vsd78

My bad - I saw parts of the episode, not the whole thing, and I thought heard something about there having been a vow renewal.

Crap. I forgot she seems to read these forums. NEVER MIND WHITNEY!!! BAD IDEA!!!! Psst... Tal and Todd and every male living within a 50 mile radius of Greensboro: Burn those rubbers. Do not, repeat do not leave them where Whitney can dig them up. LOL...

They just did on this week's episode, lol. On a Hawaii trip, which I understand is another common TLC trope.

I'm just impressed that she thought to ask permission. I had her pegged for the type who would dig through the trash looking for used rubbers. And you just know TLC would do a three-part special on that quest.

Sure, but I didn't think the fan's question was negative. More likely they hoped it really was her, and the best response (if she didn't want to do a quick video as someone else suggested, because we know she's lazy), would simply be to say "Yup, it's me, can't afford a social media assistant, lol!"

The nice thing about having no specific goals is that you never have to feel disappointment or shame when you fail to meet those goals. Y'know, it's occurred to me that Whitney is probably using a mixture of food and denial to squelch out the parts of reality that give her bad feelings, ie pain. Thing is, that doesn't work, because it just keeps bringing more pain. There's the ongoing low-lying gnawing feeling of not being like everyone else and not having the same successes as everyone else, there's the regular pain of rejection from those buff guys she drools over, and since her drug of choice is calories, there's all the pain from the physical consequences of eating too much - let's say for instance that she isn't lying when she says she can't do xyz because of her latest sprained toe or plantar fasciitis or tweaked back: all of those are painful. She can't walk without pain even though she barely walks, I can't remember if she said anything about having acid reflux but surely she must, she had trouble breathing at night and that's probably painful... and the solution to all this is to keep on denying and keep on eating, therefore guaranteeing future pain as she tries to distract or avoid current pain. PS: my guess is Will had her on the panel both as part of a TLC contractual obligation thing, and also because anyone with an IQ above room temperature there would know she was full of shit and to be taken as the voice of "what not to do."

Yeah, I stupidly let my weight creep up to 270 in the last couple years, so 100 lbs less than Whitney claims to be, and I assure you, it's because I was overeating (and still am, though I'm slowly cutting back step by step). If Whitney was actually fasting until 9pm at night, there's no way she'd still be 380++... unless this is her way of telling us she sleeps all day to 8:45pm. I'm sure she has screwed up her metabolism pretty badly, but even so, if she ate as little as she seems to believe she does, she'd be dropping 10 pounds a month easily.

She was deprived of boundaries and the opportunity to learn to do/earn things for herself, I guess. Or there are some parents who only know how to show love via giving material things to their kids, but as we see every episode, Whitney seems to be a very touchy-feely person. Maybe she never felt she received love the way she needed to receive it, thus the deprivation? But it wouldn't just be deprivation, necessarily. Trauma can cause addictive behavior as much as deprivation can, and I have a feeling something crappy happened to Whitney along the way that she's just never learned to deal with, plus at a certain point after enough bad habits and shitty coping mechanisms like eating to soothe your feelings, you end up with a very entrenched habit and momentum to carry on the same way. Whit being in denial about everything in general tends to not do anything to break that momentum.

It's 9 o'clock somewhere.

I think what Jazz really needs is to stop the show, finish high school, and spend a year engaging in the great tradition of spending a year backpacking around wherever doing some soul searching and discovering who she is on her own away from her parents and everyone else. Just find out what Jazz wants to do when there are no cameras, no public appearances, and no Jeanette around to influence that. It's one of my big regrets I never did that (wasted a lot of time at college changing majors etc.) but I have friends and family who did that, or even shorter backpacking trips (my brother went trekking in Nepal and India for 4 months), and it did them a world of good in terms of confidence and direction.

I guess it all depends on your background and circle of friends. As for The Vagina Monologues, I heard the hype and went to see it many years ago. It had a couple funny moments but all in all I found it cringey and even boring in spots. Most of the rest of the crowd was much more impressed than I was, though. But hey, different tastes and all. Anyway, I'm 39 and I didn't find it at all representative of my circle. We may discuss our genitals at times, but not as some sort of common conversational topic. With my best friend we occasionally discuss things like cramps and other related annoyances, but it'll be more in passing or related to a specific incident like the time I had to have a biopsy at the gynecologist's and the occasional discussion about waxing or shaving, but that's it. Honestly, we discuss our skin far more. No in-depth discussions with the partner, either, other than in-the-moment directions, lol. But then, we don't exactly discuss his equipment, either, unless it's also in-the-moment. ;) YMMV. Getting back to Jazz, hopefully it's just staged for the cameras, but there's too much focus on the quest for the perfect vagina and too little focus on building a future life outside that small little bit of real estate. There's a big ol' "now what?" coming down the pipeline the morning after the surgery. Mostly I feel bad for the kid, having to muddle through all this stuff on camera at an age when life is awkward and confusing enough without being on national TV, and I do think Jazz is having cold feet about the surgery. It's a huge procedure that comes with huge responsibilities and changes, even if having it done eventually is the right decision, that doesn't mean it's the right decision right now, and even if it is the right decision right now, it's still natural to have all sorts of fears and doubts that come out in weird ways.

Agreed. She's of an age where she probably envisions herself in Hawaii as Annette Funicello in Beach Party, with Glenn playing Frankie Avalon's role. All very wholesome and WASPy... well, they were Italians, but I don't think Babs sweats the small details just like I don't think it occurs to her that "brown-toned men" might give any other impressions some 50 years later.