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spectrumed · 3 years ago

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3. sadness

Don’t be like that. Be like this, or be that other thing. Be unique, but don’t be too unique. Fit in, but try to be a rebel. Be a renegade, but don’t rock the boat. Don’t know what you are supposed to be? What? Do you have imposter syndrome or something? Just be yourself, but, y’know, sand down the edges a little bit. Be friendlier. Be the kind of person everyone likes. Be the life of the party! Don’t be some shut-in, some crazy cat-lady with absolutely zero social life. Don’t be sad. Don’t burden others with your sadness. Work to maximise the total happiness of your community. A smile goes a long way. Can’t smile? You really can’t help but being a sourpuss all the time? Well, I guess maybe that if you can’t help but stay in a perpetual bad mood bringing everyone else down… then maybe you should just stay isolated? Better stay alone, away from others. You’re toxic. You’re just so damned sad. You really must be quarantined.

I am sad, a lot of the time. Are you? But, no, you can’t just admit that you are sad. Don’t be a buzzkill, try to inject a little humour into the things you say. You can admit you’re depressed, if you do so with a joke. Don’t let others know you’re being sincere. Ironic jokes work the best, don’t they? They let you confess your secret gloom to everyone around, but they’ll never know just how serious you’re being. With a wink of the eye, any candid expression of your inner turmoil can become a hilarious post-modern gag. Are they or are they not telling the truth? Oh, I’ll never tell! And it will all work out excellent, up until the day you commit suicide. But every comedian’s time in the limelight has to end at some point, right?

This blog is supposed to be about autism spectrum disorder, why am I suddenly discussing depression? Well, I suppose that it is time we bring to the table this little thing called comorbidity. Psychology is messy. Some would argue that it is barely even a real scientific field (I tend to think that it is the best thing we have, but I acknowledge that in places, psychology is fundamentally flawed.) You may have thought that you’d get just one diagnosis. One simple label that you can work through and overcome. You’re bipolar, now go deal with it! But instead, you find yourself with a whole fistful of diagnoses. What to hear my proud list of diagnoses? Oh, please, don’t think because I am listing them this one certain way, I put them in order of relevancy to me. I love all of my diagnoses equally.

My diagnoses are:

Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD)

Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD)

Agoraphobia

Possible Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)

Asperger syndrome (AS)

No, I was never officially diagnosed with depression, but largely because, at the time I received these diagnoses, my depression was so blatant that it felt as if I was walking around with a cloud of miasma surrounding at all times. Imagine me as Pig-Pen from Peanuts, but instead of being covered in dirt, I was covered in the funk of melancholy. And whatever treatment I would eventually go on to receive (and still am receiving to this day,) would go about treating my anxiety first, and hopefully, the depression would give in alongside the anxiety. It has, for the most part, though, I still feel the presence of that black dog from time to time. I also got only a half-hearted potential diagnosis of OCD, but later, during a trial of an antidepressant that had a freakishly negative impact on my psyche, it blossomed into a fully-grown attention-craving condition. Turns out that OCD can be a real hog for the spotlight, really not allowing any of the other diagnoses to take their turn on stage. Thankfully, when I got off that particular antidepressant, those symptoms stopped, but it has led me to be far more aware of my internal obsessive-compulsive thought patterns. For me, OCD largely lacks physical compulsions, but my mind is ablaze with intrusive thoughts, and I will routinely force myself to repeat certain phrases in my head to make them go away. The funny thing is, I never realised that wasn’t normal.

Diagnoses are an attempt to map out a spiders’ web of problems. Things come hand in hand. While I’m no psychologist, I can speak from the perspective of someone who has been through the psychiatric process, which I suppose, lends me a certain kind of expertise, doesn’t it? Maybe it really doesn’t. Maybe I’m just throwing words out there, thinking that I could serve a good purpose, but instead all I am doing is contributing to this great onslaught of digital disinformation we’re all suffering under. But I’m probably just too doubtful of myself. I am speaking about myself, after all. I’ve got first-hand experience in being myself. I know exactly what it feels like to own this skin, these bones, this heart, and this mushy brain of mine. I’m not claiming to know everything. I’m just claiming to know about this one sad individual writing this hoping it might allow someone to reblog my posts with the hashtag “relatable” one day.

Anxiety runs in my family. The neurosis demon gets passed down from generation to generation, only occasionally skipping a beat. My mother and I share many of the same neurotic quirks, though, she has for the most part of her life not had it to quite the excessive degree that I have it. I really took that genetic predisposition for anxiety and ran with it. And while I’m the only person in my family to have gotten diagnosed as being “on the spectrum,” there are a few members that I kinda sort of in a way actually quite seriously suspect might also be here somewhere on the spectrum. Still, as always goes with diagnosing, there’s no point in doing it unless the person is in need of some kind of treatment. I wholeheartedly believe that most people on the planet belong to one spectrum, be it an autism spectrum, a bipolar spectrum, a narcissism spectrum, even a schizophrenic spectrum, but diagnoses should be exclusively reserved for those who need psychiatric care. The world is a spectrum, and it’s worth noting that the terms “sane” and “insane” do not alone capture the complexity of the human psyche. A person can appear perfectly sensible, yet at some point in their life, they may have been a real silly little bugger who thought that their pet hamster was the reincarnation of the Buddha. Just as with physical health, one can struggle with one's mental health for one period in their life, only to later on in life feel utterly and entirely mentally healthy. Or, well, sadly in a lot of cases, people who were perfectly mentally healthy may suddenly become diagnosed with dementia. But that’s really sad, so let’s not talk about that.

Is it all genetic? Well, no. Or well, maybe? In regards to autism, I am pretty sure that, yes, it is genetic. While, yes, I do admit that I’m just a dummy on the internet, so what do I really know? And the brain is such a complex bit of mushy meat, so I could always be proven wrong. Though, I tend towards thinking that there most likely is principally a genetic factor to conditions like autism, or attention deficit disorder (and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder,) or things like bipolar disorder. But with anxiety, quite frankly, I can’t say how much of it is nurture and how much of it is nature. I mentioned that my mother and I share many of the same neurotic quirks, so that would imply that there is something in one's genes that can make some more prone to anxiety than others, but my mother does not struggle with agoraphobia, nor does she seem to have any obsessive-compulsive tendencies. In fact, in my family, even those that exhibit some element of heightened anxiety, they don’t seem to show any milder symptoms of this kind. I can’t help but feel as if these conditions I gained through that tortuous period of every boy’s and girl’s (and boy-girl’s) life is called puberty. I hate to conform to stereotypes but I did indeed hate being a teenager. Believe it or not, I wasn’t a jock, and no, I didn’t go to parties. I mostly spent my time crying.

The question that no doubt plagues every movie psychiatrist to no end is what kind of trauma must a person undergo to make them go mad? Abusive parents? Abusive uncles? Abusive teachers? Abusive dogs? Honestly, to be an adult raising a child must be rough, considering how any mistake you make might suddenly turn your little babe into a future serial killer. Now, there’s no doubt that there are some seriously terrible parents out there, and that a lot of people have mental woes that definitely came about due to their parents and their abysmal lack of parental care. But generally, how much can you actually blame on your parents? We know the cliché, let’s go sit down on the sofa and complain to our Freudian hack-shrink all about those times as a kid our dad missed the big game, or that time our mother embarrassed us in front of all of our friends. I have plenty of things to complain about my parents, like I believe we all have. Our parents are flawed, messy human beings, of course they occasionally made mistakes throughout our upbringings. But is that nearly enough to turn a person mentally ill? Putting up with an at times really embarrassing mom? No, I don’t think so. And of course, there are some real awful parents out there, I’m not doubting that. Trust me, I’m a fan of true crime, so I’ve heard some real grizzly stories of what some kids are forced to grow up with. But I am thinking that those instances are more rare than they are common. Most people with mental illnesses can most likely not blame their parents.

How ‘bout bullies? Yes, them bullies. Them awful mean bullies that made all of our lives so painful. It’s funny, it seems like every school had their own fair share of bullies, and yet no-one as an adult ever comes forward to admit that they themselves were the bullies. It’s almost like as if no-one ever thinks of themselves as being a bully, even when they are throwing rocks at that weird chubby kid with blonde hair who happens to be named Fredrik and who just wants to be left alone. Was I bullied? Well… yes. But I can’t say I got the brunt of it. I got bullied, but overall I’d say I only ever had it slightly worse than most people. I was still quite tall, typically taller than my classmates growing up, and for the most part I could roll with the punches. If you really want to talk about a kid I knew growing up that got bullied, let me tell you about this kid who knew all the right dances for all the right Britney Spears songs. He was gay, I think. Not quite old enough to have come out, I suspect, but, well... He liked all the female pop stars, but not in that way of wanting to kiss them and fondle their boobies, but in the “I want to sound just like them when I grow up” sort of way. I don’t know what happened to him (or them, or her, depending on how they identify now,) but that was real bullying. Like most folks, I found myself stuck in that limbo of seeing others get bullied far worse than me and being too cowardly to intervene, in fears that I’d end up taking their place. Yes, isn’t school just a marvellous place? It’s a wonder any of us turn out okay.

No, I think that, fundamentally, the problems I have arose with myself. This, blaming myself, is not something that I am unused to doing. I have a long history of blaming myself, that’s really the problem. As a teenager I knew that I was different, and I was frightened and scared of being exposed. I didn’t even really know what it was that was different about me, I just knew that I didn’t fit in. I felt as if I didn’t deserve to fit in. The older I got, the more intense these feelings got. And I started taking it out on myself. I started hating myself. And I really mean furiously hating myself. It wasn’t some casual self-loathing, it was searing self-hatred. I did not physically hurt myself, but I did engage with self-harm. I kept repeating the mantras of “I hate myself,” and “I am pathetic,” over and over again, with the ultimate goal of making myself cry. For a period, I couldn’t go to bed without making myself cry first. I began taking days off from school, pretending to be sick. Well, I suppose I was ill, but not physically. I began failing most of my classes, I only ended up doing well in art. I stayed away from school for whole weeks at the time. Once, when I shame-facedly returned to school some of the meaner boys came up to me and said that they were surprised to learn that I was still alive. They were surprised, but also a little disappointed.

This was a time in my life when I really needed psychiatric care. This became increasingly obvious to my parents, and my teachers. I was clearly suffering from depression. Not just some teenaged angst, but full-blown, wholly insidious, depression. But, well, I didn’t get the care that I needed. Oh, I did go to see a psychologist a couple of times, but she saw no reason for me to continue seeing her. I don’t know why she felt as if I wasn’t in need of help, frankly, I can’t fathom why she felt as if I wasn’t in need of help. I suppose I avoided telling her the truth of what went on inside of my head, but I feel like as if any good psychologist would have been able to tell that the kid sitting across from them was clearly suffering from something a tad more intense than just some common concerns about puberty. At most I was able to confess was that I was feeling ashamed over myself for getting so fat, but it should have been clear to anybody that I was only using that as a hook to hang my self-hatred on. There very clearly was some underlying condition that I had that should have gotten addressed. But it went ignored.

At most I can think to explain this is the fact that I wasn’t “problematic.” Not in the way some kids are, when they’re struggling with their mental health. I did not act out, I did not take drugs, and I was certainly not violent. Even to this day, though I have at many times suffered from suicidal ideation, I am a real low-risk for actual suicide considering my intense fear of dying (yes, that’s an odd combo to have.) So, I’ve come to realise that the only way I am getting treatment is if I actually seek out treatment. And back then, I was just as placid as I had previously always been. I was quiet and introverted, just desperate to get back home so I could go and hide in my room. Many teenagers are like that. And it is easy to ignore them, because they want to be ignored. They just don’t want to exist. When you are desperate to be left alone, eventually people will leave you alone. I would go on to receive psychiatric care later on my life, but only after several years passed. I did have a better time living in my later teenage years, but like with a bone that heals wrong, I needed someone to come in and sort me out. I was sad as a teenager, but I would become really sad as a twenty-something. Hopefully my thirties will be jolly.

#neurodiversity #neurodivergent #autism spectrum disorder #autism #aspergers #mental health

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antiquatus · 5 years ago

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✧ ━━ the courts of switzerland present GIULIO DE MEDICI of THE PAPAL STATES, a CARDINAL of THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. the THIRTY-THREE year old had been LEARNED and CHARITABLE before the break of war but have now become RUTHLESS and ZEALOUS. HE is often remembered by their likeness to JAMES NORTON and THE SMELL OF INCENSE IN HIGH-CEILINGED CATHEDRALS AS THE SOUND OF LATIN ENUNCIATIONS SPILL FORTH FROM HIS LIPS ; A RED GALERO TO KEEP THE GLARE OF THE SUN AWAY , WHICH NONETHELESS SPARKLES OFF A BEJEWELED PECTORAL CROSS ; and ANTIQUATED TEXTS SMUGGLED AWAY FOR PERSONAL PLEASURE . the rumor mills of europe claim that his allegiance lies with THE CHURCH and that he is for WAR.

yes, hello, i am henry ( twenty, gmt+8, they/them ) and this is my bastard supreme catholic crusader-king wannabe : giulio michele cardinal de medici, archbishop of esztergom and cardinal of the ( one, holy, catholic, and apostolic and bigoted ) church. here is his about page , his biography ( which is basically just the headcanons section of the app ) , some wanted connections, and ( if you care to read a whole buncha words ) here’s the whole application. read down the cut if you want it summarised + the first task! :) if u wanna plot, send me a dm @ i am a mushroom! 🍄#9146 or hmu here on tumblr ims.

content warning for usual mediaeval church brand of bigotry + mentions of: disordered eating, scrupulosity, obsessive-compulsive tendencies

SUMMARY

hhhhhhhhh

crusader-king wannabe, what else do u need 2 know?

hashtag only 1099 kids will remember

CHARACTER SHEET

BASIC INFORMATION

FULL NAME : giulio michele de medici

MEANING :

giulio — from latin, a cognate of julius, the meaning of which is irrelevant, as it was chosen more to invoke julius caesar

michele — italian form of michael, meaning who is like god?

de medici — medici, plural form of medico, meaning doctor, physician

MONIKERS / NICKNAMES : giulio, papabile

TITLE :

commander of several abbeys, scattered throughout the italian peninsula (multiple dates to present)

administrator of bozen (1538 to present)

archbishop of esztergom-budapest (1540 to present)

cardinal of the roman catholic church (1544 to present)

prelate of the roman inquisition (1550 to present)

vice-camerlengo of the apostolic camera (1556 to present)

GENDER & PRONOUNS : listen... he’s actually Agender but do u rlly expect the church/himself to like... accept anything beyond the gender binary... that being said, the imago dei is inclusive and also inherently non-binary so... there is that... (one day, giulio...... one day...........) — pronouns are he/him

ETHNICITY : white

DATE OF BIRTH & AGE: 25th december 1526, thirty-three

ZODIAC SIGN : capricorn sun / virgo moon / sagittarius rising

ORIENTATION : do u know that playlist in spotify that’s just like is this sufjan stevens song gay or just about god? ... yeah, like that exactly.

MARITAL STATUS : married to the LORD

OCCUPATION : cardinal, archbishop, crusader LARPer

CURRENT LOCATION :

switzerland...?

BACKGROUND

PLACE OF BIRTH : florence, tuscany

RESIDENCES :

basilica cattedrale metropolitana di santa maria nascente, milan, lombardy villa d’este, tivoli, lazio

RELIGIOUS VIEWS : roman catholicism, somewhat of a catholic mystic in the vein of pseudo-dionysius, hildegard von bingen, and meister eckhart (hashtag eckhart did nothing wrong!!!)

EDUCATION : private tutoring, ecclesiastical catechism, autodidact in a great deal many things

LANGUAGES SPOKEN : italian, latin, ancient greek, hungarian, bulgarian, serbian, russian, arabic, hebrew, french, german, spanish, english, old church slavonic

ALLEGIANCES : the church & himself (to him? there is no difference)

the house of de medici: only nominally loyal, he thinks there are far better things to pay attention to than temporal matters such as these

the one holy catholic and apostolic church: his #1 bae

FAMILY :

papa & mama medici: parents

piero de medici, older brother

francesco de medici, younger brother

giovanna de medici, younger sister

OTHER FAMILIAL RELATIONS :

—

APPEARANCE

FACECLAIM : james norton

HAIR COLOUR / STYLE : i’m so mad abt this... but yes... he has a tonsure... press F in the chat pls // though he has stopped shearing his hair in switzerland

EYE COLOUR / SHAPE : blue, and idk... eye-shaped?

HEIGHT : 1.85m / 6′1″

BUILD : fluctates: for reasons specified in the neurological conditions section below, this isn’t very consistent; however, if this was modern day, redditors would just spam him with “delete facebook, hit the gym, lawyer up!!!!”

SPEECH STYLE : mellifluous to the point of inane verbosity, uses more words than he should; that being said, he possesses the uncanny ability to pick up a language easily and quickly, inserting local colloquialisms to the point that he sounds like a native speaker; nevertheless, he consistently speaks in a formal register (sometimes! even to family members!) and has a very blunted affect, diminishing the effect if only slightly

RECOGNIZABLE MARKINGS : n/a

BEAUTY HABITS : for a mediaeval european, he is actually very hygienic; takes baths obsessively, definitely more than once a week, which does link to his fixation with purity both metaphysical and temporal; hates public bathhouses with a passion; combs his hair and parts it to the side, favouring his left

PERSONALITY

TROPES : the chessmaster, bookworm, our angels are different, knight templar, lack of empathy, lonely rich kid, affably evil, & raised catholic (duh).

INSPIRATIONS : lenny belardo (the young pope), crusader kings ii (the game), pope julius ii (history), adso (the name of the rose), john the beloved (history, the bible), jacopo belbo (foucault’s pendulum), henry winter (the secret history), the prince (the prince, niccolo macchiaveli)

MBTI : intj-t (the architect)

ENNEAGRAM: 5w4 1w9 4w3 (the researcher) sp/sx

ALIGNMENT : lawful good, insofar as goodness is aligned to catholicism

TEMPERAMENT : choleric but perhaps more arguably a choleric-sanguine hybrid

HOGWARTS HOUSE : slytherin

POSITIVE TRAITS : charitable (to catholics), brilliant, prodigious

NEGATIVE TRAITS : manipulative, narcissistic, self-serving, self-righteous

HABITS : has a tendency to fidget his fingers; gnaws on his lower lip to the point of bleeding when thinking, not that he realises it

HOBBIES : reading, writing, playing this new thing called chess

USUAL DEMEANOR : affable to the point of boring people, charming to catholics but cooler against non-catholics, somewhat easy to talk to but one has the niggling feeling that he’s not as invested in the conversation as he should be, people hear the word cardinal and thinks he’s bigoted to the extreme (which he is) but he always deflects and he can be agreeable (but probably slips by still calling istanbul constantinople though!), very learned and nerdy and will talk about theology all the goddamn day if nobody stops him, presents as a very non-threatening (affably bland) cardinal who albeit has very fixed opinions about All The Things

HEALTH

PHYSICAL AILMENTS : n/a

NEUROLOGICAL CONDITION : thinks of himself and presents as neurotypical but probably has szpd (schizoid personality disorder), a form of scrupulosity in the vein of alissa (in strait is the gate by andré gide); also arguably has some form of disordered eating, cycling between binging and extreme fasting, which gives him a weight leaning toward lanky

PHOBIAS : haphephobia, fear of touch; his scrupulosity can also be arguably defined as a phobia of sinning, but that’s basically a whole other complex

ALLERGIES : allergic to SIN!!!! n/a

SLEEPING HABITS : an insomniac, though he thinks it a common affliction; has a habit of reading until late as a way of staving off boredom; may sleep a grand total of only three to four hours at nighttime, though he makes up for it through a post-lunch siesta (which is a habit he picked up from the pope)

SOCIABILITY : presents as a social butterfly, if albeit sterner than most; can slip into conversations of any kind easily, but always ever in a professional context; has no real friends, but can lay claim to easy acquaintanceships; forever holding people at an arm’s length, which is just the way he likes it

ADDICTIONS : drinks the communion wine more often than he should; other than that, he can be almost puritanically temperate, to the point of self-affliction (?); addicted to the idea of purity

#bgintro #'but henry cigs weren't even a Thing in the 1500s!' ye i know but also this was Aesthetic ok let me live

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ypnhot · 5 years ago

Video

youtube

idontwannabeyouanymore by Billie Eilish But, of course, you’ve heard of Billie Eilish. She has exploded onto the music scene. I think the main reason is due to a couple of factors; First, she’s young; she’s only seventeen and represents her age well with her meta-existence on social media, which allows her music to travel quickly, almost instantly, through the ethereal consciousness that is the internet. Second, she’s young; which has created a unique auditory situation. From listening to her music, it’s clear that her musical tastes developed from many sources in a way that wasn’t really possible before now. With the internet and the instant accessibility of almost any music anyone could ever wish to hear, her sound is a mixture of R&B, hip-hop, pop, alt-rock, classical, rap, etc, but where these genres have been mixed before, they are typically only mixed one at a time and with a primary and a secondary musical style. An example of this is The Verve’s song ‘Bitter Sweet Symphony.’ The song is still an alt-rock song, but they brought in symphonic instruments to add something of a sort of melodic beat in the background of the song. This is used more like a gimmick than a blending of musical styles. Billie’s music, however, internalizes each of the genres and creates an entirely new style that’s an amalgamation of all of them. I feel like this is the future of music, the previous genres and waves, of music combining into new forms. I think this internalized melding also contributes to her music’s popularity. Everyone who’s a fan of any one of those genres can find elements of her music that is appealing to them, giving her an extremely wide market of appreciated listeners. Third, intellectual complexity in themes and lyrics. Her songs can sometimes be about relationships, like most pop music, but even those songs are about aspects of relationships that aren’t often addressed. She also has songs about suicide, self-reflection and judgement, depression, moral ambiguity, and the culture of the patriarchy and its double standards of women. This song, idontwannabeyouanymore, in particular, showcases several of these points. Starting with the video, we see it’s in a vertical orientation, something that would be ideally viewed on a smartphone rather than on a television or computer monitor. This shows how intuitively in-touch she is with the course of current technology and the habits of people consuming music. I also appreciate the wardrobe in this and other videos of hers. She wears a lot of baggy, specifically not form fitting, clothing like jumpsuits. Often the clothing is made of designer fabrics, like Louis Vuitton, something often associated with hip-hop culture, as well as the chains and baggy clothing. The lyrics of the song illustrate my third point. The song is about self-reflection, as evident by her singing to herself in a mirror, as well as the title of the song, idontwannabeyouanymore, obviously, the words, “I don’t want to be you anymore,” compressed into one word as if it were being used as a hashtag or has had its spaces removed to save space in a tweet. She talks about the beauty standards of women and the destructive feelings of self-deprecation. The line ‘fall apart twice a day’ shows the cost of this behavior. The lines ‘but I know you too well’ and ‘only you know the way that I break’ illustrate the unique way that we can hurt ourselves more than anyone else. We know our own weaknesses and can exploit them like no other. I think the namesake’s line of ‘I don’t wanna be you anymore’ especially the last line are a defiant statement of trying to break that cycle. Not only is the singer saying that they don’t want to be the person in the mirror that they see in the mirror with all the flaws that they’ve been pointing out, but that they don’t want to be the person in the mirror that is the one pointing out the flaws. They want to break the self-hatred cycle, which is the only way forward. Our society is sick and it keeps telling us that we need to hate ourselves in order to drive change but this toxic strategy doesn’t work. Rarely it can drive some kind of change but even then it drives the change to the extreme until it becomes unhealthy and dangerous. This is how anorexia, bulimia, and other eating disorders, obsessive exercising, or other compulsive behaviors develop. We need to stop this diseased mindset and the only way to do that is to not want to be that person anymore. idontwannabeyouanymore by Billie Eilish Don't be that way Fall apart twice a day I just wish you could feel what you say Show, never tell But I know you too well Got a mood that you wish you could sell If teardrops could be bottled There'd be swimming pools filled by models Told a tight dress is what makes you a whore If "I love you" was a promise Would you break it, if you're honest Tell the mirror what you know she's heard before I don't wanna be you anymore Hands, hands getting cold Losing feeling's getting old Was I made from a broken mold? Hurt, I can't shake We've made every mistake Only you know the way that I break If teardrops could be bottled There'd be swimming pools filled by models Told a tight dress is what makes you a whore If "I love you" was a promise Would you break it, if you're honest Tell the mirror what you know she's heard before I don't wanna be you I don't wanna be you I don't wanna be you, anymore YouTube | Official | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Wiki

#Billie Eilish #idontwannabeyouanymore #piano #drum #vocal

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writer59january13 · 4 years ago

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Sacrilegious transgression against obsessive compulsive disorder

Siege warfare (trumpeting) linkedin with aberrant behavior

transpires within me mind,

(not just today December 5th, 2020,

but everyday/365)

warrants depleting stockpile arsenal

constituting exhausting mental health

uprooting deep seated repellent pesky

daunting lost cause.

Overruled by irrational thoughts,

I feebly muster a lame duck

half quacked comeback

(think home team cheering at pep rally)

against analogous figurative agents provocateur

said nemesis bore down hard

upon sense and sense abilities

mine psyche undergoing

blistering, hectoring withering, et cetera

courtesy ghost of Emily Brontë

mailer daemons flitting to and fro,

hither and yon within wuthering heights.

Another necessity Emma gin)

awoke prided prejudice

to confront head on

beastie boy foo fighting (Irish,

no matter genealogy regarding

yours truly Eastern European)

mine talking head housing

private insane asylum.

Incomprehensible thought processes

chronically spin out of control

dictate mandate NOT to wash hair

until at least one week passage of time,

(an arbitrarily chosen number

i.e. seven days convenient block)

even if appearance looks unkempt, slovenly

grungy, et cetera as nirvana seeking guy.

Thus, I readily admit self held hostage,

whereby loopy thought provoking patterns

hopelessly, grimly, futilely find me surrendering

NEVER eradicating down battened ramparts

neurotic, lunatic approved, idiotic

mind mental chattering

babbling jabbering gibberish

housing concocted village people

dead set against shampooing oily locks.

Quite a tussle (think metaphorical hair pulling)

ensues within me scrambled noggin,

whereby pathetic psychotic pummeling

win knows scrimmage

scoring touchdown amidst

teaming muted brouhaha

allowing, enabling, and providing

harmlessly insane nettlesome

pesky skewed notions

ridiculous leeway to predominate

until yours truly USDA

qualified, hashtagged, certified...

as grateful dead among human league.

I generally mean mine mien mental state

moost occasions heavily marinated stupor

long established as external trait

psychologically time tested trooper

impossible mission to kickstart sanity

doppelgänger regularly revisits his soul asylum

hellbent antimatter he cannot vitiate

despite therapeutic laxative merely exhausts

well bred literate smoking doobie brother

eliminating aforementioned pablum

witnessed courtesy one floundering grouper

among plenty of fish schooled

hyphenated (high finned haggled)

burn hushed scaled poem

courtesy one unionised rebellious party pooper.

Spellbound with colossal mental grippe

(i.e. all-consuming figurative cerebral

obsessive compulsive forced membership)

magnetic resonance imagine indicated jagged blip

and/or nsync microscopy

showed telltale genetic authorship

regarding above stated mental health crisis,

whereby Sigmund Freud analyst did flip

lid freeing leeches imported courtesy Philip

Hansel and Gretel a mere slip

o' lass whose nose she always did turnip.

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neurowonderful · 8 years ago

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Here are some of the Weird Brain Things I have going on. I’m receptive to talking about anything here. Source: https://www.facebook.com/EndTheStigmaBadges/

[Image: A series of colourful badges with white sans-serif text against a solid or patterned background. Each badge has the hashtags “[hashtag] end the stigma” and “[hashtag] you are not alone” underneath the main text. Some badges have “[hashtag] 1 in 5″ as well. The main text for the badges read:

I am dyspraxic

I have Auditory Processing Disorder

I have Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder

I have a dissociative disorder

I have Dyscalculia

I have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

I have Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

I have Sensory Processing Disorder

I am a maladaptive daydreamer

I have an eating disorder

End of image description.]

#neurodiversity #neurodivergent #actuallyautistic #actuallydisabled #autistic #described #bright colors #eating disorder #ed tw #ptsd #ocd #ocpd

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bestnews99 · 5 years ago

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Corona Virus: How to Deal With Fear of Illness?

Corona Virus

How to Deal With Fear of Illness?

The Corona virus has put the world in a precarious situation and constant news about the outbreak may seem cruel. All of this can affect people's mental health, especially the health of those who already have anxiety or have OCD. So how can we protect our mental health? It makes sense to be nervous about the news, but for many it can only worsen the problems that are already in place. So when the World Health Organization spoke about protecting mental health during the outbreak of the Corona virus, it got a huge boost on social media. Nicky Ludbetter of Engagement UK says out of control or fear of not having to deal with uncertain circumstances is one of the common symptoms of anxiety disorder. So it seems that people who are already suffering from this disease are facing more challenges right now. Rosie Wetherley, spokeswoman for Mind, a mental health welfare organization, says, "Many anxieties are rooted in fear of the unknown and waiting for something to happen. The Corona virus is also on a bigger scale." A Kent resident and father of two children, formerly suffering from angioedema, is suffering from 'panic attack' because of too much news about coronavirus. “When I'm nervous, my thoughts go out of my way and I start thinking about the devastating consequences.” Nowadays, Nick is worried about his parents and the people he knows. 'Usually when I suffer, I walk away from this situation. It's not in my bus. ' Staying away for longer than news websites and social media has helped them cope with anxiety. They also understand that mental health care helplines designed to help the welfare organization Engage UK are also very useful. Limit reading or viewing time on websites that don't make you feel good. A lot of misinformation is circulating, using reliable sources of accurate information such as government and NHS websites. Allison, a 24-year-old from Manchester, has a Health Engagement and is constantly getting information and research. But with that, she also knows that social media can add to that. She says: 'A month ago I was clicking on hashtags and seeing all the unproven conspiracy nonsense and it was definitely bothering me and I was feeling hopeless and crying.' Now she is careful about which account to look at and the Corona virus avoids clicking the hashtag. She is trying her best to stay away from social media and instead watch TV and read books. ۔ Mute their 'keywords' on Twitter that cause more anxiety and 'follow' accounts ۔ Mute these WhatsApp groups and hide the Facebook posts that dominate the most Wash hands but not too much OCD Action has received numerous requests from individuals whose concerns are centered on the Corona virus outbreak. For those who have OCD and a certain type of excretion, it is difficult to keep on saying that it is difficult to keep hands washed. Lily Bailey, author of Oscar's life-based book, Beck's VRBade, says that fear of pollution is one aspect of her 'Abbessio Compulsive Disorder'. She says that talking about handwashing can revitalize those who have recovered from it. "It's definitely difficult because now I have to adopt some of the behaviors I was avoiding," Bailey says. I have been following the instructions strictly, but it is difficult, because if you look, soap and and sanitize used to be an addiction. ' The charity says OCD Action is the way it looks. For example, is hand washing done at a certain recommended time to prevent the virus from spreading, or is it being done in a particular setting to formally 'feel'. Bailey says that for most people with OCD, being OK means being able to get out of the home, so self-isolating can pose another challenge. She says that "if we are forced to stay indoors, we have too much time, boredom can make OCD worse." Stay in touch with people More and more people will now live in self-isolation, so it's time to get the correct phone numbers and email addresses of the people you value. 'Weatherlee says that regular check-ins agree on the times and stay in touch with the people around you. If you are in self-isolation, keep a regular routine and make sure that each day is something different. It may even seem like these two weeks were quite useful. Complete your to-do list and read the book you want to read. Just don't do too much The Corona virus outbreak and its effects will last for weeks and months, so it is important to spend time or do nothing at all. Mind recommends viewing the power and sitting in the sunlight as far as possible. Exercise, eat good food and drink water. Read the full article

#CoronaVirusSafty #CoronaVirus:HowtoDealWithFearofIllness?#HowtoSafewithCoronaVirus

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thecrookedgavel · 5 years ago

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The Black Box Readings - Ep 1 Transcript

Here’s the transcript for episode 1 of The Black Box Readings, the podcast where I read to you the backup of queer blogs that have gone down.

See Other Episodes

An: Hey, all! And welcome to The Black Box Readings, the new podcast where I read to you the backup of queer blogs that have gone down! I’m your host, An Capuano. So basically, it’s a show where I narrate through a deleted or deactivated blog over the course of a season, with a focus on queer artists. Though to be honest, there was a specific blog that inspired me to make this podcast, and unless this format is super popular, I may just do the one season. Anyway, although reading things in a dramatic fashion is definitely in my wheelhouse, non-fiction podcasts are not. So please bear with me while I go through some growing pains as I try and figure this thing out.

Alright, so this season, we have the story of a digital artist who caught my attention with a really cool piece of Overwatch fanart. It’s about her journey through a life spent mostly online, disability, and navigating through the difficulties of realizing that you’re trans.

For those of you not in the know, I am a disabled trans woman myself, so it’s not a journey I’m altogether unfamiliar with. The biggest reason I’m doing this podcast is because stories like ours get drowned out in the media. I wanted to be able to tell her story so that queer people, young and old, can hear something that resonates with them. And I have a good feeling that this will do that for you.

The Tumblr in question, I won’t say the address. Just know that the title of the blog was: “Less Than Human”. Yeah, I know. Not a very cheery introduction. I sort of choose to think of it, kind of like reclaiming a slur. If she calls herself less than human, other people lose the power to hurt her with it. I’m telling you the blog title because it is important later.

Anyways, enough out of me, here’s the first post of the episode, which happens to be the first post of the blog itself. It’s titled:

“Welcome!

Hey, my name is -”

Ok, so I guess I didn’t think this through. In the post, she uses her deadname, and I don’t feel comfortable reading it out to you all. If I have to choose between deadnaming a trans girl and being a little inaccurate, I’m choosing inaccuracy. I should say, actually, that I don’t consider myself a journalist or anything like that. Also, I get it would be bad of me to use her real name too. So we’ll just call her… Hmmm…. Ok, let’s go with Emmy.

“Welcome!

Hey, my name is Emmy, and I’m 19 years old! Nice to meet you guys! I’ve decided to start posting on my tumblr instead of using it as a dash, lol! I’m a visual artist, though I mostly stick to digital art these days. I spend most of my time reading. My fandoms are Gravity Falls, Steven Universe, Supernatural, Sonic the Hedgehog, Marvel, and of course, Shrek! Lmao. I think Cat Girls are cute, but I’m not a weeb”

*Laugh* I never read this post while she was active. Her sense of humor is really present in this post, she was always silly like this. Anyways, she follows up this post by posting a backlog of art that I figure she must have made and not shown to anyone. It’s all really good stuff. Some fandom, some original. It’s clear to me that she’s not posting her earlier, rougher work. I don’t remember too many details though, as this was a while ago, and I didn’t think to save her artwork when I was copying all her text posts into the google doc. I hope someone out there saved them before they were deleted, though.

I’m not going to bore you by reading every single one of her posts, or anything like that. Just the ones that stand out to me. Here’s one about Supernatural and how she might be falling out of love with it.

“I don’t know guys, I’m finding it hard to watch supernatural these days. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still one of my favorite shows, it’s just totally not as good as the first 5 seasons. That and I WANT DEAN AND CASS TO BE TOGETHER! Is that so wrong? Look, Cass is an immortal being that just HAPPENED to take a male form. If he had a female form, you can bet that he and Dean would have banged already. I’ve read the tumblr posts too, the ones that talk about all the hints the writers give that Dean is gay. This is ABSOLUTELY queerbaiting, and even as a straight guy, I can see that. I have a lot of gay mutuals who have convinced me how ultimately cute Dean and Cass are, and I feel bad for them, because they’re not being treated fair. You think in its 12 seasons there would be something, but no, nothing. Pisses me off”

Here is where we start seeing a connection between Emmy and queer culture. Although she’s currently IDing as straight and male, you can tell she cares about queer representation. Now, I’m not saying that wanting good queer content makes you queer, of course not. Just that knowing that Emmy is queer, when you look back at her earlier posts, there’s some evidence there. She even talks about Castiel, a male character, having a female form, which I find interesting for obvious reasons.

Next up is a post about something outside of her fandoms, a show called Monk. For those of you who don’t know it, it’s a show focused on a detective with OCD who uses his disability to solve crimes no one else can. As someone with OCD myself, I really enjoyed the show, but it’s not without its problems. Hmm, yeah, I’ll get to those after reading the post, I think

“I’ve been watching a new show lately! Well, a show that’s new to me at least. It’s called Monk! I’m 3 seasons in, and I laugh every episode. But it’s not without its serious moments too. It’s about Adrian Monk, a detective with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and it’s like a super power to him. He can do things no one else can. But he also can’t do things that everyone else takes for granted. Mood. He always says “It’s a gift… And a curse” when talking about it. Big mood. Anyway, I highly recommend it, because it’s a positive depiction of someone mentally ill! I’m so used to people who are “crazy” being mass murderers or some shit. Idk, it’s heartwarming.”

I noticed one of the hashtags of her post was, “Finally found a version with captions.” This is important for later and I’ll get to it by the end of the episode. Where the previous post was the first we saw of her queerness, this is the first we’ll see about her connection with mental illness. It’s unclear if she feels her inabilities are balanced off by her abilities, or if her “mood” was just about her being unable to do what others can. Since her “big mood” is regarding Adrian Monk’s favourite quote “It’s a gift and a curse”, I like to think she was being positive and was including her abilities in the “mood.”

While I do agree with Emmy that it’s a positive depiction of someone mentally ill, and that’s certainly better than having yet another bad guy is who’s only evil because he’s crazy, I’m worried that it’s too positive. It’s actually a really common trope where neurodivergent people in media are seen as “super human,” like Sheldon in the Big Bang Theory, or uhh, the main character from The Good Doctor, I forget his name. It makes it look like everyone with autism or OCD are geniuses, and that sort of skews how neurotypicals view people like us in a negative way. Like, I do view my OCD as a gift, I wouldn’t be able to write the way I do, or play video games the same way if I didn’t have it. But I’m not a superhuman by any means. But I’m expected to, in some sense, outperform everyone because of my OCD, because of this impossible standard set by the media. *Sigh* I’m sorry, I’m getting really off topic. I hope you don’t mind this little rant.

Back to Emmy, I find it a little upsetting that she feels herself cursed in some way. Knowing what I know about her, I like to think she was more gifted than cursed, but given the title of her blog, I doubt she would agree with me. We can glean from this post that she is disabled in some way or another. Maybe she herself has OCD? Or maybe she just relates her own, different disability to OCD? It’s hard to tell at this point, and I don’t want to spoil it, especially since it will come up again in a few posts.

Next up, we have a post about not just queer characters, but lesbian characters. I’m sure you have heard of Overwatch by now, even if you haven’t played it. Well, the creative devs promised us that a handful of the cast was queer, and at least to me, it seemed like an empty promise. Hmm, I guess it seems a little bit like the queerbaiting conversation we had earlier. Interesting. You know what I mean, right? Like, why take the risk of pissing off the straight, cis part of your fanbase with queer characters when you can just say some characters are queer and attract a bigger queer fanbase that way? But then they did something that blew me out of the water. They made a comic where Tracer has a girlfriend. This next post from Emmy is about this reveal.

“Merry Christmas! And what a Christmas it’s been. Because I got something I’ve been asking for for a LONG time. Blizzard made Tracer gay! I’m not the only one who’s been asking for this, a huge chunk of the fandom has been saying that Tracer is only into other girls. It’s been my headcanon for so long, and now it doesn’t have to be, because it’s canon! Tracer and Emily are so cute together! And their kiss is so hot too! Yeah, lesbians are really hot in general. They’re every guy’s ultimate fantasy. Thanks, Jeff!”

An: Ok, so before we continue, I think I need to apologize on Emmy’s behalf for the way she talks about lesbians. As a trans lesbian, I had a period where I talked about lesbains that way too. Before I came to terms with that identity, I mean. Since you believe you’re a straight guy, there’s no real explanation for why you’re so into lesbians other than them being a male fantasy. But it’s more than that. It’s part of like, seeing yourself as a girl that the idea of being with a girl that likes girls... that is so fundamentally appealing.

Like, ok. *sigh* I remember this one time very clearly… I was with my girlfriend at the time and a friend of mine at a bubble tea shop. This was probably 9 or 10 years ago now? Jeez. Anyways, this couple of girls starts making out at the table next to us, and I had a full on sexual awakening. I remember that I couldn’t look away. Mostly because my ex wouldn’t let me forget it. I got teased by my friend and berated by my ex. Because I couldn’t explain what happened to her, let alone to myself, I eventually came up with a rather math-y explanation involving vectors of attraction *laugh*. Something like, if women are attractive to me, and men are not attractive to me, then adding their vectors together gives less attraction than two women’s vectors being added together. It was pretty stupid. I don’t talk to either of those two people anymore, by the way.

Anyways, my point is that since this is before she’s realized she’s a lesbian herself, she’s under the false impression that she needs to sexualize lesbians in order to explain why she’s so attracted to the concept. So please don’t hold that against her.

---

With that out of the way, we can move on to her next post. It’s a piece of art she made, and it’s pretty special to me. You see, this was the way I found her blog. One of the blogs I follow, who knows which at this point, must have reblogged it and it came across my dashboard. Again, I don’t have a copy of any of Emmy’s art, but I remember it pretty well. It’s a picture of Emily wearing Tracer’s outfit... Shit… Why did I give Emmy a name so close to Emily? Emily as in Tracer’s girlfriend. Maybe it’s because of my association with her and this drawing? Either way, it’s too late now, I’m not re-recording this whole episode. *Sigh* We’ll just stick with the blogger being named Emmy. Anyways! She’s sort of looking a bit out of place, like she doesn’t know how to feel about having a Chrono-accelerator attached to her chest. There’s a speech bubble in the frame pointing off screen that says, “You look marvellous, love!”, or something to that effect, but it’s obviously supposed to be Tracer saying it. It was a really cute drawing, and I was really fond of it, so I liked and followed. Feels like so long ago.

Anyways, she did reblog the picture afterwards, saying:

“Thank you so much for all the notes! I really appreciate the support. Who knew that something so dumb would be liked by so many people? I really like Emily, and I hope she’s added as a Hero in Overwatch soon! I feel so happy! I’m going to go and do some more drawing, so keep an eye out for more posts!”

Not much going on in this post, but I decided to read it anyway because it contrasts so heavily with the next post. Not the next time she posted, but the next post I’m going to read. Actually, it’s the last post of this episode.

So, I’m going to warn you, this is a side of Emmy we haven’t seen yet. The really negative side. *Sigh* I don’t know what set her off, maybe nothing did, but I think this post is very important to read to you, as it clears the air about her disabilities.

“I really appreciate all the love you’ve given my art, but I feel like I don’t deserve any of it. I’m so broken and worthless and I’ve only been pretending to be normal so that you’ll all like me. The truth is, I’m physically and mentally disabled, and life is just a never ending struggle.

First off, I’m deaf. Very deaf. The quietest thing I can hear in either ear is a chainsaw. It means I can’t understand speech or anything I’d need to be social. I don’t know sign language at all, I was never taught. So I just… stay inside all day. I’ve been homeschooled by my Dad since I was young. He thinks something bad will happen to me if I go outside, because I couldn’t hear something like a car coming towards me. So I live my life online, for the most part. I feel so isolated, and like I can’t relate to anyone normal.

Also, I have Bi-Polar Disorder. For those you don’t know of it, it basically means I have high highs and low lows. I’ve done a good job so far at hiding my lows from everyone and only showing my highs. Until now, I guess… I just feel so low today, and I couldn’t hold it back anymore. I just had to be real. Even if it’s an ugly side of me that I hate. My dad hates how moody I am too. He just doesn’t get that it’s not my fault. Even my highs are hard for him to handle sometimes. Anyway, please forgive me for lying so long”

So, I sense a bit of imposter syndrome here. She’s gotten some success and because she views herself as not even a normal person, she thinks she doesn’t deserve it. It’s a pretty common feeling amongst content creators and something you have to move past if you want to make stuff. It’s like, *sigh* like me, I’m not an expert voice actor, why are people listening to me? I have tricked them into thinking I’m worth listening to. If you’re feeling that way about a recent success, just know that it’s all bullshit and it’s normal to feel that way. I wish I had that knowledge at the time I originally read that post… Because then, I would have messaged her and let her know. But yeah, we have more to unpack here.

She talks about being deaf, and the level that she describes is a profound hearing loss, which is as bad as it gets. I have that level of hearing loss in my left ear, and it’s really hard to deal with. So, I kind of can’t imagine what it would be like to have it in both ears.

Like, for me, I remember this one time where I was at my locker in high school, and someone must have been asking me a question a few times on my bad side. She wanted to know if I had any extra bus tickets, and by the time I finally caught on that she was talking to me, she said something like “Urg, I just want to punch you.” And it wasn’t a joke either, she was very frustrated with the way my hearing loss had affected her. It made me feel small, and like I was an inconvenience to those around me. Guess it didn’t help how I felt that I had a crush on her at the time… Ha… *Sigh* It was very isolating to grow up like that. I didn’t really belong there, but I didn’t exactly belong in the deaf community either, since I could hear fine out of one ear. So when Emmy describes how isolating it is to be deaf and not know sign language, I get it. I really feel that. When I saw this post, it really made me feel for her. This is probably the point in time where I made a mental note to support her art whenever I could.

Lastly she talks about her mental illness, being bi-polar. I know a lot less about bi-polar disorder than I do hearing loss. Though I was in a production that never wrapped up about a bi-polar teen. Actually, I was the strict dad who couldn’t understand his child’s illness, which is a similar theme seen in Emmy’s post. I’ve actually been cast as a dad 3 or 4 times now? Yeah. *Laughs* Anyways, what I understand about it is that it can be seasonal. You might be manic for a season, and depressive for another. But yeah, it doesn’t always work that way. Usually medication can help balance you out, but in Emmy’s case, she wasn’t taking any meds at this point. I’ll say it here for clarity’s sake, but her having bi-polar disorder was a self-diagnosis, not a professional one. That’ll be covered in the next episode, though.

So now the whole “Less than Human” thing makes a bit more sense, doesn’t it? Not because it’s true in any sense, but because it was true to her. Disability is something that people tend to see as different, or othering. There’s a lot of stigma there. We can sort of tell at this point that the way her Dad views her and treats her doesn’t help her feel any better about this either.

That’s why she likes the depiction of mental illness in Monk so much, right? Because it’s a bit of a “More than Human” approach. It gives her some hope that maybe she can be seen positively one day too. As far as movies with Deaf characters goes there’s like 100, if I recall correctly. Which is honestly pitiful compared to the amount of movies, period. So it’s more than likely that she never got to see herself in media in that perspective before.

Also, there’s the markings of a budding trans girl in there too, which may further intensify the feeling of not being human. For years and years *sigh*, there was practically zero positive representation of trans people in media. We’re taught that feeling like this makes us freaks, and that presenting differently than we’re supposed to makes us... something worse than that. It all comes together to form something bitter and isolating. Especially before you start owning those parts of you and finding a community of your own.

Thank you for listening to this episode of The Black Box Readings! I really ranted more than I thought I would. Hopefully you all liked the anecdotal stuff I added in, didn’t really plan on doing that. Follow me on Twitter at TheCrookedGavel to stay up to date on this and other queer podcasts. Feel free to contact me there as well. This is An Capuano, signing off!

#queer #lgbtpride #visualart #podcast #transisbeautiful

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nrip · 6 years ago

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Picture Perfect: Social Media and Body Dysmorphic Disorder

Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD) is a disorder where one is preoccupied with an imagined defect in their physical appearance or when one has a distorted perception of their body image (Alavi et al., 2011; Franca et al., 2017; Ribeiro, 2017) which causes distress and hinders daily life functionality (APA, 2000). It stems from the Obsessive Compulsive Disorder spectrum and individuals must show the following signs in order to be diagnosed and treated:

Fixation with one or more perceived defects in appearance which are not visible to others

Repetitive behaviors and/or mental acts regarding appearance – mirror checking, excessive grooming, reassurance seeking

Significant distress and impairment in social, occupational and other functioning areas

Obsession with the appearance isn’t better explained by an eating disorder

Categories of BDD:

Mild/Moderate Symptoms:

Non-significant impairment in global functioning.

Appearance concerns are localized.

Concerns are realistic to psychosocial norms

Severe Symptoms:

Patients show impairment in global functioning and display avoidant behavior

May have depressive or anxious symptoms

Extremely preoccupied with defect and have delusional beliefs about appearance – may indulge in constant mirror checking or even self mutilation

Cosmetic procedures seem like a safety net

Both Severe and Mild Symptoms:

Frequent anxiety regarding appearance

Constantly checking mirrors and comparing self to others

Display referential thinking, feeling that others feel the same way about the defects

Resorting to unnecessary cosmetic/dermatological procedures and making abnormal demands to surgeons

Social Interaction or Social Altercation?

Social interactions have long been the primary way of human survival. Programmed by genetics to survive in packs, human interaction is one of the most important evolutionary behaviors. However, as time passed, the world changed.

So did people.

Interacting with people doesn’t necessarily mean a healthy survival. With negative behaviors of the likes of derogatation, racism and stereotyping being displayed, those with sensitivities to physical appearances might not fare too well.

Cognitive-Behavioral and Learning models have claimed that negative experience of body image (bullying, teasing) at an impressionable age condition values and beliefs about attractiveness and body image. Usually, these are accompanied with anxiety, shame or disgust at one’s appearance. (Neziroglu et al., 2008).

A study also found out that children who suffered from emotional, sexual and physical abuse may show tendencies towards developing BDD, stemming from the results of a study that showed 38% of 50 BDD patients reported abuse (Neziroglu et al., 2006).

Lifestyle

Nearly 93% of adolescents have access to the internet and 89% of the 18-29 year age group is active on social networking pages. With internet becoming a very staunch source of learning, there’s no escaping what it has got in store. (Madden et al., 2013; Neziroglu, 2004)

Adolescents consider the perfect selfie picture on their social media feed as a measurement to achieving popularity amongst their peers. While these kids upload their selfies to win the beauty race, they’re also internalizing the dark message of beauty media, peers and others are enforcing on them.

The Dark Side of Social Media

With the advent of social media, where mainstream channels like YouTube, Twitter, Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, Tinder, Bumble and various other channels of online social interaction exist, so does the problem of realistic beauty standards.

With brilliant photo shopping programs available for free downloads on smart phones, the world is now putting their most glamorous face forward. With options to edit your physical features like eyes, nose, ears and lips, and even change skin tone, hair and eye color, our social media feed is full of picture perfect people.

With BDD developing in adolescence, and the legal age of social media memberships being lowered to early teenage years, the presence of such perfect pictures has reinforced unrealistic beauty standards on adolescents worldwide, conditioning them to appreciate computer generation perfection. Never-before-seen freckles, a slight turn of the nose, a small scar behind the ear – all these things begin to look unappealing.

Preying on the Weak: Social Media and Self Esteem

Creating and online identity has become a very common phenomenon. Those with body image concerns can take it too far and let it impose body image concerns on them, especially females. In fact, a psychiatrist remarked that 2/3 of his BDD patients felt the compulsion to repeatedly take selfies and upload them on social media

The Selfie Fiasco

Females with BDD have rigid and perfectionist views about how they should look, indulging in negative self evaluation and low self esteem (Wilhelm, 2006). Such individuals try to indulge their narcissistic tendencies by uploading selfie photos on social media to gain validation, and according to the self verification theory, this is a means to receive self verification through positive feedback; for those with serious body issues, the constant need to seek appreciation and comparisons with others causes depression (Sawnn, 1983).

Research has also shown that since 2013, there’s been a 10% rise in rhinoplasty procedures, 7% increase in hair transplants, and a 6% increase in eyelid surgeries (Vats, 2015).

Snapchat Dysmorphia

In early 2018, the negative effects of filters on applications like Snapchat and Instagram were highlighted. Patients had begun to visit plastic surgeons and demanded to look like their filtered pictures, leading one doctor to politely counsel his patient to look towards psychotherapy to correct her body image.

A professor at Northwestern University has remarked how the unrealistic manipulation of features, skin tone and looks had led individuals to lose perspective on how they really look, and doctors are now being warned to look out for BDD tendencies in their patients.

Follow this link so see more about the Snapchat Dysmorphia.

Instagram and Orthorexi

Social media not contributes to distorted self image in the BDD disposed individuals, but also makes them turn to certain acts to achieve that picture perfect look; in some ways, BDD feeds Eating Disorders, and vice versa.

A study was conducted on Instagram influencing an eating disorder: Orthorexia Nervosa. This disorder is characterized with an obsession to eat healthy and eschew certain impure or unhealthy food groups. In this case, the echo-chamber effect of social media comes into play, where individuals perceive their own values to be common even though they may be far from the norm. The #fitspiration tag on Instagram, which follows the healthy eating movement, revealed super toned bodies alluding to healthy eating and exercise, but with dangerously objectifying elements that could harm the BDD prone (Tiggemann & Zaccardo, 2016)

Interventions for Body Image Problems Arising Due to Social Media

Mental health organizations have said that social media does not necessarily bring the onset of BDD but definitely serves as a trigger for those who are predisposed towards BDD, currently are suffering from it, or those who have low self esteem and negative self image.

Either way, real life does not come with a filter, and neither is social media going to stop introducing newer ones. Various organizations and researchers are now working together to use social media to promote positive body image.

Self Care

Practicing safe use of social media can be practiced by oneself and impose don younger children. Not interacting with social media pages that trigger body image issues and being wary of real and modified material on the internet is a must.

Parents and adults can limit their time spent on various social media applications, and monitor use of their children by observing their behavioral responses to what they are exposed to. Positive psychology has started advocating for positive self talk; practicing self esteem and self affirming self talks is one way to internalize positive feelings about oneself.

The Hashtag Control

The National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA) has been reportedly working with social media platforms to remove certain hashtags and ban provocative feed material.

They also launched their own website in 2011, Proud2BMe, which encourages adolescents to embrace their natural bodies and have a healthy relationship with food and self image. They also promote positive hashtags.

My Journey

Various people have realized the detrimental cost to body image with photo shopping and filtering applications. Many of those recovering from Eating Disorders or trying to fight the demons of BDD are now sharing their recovery stories to encourage others with their real life examples.

Check out how this top runway model made her vitiligo her biggest strength.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

CBT modifies distorted thought processes through intensive talk therapy. Therapists try to understand and excavate the root cause of the problem and try to help their patient modify destructive thought patterns and equip them with coping skills to fight off their triggers.

For example, in CBT for BDD, a practitioner may focus on armoring their patient’s self esteem and modifying their self body image to make them braver and more self assured.

Psychiatric Medication

Some studies have found decreased serotonin transporter density, a depletion of tryptophan, greater white matter volume, small orbitofrontal cortex and a small anterior cingulated in certain BDD patients.

To counteract the behavior which these brain differences elicit in individuals, psychiatric evaluation and medication is also a route to recovery. Serotonin agonists, fluoxetine, and various other psychotrophics are utilized in the medical treatment of the disorder.

Social Media is Here to Stay

Social media is here to stay. With millions of people having access to all sorts of people, information and interactions online, this medium of communication is now a culture of its own. Of course, with every culture, there are those who do not benefit from the majority discourse.

It’s perfectly fine to care about one’s personal grooming and putting the best face forward; however, when the desire to be the best begins to cause distress and interrupt daily life responsibilities, that is the time to seek help. With psychiatric disorders, there’s only a thin line which distinguishes acceptable from the maladaptive.

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Training, Tanning, and Branding With The Bikini Bodybuilding Stars Of Instagram

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Training, Tanning, and Branding With The Bikini Bodybuilding Stars Of Instagram

Twenty-six-year-old Ashley Kaltwasser is the reigning world champion of a polarizing new bodybuilding competition that raises questions about attainable female body image while cultivating a massive following on social media. But the LeBron James of #BikiniCompetitor culture doesn’t have the answers — she’s busy trying to make history.

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Photographs by Ty Wright for BuzzFeed News, Isaac Hinds

“Bodybuilder” is not the first word that comes to mind when you see Ashley Kaltwasser. She has a sprinter’s body and a pageant girl’s good looks. Her teeth are bleach-white, nails French-manicured, hair dyed black and Keratin-treated so it falls in a glossy curtain down her back. When we meet in her fifth-floor room at The Orleans Hotel in Las Vegas, she’s in her stage makeup — fake lashes, heavy powder. It’s a late September afternoon, the day before the 2014 Bikini Olympia competition, and Kaltwasser is already dark from her first layer of spray tan. She’ll get another layer before bed and one more the next morning. The contest rules call for “a natural and healthy tan,” but Kaltwasser always goes for Boehner orange because it looks better onstage. The table, the bed, and the bathroom are strewn with what can best be described as product: bottles of serums, sprays, powders, glosses, and scrubs.

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Photograph by Ty Wright for BuzzFeed News

The Orleans is about a mile from the Strip, near a Déjà Vu adult emporium and a Budget car rental. This weekend it’s the site of Joe Weider’s Olympia, the biggest bodybuilding event of the year. The place teems with thousands of bodybuilding fans: men with arms like vine-choked tree trunks, women whose skirts reveal remarkable quads. They come from Southern California and Florida, the coastal epicenters of the sport, but also from Sydney, Seoul, Oslo, and all across the midsection of America. To them, Kaltwasser is something of a celebrity. Whenever she walks through the lobby, at least three people ask to take her picture. Sometimes it’s gawking men who smell like Axe body spray, but more often it’s those guys’ girlfriends. “My coach says I have the same body type as you,” says one starry-eyed woman. The elevators are decorated with life-size photos of the top competitors. Kaltwasser is thrilled when she discovers this. For the rest of the weekend, she takes “her” elevator almost every time.

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Photograph by Isaac Hinds / Via hardbodynews.com

Kaltwasser is quickly becoming the LeBron James of the bikini division, a new, more accessible and relatable category of bodybuilding. Long the provenance of MTV Spring Breakers and a close relative of the wet T-shirt contest, these competitions are gaining legitimacy as a sport and attracting legions of participants and fans. The number of professional competitions has more than doubled since 2010, when the professional arm of the International Federation of Bodybuilding and Fitness added bikini to its roster of female divisions. (Those divisions, in order from most to least jacked: bodybuilding, physique, fitness, figure, and now bikini).

The addition is part of the IFBB’s effort to change bodybuilding’s image from freakishly strapped ectomorphs to something sleeker, more modern, and, well, sexier. On a broader scale, bikini competition culture is changing the conversation about what health and fitness should look like. It’s a conversation that’s taking place largely on Instagram, where women like Kaltwasser — and women who want to be like Kaltwasser — get advice, give support, and pose in their underwear.

Advocates of this “bikini body” say it’s opening up the world of weightlifting to women who wouldn’t otherwise think of approaching a squat rack. “They’ll come and they don’t even know how to pick up a weight,” says Shannon Dey, who goes by Momma Bombshell. Her company, Bombshell Fitness, is one of the largest professional fitness coaching businesses in the country, and 80% of her competing clients are in the bikini division. “This type of body is gorgeous and fit, yet it’s attainable,” she says.

That word “attainable” comes up a lot when people in the industry talk about the bikini fitness trend. It’s being offered up as an antidote to thinspo culture — instead of thigh gaps, it’s “strong not skinny”; instead of pro-ana, it’s “eat to grow.” Kaltwasser, a former all-state athlete who professes her love for steak and pizza, is the poster woman for this trend.

But another story is playing out on social media. A search for #BikiniCompetitor on Instagram brings up endless reels of selfies at the gym, food weighed to the gram, quotes like “fail to plan, plan to fail,” and memes about not being able to walk after “leg day.” They chant their mantras in hashtags: #BeastMode, #NoExcuses, #RiseAndGrind. In profile after profile, women describe themselves as “recovered” from disorders like bulimia and compulsive exercising. All of it raises the question: Is the lifestyle that Kaltwasser literally embodies really a new and healthier attitude toward the female body, or is it a new expression of sexist old ideas and dangerous standards of beauty?

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Photograph by Ty Wright for BuzzFeed News

Bikini competitors are quick to say that they aren’t just girls who go to the gym; they’re athletes who train. Or, as Kaltwasser says on more than one occasion, “This isn’t just some bar contest. It’s a sport.” The 26-year-old from Akron, Ohio, has always competed in sports that were about individual performance — gymnastics, swimming, running. In high school they called her AK-47; she broke six track and cross-country records and qualified for state championships in both sports. Another thing she likes to say to reporters: “I worked for this body my whole life.”

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Photograph by Ty Wright for BuzzFeed News

She started training for the brand-new bikini division in 2010 after deciding that college wasn’t for her. She found Summer Montabone, a personal trainer and the owner of a local gym who runs Team VIP (Very Impressive Physique), a coaching group for bikini competitors. “You knew she was an athlete,” says Montabone, who is still Kaltwasser’s competition coach. These days Kaltwasser works out six days a week, doing an hour of weightlifting and a half-hour on a cardio machine when she’s preparing for a show. Sometimes she’ll do another session of cardio in the evenings.

Kaltwasser doesn’t have a boyfriend. In high school, boys were intimidated by her. “You could just feel the atmosphere change when she was around,” her former running coach tells me. “She’s so hardworking and so dominant in whatever she does.” This is the part of Kaltwasser that made her a track star, and it’s what makes her a bikini competitor now.

Even on the amateur level, a lot of competitors are like Kaltwasser. They have the mind-sets of CEOs; they push themselves to extremes in all aspects of their lives. Bikini competitions are seductive to these kinds of women: They seem to promise that perfection is possible if you put in the work. As Liz Ortiz, an Army soldier, bikini competitor, and mother of three told me, “I set my standards so high, and [competing] is just part of that.”

Kaltwasser’s competitive drive has propelled her to the top in very little time. She was a rookie when she won last year’s Olympia, an event that has grown from a three-man competition at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 1965 to become the fitness industry’s Super Bowl, a four-day event in Las Vegas that draws more than 55,000 fans. Since last year’s Olympia, Kaltwasser has entered six shows and won five. She estimates that she’s earned over $100,000 in prize money, along with endorsement deals, modeling gigs, and paid appearances. She has the forgivable egotism of a small-town girl who’s still a little starstruck by her own life. “Winning the Olympia changed everything for me,” she says. “Who goes to seven countries in a year?” She liked Sweden the most because there were no “trashy areas, no homeless people.” She’s still learning how to talk to the press. “When I don’t know what else to do, I smile,” she says.

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This year she’s trying for something that no bikini competitor has done yet: win the Olympia twice. Her biggest threat is Yeshaira Robles, another relative newcomer. On paper, the two women couldn’t be more different. Kaltwasser curls her eyelashes and wears matching workout clothes. She loves cats and calls her father “Daddy.” She doesn’t curse and she only likes the kind of rap that plays on the radio. Robles is a 35-year-old Puerto Rican from the Bronx. She’s got a husband and a daughter and a smoldering gaze that makes her opponents look like they’re posing for elementary school portraits. If Kaltwasser is Hannah Montana, Robles is Miley with a sledgehammer in hand.

Kaltwasser (@ashleykfit) is starting the weekend with 80,000 followers on Instagram, the majority of whom came after last year’s Olympia. She’s hoping to break 100,000 this time, which will likely only happen if she wins. Many bikini competitors use Instagram like a high school cafeteria, chatting, bragging, stirring up drama, gushing about their “swolemates,” all with plenty of emojis and exclamation points. But Kaltwasser and her fellow Olympia competitors are pros. They’re building brands, not making friends. Their images are more polished, the self-promotion more blatant. They have endorsement deals that require them to post about their sponsors. Kaltwasser, for example, has agreements with Gaspari supplements, Muscle Egg liquid egg whites, Liquid Sun Rayz spray tanning, FitnessRx for Women magazine, and Better Bodies fitness apparel.

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Kaltwasser checks her Instagram while at the gym. Photograph by Ty Wright for BuzzFeed News

For Kaltwasser, social media outlets like Instagram have brought exposure, but they’ve brought critics too. Those followers can determine whether she gets a sponsorship or modeling gig; they can determine the future of her career. “I try not to go out in public without my makeup on because you never know when someone’s going to ask for a picture, and then it’ll be on Instagram,” she says. Her Instagram has plenty of beauty shots, most of which feature her prominent glutes. Recently she’s been hard-selling Fuel Meals, a food service that ships premade meals tailored to bodybuilders’ diets. Still she tries not to come across as an adbot in a bikini. Her account also features dogs in sweaters and a photo of herself in a pepperoni-pizza-print onesie.

It makes sense that bikini competitors and wannabes would flock to Instagram, a female-dominated social media platform where image matters most. Their presence there is hard to ignore; it’s turned the site into a 24-7 forum for tips and tricks. Competitors’ accounts are littered with questions, some from girls as young as 14: “How many calories and carbs do you eat and stay this lean?” “How can you get veins on your abs?” “What does your typical diet consist of?” “What moves are you doing to get all that hammie definition?” “How do you dry ure stomache out like that????” “What sorts of things do you eat? And how many meals a day?” “What are your butt workouts??”

In her hotel room that afternoon, Kaltwasser opens the mini-fridge and plucks a doggie bag of mush from a mound of other bags. She brought enough meals for the whole trip, divided and frozen. There’s little variation: chicken, sweet potato, asparagus, broccoli. Ground oats and egg whites cooked into patties. She often eats things cold right out of the bag. “I like the taste of simple food,” she says. “I never really want to eat crap.”

“Abs are made in the kitchen” is another much-repeated Instagram line. Bikini competitors’ feeds showcase elaborate meal preps, and debates rage on about the etiquette of taking your food scale to a restaurant. Some competitors stick to strict quantities of protein, fats, and carbohydrates, which they tweak obsessively in the weeks leading up to a show. Kaltwasser doesn’t track her calories or grams. She follows a meal plan that she writes herself with Montabone’s help. She eats six or seven small meals a day and drinks two gallons of water. She cuts out sodium the week before her shows and drinks cups of dandelion root tea, a natural diuretic. She “eats clean” but doesn’t worry about things like pesticides or artificial sweeteners. She likes the blue packets more than the pink. The yellow ones are just OK. Real sugar is not a concept she knows. After every show, she allows herself to have a cheat meal. Right now she’s craving salad, one with the works: apples, cranberries, walnuts, and blue cheese dressing. “A real salad,” she says.

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Photograph Ty Wright for BuzzFeed News

Kaltwasser doesn’t measure her body-fat percentage, but she estimates that it’s between 10 and 12% — well below the 21 to 32% that experts recommend for women her age, though not unheard of for a competitive athlete. She gains a few pounds in the off-season but emphasizes that the bikini body is supposed to be maintainable. “It’s a livable lifestyle,” she likes to say.

Not everyone agrees. “People see photos of competitors and think that’s how they look year-round,” says Layne Norton, a bodybuilding coach in Florida. Norton has a Ph.D. in nutritional sciences and considers himself a renegade for his less restrictive approach to dieting. According to him, “stage-lean” is a fleeting state, one that women peak for just like any athlete peaks for a competition. The idea that anyone can maintain that kind of physique has created a black market of sorts in the coaching industry. It can seem like every bikini competitor on Instagram sells a “bikini body” diet and workout plan. Some of these women have certifications but most probably don’t. “It’s gotten really terrible,” says Norton. “A girl goes and wins a show and has abs and so now she’s a coach to make money.”

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These coaches can wreak havoc on their clients’ lives. Ruthie Harrison is 5-foot-10, blonde-haired and blue-eyed with a disturbingly symmetrical face. She looks like a fitness model because she is. For nearly a year and a half, she was also a client of Momma Bombshell, aka Shannon Dey of Bombshell Fitness. Harrison, who is 25 now and works as a mechanical engineer, signed up with Team Bombshell in 2011. “I saw all these photos of women in bikinis on her website and thought, Wow, if I could be a part of that, that would be really cool.”

The meal plan took some getting used to — she had never measured cups of rice or counted asparagus spears before, and she didn’t understand why salt and seasonings were forbidden (spices cause cravings, she was later told). “[Dey] would always tell everyone, ‘Follow the plan, stick to the plan,’ and if you asked why she’d say, ‘Why are you asking why; just do it. Your mind’s in the wrong place if you’re asking why.’”

Harrison’s training plan had her doing an hour and a half of cardio six days a week on top of weight training five days a week. All told, each day she was spending three to five hours at the gym and eating an estimated 1,500 calories. Sometimes she’d fall asleep at the table in front of her last meal of the night — a tiny steak and salad greens.

Harrison says Dey had her clients wear rubber corsets called Squeems, meant to narrow women’s waists. “We wore them all day,” she says.

Dey says that if Harrison was spending that much time in the gym, it was “due to her own physical limitations, not our recommended plans.” (The Bombshell website refers to a workout program of one and a half to three hours a day of gym time, five to six days per week.) Dey doesn’t recall Harrison’s meal plan, but says that a 1,500-calorie-a-day diet was not uncommon during prep. She recommends Squeems to clients, she says, because “they have proven very effective in creating the hourglass shape competitors desire.”

Harrison went pro within a year of joining Dey’s team. She lived for the trophies and for Dey’s positive feedback week after week. But she also developed a secret habit of binging and purging, which only got worse the better she performed. After one show, she spent a week in total isolation, eating and throwing up seven times a day. When Harrison qualified for the Olympia in 2012, she realized she couldn’t survive another prep. She confessed everything to Dey, who told her she was having a reaction to “a self-imagined stress.” Harrison competed in the 2012 Olympia in the midst of a full-blown eating disorder and didn’t place.

Layne Norton, the coach from Florida, says he’s seen “an enormous amount of women who had normal relationships with food before fitness start to have eating disorders.”

Dey confirms that she and Harrison spoke “at length” about Harrison’s eating disorder, and that she may have told Harrison that she was putting too much pressure on herself. When asked about the prevalence of eating disorders among her other clients, Dey wrote: “Several studies have shown that eating disorders are not a result of calorie restriction, rather they are often triggered by trauma and stress … In a sport where much of the emphasis is on food manipulation, individuals who have such issues to begin with may find dealing with these issues while manipulating food to prove difficult.” But Layne Norton, the coach from Florida, says he’s seen “an enormous amount of women who had normal relationships with food before fitness start to have eating disorders.” He estimates that up to 70% of the women who come to him have had an eating disorder in the past.

Harrison stopped competing after the 2012 Olympia, and things got worse for a while. “I had no idea how to eat on my own,” she says. Eventually she found a therapist who helped her see how much she’d let competing affect her self-image. Last year she wrote a blog post about her experience on Team Bombshell. “Competing brought out a savage underlying weakness,” she wrote, “to sacrifice all happiness and reason for the sake of succeeding.” According to Harrison, Dey asked her to take it down. Harrison refused, though she did remove some details about her time as a Bombshell.

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Photograph by Ty Wright for BuzzFeed News

Many bodybuilders, whether they realize it or not, share this idea that their physiques reflect their morals, their work ethic, and ultimately their self-worth. It’s a notion that’s as old as the Greeks and that crops up everywhere from Bible verses to Renaissance philosophy to the weight room — and now social media. The semi-naked selfies on Instagram mean more than “Look at my body.” They mean, “Look at my dedication. Look at my discipline. I am a better person for this.” It’s common for these women to testify about booze, partying, and bad relationships forsaken for the morality of the gym. “The only bar I’m hitting,” says the caption under a photo of a squat rack. “Getting wheysted,” says the label on the protein shake.

Kaltwasser’s physique is her product and her livelihood, and she’s under enormous pressure to maintain it. Despite this, she says she doesn’t have a history of eating disorders and that she’s indebted to her coach for all she’s done. She talks about starting her own training and nutrition business when her career on the stage is over. “Right now I feel like I’m building up credentials,” she says. “When the time comes and I can’t compete anymore, they’ll look at my resume and it will make me seem more credible.”

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Photograph by Ty Wright for BuzzFeed News

Kaltwasser eats her second-to-last meal of the night before the final at a “Meet the Olympians” event — four ounces of chicken and half an avocado mashed together. There’s a steady flow of visitors to her table, but nothing like the crowds who line up to meet reigning Mr. Olympia Phil “The Gift” Heath and his rival Kai Greene. The hours wear on and Kaltwasser is clearly ready to go. Still, she smiles, signs photos, applies and reapplies lip gloss.

It’s past 10 at night by the time she gets to the ninth-floor hotel room, where the illicit spray tanners have set up shop. Kaltwasser’s face is bare and freckled, and in her track suit she looks like the high-school runner she once was. Hotel management strictly forbids tanning in the rooms, so one woman keeps her eye on the peephole while another hoses a naked Kaltwasser with a spray gun attached to a turbine while she stands in a tent-like pod. In the room next door, a half-dozen women in bathrobes wait their turn. They eat out of Tupperwares and scroll on their phones. The Biggest Loser blares on TV, and it’s hard not to see a parallel world: the dieting, their exercise regimens, the obsession we seem to have with watching bodies transform.

Bodybuilding forums are full of complaints about “protein farts,” and, in the crush of the expo floor, the problem is clear.

To walk through the Olympia Expo, which sprawls across the South Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center, is to do battle with an army of broad shoulders, tens of thousands strong. Women in tight-fitting fitness garb stand with trays of protein bites. Ice cream machines churn out protein soft-serve; Sylvester Stallone promotes protein candy chews. This is maybe the only place in the world where you will ever sidestep someone throwing up from too many protein samples. Bodybuilding forums are full of complaints about “protein farts,” and, in the crush of the expo floor, the problem is clear. Stallone is whisked around by bodyguards and hidden behind sunglasses and a frozen smirk, but miraculously Jen Selter (@jenselter), the “Butt Selfie (or #belfie) Queen” of Instagram, is standing alone, almost blending into the crowd with her velvet sweatpants and her Louis Vuitton bag. Selter, who has more Instagram followers than all the bikini pros at the Olympia combined — 5.1 million — says that she has a lot of respect for the bikini division and wouldn’t rule out the possibility of competing one day. “I love that clean, healthy lifestyle,” she explains. According to Kaltwasser, Selter would probably not do well in a bikini competition. “Symmetry is important,” she tells me, tactfully.

Prejudging for the women’s divisions happens on Friday morning, on a makeshift stage near a booth selling Isobags, which are the most intense lunch boxes you’ve ever seen. Kaltwasser has been up since 5, doing the tanning, the makeup, the hair routine. She’s eaten mostly carbs today — rice cakes, oats. The glycogen from the sugar will fill out her muscles in these last crucial hours. She’s in a silk bathrobe with her name embroidered across the back above the words “IFBB Pro.” She opens the bathrobe to reveal a tanned, waxed body and the bikini: emerald, her trademark color, and studded with first-cut Swarovski crystals. Kaltwasser says it’s worth about $3,000 but the company gave it to her for free, along with some serious bling for her fingers and wrists.

Kaltwasser is jittery as she puts the final touches on her makeup. For her and the other bikini competitors, prejudging is the most important part of the day. It’s when the judges make their decisions, and those decisions rarely change at the finals show. The women are judged on their bodies, of course, but also on their walks, their smiles, their skin tones, and how they interact with the judges. “Hooker makeup” will detract from the score, they tell me. Kaltwasser’s weakness is her presentation. Sometimes her legs shake or she forgets to smile. “I get nervous because I care so much,” she says.

The competitors strut out one by one and pose to a frenetic mash-up of club songs. They’re allowed to pose however they want to show off their figures, and the results are sometimes bizarre to the untrained eye — hips popped out, waists dramatically torqued, backs arched and legs spread like a farm animal doing its business. Butt-wiggling and shoulder-shimmying are frowned upon, one judge tells me, but they happen a lot.

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Photograph by Isaac Hinds

There are 27 women — more than any other division, men’s or women’s — at the Olympia. If you’ve only seen these women on Instagram, the most remarkable thing about seeing them onstage is how small they are in real life. Kaltwasser is one of the tallest at 5-foot-5. Onstage they all wear clear, sky-high heels.

Yeshaira Robles comes out toward the end in a pink suit with gold-highlighted hair. She looks ripped and gorgeous, of course, but maybe a teensy bit bored. Her gaze doesn’t smolder so much as say, “Just give me the trophy and let’s get this over with.”

Because she’s the defending champion, Kaltwasser goes last. She looks poised and confident. Her legs stay steady, even when she crosses them for the back pose. There’s something refreshing about her routine; she doesn’t wink or pout at the judges but keeps her smile wide. The judges bring six women to the center, including Kaltwasser and Robles. This is first callouts, and it means these are the six women in the running for a top spot. The judges move the women around to compare them. Robles gets moved to the far end — that means she’s out of the running for first. Kaltwasser gets moved to the middle. They move a first-time Olympia competitor named Janet Layug next to her. The thing everyone seems to know about Layug is that she won a Hooters pageant of some kind earlier this year. She’s stunning in a Victoria’s Secret runway model-type way, long and lean with a face that one webcast commentator described as “a pillar of beauty.” She poses with a winner’s cockiness, smiling just enough to show she’s having a good time. Here, next to Layug, Kaltwasser looks almost (almost) stocky, her smile like Miss Ohio’s at the state fair.

“[Layug] had the stage presence that I didn’t have,” Kaltwasser tells me later. Based on prejudging, Kaltwasser thinks she has a spot in the top two, but second won’t make history. She spends the afternoon glued to her iPhone, reading comments and predictions on social media. All the events are live-streaming, and people are weighing in from around the world. A popular bodybuilding Twitter account @musclephone thinks Kaltwasser “won it from the back,” but will the judges agree?

Kaltwasser’s manager is J.M. Manion, owner of the Fitness Management Group and a man whose influence in the bodybuilding world is both obvious and hard to quantify. His father, Jim Manion, is president of the IFBB Pro League in the U.S. The younger Manion manages not only Kaltwasser but also Robles, Layug, and every other top contender at the Bikini Olympia. Every Bikini Olympia winner since the division began was managed by Manion at some point in her career. It seems like an unspoken rule that no one has a shot at the top spot until they sign with FMG.

Manion’s email address is also registered as the owner of two active porn sites devoted to IFBB competitors. One, called “Lacey D.” (tagline: “For All Of You To See”), features Lacey DeLuca, an FMG client who competed alongside Kaltwasser on the Bikini Olympia stage. According to DeLuca, 26, Manion photographed her for his porn site in 2012, soon after she became a bikini pro. “Everything that J.M. does with me like that is very classy,” she says. She adds that, as a manager, Manion “always steers us in the right direction,” telling them which shows to enter and which to avoid. DeLuca declined to comment on whether she’s seen any profits from “Lacey D.” Manion did not respond for comment about the relationship between his bikini competition endeavors and his pornographic ones.

The bikini division is a blatant attempt to revive the sex appeal that women’s bodybuilding had in its early days, before a steroid-fueled arms race turned the division into a carnival show of the impossibly huge. Back then, most female bodybuilders looked like the women in the bikini division today. For evidence, look no further than 1985’s Pumping Iron II: The Women, hornball sequel to Pumping Iron, the film that helped make Arnold Schwarzenegger a star. For over an hour and a half, the camera ogles them up and down: in spandex at the gym, in bikinis by the pool, naked in a communal shower, all set to a synth-pop soundtrack. “Well I’ve always considered myself a powder puff, but I consider myself a really strong powder puff,” says one woman who looks like Jennifer Beals in Flashdance. “Got to get that fat off,” says a male trainer to another competitor. He pushes her through some T-bar rows, then they make out.

Iris Kyle, the 10-time Ms. Olympia whose quads are thicker than most horses’, is not going to get a GQ spread anytime soon, but Ashley Kaltwasser very well could. (Standing behind her at the podium, the male emcee jokes about having “the best seat in the house.”) Kaltwasser got breast implants in 2011, not long after she started competing. Most women at the pro level do, because, as Kaltwasser put it, “when your body fat gets down, your boobs go.” Kaltwasser wanted to stay athletic-looking and she was aware that the judges don’t go for the “bimbo look,” so she went for a sensible D-cup. But she also says she’s not interested in being a sex symbol for guys. “What are boys? I’m all about the Olympia,” she jokes. The posing, the getup, the hour-long makeup routine: She treats it as seriously as the training and the diet. She treats it all like a job, because it is. When I ask if there’s a hookup scene at the Olympia, she gives me a strange look. “Probably [among] the fans,” she says.

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Photograph by Isaac Hinds / Via hardbodynews.com

A few hours after the morning’s prejudging, Kaltwasser heads to the arena for the bikini finals. Tonight’s show feels a bit like a warm-up to Saturday, when Phil Heath and rival Kai Greene will pack the arena with fans paying over $200 a seat. But the arena still sparkles with smartphone flashes, and the TV cameras swoop and soar. NBC’s sports channel is planning to air two 90-minute specials about this year’s Mr. Olympia, the competition’s first major television coverage in 30 years.

As the bikini competitors parade out one by one under the bright lights, I can see why Kaltwasser calls these competitions “Miss America for the fit girl.” It is a pageant in its purest form, a beauty contest without any of that fuss over saving sea lions and tap dancing. And the women are lovely, but the whole thing is a little mind-numbing. Twenty-seven pairs of breasts, round and high, twenty-seven flat bellies, twenty-seven winning smiles. Say what you will about performance-enhancing drugs; the most arresting moment of the night was watching a strapping, square-jawed female bodybuilder lip-synch to Cat Power’s cover of “Sea of Love.”

Kaltwasser looks relaxed onstage, strutting and posing to the brassy beat of “Timber” and working her All-American, girl-next-door vibe. When it comes time to award the top six, Robles takes fourth, smiling gamely. Layug and Kaltwasser are the final two. When the emcee names Layug as the runner-up, Kaltwasser gasps and starts clapping just a second too soon.

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Photograph by Isaac Hinds / Via hardbodynews.com

Commentators on Bodybuilding.com’s live wrap-up remark that the judges went for the athlete over the model, that Kaltwasser’s body is setting an attainable standard, and that this is a good thing for the sport. But they’re wrong. There will never be a truly mainstream physique on a professional bodybuilding stage, because there’s simply no place for “maintainable” in a world where bodies must be built, sculpted, and improved. It’s the bodybuilding mind-set, the body reflecting the inner self, that’s gone mainstream, not the other way around.

From the smoking balcony of The Orleans Arena you can see the whole Strip, all that sparkle and sex laid out from head to toe. Inside, Kaltwasser will stand for the next two hours in her green bikini and heels, giving interviews to NBC and the muscle press. Tomorrow she’ll work all day at her sponsors’ expo booths; she’ll go to the Victory Gala and eat her real salad and some rolls with butter too. Sunday she’ll get back in her bikini and pose for a Norwegian magazine, then she’ll drive to a Gold’s Gym and do hamstring exercises for another photo shoot. This year she may not have an off-season at all. From Vegas she flies straight to South Korea for the Korea Pro. Then there’s a competition in Russia in November. (She will win them both.) The 2015 season starts three months later with the Arnold Classic.

But, for now, all Kaltwasser has to do is raise her arms up and smile. Stars glitter on the screen behind her as another pop song plays. She’ll get $25,000 for her win, the most ever awarded to a bikini competitor. In a Bodybuilding.com wrap-up video, Kaltwasser will say that her goal is to prove that the bikini division is about more than “genetics and diet and cardio.”

“I know firsthand we’re athletes,” she’ll say. “I’ve worked for this body my whole life.” By this time tomorrow, her Instagram followers will hit 100,000.

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Photograph by Isaac Hinds / Via hardbodynews.com

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Read more: http://www.buzzfeed.com/ashapiro009/training-tanning-and-branding-with-the-bikini-bodybuilding-s

#bikini competition #Bikini Olympia #bikinicompetitor #Body Image #bodybuilding #fitness #instagram #las vegas #social media

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