Either you accept that women want to lose weight or you pretend that "fat women" are happy with their bodies, but the success of the diet industry suggests otherwise.

Either studies should include and/or focus on women, or they shouldn't. Research is not designed to coddle or flatter. If women are included in research, and it's a weight loss study, they will sometimes be called "fat" or "obese," which are at bottom value-neutral terms.

Exercise is perhaps THE healthiest, most reliable, most consistent, etc. weight loss strategy out there. Yet people seem to think in terms of diet alone. If this study highlights the role of exercise, good for it.

Guess what? Breaking skin does release endorphins and adrenaline. Not surprised people who do it once want to do it again!

Don't go to grad school, like someone suggested upthread. Grad school is an abusive spouse.

I also wouldn't worry about the people who chide you for not being "specific" enough. Sometimes folks want to protect their identity a little, people! It's not all just about entertainment.

Anyway, I am puzzled about this "therapy leading to life destruction" thing. Is it possible that the process, which often sucks to work, had a negative effect on your functioning, which in the best of worlds, is temporary and tolerable? (In your case not, which is unfortunate.) Or perhaps you had just a total idiot. Try, try again.

Try again with everything. Except expecting your family to start treating you right when they never have before.

Good luck.

Because this criticism is b.s.:

"...they also tell children there's something wrong with them and imply that they don't deserve to have the kind of fun summers their peers are enjoying."

There is something wrong with them--with their weight, anyway. If kids are "desperate" to go to fat camp, they're more than just chubby. And there's no reason to think that "fat camp" can't be fun. It's camp!

Which peers are you talking about, anyway? The minority of kids whose parents can afford to send them to regular sleepaway camp, or the ones who are bored shitless trying to find something to do all summer?

Because I always check for her name first. I was wondering where she's been, but I guess writing a book-length version of the article on learning to love the public schools is a pretty good trade.

Come on, that's genius.

Okay, so her specials have gotten progressively less funny since Notorious C.H.O. She bought into her own awesomeness maybe too much. But as long as the first couple of performances are out there, I'll give her all the rope she needs.

Some kids deal with the horrible trauma of losing a parent with drugs, stealing, or bullying other children. But obviously, changing one's hair color is much worse.

Once again, people, it's not Salon's job to put Obama in the White House. Its writers are allowed to (and should!) raise questions and consider the nuances of the primary campaign and beyond.

I listened on and off to NPR's convention coverage all last night, and there is no way that anyone is stealing this from Obama. In between the slavering excitement of the PUMAs...or should I say, Chris Matthews, and the less measured voices I read here who persist in seeing the enemy in all the wrong places...in between those extremes is the army of former Hillary supporters who are ready and willing to get behind Obama. And there's a lot more of them in the middle.

Zing!

God, McCain is trolling hard for former Clinton supporters. Well, this is one who isn't falling for it. Female does not equal feminist, okay? The next president will shape the supreme court. I don't have to love Obama--no way, no how, no McCain!

It's desperate, desperate, desperate. Perhaps McCain thinks it will nail in those angry Clinton supporters. I hope it backfires. Women are not fucking interchangeable, even though the anti-choice right may see us as a series of interchangeable parts.

I have too many years of non-procreational sex ahead of me to stop caring about access to birth control, let alone abortion. And I've seen too many people who should not be parents under any circumstances be parents under the worst of circumstances. There needs to be a cultural shift BACK toward preventative birth control, and it's not going to come from people who think that birth control is a variant of abortion.

No way, no how, no McCain!

I don't need to know anything about Palin other than "anti-choice," so I don't know why or for how long she did the pageant circuit. But a lot of women do it for scholarship money for higher education. There are a lot of real things to criticize her for, okay? Let's not criticize her for that.

And I wish Clinton and Obama had said as much. Clinton wasn't groundbreaking because she wanted to be president, she was groundbreaking because she fucking campaigned for it. God, I hope this backfires for former Clinton supporters, I really hope it does.

Folger, did you mean "women who are democrats" or "women who believe in concept of democracy"? I think you meant the former, in which case, we are urging people to vote against her because Palin is not FOR us. She was chosen as the running mate on the REPUBLICAN ticket, and as such, would be one half of a team that is for pretty much everything I'm against, and vice versa.

But you're probably right. "Democratic" women aren't supporting Palin because we're all backstabbing bitches.

It's the battle of the stereotypes! Which will emerge victorious: the irrational Hillary-supporting menopausal women who are captivated by the drums of sisterhood, or the women who are against Palin because we never support our own?

Tune in later...