...than those for children. At least in therapeutic situations.

A few years ago, when I was having to get IV iron almost weekly for awile-- I still felt lucky compared to the rest of the patients who were mostly getting chemo-- occasionally, there would be a clown visiting with patients. Not a children's clown, but one for adults. And specifically for patients. She wore a really great costume, with a lot of funny & ironic buttons, and a poetically painted face, and, I noted, custom-made shoes. I really wanted a pair, even though they were so huge, just because they looked both comfortable and whimiscal.

There may have been something that made it possible for the child clown inside the adult clown to connect with the child patient inside the adult patient... and recover a bit of innocence, hope, whatever, awaken the immune system. I don't know, and can only guess, but I will admit to being drawn in a bit, and I've never been a big fan of clowns in general.

Who knows how something like that works? Does it really matter? After all, medical research is strongly biased in favor of quantitative studies and measurements, yet healing is nearly always a subjective experience.

But it strikes me that this idea of changing or playing with one's expectations seems especially appropriate in a setting for women who wish to become pregnant, since clowns, apparently, are pregnant with possibility...

Like another reader, I can't eat dairy, either. Nor can I have anything with wheat.

You try doing without both for a week or two, and then tell me that chocolate is not, indeed, a lifesavor for someone denied nearly all comfort foods: bread, cheese, cream, butter, etc. I've been having to live this way for too many years now. It's much easier to shop now than even a few years ago, but there are somethings for which there is simply no substitute, since soy gives me a stomache-ache.

So, whenever the food snobs, or diet-faddists, etc. have an impact on mainstream culture, it often benefits me (as long as I figure out what to ignore, e.g., the benefits of low-fat). Now, instead of having to search high and low for a non-dairy chocolate, I can find something really good in a number of places. Not, I'll grant you, like in Europe where chocolate is deservedly its own food group with its own aisles in the supermarket. But, I'll take what I can get.

A few years back, the Atkins diet made it possible for me to order a meal without a big to-do just because I wanted a burger without a bun.

And now the ubiquity of chocolate bars with 70% cocoa make it possible for me to keep my mood elevated, and to start off the day with something other than coffee.

I will agree, though, that if you get something that is much higher (e.g. 85%) in cocoa, it can have a disagreeable texture. Very similar to crayons.

In fact, I'm really hoping for a lot more food snobbery that becomes democratized (i.e., affordable for folks like me). Perhaps the reason we keep seeing new sources of such snobberies is because once a snobbery becomes more accessible to the rest of us, it loses its cachet and must be replaced by something else. So, bring it on... I'm braced.

...and out into the world where they belong and where there are women waiting for them.

Alone among my family, I've been thin most of my life, except, ironically, when I was a vegetarian and gained an extra 20-30 pounds, which practically melted away once I began not only eating meat, but no longer eating wheat and dairy. Go figure. I did notice that I was/felt more invisible then, than before or after.

Still, I've often felt that many/most men, underneath it all, really preferred women with more flesh on their bones than less, and that to the extent that they preferred thinner women it was only because thinner women had finally acquired more status. (This was waayy after Twiggy.) Before that, skinny women were usually not considered all that desirable.

As for the health implications... perhaps we should just set aside all judgments until after the health-industrial complex has conducted enough studies with the female body, metabolism, hormones, psyche, etc., as the norm, rather than a mere after-thought. As one letter-writer noted about a thyroid condition that went undiagnosed for so many years... she thought it was her fault. Surprise! Research models have generally been centered on men. The impact of hormones on a woman's health cannot be over-estimated, are nothing like they are for a man, and yet have been given short shrift throughout our relatively short history of medical research. So, everybody, just try to set aside your judgments until you have something more substantial to base them on.

In the meantime, I'll be on the lookout for more men paired up with plus-size women.