#tressie mcmillan cottom

[living400lbs]

The American Diabetes Association developed the term “prediabetes” to bring attention to slightly elevated blood sugar levels in some Americans in 2001. Over the next two decades, the organization expanded the definition of the condition, so that by 2019, as Charles Piller reported for Science magazine, 84 million Americans had prediabetes, “the most common chronic disease after obesity.”

There were no drugs specifically designed for prediabetes, so doctors often relied on off-label treatments, a common medical practice. But because off-label drug interventions coincided with the wholesale expanded classification of millions of people with a novel condition, a new market boomed.

This shift broadened the consumer language for medicalizing weight loss as a preventive strategy to treat not only diabetes, but also supposed — though not always proven — diabetes risk. It armed a wellness machine with the medical terminology of “insulin resistance” and “insulin sensitivity,” without the medical expertise to screen for diabetes risk indicators. People could soon buy an astonishing array of apps and devices to self-diagnose insulin efficiency. Enter Ozempic and Wegovy, perfectly designed for our highly developed consumer palates.

Given all these changes, I wondered what Dr. Richard Kahn, the former chief scientific and medical officer at the American Diabetes Association, who helped establish “prediabetes” as a term, now thought about the phenomenon.

When we talked, Dr. Kahn told me that he regrets his role in developing “prediabetes” and its associated grift, but his giddiness about GLP-1 drugs was palpable. He said that encouraging weight loss through lifestyle changes was an “abject failure.” Now, Ozempic offers patients light and hope.

The problem with these drugs, he said, “is that they cost an enormous amount of money.”

From Tressie McMillan Cottom

Oh, fyi: I weigh about 400lbs. I do not have diabetes or prediabetes.

[fanhackers]

During the pandemic, we, fans, have been able to rely on some of our already existing coping mechanisms to deal with the increased strain of our mental health due to the global crisis. Participants in a study about the mental health of PhD students during the pandemic responded that their coping strategies mainly included social interaction and recreational activities. Furthermore, 

Lower scores of depression and anxiety were predicted by the strength of the overall social network (…) NAUMANN, SANDRA, LENA MATYJEK, KATHARINA BÖGL, SCHOLAR MINDS, AND ISABEL DZIOBEK. UPDATE ON THE MENTAL HEALTH CRISIS IN ACADEMIA: EFFECTS OF THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC ON EARLY CAREER RESEARCHERS’ MENTAL HEALTH AND SATISFACTION WITH PHD TRAINING, 2022. 

In another survey, this one about Philippine BTS fans, social interaction and recreational activities were  both listed as ways that fandom supported participants’ mental health.

Despite being isolated from one another geographically due to the lockdown, the fans felt that BTS was with them throughout the pandemic, through their music, live videos, tweets, pictures, and even the mere thought of them. VANGUARDIA, MARC. “LOVE YOURSELF, BTS ARMY: PARTICIPATORY FANDOM AND AGENCY DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC.” PHILIPPINES COMMUNICATION SOCIETY REVIEW, 2021, 229.

These digital  networks of intimacy allowed for comfort, happiness, and healing to be conveyed and received across miles in the physical realm and created imagined yet profound connections that acted as safe spaces for ARMYs online. VANGUARDIA, MARC. “LOVE YOURSELF, BTS ARMY: PARTICIPATORY FANDOM AND AGENCY DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC.” PHILIPPINES COMMUNICATION SOCIETY REVIEW, 2021, 231.

By seeing other ARMYs and interacting with them on various social networking sites, the (survey) participants felt less lonely as a part of a community of people who shared not only the same interest and admiration for BTS but also similar experiences regardless of their cultural, linguistic, gender, and other identifying background. (Participants) pointed out that relationships were formed not only as fans of the same idols but as individuals who were included in each other’s support systems. VANGUARDIA, MARC. “LOVE YOURSELF, BTS ARMY: PARTICIPATORY FANDOM AND AGENCY DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC.” PHILIPPINES COMMUNICATION SOCIETY REVIEW, 2021, 241-242

The individual activities and actions that the participants engaged in as fans of BTS served as a distraction from the bleak reality of the pandemic. By being occupied with tasks such as streaming, voting, and getting updated on the fandom over stan Twitter, the fans were able to focus on accomplishing things instead of dwelling on their problems and concerning themselves with the situation of the world around them. By being able to control something they found an anchor that was constant, and had a sense of agency in a time of almost complete uncertainty. (…) The participants exhibited a high level of consciousness of the positive effects and potential drawbacks of their engagement in the fandom. They recognized the various ways that their actions could affect their well-being, and adjusted accordingly by putting themselves in conducive situations that would provide them the greatest benefit. VANGUARDIA, MARC. “LOVE YOURSELF, BTS ARMY: PARTICIPATORY FANDOM AND AGENCY DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC.” PHILIPPINES COMMUNICATION SOCIETY REVIEW, 2021, 239-240.

Fandom might be seen then, as a culture that adapted well to the pandemic. It would be tempting to characterise academia as also not needing to change drastically in a world in lockdown.

Drawing a parallel between these two is not a new statement.

In some cases, we argue that academic research interests paralleled fannish passion. HAYASHI, AYA ESTHER. 2020. “REIMAGINING FAN STUDIES IN THE AGE OF COVID-19 AND BLACK LIVES MATTER.” TRANSFORMATIVE WORKS AND CULTURES, NO. 34. HTTPS://DOI.ORG/10.3983/TWC.2020.2029.

However, both fandom and academia have their  issues, which were  not only carried over into  the pandemic but might have been amplified by it . As McMillan Cottom explained  in a roundtable about the state of higher education,

Overall, most college leaders saw COVID-19 as an opportunity to do more of what they had already been doing. Schools that had wanted to respond to inequality doubled down on that. School that had been trending toward profit-seeking especially under the guise of a public institution-like Purdue and Arizona State -doubled down. SHENK, TIMOTHY, MAGGIE DOHERTY, NILS GILMAN, ADAM HARRIS, TRESSIE MCMILLAN COTTOM, AND CHRISTOPHER NEWFIELD. ACADEMI AFTER THE PANDEMIC: A ROUNDTABLE ON HOW COVID-19 HAS CHANGED AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES. OTHER. DISSENT, 2021. 

(…) participatory culture of affiliation in the BTS ARMY fandom can be ambiguous at best in its effect on fan mental health. VANGUARDIA, MARC. “LOVE YOURSELF, BTS ARMY: PARTICIPATORY FANDOM AND AGENCY DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC.” PHILIPPINES COMMUNICATION SOCIETY REVIEW, 2021, 243.

Notwithstanding the positive impacts of involvement in BTS ARMY? The participants generally agreed that some other ARMYs can be very “toxic”, or overly competitive, intense, or aggressive in their way of supporting BTS and engaging in “fan wars” with fans of other groups. To address this problem, some fans distanced themselves from stan Twitter altogether, avoided “toxic” fans by curating the accounts they were following or accounts following them, or decided to temporarily leave or stayed only to focus on ARMY common goals true to the ideals of BTS: The process if compartmentalization of personal and fandom life and interactions between online ARMY friends and personal/in-real-life friends that some participants reported as coping mechanisms for their mental health were a steady reality in network society where inclusions and exclusions always came together. VANGUARDIA, MARC. “LOVE YOURSELF, BTS ARMY: PARTICIPATORY FANDOM AND AGENCY DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC.” PHILIPPINES COMMUNICATION SOCIETY REVIEW, 2021, 243.

In a world so changed by the pandemic, looking forward, we cannot accept neither the idea that we can go back to normal, nor the idea that we have moved toward a digital utopia. Harris says,

During the protests and reckoning over systemic racism in American life over the past year, students have been a major part of the national energy. But they haven’t had the chance to be on campus, to be in spaces where they can organize. A lot of college leaders, particularly at predominantly white institutions, are very concerned about what is going to happen when students come back. I think a lot of energy that has been pent up over the last sixteen, seventeen months will reveal itself on campuses. SHENK, TIMOTHY, MAGGIE DOHERTY, NILS GILMAN, ADAM HARRIS, TRESSIE MCMILLAN COTTOM, AND CHRISTOPHER NEWFIELD. ACADEMI AFTER THE PANDEMIC: A ROUNDTABLE ON HOW COVID-19 HAS CHANGED AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES. OTHER. DISSENT, 2021. 

We have to reflect on how to adapt to this world, possibly, how to use our current opportunities to change. 

What practices can we introduce at conferences that don’t tokenize BIPOC scholars? (…) Let’s diversify editorial boards and conference planning committees. (…) Let’s create alternative funding for conferences and journals, to transform these practices from unremunerated service activities to activities where labor is honored. HAYASHI, AYA ESTHER. 2020. “REIMAGINING FAN STUDIES IN THE AGE OF COVID-19 AND BLACK LIVES MATTER.” TRANSFORMATIVE WORKS AND CULTURES, NO. 34. HTTPS://DOI.ORG/10.3983/TWC.2020.2029.

[wellconstructedsentences]

The families that can hoard do, and the neighborhoods in which they live benefit.

Thick and Other Essays by Tressie McMillan Cottom

[sazzyartist]

Tressie McMillan Cottom 'In the Name of Beauty'

[lima-norte]

Las claves de la independencia periodística #AGSulzberger

✨ El acontecimiento. Con eje en la relevancia que tiene la independencia periodística, el editor del New York Times, A. G. Sulzberger, dictó esta semana la Reuters Memorial Lecture 2024: se trata de nuestro evento principal de cada año, en el que un destacado colega ofrece su visión profesional. Hemos traducido su discurso al español y a continuación te detallamos tres de sus principales…

[living400lbs]

"You acknowledge that the chaos is smoke, but the heist is the fire. Don’t look away from the smoke. Look through it for what is being taken, redefined and reallocated. Stop pointing out the hypocrisy. The other side does not care. Its content makes the people there feel powerful but action is the only real power.

...

Opposition is action"

Tressie McMillan Cottom’s latest is not easily summarized, but is well-worth a read: Look Past Elon Musk’s Chaos. There’s Something More Sinister at Work.

[ravenkings]

So far, Musk’s DOGE gang has outmaneuvered the Democrats and produced a governmental soap opera that confuses some Americans but feeds their fans what they want. Storming anodyne cubicles as if they’re Waterloo creates chaos and it satisfies fans’ desire to vicariously storm the seat of world power. In Musk, Trump has found something important for his stylistic approach to authoritarianism. He needs a muckraker who can create content for our media environment. I could not help but feel that the Democrats’ response, staged for 20th-century media with a lectern, microphones and standing outside in the cold, could not compete with the emotional power of content. And that could have disastrous consequences. DOGE is a democracy wrecking machine. It is targeting the government’s plumbing, the infrastructure that makes the state reliable and legitimate for millions of Americans. DOGE is also a propaganda machine. A friend asked me recently why a president who controls both legislative chambers would need to elbow his administration’s way into relatively small, if important, bureaucratic offices. Why, he wondered, all the questionably legal mafia-like tactics? The easy answer is that this is just Trump’s style and Musk is unpredictable. That is true, but it does not clearly assess the strategic efficacy of deploying gamified smash-and-grab antics. Musk’s escapades are political posturing staged like a video game side quest. The DOGE playbook is to target an office of which most Americans have only a vague notion. Then Musk’s operatives label the office a villain in overblown comic terms — “a criminal organization” as Musk called the U.S. Agency for International Development. Then, the executive branch uses DOGE to pick a fight it knows it can win. Musk’s fans love his narration of power as a vicarious gamelike experience of dominance. These fans don’t find the DOGE escapades chaotic or confusing. If anything, the bombastic flouting of norms and laws makes the world more sensible to them. It is government and civic life they don’t understand. Musk clarifies a scary world for them, putting it in terms they understand. Bad guy. Good guy. Evil. Villain. Kill. Win.

– Tressie McMillan Cottom, "Look Past Elon Musk's Chaos. There's Something More Sinister At Work," The New York Times, February 12, 2025

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

Hello, I was wondering if you had reccs for the nonfiction essays for the bingo sheet? It’s a genre I never touch usually so I’m sort at a loss where to start.

some essay collections I've enjoyed!!!

How to Read Now (Elaine Castillo)

Thick (Tressie McMillan Cottom)

Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning (Cathy Park Hong)

How Far the Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures (Sabrina Imbler)

One Day We'll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter (Scaachi Koul)

How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America (Kiese Laymon)

My Body (Emily Ratajkowski)

Trick Mirror (Jia Tolentino)

[mswyrr]

I agree on the idea that verbal abuse and division is a problem in online progressive spaces. But "just be nicer to men" ignores the fact that Harris did important gestures on that front! Quote from Tressie McMillan Cottom:

A lot of men don't want nice or to be treated equally. They want the temptations Trump offers: to dominate and subject women. To control their bodies and not care how many bleed out in hospital rooms because their doctors can't legally give them life saving care.

There is a problem with the media ecosystem. There is a problem with verbal abuse in online progressive spaces. But there's also a problem with how tempted many men are by being able to dominate and subject and control and hurt women. To be our superiors not our beloved equals.

[thatstormygeek]

McMillan Cottom: It goes much deeper. You call it populist rage, Patrick. I’m not against that description. But it doesn’t quite capture that the other side stokes that rage. The reaction is a defense of one public who is at odds with the interests of another public. Markets create moral economies. Whether you call it crony capitalism or just an unfair economy, the market sets the rules for which lives matter. We have set up a system of interlocking ninth circles of hell for all of our basic needs. Housing is a noose of landlord interests, developer exploitation and rising costs. Transportation is a Gordian knot of failing infrastructure and limited vision that traps us in neighborhoods and lifestyles that make us sicker and meaner. Our moral economy is trash. Healy: And how does the health care industry fit in here, Tressie? McMillan Cottom: Nowhere is the perverse nature of our moral economy more evident than health care. It is not just expensive. It is often tied to jobs people either cannot get or cannot afford to leave if they want to be able to see a doctor. Health care is one of the biggest reasons that Americans file for bankruptcy. The incentives are to put profit over people. We know this and yet we also gaslight millions of Americans. We tell them that the system is fair and meritocratic, that their quality of life is not deteriorating and, if it is, then they did not work hard enough. Scam culture makes everyone a mark. The moral economy of a scam culture says that everyone deserves to be a mark. That is dehumanizing. ... McMillan Cottom: No one is under the impression that murdering a health care C.E.O. will make insurance more affordable or accessible. Some people are relieved to see their experiences reflected and to see the moral rot of our system exposed. That is a public response to a social problem that pits one public’s needs against profit. Is it unfortunate that this happens because of a terrible crime that will certainly impact a family? Certainly. It is also unfortunate that we do not see the pain and illness and death of millions of people as a crime against our moral economy.

NYT gift link

[skatehepburn]

9 5 books for 2025

thank u @kshaar for the tag!

THIS IS WHERE I CONFESS:

i am not a good reader anymore. in between being a technology addict, reading more fanfiction than anything, and developing MS a few years back my capacity to sit with a book is... not great these days. (i know audiobooks count! but as someone who loooves quiet when i'm not driving i'd rather rebuild my capacity to read as much as i can)

BUT! We moved this summer, and i got a new library card and i have at least STARTED my first physical book in years. So i will make an aspirational list of books I want to check out and books that are sitting in my house, untouched after moving with us.*

Pure America: Eugenics and the Making of Modern Virginia, By Elizabeth Catte

Let This Radicalize You, by Kelly Hayes and Mariame Kaba

Modern Chronicles of Reaper's Coast, by "Cranley Huwbert" aka Divinity: Original Sin 2 lorebook which I am devouring in hopes of finishing a fic idea lol

Disability Visibility, ed. By Alice Wong

THICK, by Tressie McMillan Cottom

*(In the interest of making my goal achievable, I am making a shorter list <3 )

Tagging @lingerbythecranberries1993 and @electric-eccentricity bc they have good brains and i would like to know what feeds them

[spiderfreedom]

That [no-makeup makeup] is meant to disappear flaws, then disappear into the wearer — to appear to be “no makeup;” to look “clean” — speaks to the making of modern femininity, which, Susie Orbach writes in the foreword to Aesthetic Labour: Rethinking Beauty Politics in Neoliberalism, is “marked by a concealment of the work of body making.” The labor of making one’s effort invisible is “so integrated into the take up of femininity that we may be ignorant of the processes we engage in,” according to the author. “We are encouraged to translate the work of doing so into the categories of ‘fun,’ of being ‘healthy’ and of ‘looking after ourselves.’”  Payment for this kind of labor comes in the form of privilege. Embodying the beauty ideal elicits better social treatment, more attention from teachers and supervisors, greater job opportunities, higher pay. To vanish into beauty is to become visible as a person. (“Beauty isn't actually what you look like,” sociologist Tressie McMillan Cottom writes in Thick: And Other Essays, “beauty is the preferences that reproduce the existing social order.”)  “It’s interesting to note that there’s psychological research suggesting we view women as less human when they wear a lot of makeup,” said Dr. Renee Engeln, a professor of psychology at Northwestern University.  Maybe the “five-minute face” is a plea: See me. I am invisible. I am human.

How the 5 Minute Face became the $5000 face by Jessica Defino at The Unpublishable

[alanshemper]

And I'm sorry, if you actually read what he is saying and don't simply shut off at seeing a critique of "wokeness" and "transgenderism", you'd see that it is not as unreasonable as others might lead you to believe.

He is critiquing inclusionary capitalism, not the existence of trans people. Could he benefit from doing more scholarship here and talking with trans academics? Absolutely. Is he a bigot or a transphobe or a """clown"""?

No. I don't think so.

Compare what he's saying to Tressie McMillan Cottom's concept of "predatory inclusion," for example.

Norman Finkelstein is not a grifter. He's extremely well researched and correct on some topics and is unfortunately wrong about others. His life has been legitimately ruined by the Israel Lobby, and he has a better reason than most to have an opinion about "cancel culture". He doesn't take money from sketchy right-wing money sources (looking at you Jimmy Dore and Glenn Greenwald), and he generally seems to live a simple, somewhat monastic life of books and writing. He cares deeply about things, but by his own admission, he has a poorly developed moral instinct. (In a recent interview he admitted that he had leaned heavily on Chomsky for moral clarity for much of his adult life, and they no longer talk. This has been difficult for Norman.)

Somebody needs to get him a copy of Histories of the Transgender Child by Jules Gill-Peterson.

[taylortruther]

love love love Dr. Tressie McMillan Cottom, esp her article The Enduring, Invisible Power of Blond which put into words so many thoughts I've had but was never able to articulate

oh i loved this and i did not realize this was also dr. cottom! thank you!

i remember this article, because there is semi-regular discourse on swiftie tumblr about what color taylor's hair is. and there was that infamous poll about "vote where blonde starts" and all this anger about it lmao. and i have never understood it, i would always think, "white people are obsessed with blonde because it's a signifier of whiteness, i guess?" but i wasn't sure how to make sense of it beyond that. so this article helped immensely when i found it, i love it when an educator or researcher can do that!

[jkottke]

Tressie McMillan Cottom: “Whether you call it crony capitalism or just an unfair economy, the market sets the rules for which lives matter. We have set up a system of interlocking ninth circles of hell for all of our basic needs.”

[salamanderinspace]

Making good progress sorting my tbr by genre so here is my nonfiction tbr. I don't read as much nonfiction as fiction but this list does give an embarrassing amount of insight into my weird and varied niche interests! If there's anything that absolutely must be added to this list, leave me recs! :)

NONFICTION

Working Guys: a Transmasculine Sex Worker Anthology - Edited by Jack Parker Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers - Mary Roach (nonfiction) Inseparable: Desire Between Women in Literature - Emma Donoghue (non-fiction, lgbt) Intuitive Eating, 4th Edition: An Anti-Diet Revolutionary Approach 4th Edition - Evelyn Tribole M.S. R.D., Elyse Resch M.S. R.D. F.A.D.A. (nonfiction) Elle reeve - blackpill (nonfiction) Adultery - Paulo Coehlo (nonfiction) Transactional analysis today (nonfiction) Emperor of Rome by Mary Beard The Third Rainbow Girl: The Long Life of a Double Murder in Appalachia - Emma Copley Eisenberg (nonfiction, true crime) The Best American Science and Nature Writing - Freeman Dyson (nonfiction) Never Satisfied: a History of Dieting (nonfiction) Braiding Sweetgrass (non fiction) Brazen: Rebel Ladies Who Rocked the World -Pénélope Bagieu The brazen vessel - Alkistis Dimech, Peter Grey (nonfiction, occult) Cleopatra: A Life - Stacy Schiff (non-fiction) Entangled Empathy: An Alternative Ethic for Our Relationships with Animals (2015) (non-fiction) The Collected Schizophrenias - Esmé Weijun Wang (essays) I want to burn this place down - essays by Maris kreizman (political nonfiction) Genethics: The Clash between the New Genetics and Human Values (1990). David Suzuki Shoji morimoto - rental person who does nothing - nonfiction The hatred of poetry by Ben lerner (nonfiction) Ethics and Animals: An Introduction (2011) (non-fiction) Backlash by Susan faludi (nonfiction, feminist) Sexuality Beyond Consent: Risk, Race, Traumatophilia by Avgi Saketopoulou Give People Money: How a Universal Basic Income Would End Poverty, Revolutionize Work, and Remake the World by Annie Lowrey Mingling Minds: Phineas Parkhurst Quimby's Science of Health & Happiness by Ervin seale (philosophy, witchcraft) Consent by Vanessa springora (memoir) The age of magical overthinking by Amanda montell (self help, psychology) behold a pale horse, urantia (Nazi propoganda books) Pablo Helguera - Education for Socially Engaged Art The Dharma of Star Wars - Mattew Bortolin Sacred Economics (nonfiction) Star Stories - Anthony Aveni (nonfiction) Kvetch - T.R. Witomski (lgbtq, nonfiction, memoir, humor) Ordinary Girls - Jaquira Diaz (memoir) Know My Name: A Memoir - Chanel Miller What's Wrong with Fat? by Abigail C. Saguy (nonfiction. also see Saguy's other works) Apocalyptic Witchcraft - Peter Grey (nonfiction, occult) Better to Never Have Been - David Benetar (antinatalism) Brave Face - Shaun David Hutchinson (gay memoir, lgbtq, same author as Feral Youth) Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar - Cheryl Strayed (memoir) Thick: And Other Essays - Tressie McMillan Cottom (essays) Talking to Robots: Tales from Our Human-Robot Futures - David Ewing Duncan THE STORYTELLING ANIMAL: How Stories Make Us Human - Jonathan Gottschall The Story of Jane: The Legendary Underground Feminist Abortion Service - Laura Kaplan (nonfiction)