A Search For Survivors

Now for a bit of levity, at least by our standards…

To be sure, depressing issues certainly abound in this case, but the fun-loving little guys mostly triumph over the humorless corporate bullies in the end, so, yay?

‘Tis a story of fair use of the DMCA actually being honored over its would-be abuse! Which is, of course, extremely relevant to this site, what with us being attacked time and time again by Attachment quackery proponents Arthur Becker-Weidman, Ronald Federici and Heather Forbes, who will stop at nothing to cow child torture survivors into silence. Classy.

So! Recently, Xeni Jardin over at BoingBoing posted a Ralph Lauren ad in which a model’s already sylphlike body was photoshopped into grotesque, emaciated and just plain unworkable proportions:

Honey, I Shrunk the Pelvis!

Ralph Lauren goes and files a moronic DMCA complaint and threatens to sue the bloggers for infringement. Heh, sound familiar?

Boingboing quickly responds with gentle and joyous mockery, reminding the fashion megaconglomerate of the fair use doctrine.

From Cory Doctorow:

…So, instead of responding to their legal threat by suppressing our criticism of their marketing images, we’re gonna mock them. Hence this post.

So, to Ralph Lauren, GreenbergTraurig, and PRL Holdings, Inc: sue and be damned. Copyright law doesn’t give you the right to threaten your critics for pointing out the problems with your offerings. You should know better. And every time you threaten to sue us over stuff like this, we will:

a) Reproduce the original criticism, making damned sure that all our readers get a good, long look at it, and;

b) Publish your spurious legal threat along with copious mockery, so that it becomes highly ranked in search engines where other people you threaten can find it and take heart; and

c) Offer nourishing soup and sandwiches to your models.

Bloggers everywhere voice their support and gleefully point out the wankery of Ralph Lauren’s untenable legal position.

En fin, Ralph Lauren thus garners so much negative attention from an outraged public that the corporation backs off from their lawsuit threat (which would never have held water anyway) and finds itself forced to make a formal apology, which was released at the end last week:

‘For over 42 years, we have built a brand based on quality and integrity. After further investigation, we have learned that we are responsible for the poor imaging and retouching that resulted in a very distorted image of a woman’s body. We have addressed the problem and going forward will take every precaution to ensure that the calibre of our artwork represents our brand appropriately.’

Of course, they make no mention of their DMCA abuse that got them so much bad press in the first place, but eh — what else can one expect from bullies besides cowardice?

Ironically, the model herself has apparently just been fired from Ralph Lauren for being “too fat.”

This brings us to another issue in this case – starvation, which is all too prevalent in Attachment Therapy and RAD cultism.

Revealing our personal experiences with this would be too much for one post; for now, we’ll simply post this commentary from the executive director of Advocates for Children in Therapy:

Food; this is another area where Attachment Therapy/Parenting (AT/P) proponents talk out of both sides of their mouth. They say to never make food an issue, but they also give numerous examples of manipulating and punishing children with food.

It appears to be a basic belief (and idiotic reasoning) among AT/P proponents that if the child rejects his mother’s love, then he must not be allowed have her cooking, because moms put love into their cooking.

They also claim that a child must form a bond to his current mother before all others. Therefore, there are restrictions on food — especially “bonding foods” — from other sources, as well. “Awesome moms” may request teachers set a time limit for their child to finish lunch at school and that he not be allowed any shared class treats.

AT/P’s “Awesome Moms” are infamous for what they call “Peanut Butter and Jelly Therapy.” [See Mia's survival account.]

Nancy Thomas, a leading proponent of AT parenting, revealed the depth of her knowledge on nutrition when she wrote about P&J Therapy in an online course *for continuing education credit* for therapists:

“They do not eat with the family. They do not eat my food. They eat peanut butter and jelly.…and they get them for breakfast, lunch and dinner. But if I’m out of bread, they get oatmeal. You want to be sure they get a balanced diet, and peanut butter and jelly on whole wheat bread with a huge glass of fresh milk is very balanced.”

Let us not forget the forced gorging. There is the horrific case of forced water intake that killed 4-year old Cassandra Killpack while she was also enduring a “two-week intensive” at the Cascade Center in Utah.

I talked to a survivor (“S.”) who as a child was handed back and forth between a number of AT/P “therapeutic parents” in Evergreen, Colorado. As a child. S. said children were forced to gorge on any food they were caught eating without permission. If a child took a candy bar, he would either have to eat a pile of them all at once. Alternatively, he might have nothing to eat but candy bars for the next week. S. told me about a small boy who took a cookie without asking and had to eat a whole package of cookies covered in hot sauce.

You would think AT/P was in the business of creating eating disorders.

By the way, S. also told me this “therapist” would lock him in a closet of the attachment center after Holding Therapy until it was time to go to the therapist’s home. Then when the therapist and her children stopped at a restaurant on the way home, S. would have to stay in the car.

A number of the AT/P survivors I have had the opportunity to talk to say hunger was often the hardest thing to endure, and certainly we have seen a number of high profile criminal starvation cases related to these cruel parenting methods.