Book Review: Good Girls Don’t Get Fat

Good Girls Don't Get FatGood Girls Don’t Get Fat by Robyn Sil­ver­man

My rat­ing: 5 of 5 stars

This book is absolutely amaz­ing, and I strongly rec­om­mend it to everyone.

Yes, I said every­one. If you are a human being who is read­ing this post/​review, you live in a first-​​world soci­ety and you inter­act with females. You will ben­e­fit from a greater under­stand­ing of what mod­ern social stan­dards do to young females and how they shape us for the rest of our lives, how they twist us into dis­or­dered think­ing that touches absolutely every­thing we do, from how we think about our­selves to our per­sonal and busi­ness rela­tion­ships, our spir­i­tu­al­ity, our health — every­thing. And you will have an oppor­tu­nity to change how you inter­act with females, par­tic­u­larly girls, so that you are more of a pos­i­tive influ­ence rather than yet another per­son who is pulling her down and hold­ing her back.

I was already famil­iar with some of the research regard­ing the media and unre­al­is­tic por­tray­als of women. I knew that every mag­a­zine cover is Pho­to­shopped and air­brushed, that “nor­mal” mod­els rep­re­sent only 1 – 2% of real women, etc. I didn’t know that 5% of Amer­i­can high school girls have turned to tak­ing ana­bolic steroids in order to get a more toned, slim look, accord­ing to the CDC’s 2003 Youth Risk Behav­ior Sur­veil­lance Sys­tem, and that one out of every 14 girls in Amer­i­can mid­dle schools have tried steroids for the same pur­pose. I had heard that the pop­u­lar­ity of cos­metic surgery for young peo­ple was ris­ing, but I had no idea that it was as preva­lent as it is. I can’t remem­ber exactly how high, but it was frightening.

If there is a young lady in your life, stop for a moment and think — are you a pos­i­tive influ­ence on her? When young women in col­lege were asked about what they recall their par­ents say­ing about their bod­ies as they grew up, 80% of the responses were of neg­a­tive remarks. What will the girl in your life remem­ber you say­ing? If you’ve ever won­dered whether or not you should talk to her about los­ing a lit­tle weight, don’t. Believe me — the rest of the world has already beaten that into her, and will go on doing so every minute of every day. There’s no way she doesn’t know that her body is unac­cept­able, whether she’s still car­ry­ing a lit­tle baby fat, is mor­bidly obese, or sim­ply has a slightly round face.

One of the things I admire most about Good Girls Don’t Get Fat is that it doesn’t just talk about how bad things are, it gives con­crete sug­ges­tions for improve­ment! That’s what we need.

The book is avail­able in any for­mat you can imag­ine. Pick it up. It’s an easy read, and won­der­ful.



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Is crying cathartic for you?

I hate cry­ing, and will go to great lengths to avoid let­ting any­one see me cry — a habit I acquired as a child, because I didn’t want to let my father “win” when he hurt me. I always feel worse, rather than bet­ter, if I do cry about any­thing, so I’ve never under­stand why any­body could talk about “hav­ing a good cry.” This piece from today’s today’s Delancey­place mail­ing was informative.

Some researchers now say that the com­mon psy­cho­log­i­cal wis­dom about cry­ing — cry­ing as a healthy cathar­sis — is incom­plete and mis­lead­ing. Hav­ing a “good cry” can and usu­ally does allow peo­ple to recover some men­tal bal­ance after a loss. But not always and not for every­one, argues a review arti­cle in the cur­rent issue of the jour­nal Cur­rent Direc­tions in Psy­cho­log­i­cal Science. …

In her book See­ing Through Tears: Cry­ing and Attach­ment, Judith Kay Nel­son, a ther­a­pist and teacher liv­ing in Berke­ley, Calif., argues that the expe­ri­ence of cry­ing is rooted in early child­hood and people’s rela­tion­ship with their pri­mary care­giver, usu­ally a par­ent. Those whose par­ents were atten­tive, sooth­ing their cries when needed, tend to find that cry­ing also pro­vides them solace as adults. Those whose par­ents held back, or became irri­tated or overly upset by the child’s cry­ing, often have more dif­fi­culty sooth­ing them­selves as adults.

“Cry­ing, for a child, is a way to beckon the care­giver, to main­tain prox­im­ity and use the care­giver to reg­u­late mood or neg­a­tive arousal,” Dr. Nel­son said in a phone inter­view. Those who grow up unsure of when or whether that sooth­ing is avail­able can, as adults, get stuck in what she calls protest cry­ing — the child’s help­less squall for some­one to fix the prob­lem, undo the loss.

“You can’t work through grief if you’re stuck in protest cry­ing, which is all about fix­ing it, fix­ing the loss,” Dr. Nel­son said. “And in ther­apy — as in close rela­tion­ships — protest cry­ing is very hard to soothe, because you can’t do any­thing right, you can’t undo the loss. On the other hand, sad cry­ing that is an appeal for com­fort from a loved one is a path to close­ness and healing.”

Tears can cleanse, all right. But like a flash flood, they may also leave a per­son feel­ing stranded, and soaked.


Bene­dict Carey, “The Mud­dled Tracks of All Those Tears,” The New York Times, Health Sec­tion, Feb­ru­ary 2, 2009

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News Flash: Decatur Teen Comes Home Early From Date!

What a weirdo! I mean, you’d think these kids were being, I don’t know, respon­si­ble or some­thing! Just because she has an appoint­ment early in the morn­ing, she came home early.

Kids these days! I don’t think I ever got home an hour and a half before curfew.

Maybe she’s smarter than I was. Hmmm.

But, really, she should have given us a warn­ing. She caught us podcasting!

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Ohs noes, I have to get up in the morning!

I mean, like get up by a cer­tain time and be con­scious enough to drive, which is unusual. Really unusual, as I very sel­dom drive. But the girl needs to go see the doc­tor, and she still sees a pedi­a­tri­cian because they’re eas­ier to get in to see when you need to see them, and sick vis­its mean wait­ing and wait­ing in the lobby. It would take way too much of Sam’s day to try to take off work to do it. So unless I just can’t, at all, it’ll be me. So no long entry tonight!

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Romance and Roleplaying

Sam has talked about this sub­ject in sev­eral of his pod­casts, but I don’t think I’ve ever tried to address it. I may fail mis­er­ably, but I’ll try.

Sam and I had one of our twice-​​weekly “date nights” tonight. That means that from about 7pm ’til we go to bed, we do noth­ing but have fun with each other. The girl amuses her­self oth­er­wise, or goes out, and we do what­ever we like. Usu­ally, that means we spend some time gam­ing.
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