Thursday, June 18, 2015

Most Excellent: The Dowdy Patient

First of all, this guy has a lot of guts to write this up.

It's an excellent piece of truth-telling, and it's unfortunate that more people don't take their daily dose of reality with their morning coffee. 

"I’ll be the first to say that looks shouldn’t matter, that we shouldn’t judge people based on superficial criteria. But it’s also true that there are costs to ignoring, or defying, the social realities of the world we live in, and I suspected that Greta was paying those costs."

"The real problem was that I didn’t know what to do in this situation. Years of psychotherapy training had given me no guidance in how to deal with the staunchly dowdy patient. Starting early in our training, we psychiatry residents spent innumerable hours addressing issues raised by inappropriately seductive patients. How best to deal with patients who flirt in session, who wear inappropriate attire, who ignore boundaries, who try, whether consciously or not, to lure you away from “therapeutic neutrality”? There were articles, books and lectures that helped us deal with a patient’s “erotic transference” and our own “countertransference reactions.”

"But advice about the patient who refuses to be attractive? No."

"Maybe a female or gay male therapist would have had an easier time addressing this topic with Greta. But for me, as a straight male working with a straight female patient, every option seemed blocked."

"Basically, no matter how I tried to put it, I would be saying, “I find you unappealing.”

Appearances matter. Your look is what you sell to the world. Is that fair? Hell, no but nothing in life is fair. 

It doesn't take a lot of money to be adept with basic grooming i.e clean and neat. 

Money does not buy class and you don't need money to have class and show class. 

These are basic issues of breeding and social skills. You have to make the best of what you've got.

Plus, the internet has completely liberalized getting information-free information about every subject on the planet, including fashion, grooming, style and makeup so there's really no excuse.

Here's something that I have been ruminating about with respect to style.

It's something that I picked up from "What Not To Wear", one of the stars, Stacey London recently posted something about American versus French women's' fashion. She observed that American women tend to feel uncomfortable wearing "old" stuff ('oh I wore that yesterday/last week/last event'), wear tights as pants (AND THEY ARE NOT PANTS), whereas French women are more like 'oh-that looked totally amazing on me, I'm gonna rock that look again today'). 

Needless to say, the American women on the Facebook post were not too pleased about that, defending their yoga pants, and talking about French women and their hairy arm pits. But the truth hurts and my litmus test for any article of clothing that I buy remains "would a French woman buy that" or "can I picture a French woman wearing that"?

I really believe in that Stacey London thought, she absolutely nailed it. I love it.

Read the whole thing.