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Lady Gaga's Illness Is Not a Metaphor [theatlantic.com]

 

A new film details the reason the star postponed her recent tour—and will test cultural attitudes about gender, pain, and pop.

“Pain without a cause is pain we can’t trust,” the author Leslie Jamison wrote in 2014. “We assume it’s been chosen or fabricated.”

Jamison’s essay “Grand Unified Theory of Female Pain” unpacked the suffering-woman archetype, which encompasses literature’s broken hearts (Anna Karenina, Miss Havisham) and society’s sad girls—the depressed, the anorexic, and in the 19th century, the tubercular. Wariness about being defined by suffering, she argued, had led many modern women to adopt a new pose. She wrote, “The post-wounded woman conducts herself as if preempting certain accusations: Don’t cry too loud; don’t play victim.” Jamison questioned whether this was an overcorrection. “The possibility of fetishizing pain is no reason to stop representing it,” she wrote. “Pain that gets performed is still pain.”

Jamison’s work might come to mind when watching Lady Gaga’s new documentary, Gaga: Five Foot Two, or when reading about the singer postponing her European tour. The pop star this month informed the world that she suffers from fibromyalgia, which causes chronic muscle pain. In the documentary, she visits the doctor, she curls up on a couch, she cries in agony. On Instagram, she prays while holding a rosary. The caption is a lengthy apology to her fans for having to postpone upcoming performances due to her condition.

[For more on this story by Spencer Kornhaber, go to https://www.theatlantic.com/en...t-a-metaphor/540369/]

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HI Paul-  I have several friends (all women, FYI) that have  been diagnosed with fibromyalgia and they all have multiple ACEs. But as you say, not all with ACEs will develop it and not all with fibromyalgia have ACEs... that said, i would hope that those treating fibromyalgia are familiar with the ACE study (also extended ACE questions) and speak to their patients about the findings. Wonder if folks know of any fibromyalgia prevention or treatment research happening looking at educating patients about ACEs and introducing concepts of self care/ resilience? 

I suppose it's only to be expected this story hasn't yet attracted any responses -- and I don't really want to be the first, other than to say fibromyalgia's a very complicated issue, but it IS a real disorder, and one with some import for survivors of ACEs, and of course not all sufferers of ACEs will suffer from the disorder, and not all of those who suffer from the disorder have necessarily experienced ACEs but a lot have -- I could post MULTIPLE articles on this, having followed the issue for several years, but .... 

But I'll be glad to see others responses -- I hope....

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