in glancing out of the corner of my eye at the mags my wife and mother collect I have often had the same perplexities lay heavy on my brain pan - thanks Rachel!

Likely freelance writers pick up on a growing trend and flood editor's with witty yet poignant tales of woe and triumph.

I hate that shit! I think it is a way of modeling a passive, obedient non political roles for females. They aim to portray loss and disease as a normal state for women. If a disease has an overwhelming environmental component the response modeled for us is still supposed to be medical and individual, never to organize and stop the root causes of it.

People magazine has also been heavy into that stuff in their own way. It's sick to contemplate that stuff as much as they do. There's other things that life is about. It's all formulaic crap too and it leaves a lot of people with false ideas.

Cerulean, To be fair, the formula generally stresses the heroic struggle of the sufferer as she takes control over her life. If the cause is environmental, doubtless she started some kind of group to educate the public about the dangers of XXX. But often the diseases, whatever the cause, are extremely rare, though the headlines imply that you, too, could be in danger.

Interesting observation, Rachel. I think we have become a society that lives in such relative ease that we need to read or see someone suffering to get that "soap opera" psychic release. We feel better about ourselves for some odd reason. Carl Jung said:

Man needs difficulties; they are necessary for health.

I think it applies to both men and women.