The way Stone is talked about in this Vogue story — cover line "When Size 4 Is Too Big: A Curvy Model's Struggle To Fit In" — you'd almost think she was a plus-size model instead of a girl with the highly typical (for a straight-size model) measurements 33"-24"-35". Writes Rebecca Johnson:

'What they say is 'curvy,' but you know they mean fat," says Lara Stone, who is Dutch and so soft-spoken, you have to lean forward to hear what she's saying. However, she enunciates that word — fat — clearly and forcefully, as if it were caught at the back of her throat. The word hovers over the din of the hotel lobby where we are seated in downtown Manhattan, laced with irony and just a tinge of bitterness.

So that's 11 rather straightforward words from Stone, and 59 words from Vogue about what Stone said. (I guess when a word, having at last dislodged itself from the subject's throat, literally flies out of her mouth and floats in the air of a hotel lobby, it requires special treatment. Did she fling her arms in the air, too, Vogue? Because limb amputation sounds almost as painful as reading that sentence!) Anyway:

Worse than being called fat is a gaggle of stylists whispering in a corner after you've been trying on clothes for ten minutes. "That," she says, "is when I know I'm about to be canceled."

And even now that her position in fashion's firmament ought to be secure, given she has earned Karl Lagerfeld's favor, worked with the world's top photographers, and been on multiple covers of British, French, and American Vogue, she still encounters narrow-minded folks who make her feel like "the odd one out." "I was on a shoot just last week," Stone told Johnson, "and the stylist took out this tight corset dress and said, 'Here, put it on,' and I was like, 'Who are you kidding?' There was no way, so that was very rude of her. It's like, come on, she's a woman; whether you're buying jeans at the mall or wearing couture, you know what it's like for clothes not to fit. It's not an easy kind of rejection, because it's very personal. It's you, your body. You take it to heart."

What I guess a lot of people don't realize is that modeling is just manual labor with fancier clothes. The work is deeply bodily, and therefore the division between you and your work dissolves: everything you wear, how you present yourself, how you walk, every product you put on your face, every haircut, and, mostly, everything you put in your mouth, impacts your career. It is automatically a professional choice, not a personal one. There is no meaningful work/life balance, because your body is your work. Of course, women outside of the modeling industry have long been told that their bodies need to be their "work," too: that we all need to obsess over our arms and abs and thighs and do 30 squats on our lunch breaks and always take the stairs and use the Shake Weight and join gyms and buy athleticwear and Lose 12 lbs Before Sunday. It's just that for models, these imperatives are professional. Living is work. And that can kinda mess with your head.

Stone herself, being unable to budge from what must be her set point weight range with diet and exercise, began taking pills to lose inches. "But they made my heart race," she reports. So she started drinking. Nobody noticed, and her work didn't suffer, but soon she was waking up with the shakes. Stone did a month of rehab in January — the longest she'd spent in one place at a stretch in the two years since her career kicked into hyperdrive, she told British Vogue — and has not had a drink since.

What is elided in these kinds of stories that trumpet Lara Stone's "curves" and proclaim her to be a size 4 — because we all know clothing sizes are meaningful and consistent nation-wide standards, oh wait — is that Stone differs so barely, so incredibly tinily merely, so very little, from the accepted size standard for fashion models. She is slightly shorter, at 5'7", than most runway models, and her measurements are well within fashion's preferred range. While it's undeniable that she has a slightly different body shape than most models, her size is entirely typical of the industry. (Technically, her stated hip measurement, 35", is about 1" larger than the 34" it "should" be for her to model, but there are dozens of other models who have worked, and done the show circuit, with hips of Stone's size.) It's all well and good to call her the "curvy" model, and it is obvious from her runway work and every nude shoot she's ever done that Stone has breasts. When she slings one hip out, like for the photo accompanying this Vogue story, sure, she can indeed look kind of voluptuous. (When she doesn't, she doesn't: Would you call her the "curvy" one in this Givenchy campaign?) These stories never make clear that Stone veers from the accepted modeling standards only every so slightly, and that booking her for a shoot or a campaign is not some revolutionary act of body diversity. If anything, the fact that she is seen as a different kind of model for her size is the ultimate indictment of the fashion industry's standards. But Vogue would never make that point.

An item on Fashionista this morning points to two actual plus-size models, Crystal Renn and Amy Lemons, who are both busy working in Europe. Renn — whose struggle with anorexia and exercise bulimia is documented in her recently released memoir, Hungry — apparently went blonde for a shoot for Italian Vanity Fair, and Lemons, who also began her career as a straight-size model, is working for French Elle with the photographer Tesh. Her spread is apparently over 30 pages, and includes cover tries. Lara Stone is a fantastic model. I love a lot of her work. But seeing a plus-size model on the cover of a major fashion magazine, now that would be a real sign of change. Yes, plus-size models are still models, and the fashion industry still makes its money presenting women with images to aspire to that are, for most, unattainable and unrealistic. But if we can change the parameters of the beauty standard even just enough to accommodate tall, enviably proportioned young women who don't have 23" waists, then I'd still call that progress of a kind.

Fittingly, Fashionista asks: Italian Vanity Fair and French Elle are great, but where are the U.S. magazines? Aside from Glamour's admirable commitment to using plus-size models consistently in fashion spreads from issue to issue, and V's forthcoming January special issue, what is going at American Vogue, Elle, and Harper's Bazaar? Will we see a plus-size model in a fashion spread in an American magazine that isn't trudging through the clichés of its obligatory annual Love Your Shape issue? I have a feeling — call it blogger's intuition — that it might happen sooner than you think.

Hello, Gorgeous [Style.com]
The Tides Are Turning [Fashionista]

Earlier: Model Crystal Renn On Self-Acceptance, Size, & The Fashion Industry

I agree that a lot of college kids are lying to the "statistics people" about how much they drink, if this is really the stat they came up with.


Still, the dishonesty of her peers doesn't exactly validate Jennifer's excuse for excessive binge drinking.


As with many addicts featured on this show, and elsewhere, Jennifer has an incredibly tragic back story. A few years back, she got in a really bad drunk driving accident (she was a passenger) that landed her in the hospital for a month, and led to the loss of a portion of one of her kidneys. The near-death experience helped patch up her relationship with her 14-year-old brother, to whom she never had been close, but three days after she came home from the hospital, he was hit by a car and killed. She went off the rails as a result, and used his death as a way to turn her parents into enablers.


Jennifer thinks that it doesn't count as alcoholism if a person doesn't drink alone, so she'll find out about random parties on MySpace and show up, not knowing anyone. One question: when she showed up to this party, with a documentary film crew in tow, didn't anyone say to her, "Dude, you're filming Intervention?"


When she arrived at her intervention, Jennifer immediately locked herself in the bathroom, where she downed the bottle of vodka in her purse. (She also was in possession of Vicodin, morphine, Xanax and Klonopin.) This letter, read to her by her childhood friend—who had stopped speaking to her—was pretty disturbing and embarrassing for everyone to hear, most of all, Jennifer's parents.


Eventually, she agreed to enter treatment, but was kicked out after 47 days, for drinking. Her family and friends held the bottom line and didn't pay for her plane ticket home, so she entered a sober living facility. She's been sober for about a month.

Nubian representatives say that the line compares black Egyptians to monkeys, and are suing the singer, her record label, and the songwriter. • The man charged with the kidnapping of Shaniya Davis has also been accused of raping and asphyxiating the 5-year-old South Carolina girl. Mario McNeill is being charged with first-degree murder and rape of a child. • Amanda Knox broke down in tears today in court as the prosecution closed their case against her, saying she "harboured hatred" for Meredith Kercher and "killed her to take revenge." • Amanda Knox's parents are so confident she'll be acquitted that they've already bought her a plane ticket home to Seattle. •  The British man charged with strangling his own wife on a camping trip was found not guilty on account of a rare disorder, which caused him to murder Christine Thomas in his sleep. "You are a decent man and a devoted husband. I strongly suspect that, not withstanding the circumstances here, you may well be feeling a sense of guilt about what happened that night. In the eyes of the law, you bear no responsibility," said the judge. •  Reporter Michael Crowley sat down in a restaurant the other night and found himself sitting two tables away from Sonia Sotomayor. Naturally, he sent out a Tweet, which read: "She left her purse on a chair; stern-faced security guys came back for it about 30 min later." •  Soldiers in Sweden are fighting for flame-retardant underwear. The Swedish Conscription Council claims that the female soldiers were promised appropriate bras and panties years ago, but the armed forces has failed to deliver. • Selma Aliye Kavaf, Turkey's minister for women's affairs, says, "The mentality change regarding women's participation in business or political life would take time. Legislation or laws are not enough for women to become active in business life." • A dad from Minnesota claims that during the first three years of his son's life, he spoke to him only in Klingon. The dad says it was part of an experiment, to see whether his kid would pick up the fictional language. He says he stopped when it became clear his son, now 15, preferred English. •  Warning: This story is disgusting and highly disturbing. Short version: a gang in Peru has been accused of murdering people in order to collect their fat, which is then sold on the black market for cosmetics. • The highest court in New York has rejected an attempt to throw out two government orders to recognize the rights of same-sex couples married in other states. While this is good news, the ruling was based on a technicality, and did not address the broader human rights issue at stake. • A team of researchers have made headway in understanding how the body metabolizes date rape drugs. They hope that the breakthrough "may provide new clues on how to counteract the drug's effects, or to enhance its metabolism and decrease toxicity for chronic abusers or victims of sexual assault." • A study from the Harvard School of Public Health found a woman's risk of developing multiple sclerosis during her lifetime is doubled if she was obese at age 18. This is the first time MS risk has been linked to obesity. The research was based on the Nurses' Health study, but doctors say "There's no reason to believe that the biological mechanisms would be different." • Ohio State University researchers found that alcoholics over the age of 60 have more than 40 alcoholic drinks a week on average, compared to between 25 and 35 drinks a week on average for younger alcoholics. The findings suggest older alcoholics have developed a tolerance and need to drink even more to get drunk. • A North Carolina doctor could lose his medical license for allegedly poking a patient's thigh and calling her fat and irresponsible for being unemployed and using taxpayer's money to pay for another pregnancy. The doctor admitted he told her that her fat thighs and diabetes could make her go blind. • Could "real" America's love affair with Sarah Palin be coming to a close? In this video an angry mob boos her and calls her a quitter after left a an event in Noblesville, Indiana without signing the books of about 300 families who had been waiting for more than three hours. • A few Indian travel agents are pushing "divorce tourism," package deals designed to help couples salvage their relationship. Viresh Hirjee, chief executive of a Mumbai travel agency, has been sending customers of vacation along with marriage counselors. "We are trying our best to bring the couple together," he said, but warned, "We are not destiny changers." • School officials in Orange County, California warned kids that if they skip school today to see New Moon they'll be marked truant. • The business information analysis firm IBISWorld says that the growing popularity of online dating sites is responsible for Australia's sex industry losing $67.6 million in the past year. "The rapid growth in online services means it has never been easier for like-minded individuals to organize casual liaisons for little or no cost," said IBISWorld analyst Edward Butler. • Barbara Ann Radnofsky, Democratic candidate for attorney general in Texas, says a clause in a 2005 constitutional amendment to ban gay marriages accidentally banned all marriages in the state. The clause reads: "This state or a political subdivision of this state may not create or recognize any legal status identical or similar to marriage." Backers of the ban say she's reading too much into the clause for political reasons. • The city of Auckland, New Zealand paid $74,000 to give a 66-foot fiberglass Santa statue a facelift. One of his mechanical eyes had been drooping and people were worried it would scare children. His face has been bandaged and the repairs will be unveiled on Sunday. •

New York's Steve Fishman tells a depressing tale of denial and rage. On one side is the bereaved Schuler, struggling to go on after the death of his wife and daughter, and on the other is the Bastardi family, two of whose members were killed when Diane Schuler's Winstar struck their TrailBlazer. Mike Bastardi lost his father, Michael Sr., and his brother Guy, and is angry at the whole Schuler family for what he sees as their role in the accident. He says, "They make like it was not even their fault. I think they knew she was drunk and stoned." Bastardi's wife Jeanne is even harsher. She says, "Not even a second have I felt sorry for Danny. This becomes a man you can't hate enough."

Part of the reason the Bastardis are so angry with Schuler is that he won't own up to his wife's guilt. After the crash, he said at a press conference, "She did not drink. She is not an alcoholic. My heart is rested every night. Something medically had to have happened." He's stuck to this story ever since, hiring a private investigator and a lawyer who speculated that a small stroke or abscess might have caused her to suddenly lose judgment and down ten shots of vodka before getting behind the wheel. Not only was his wife not an addict, he says, she was nearly flawless. Though he spoke to the investigator about "ups and downs" in his marriage," he told Fishman, "There were never any downs. Up for twelve years." He says they were "perfect" for each other, she was an "outstanding" mom, and, tellingly, "She never complained. I do; she doesn't."

Diane Schuler's friends also portray her as keeping her feelings — especially negative ones — to herself. One says, "I've never seen her mad or angry," another, "she infrequently talked about personal feelings." She never talked about her parents' divorce, and refused to speak to her mother — some friends even thought her mother was dead. When Fishman asked Danny "how well he really knew" his wife, Danny answered, "She'd talk to me if things came up." His examples: "The house needs painting, the gutters need to be cleaned."

To hear Fishman tell it, the Schulers' story seemed like a long, drawn-out, and bloody example of the consequences of secrets in a marriage. Did Diane Schuler feel pressured to be the perfect mom — Danny mentions her expertise with birthday cards and holiday decorations — and thus keep her substance problems to herself? Did she feel she couldn't confide in her husband because their work schedules meant they were rarely home at the same time? Did her parents' divorce make her feel she couldn't rock the boat in her own marriage? Why didn't her friends know more about her troubles? Probably these questions will never be answered, but if there's a tragic flaw in the whole Schuler saga, it's isolation.

Despite her supposedly close-knit family, Diane Schuler apparently kept herself hidden from everyone. This led not only to her death and the deaths of seven others — it also plunged her husband into denial and the surviving Bastardi's into fruitless anger. They won't be satisfied until he admits guilt; he won't be satisfied until he proves his wife was blameless. It's hard to know how much of this cycle of despair was caused by Diane Schuler's own particular pathology, and how much by an American idea of marriage that often positions the spouse as sole confidant even when, as was the case with the Schulers, that spouse may be physically unavailable. Only one thing is clear: if Schuler had felt able to open up about her own life, she might have avoided destroying countless others.

Image via New York Magazine.

I Dream Of Diane [New York Magazine]

Myerson's book is just one of two familial addiction memoirs reviewed in yesterday's Times. The other is a review of Kaylie Jones's memoir, Lies My Mother Never Told Me. Jones is the daughter of James Jones, author of From Here to Eternity, but her memoir focuses on her alcoholic, "histrionic" mother Gloria. Reviewer Janet Maslin says Jones "exposes her mother's cruelty, narcissism and heavy drinking, reeling off story after story about her mother's scorching wisecracks and bravura displays of malice." "Kaylie is at her fieriest," she continues, "in describing the step-by-step souring of her dealings with her mother and the ghastly decline of her mother's physical and mental health." A memoir that takes a mother's "ghastly decline" as it own aesthetic apex sounds potentially distasteful, but Maslin praises Jones's candor, saying, "she doesn't let propriety blunt her memories."

Gloria Jones is dead now, and can't be harmed by anything her daughter writes. But Jake Myerson, son of Julie Myerson and subject of her memoir The Lost Child, is very much alive — and only twenty years old. When Julie Myerson chose to write about her son's teenage marijuana addiction and her eventual decision to kick him out of the house, her British readership was outraged. The Times's Patricia Cohen says Myerson "was pilloried in her home country this spring as cruel, selfish and manipulative." Myerson elaborates: "a bit of a witch burning was what it felt like." Myerson feels that both memoir and drug addiction are less taboo in America, where she's releasing the book this week, and she hopes "Americans won't rush in and judge me."

But the harshest judgment may have come from the subject of the book, Myerson's son Jake. In a March interview with the Daily Mail, he vented his anger not only at the book but at his mother's anonymous column Living With Teenagers. Earlier in March, Myerson had confessed, "I wrote Living With Teenagers. I did so anonymously because I wanted to write truthfully, and that meant my children's identities had to be obscured." But, Jake says,

The thing is, it wasn't really anonymous; not to the people who knew us, those who matter. Having grown up with this, being written about in an arbitrary way since the age of two, I have always said to my parents 'Please don't do this, I hate this.' I was made to feel I was wrong for being offended by it.

He also accuses his mother of repeatedly denying she was the author of the column, even after his school friends worked it out and began to tease him. Of The Lost Child, he says,

What she has done has taken the very worst years of my life and cleverly blended it into a work of art, and that to me is obscene. I was only 17, I was a confused teenager, I was too young really to know who I was or what was happening.

He adds that before its publication, "she gave me a copy of the manuscript of The Lost Child and told me to read it. She wanted my approval; the problem is she would have published it regardless." Somewhat distastefully, Jake's comments to the Daily Mail caused Julie Myerson's publisher to rush the book out two months early in order to take advantage of the controversy.

Jake Myerson has lots more choice words for his mother, calling her a "pseudo New Labour socialist" who greatly exaggerated her son started action and "couldn't survive" without writing about her family. But Jake himself is very young and not exactly restrained — he talks about his siblings, one of whom is still a minor, and says his parents should have gotten a divorce — and it's hard to believe his side of the story is the unalloyed truth. The image he paints (with eager assists by the Daily Mail) of Julie Myerson as unrepentant fame-whore is probably oversimplified. That said, Myerson does sound like a piece of work. In her last Living With Teenagers column, she wrote,

There was no way I would or could continue writing with them knowing what I was doing. Over those two years, as our teenagers bloomed and matured and softened, and became so much more vulnerable, so the column began to feel less like some kind of benign, semi-comic revenge and more like a betrayal.

Getting back at your "ghastly" mom is one thing, but should you really be using your column to get "revenge" on your children, no matter how benign? And does "the importance of publicizing the nightmare of teenage drug use" — the justification Myerson and her husband use for publishing The Lost Child — really outweigh a young man's desire to keep his painful adolescence private? In the Times, Susan Cheever basically says: totally! Author of two addiction memoirs, one of which describes her assignations with two men while her daughter was sick, she explains, "I strongly believe everybody has the right to their own story." But everyone's story includes other people's, and artistic autonomy becomes a lot less admirable when those people are your children.

Cheever may be working out some of her own revenge, since her dad wrote "very, very thinly" veiled novels about their family. Perhaps she's so adamant about her right to her own story because, as a child, she was deprived of control over it. The same thing, it seems, has happened to Jake Myerson. Of his parents, he says, "They are writers, they are published, they have a voice. I don't." But the Daily Mail has been only too happy to give him a voice — unfortunately, his mother hasn't set a very good example of how to use it.

A Mother's Memoir, A Son's Anguish [NYT]
A Daughter's Memoir, A Mother's Anguish [NYT]
'You're The Addict, Mum!' Son Of Julie Myerson Says She's Hooked On Exploiting Her Own Children [Daily Mail]
Mum, What You Did Is Obscene: The Son Julie Myerson Kicked Out For Smoking Pot Tells His Side Of The Story [Daily Mail]

According to Melissa Healy of the LA Times, the study in question showed pictures of faces to 15 currently abstinent alcoholic and 15 non-alcoholics. The non-alcoholics had elevated activity in the amygdala and hippocampus when looking at faces that displayed "anger, joy, sadness or disappointment." However, alcoholics had the same amount of activity whether looking at an emotional or a neutral face. This "emotional insensitivity" in the brain may explain earlier research that shows alcoholics often misread others' feelings.

A difficulty reading facial cues obviously poses a problem for moms. Especially in babies and very young children, facial expression may be the only clue that something is wrong. This is added to the more obvious problems associated with drinking too much around young kids — in a Times profile on Friday, blogger and author Stefanie Wilder-Taylor recalls waking up fully dressed on her couch and realizing, "I have these kids who are depending on me, and I have a bad problem."

But study author Ksenija Marinkovic points out an interesting conundrum — scientists don't know whether alcohol abuse causes emotional insensitivity, or whether this insensitivity is pre-existing, perhaps the result of brain problems that gave rise to alcoholism too. Healy says some studies indicate "that a child's cognitive deficits — especially in the realm of emotional intelligence — may set off a cascade of events leading to alcoholism." When people have trouble relating to others, might this lead them to seek comfort in alcohol? And might their difficulties with relationships be exacerbated by other factors?

Wilder-Taylor writes that she and her friends drank "to express that we're still fun people. Just because we have babies doesn't mean we can't have an adult side." The idea that moms aren't fun is a pervasive one in our culture, but women might feel more vulnerable to it — and be more likely to use drink as a refuge from it — if they have difficulty clicking with people in other ways. Plenty of people use alcohol to reduce social anxiety, and people who don't read emotional cues well might easily be more socially anxious than others. Of course, this doesn't mean that Stefanie Wilder-Taylor, or any other mom with alcohol issues, necessarily has pre-existing brain problems. These problems might, for all scientists know, be caused by alcohol itself. But when treating alcoholism, it's worth paying attention to other issues that may be in play, including a susceptibility to negative social messages and a difficulty understanding the feelings of others.

Healy points out that other studies have shown children of alcoholics to have similar emotion-reading problems. This may support the notion that alcoholism stems from other abnormalities in brain function. However, it also provides an opportunity for clinicians to treat whole families when a mom has alcohol problems. Whether or not her drinking has affected her kids directly, it may be related to problems with emotion processing, problems that may be passed down genetically. If therapists can address these problems in kids and provide tools for dealing with them, they may be able to break the cycle by which children of alcoholics so often become alcoholics too.

Alcoholics Misread Facial Cues [LA Times]
A Heroine Of Cocktail Moms Sobers Up [NYT]

Earlier: Why They Drank: After Accident, Other Alcoholic Moms Tell Their Stories

Brownell, author of Mommy Doesn't Drink Here Anymore, writes in Women's eNews,

Since becoming a mother five years before, I've longed to hang on to a part of myself that isn't smeared in Mommy goo. The part that laughs at parties, looks good in heels and earns a living while spending quality time with loved ones. I want to be the anti-June Cleaver, the un-wife, the un-mother, loving and present, but not invisible or brainless.

And while it is gravely oversimplifying to say this is why I drink, drinking does begin as a bulwark against the onslaught of mama drones, an enjoyable evening ritual, a life raft—cheaper and easier to do with young children than yoga or running. Only later does it become the best part of every day.

If Brownell's experience is any guide, far from keeping women from drinking, the stereotype of the mother as angel in the house may actually drive them to it. For her, drinking was a way of recapturing an old identity, an identity partially erased by society's assumptions that moms are no fun, don't look good in heels, and are brainless.

Cheever (a sober alcoholic whose father John Cheever had alcohol problems too) focuses mainly on America's widespread acceptance of drinking — and, in some situations, even of drinking and driving — but she also offers a telling speculation about Schuler's thought process:

Diane Schuler was a mother of two small children who loaded her own kids and three others into her minivan for a long drive home from a camping trip. Small children, because they are so tied to our hearts, have the ability to drive us crazy with their complaints and carsickness and impatience. (Small kids are special in this regard.) Perhaps to fortify herself for the drive, Schuler reached for vodka and pot, substances she had probably used in the past. It may not seem obvious to someone who has never had a drinking problem, but for a woman whose most reliable support had become alcohol, it could make a kind of sad, twisted sense.

Dealing with kids, Cheever points out, is hard. It's especially hard when your "marriage starts having more bad days than good," as Brownell's and possibly Schuler's did. And for some moms, alcohol can be a refuge from these difficulties. In an old but highly worth-reading article, also in Women's eNews, Gretchen Cook writes that "society has generally stereotyped alcoholics as the guy curled up with his bottle on Skid Row," and this severely hampers efforts to help women like Schuler. Cook talks to Tracey Deschaine, a nurse who has worked in recovery centers and who says that the Alcoholics Anonymous approach most popular for treating alcoholism isn't well-suited to women. She's especially critical of the First Step, which requires AA members to admit powerlessness over alcohol. She tells Cook,

Women have known all along they're powerless, that's part of the reason they fall victim to drugs or alcohol. They need to be told they have power inside them to get well. And in the Fourth Step, you have to go out and emotionally flog yourself. Nobody has to tell women to flog themselves. They do it all the time.

While the idea that all women emotionally flog themselves is a stereotype itself, it's worth noting that AA encourages people to embrace a feeling many women struggle against: the feeling that outside forces control their lives. Some of these outside forces — damaging assumptions about motherhood, lack of readily available childcare help, higher expectations of mothers than of fathers — need to be challenged, not accepted. Only when we recognize that mothers aren't perfect, and that they sometimes use dangerous coping mechanisms to deal with the very real stresses of their lives, will we be able to stop Diane Schuler's tragedy from repeating itself.

"How Could She?" Well, I Have A Theory [Salon]
At First, Drinking Made It Easier to Be a Mom [Women's eNews]
New Research Confirms Alcohol Is Gender-Sensitive [Women's eNews]

Earlier: Why Are We So Shocked When Moms Drive Drunk?

According to the Times, Gary was denied a transplant because he "wasn't able to prove to doctors that he had the drive and determination to stop drinking," of which his mother, Madeline, says "they were playing God, making an example of him." In order to qualify, Gary would have had to live "alcohol-free in the community" for six months; but he didn't have six months, and was in the hospital. Despite public appeals by Madeline and his doctors that the rules be waived and Gary - by virtue of his extreme youth, and physical inability to meet this requirement - get a shot at a transplant, he died before they bore fruit. This angers some who point to the fact that despite this official sanctimony, the famously hard-drinking soccer star George Best was granted a transplant (which echoes a similar outcry when alcoholic Mickey Mantle received a new liver in short order.) Donation is especially fraught in the UK because organs are in short supply - an artificial liver didn't work - and short of enacting a Never Let Me Go scenario, this seems unlikely to change without significant scientific progress.

By any standard, Gary drank a lot: by his father's count, three bottles of vodka a day, then lager; doctors say his was one of the most advanced cases of cirrhosis they'd ever seen in a patient his age. Madeline traces her son's problems to his parent's divorce, when he was forced to give up the martial arts he loved. Introverted and angry, he started drinking at 13, and serious behavior problems followed. His mother's words to the Daily Mail (who seemed to be waiting ghoulishly outside his hospital room) are the sad refrain of many struggling single moms:

No, I wasn't there when they came home from school, but that was because I was working. What was I supposed to do? I needed to keep a roof over our heads. They needed to eat. I guess I could have sat around sponging off the state, but that's never been me...It was always a treadmill, I had no money. State help? You must be joking. I had to work then come home, cook, clean, run after three boys. And do you know how much boys eat? It was hard. I could only do it if I was in bed by 10pm, so I was most nights. And my son Gary? Well, he wasn't in himself by that time mostly. He fended for himself a lot.'

His father says, "To be honest, this is drug country. We were more worried about heroin. Alcohol? It's bad, but it's not that bad. When Madeline would say he'd gone off on one again, I thought it was just a matter of time till he calmed down. Boys are boys; they drink a bottle of cider behind the bike sheds. I thought it was nothing more."

It was; soon the teen needed a drink to get out of bed. Afraid of angering or provoking him, his mother didn't try, after awhile, to curb it, even after he was expelled from school. His father seems to have been basically MIA; his two younger brothers say he reacted to their interventions with abuse. By the time he saw a doctor, he was jaundiced, his liver was shot and his only chance was a transplant. His mother says this was a wake-up call, that he talked about starting college and changing his ways. "'People say how could he not have known, but he was a child. Like so many other youngsters who drink, he never understood the consequences."

On the internet, plenty of strangers are blaming the parents, charging them with negligence - with his mother, not surprisingly, coming in for the lion's share of the blame. Anyone who has been a single parent or known an alcoholic knows it's far from that simple - and the fact that Gary's two brothers seem stable and well should spike some people's guns. "Should" something have been done sooner? Yes - but by the time Gary died, he was an adult - and clearly Gary wasn't the only one in denial about the consequences. Those who feel an alcoholic shouldn't get a liver over someone with a more "organic" illness? Well, he didn't: surely that should seem like justice enough at a time when his parents are surely already wracked with guilt and will be for the rest of their lives. As even the Daily Mail points out, this was also a failure of the system: as much schools who didn't want to deal with a troublemaker as parents who turned a blind eye to what was obviously troubled and dangerous behavior. What is at fault as much as anything, of course, is an institutionalized drinking culture that's increasingly out of control: according to the Times, the last five years have seen a 27% increase in alcohol-related hospitalizations in young people, and binge-drinking amongst young women has seen a particularly sharp rise. Yes, the end of early last-calls may help curb synchronized 11-pm vomiting, but any young person who's grown up with binge drinking as the primary means of socializing isn't going to suddenly start worrying about the effect on his body. If Gary Reinbach's death can lead to a serious awareness of this issue, well, that would be great. As to transplants: in a perfect world, there won't be many more of his age in the same position, but it may be a reality that will require consideration and compassion. Whatever their mistakes, his family should have ours now.

Alcoholic Gary Reinbach dead at 22 after transplant refused [TimesUK]
My Alcoholic Boy, Facing Death At 22 [Times UK]
So How Did This Bright-Eyed Little Boy Come To Die Of Drink At 22? Read His Mother's Story And Decide [Daily Mail]
Drinking In The UK [JFR]

When it comes to reality television, my bar is set incredibly low. However, I was extremely disturbed by this episode: While I do think that Intervention is typically a responsible show—as well as helpful and educational for people going through similar problems with loved ones suffering from addiction—what took place on last night's installment left me questioning whether young children should be exposed to this level of melodrama.

Here's the backstory: Bret had been an alcoholic for 10 years. He didn't seem like a sloppy drunk, but a mean drunk with a dark side. (He'd recently purchased a shotgun that he kept loaded in his closet.) Although Bret's wife of over 20 years—Amaya—divorced him after a previous intervention and rehab stint failed, for this attempt at getting him sober, the family decided to involve Bret's two children—a teenage girl, Kelsey, and a boy, Kyle, about 9 or 10. (At the pre-intervention meeting, Bret's daughter Kelsey said she felt a lot better after hearing what the interventionist had to say, and found his counseling helpful. Kyle seemed particularly troubled by his father's alienation from the family, and blamed himself for his dad's absence in his life.)

The intervention didn't go well. Bret became enraged almost immediately and ran out of the hotel conference room where everyone was meeting. (The family screamed and cried and chased him down in the parking lot to continue reading their letters.) Bret proclaimed, essentially, that he wouldn't stop drinking for anyone, including his children, which caused his son to collapse on the ground with his mother and sob uncontrollably. He then began walking home.

Concerned that Bret was going home to kill himself with is shotgun, the interventionist piled everyone into the car—kids included—to speed over to Bret's condo, break in, and get the gun. It seemed like a situation that could put these children in extreme danger. It left me wondering if Kyle would have been better off, emotionally, if he had been shielded from this mess.

I understand that probably Bret's kids really needed to confront him with their feelings, and since he was obviously a stubborn case, the family probably felt his children would be the most convincing at getting him to go into treatment. But allowing the children to go into Bret's condo and look for his gun? Completely irresponsible.

In the end, (and off-camera) Bret agreed to go into treatment only after his family threatened him with legally getting him involuntarily detained for psychological evaluation. After completing 80 days of treatment, Bret was diagnosed with advanced esophageal cancer, which is linked to alcoholism. He passed away three weeks later. He had been sober for 104 days. His son's speech afterward was heartbreaking.

Intervention has posted up an update on Bret's family on its website.

In addition to the difficulty of actually having a psychological disorder, the mentally ill have to deal with how other people stigmatize them, from employers who won't hire them, to friends and family who don't believe their ailments to be real, to health insurance companies that won't cover treatment. People usually divide the mentally ill into those that are violent and dangerous or weak and incompetent, and fear or disdain them accordingly.

In the study, published in the journal Psychological Science, researchers set out to see if gender stereotypes about certain disorders influence how we view the mentally ill, reports EurekAlert. Two Northwestern University psychologists conducted a study in which volunteers from around the country were given the case history of a person with mentally illness. Some read the history of Brian, a man with all the typical symptoms of alcoholism, and others read about Karen, who had a classic case of major depression. For some of the patients, Karen and Brian's names were switched in the reports, so that she was the alcoholic and he was the depressed one.

Researchers found that the subjects expressed more disgust and anger, and less sympathy, toward Brian and Karen after reading their real reports, in which they had the disorder associated with their gender. When the patients acted "out of character," with a depressed Brian and an alcoholic karen, the volunteers said they were more willing to help them and were more likely to see their illness as a genuine biological disorder, instead of just a character flaw. Knowing that gender does play a role in how society treats the mentally ill, researchers say that there should be a campaign to challenge stereotypes about the association of gender with certain disorders.

[Image via Exploding Dog.]

His And Hers: Study Examines The Role Of Gender In The Stigma Of Mental Illness [EurekAlert]

Chris's family is accepting of the fact that he's gay, but they don't view his long-term relationship as "real," the way they do with his sister and her husband, who have been together a much shorter amount of time. He's also resentful that his nieces and nephews don't refer to his boyfriend as "Uncle Shawn." Lastly, he's upset that he doesn't own a house and have a family. His pain about these issues is real and palpable, but it's hard to say that if they weren't present in his life that he wouldn't suffer from alcoholism, as his father and his father's parents all had the disease.

Janet's first husband was a millionaire drug trafficker, but she left him after all of their assets were seized by the government. The second time around, she married for love, but missed the money and partying lifestyle. However, the lack of the former did not keep her from pursuing the latter: Her second husband has filed for divorce, she's taken up with a 75-year-old boyfriend who lives in a trailer park, her wardrobe is limited to bikinis and sarongs, and she drinks a gallon of white wine a day. She refers to herself as a "lady of leisure."

Cheever writes on the New York Times' website that people in New York are drinking less, and she bases this conclusion on the anecdotal evidence that those in her circle are drinking less. Two things about that: Susan, honey, you're 65 years old. Perhaps part of the reason your friends drink less now is that they can't stomach it anymore! But, she takes this opportunity to say that she misses when her buddies used to get fall down drunk because "For us sober people there is a kind of drunkenfreude to watching others embarrass themselves, mangle their words and do things they will regret in the morning — if they even remember them in the morning."

Cheever gleefully describes a friend tottering around at a party a decade ago.

As dessert ended, the woman in the red dress got up and stumbled toward the bathroom… As coffee splashed into porcelain demitasse cups, the woman in the red dress returned, sank sloppily into her chair and reached for the Courvoisier. Someone gently moved the bottle away. “Are you shaying I’m drunk?” she demanded. Even in the candlelight I noticed that the lipstick she had reapplied was slightly to the left of her lips

Would this friend have described herself as merely "tipsy"? Maybe, because according to a new report, women use euphemisms to describe their excessive drinking, and those euphemisms can lead them to underestimate their intake. According to the Telegraph, "Men used more forceful words, like 'hammered' and 'wasted'. The researchers found that when women described an evening's drinking as getting 'tipsy' they were talking about consuming four drinks over two hours which is actually classed as a binge for females."

Moral of these two stories? Beware of getting tipsy, ladies, or your abstemious friends will feel smugly superior. Happy holidays!

Drunkenfreude [NY Times]
'Tipsy' Women Have Drunk More Than They Realise [Telegraph]

Earlier: 'Writer Spawn Susan Cheever's Issues Have Issues

See what I mean? Totally a book for aliens.

One of the chapters in the book is called "When Your Husband Loses His Job." Here's an excerpt:

A man's sense of identity is closely bound up with his job. His confidence stems in large measure from being able to do his work well, to hold his own with other men, and to provide adequately for his family. The loss of his job is a threat to his masculinity, a blow to his ego so powerful that it may have a physical as well as a mental effect on him.

The chapter offers advice on how women really need to be emotionally supportive, while not draining their finances on their "usual scotch and sirloin steaks, and having her weekly appointment at the beauty salon." And while there aren't any blatant tips of "Hey lady why don't you go get a job?" there is one sentence in caption that says, "Today, women, too, are taking direct action to secure better pay and working conditions."

The next chapter is called "Sons and Daughters" and this is the page of images that's used to open it:

I stared at it for a while and was like, "Whuuuuuuuuuut?" It kinda looks like that "one of these things is not like the other" thing from Sesame Street. It turns out that it's supposed to be examples of teenage rebellion, which makes it even more hilarious because that guy on the bottom right is already experiencing signs of male-pattern baldness, so it would seem that his parents fucked up raising him way long ago. Also, maybe this is a generational thing, but I don't remember doing any of those things as a way of acting out (certainly don't remember breastfeeding an infant in a room of naked hippies). My rebellion was limited to dying my hair pink, shoplifting from Claire's, using a lunchbox as a purse, and taking my parents' car for a joyride without asking (or having a license). Oh, and I guess I also dated a 27-year-old guy, so maybe that picture on the bottom right-hand corner makes a bit of sense now.

The rebellious acts of children that this chapter covers range from "trashing" (which apparently is '70s speak for "vandalism") and living in sin, like this couple:

Did men just age horribly back then or something? I totally thought it was her dad, but it turns out it's the guy she's shacking up with.

Another problem that arises with pain-in-the-ass kids?

Rallying in favor of abortion—now legalized but still a subject of controversy.

If this chick were my daughter, the only beef I'd have with her would be jealousy over how supremely awesome she is at making posters. She's protesting with a poster of a protester protesting with a poster!

This passage is for Sarah Palin:

If your daughter is pregnant, there is one thing that you and your husband must consider above all else: how your daughter feels, and what she wants to do. This is not as easy as it sounds. Your daughter is bound to be undergoing a great many conflicting emotions. She may be too distressed and confused to know what she wants, or her decision may not coincide with yours. If the boy says he wants to marry her, for example, you may breathe a sigh of relief. But is your daughter sure she wants this? Is she being pressured? Is he doing the "right" thing because it is expected of him? A hasty wedding may save everyone's face temporarily, but the chances are that a marriage made under pressure will not be successful.

Naturally, the chapter "Drugs and Your Child" has the coolest looking people. Sienna, is that you?

This quiz is from the chapter "The Drinking Problem," which evidently, we all have, since you're an alcoholic if you answer "yes" to 2 or more of these questions.

So what have I learned from this book? All the hairy bullshit stress in life stems from your husband or your ungrateful children. God, did my mom write this?

Earlier: Woman Alive: Food For Life, Love, And Looks
Woman Alive: Discover A Lovelier You

Of course, just off the top of our heads we can think of more than a few exceptions to this study, but according to those Yalies, there are physical manifestations of this male emotional avoidance. "Men had greater blood pressure response to stress, but did not report greater sadness and anxiety, may reflect that they are more likely to try to distract themselves from their physiological arousal, possibly through the use of alcohol," Chaplin tells Science Daily. So the next time your best dude wants to drown his sorrows in booze, perhaps you should get him to talk it out...though you'll probably just end up doing Jaeger bombs with him anyway.

Men Are More Likely Than Women To Crave Alcohol When They Feel Negative Emotions [Science Daily]

What's interesting is that African-Ameircan women have the lowest rates of alcohol abuse, and Grucza attributes this to the fact that by and large, they have yet to "immigrate" into the dominant culture. "Black women...have a second barrier between them and the dominant U.S. culture, namely, their race," Grucza points out. "That may be keeping them from adopting the standards of the dominant culture with respect to alcohol use."

Shelly F. Greenfield, associate clinical director of the Alcohol Abuse Treatment Program at McLean Hospital, suggests that alcohol education programs be designed that are specifically geared towards women, primarily concerning the "gender differences in metabolism of alcohol, and the associated heightened female vulnerability to alcohol's adverse health consequences at lower doses than men."

If Greenfield's suggestions are taken to heart, and alcohol abuse and education programs are formatted for women, they'll probably work, as Amstel Light has proven. When the beer company started advertising their product specifically to women, Amstel Light volume rose 13%, according to USA Today. If we can be enticed to buy beer, we can be enticed not to.

Alcoholism Is Not Just A 'Man's Disease' Anymore [Science Daily]
Women Take Stage In Beer Ads [USA Today]