Jessica Gottlieb Articles

I don’t know who said it or I’d happy attribute it to them, but I opened up my notes folder in my email and found the following:

The more success you have the more difficult it is to be uninhibited because you come to like the success and are afraid of losing it.

I don’t remember where I was but I do recall a speaker saying so and I thought, “Oh yes, that’s why I’ve become so timid with my blogging.” It’s true, it’s very true, because blogging makes me feel like I’ve connected with so many of you. However with so many others it makes me feel like I’m standing here, tits sagging and wearing granny panties… or even worse my Hanky Pankys and you can see that my ass fell.

It’s so scary sometimes to be… wait for it… my authentic self (I know gag Oprahism disgusting) because with every added reader I’m terrified to lose one. It’s crushing every time someone dismisses us (bloggers) as not worthy of reading, and we smile and keep writing but oh please we’d all be keeping journals if we didn’t want to actually be read. Right?

One of my favorite email subscriptions is to fear.less. They don’t update every day, but when they do I’m spellbound, reading about people overcoming incredible hurdles. When my only hurdles are intrinsic and strangers on the internet I feel a little embarrassed and a little empowered all at once.

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This Sunday’s New York Times has an article that took my breath away. It follows the journey of a teenage girl who opts for the lap band in order to cure her of morbid obesity. The story is heart wrenching in every way, from the sad fact that a teenage girl would weigh close to 300 pounds to the ultimate failure of the device and our medical system.

Currently Allergan is trying to get the FDA to to allow it to market the Lap-Band to patients as young as 14. This is a phenomenal disaster in so many ways I’m not quite sure where to begin.

The Lap-Band restricts the size of the patient’s stomach so that they feel full. It’s not a surgery without risk but of course the folks who are getting the Lap-Band are already at risk for a host of terribly debilitating and life threatening diseases. The Lap-Band isn’t about getting cute, it’s a medical Hail Mary.

In restricting the size of a patient’s stomach, the Lap-Band also restricts a patient’s ability to get nutrition. Lap-Band recipients are told to take vitamins, but because of the size of their stomachs the vitamins are very uncomfortable to swallow. I have a hard time swallowing vitamins and I assure you I have the palate of a billy goat and a rather average sized stomach.

There are countless stories about Lap-Band patients and their misery post operatively. Common sense dictates that when someone needs to lose half their body weight it’s a medical issue, a behavioral issue and a psychological issue. A 45 minute surgery is more of an introduction to the solution than it is an ending.

It is alarming that Allergen would seek to make Lap-Bands available to 14 year olds. It is not alarming that Allergen wants to do business with teens. Allergen is a business and it operates to please it’s shareholders. What is alarming that there is a growing market for Lap-Bands with teens both literally and figuratively.

As I mentioned before Lap-Bands are the Hail Mary of medicine. When a patient gets a Lap-Band that means that diets, therapy, exercise, and behavior modification have failed. The tremendous risk of surgery is overshadowed by the risk of diseases such as diabetes and heart failure.

Every parent, educator and ally of children should be wondering how we can affect change so that 14 year olds never need to lose half their body weight. Every lawmaker who thinks they can cut physical education out of the school day needs to know that it’s going to cost our country hundreds of thousands of dollars to treat those children who are unable to work and who will require medical care that healthy sized folks don’t require. Every school board that serves crap lunches should know that they’ve effectively slapped every child in the face, hard, when they serve them dubious food.

Every time high fructose corn syrup (or Corn Sugar) is added to a food it should have a surgeon general’s warning on it much like a pack of cigarettes. This will attack your liver and send your pancreas into a tailspin. Your body doesn’t know what to do with this much sucrose.

And every time we tell ourselves that a ten year old has “baby fat” and then we reward him with a Snickers Bar we should be ashamed. Because it hurts our kids. It’s Munchausen’s by Twinkie.

It’s entirely possible that your breakfast cereal has more sugar in it than your homemade cake or cookies.

It’s probably not good medicine to give Lap-Bands to teenagers, but Allergan isn’t their parent. Let’s please look at articles like this and be shocked into doing something good for our kids, all of our kids.

If these kids feel ashamed for being fat we should all feel shame for making them that way.

We have a good number of celebrity parents roaming the neighborhood. The kids go to school and to camp with kids whose families have security plans. Some of the parents are film actors, some are TV, some are easily recognized and others just look familiar because they’re in everything. It’s fun to see my friends pop up on screens large and small but I’ve never felt intimated or star struck by any of their appearances.

Until this week.

Jane has a very good friend at school whose family we trust. When Alexander had his eye surgery I asked if Jane could stay there. It’s just a solid home with two involved parents and a Grandmother that lives nearby and lends a hand every now and then. I’d met the Grandma and I knew that she had directed Wayne’s World and some other stuff and I knew that she drove a modest car and smiled brightly when talking about her granddaughter. That’s all I knew.

I was watching TV the other night when a promo came on for Suburgatory which made me think of the Pet Shop Boys song Suburbia which then made me think of my all time favorite movie when I was a teen, Suburbia. I watched that movie dozens of times, wearing out the tape when the kid woke up with a snail on his face.

For a kid who grew up surrounded by south bay skate punks Suburbia was a film that celebrated my heroes. It spoke to me. Flea was in it, you can’t get more important than Flea in 1984 (or 1885, 86, 87 and parts of 92).

So I did what every middle aged, middle class, suburban housewife does on a Tuesday night. I flipped open my iPad2 while sitting up in bed and googled Suburbia to see if I could find a copy of it for sale.

Of course Suburbia has it’s own Wikipedia page so I started to scroll through that and I saw that the Suburbia was written and directed by Penelope Spheeris. Interesting.

Then I followed the hyperlink and saw that Penelope Spheeris had directed some other things and I looked at her picture and went Penelope Fucking Spheeris! That’s the Grandma. She’s my Steven Spielberg, she’s my Joe DiMaggio… she’s the only woman in Hollywood that I’m DYING to sit down with and ask her a million questions and she’s been to my home a half dozen times but I’ve been busy talking to her about kids. As if kids matter…

It’s been THREE hours since my last blog post and eighty gazillion publicists have sent me 732 pitches for holiday gift guides. I’m deleting them all, I hope you’ll forgive me when I delete the follow up emails too.

My gift guide is almost done. I’ll suggest a few items that I’ve bought myself this year. That is all. I won’t suggest anything I don’t own and know to be wonderful. You can shop the sales if you want or if you’re like me you’ll shop this week and use an app to get a price adjustment next week.

Actually if you’re really like me you’ll you’re on your way to the grocery store to buy stuff for the food pantry, because stocking up for holiday toys that no one really cares about can be fun, but it’s a luxury and it’s good to be cognizant of luxuries.

In the coming days I’m going to give you details of my trip and why Mexico is my new old favorite, I’ll tell you about my upgraded mattress, and why Mr. G. and I are going to start a new family tradition of flying like the president and vice president.

I will not recommend toys and games for your children for the holidays because if your kids want a toy or a game they’ve probably already told you about it. I will not recommend a special holiday drink because I’m Jewish, we just hold up a glass of wine, say l’chaim and get on with the show.

Buy yourself something nice, buy a stranger something nice. If you want to give for the holidays try giving Gideon and Leah the chance to go to High School.