Comments

1
TMI.
2
You’re looking for validation in the wrong place. You’re gonna get crucified here.
4
I never, and I mean never, agree with Muffy, but girl, they are right this time.
5
well, I guess if you want to add a diary entry to the same outlet that publishes your "journalism" then go for it....?

This was so weird.
7
What's the significance of being a scientist here, as called out in the title? Seems superfluous, like much of the narrative.

At the risk of armchair-psychiatry, rhinoplasty and a tattoo a day apart suggests impulsive behavior; not well planned or intentional. Not necessarily anything wrong with doing either, but mental health instability can lead to poor choices and changing too much at once. Also, there is nothing wrong with wanting to feel attractive and wanted, but this reads like the prologue to a bad self-help book. At any rate, I wish you the best and that you feel good about yourself. Everyone deserves that. Also, there's nothing wrong with being an attractive, white woman. Try not to allow the, at times, overwrought and poorly focused national dialogue that's happening interfere with how you perceive yourself.
8
Why do white people love to publicly self-flagellate so damn much?
9
@11 White privilege is why.

You GO, girl!

Burn the motherfucker DOWN.

Now -- about them titties....
10
God this place has turned into such a fucking mommy blog.
11
TL;DR...

Does she say what her Ph.D. is in?
12
oops -- make it @ 8
(who edits this shit?)
13
I haven't wanted to stab myself in the face this hard since xoJane stopped publishing. I mean, you do you... but what kindbof validation are you looking for here?
14
Isn't it a cardinal sin for women to admit their inherent desire for the male gaze?
15
@7 this part stuck out to me like a sore thumb,stability wise... And frankly made the whole thing seem FAKE to me.
"I signed the divorce papers on a Thursday. The next day, I had rhinoplasty, arriving for my cosmetic surgery appointment at 8 a.m. with a coffee cup in hand and a moderate hangover from the night before. "
What surgeon is going to do a surgery on someone (going under anesthesia) with a not empty stomach and hung over????? Oh, her godfather.... I see.
16
Who. The. Fuck. Cares.

Sounds like you had an early life crisis and now your kid lives in a broken home because of it. Maybe when they seek counseling later in life that can justify your selfishness by explaining "well, at least my mom looked pretty".
17
Interested in the new tack The Stranger seems to be taking. This seems in the same vein as the living in a pod apartment piece. Maybe it's just me, but I find people's motivations, particularly ones I don't agree with, interesting.

Oh, and @8, I can only speak for myself. And it is because of guilt for being part of a social construct I want no part of and actively hate.
18
Did anyone read the whole thing?
19
@18 No.

It was insufferable. The only interesting thing about it is trying to imagine how it would get published if it was written by a man.
20
@15 Yeah. I thought this was fake as fuck, too.

I couldn't even get a steroid injection because I had ginger tea the night before.
21
@18, I made it to 'gypsy band'. Like @7, I wondered why scientist in the title mattered, but like the pod apartment piece, this was substantive than a 280 character tweet.
22
This woman needs medical attention.

@Stranger staff. Please stop publishing her mindless pleas for help (drivel). Instead, direct Ms. Myhre to a trained psychologist, therapist, or something.
23
Sarah Myhre has written 12 posts for Slog — 5 of which include this “I Am A Scientist!!” proclamation in the headline. Even if she were a parody character in the style of The Onion’s Jean Teasdale, this degree of obsessive self-labeling would be too much.
24
I have to join the chorus of people responding with the sentiment of, "...OK. So what?"

You got a nose job to repair repeated injuries you received when you were younger. OK. Good for you, that you can afford to have the work done, I guess?

You got a tattoo. That's pretty standard, for someone (especially women, for whatever reason) to do after a divorce.

The most alarming passages that stand out to me were that you felt "toxic satisfaction" as you thinned down to what appears to be a healthy BMI, and that you feel conflicted about wanting to feel desirable. It sounds like you went from being "a vessel of internalized misogyny" to a vessel of internalized toxic feminism. You lost weight, got minor repairative surgery, and now you feel confident in your perceived attractiveness. Great! There's nothing to feel guilty about there. Go live your life feeling more desirable. Anyone that would make you feel guilty about any of this should be told to fuck right off.
25
@18

I'm going to read all the comments. Does that count?

@19
I have been wondering about the likelihood of an essay plus photo of Cliff Mass getting his nipples pierced.
27
Based on her past Slog posts I'd already assumed she was insufferable.

Perusing her website, it would seem she's an insufferable attention wh-- uh, she's attention seeking. So it all seems understandable. Except that the old nose was totally fine!

28
ATTENTION FBI! ATTENTION BUREAU OF FIREARMS! ATTENTION ARMS DEALERS!

If you have a DO NOT SELL list, there may be someone that should be added to it.
30
I'm reminded: In the infinite catalogs of online dating sites, a filtering mechanism is a tremendous benefit, even if it's a polarizing physical feature:

We now have mathematical evidence that minimizing your “flaws” is the opposite of what you should do. If you’re a little chubby, play it up. If you have a big nose, play it up. If you have a weird snaggletooth, play it up: statistically, the guys who don’t like it can only help you, and the ones who do like it will be all the more excited.
https://theblog.okcupid.com/the-mathemat…

See also: Rule 34.
31
Could not finish this piece of crap. Stranger, you have a lot of good writers. Keep them and lose this one.
32
Christ, what a bunch of assholes. Good piece.
33
Well, the picture posted suggested you did it out of vanity. Plain old, uninteresting vanity. The tiny amount of this drivel I was able to stomach proved this assumption pretty quickly.

@8: White people are the only people on Earth who volunteer to hate themselves and their history just because someone tells them they should. Hell, large numbers of them are convinced that they themselves are not even able/allowed to have a culture or national identity. It is a basically pathological.
34
Sarah Myhre is...

...the new Charles Mudede.
35
Women will have achieved equality when a woman can go out and get a nose job and not have to explain it to herself in her head 14 different ways before taking 5,000 words to claim to an audience that she doesn’t have to explain it to herself or them.
36
OCD intellectual with an identity crisis. Being pretty doesn't fix your life (mine is surgery-free and not augmented but no judgment on self-improvement). The "male gaze" it draws will be a creep magnet also. Nothing wrong with looking your best, but maybe do some work on the inside too. Um...yoga, therapy, meditation? Looks fade over time, but a big ugly mess inside is forever.
37
It is shameful and disturbing that the Stranger would publish this disturbing rant. This is clearly the thoughts of a desperately troubled woman. Desperate for attention. Any attention, good or bad. Why would the Stranger allow her to embarrass herself this way and expose her to ridicule? Is there any ethical sense or propriety among the Stranger editorial board? Apparently not. They will do anything for attention (clicks), including allowing a young woman to disassemble herself in a public way. The Stranger loves to attack Trump for moral failings....are you any better?
38
Did Teddy just call for white pride?
40
@38. No. He just said you’re weak minded and neurotic.
41
@38: Obviously not, but thank you for proving my point so succinctly.
42
If I were her I would be so embarrassed to have this article come up when people Google me for the rest of my life
43
"White people are the only people on Earth who volunteer to hate themselves and their history just because someone tells them they should."

White-warshed 'history' is seldom accurate -- unless you happen to prefer The Winner's side, exclusively. For a little balance, see: 'A People's History of the United States,' 'An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States,' etc. Much of the shit which emanates from Texas' schoolbooks, and thereby permeates most of the rest of Public Education, USA, is glorification of White America, might-makes-Right, plain and simple.

The trash we're (still? wtf?) taught is toxic. See: Mein Trumpfy. Who is now praising the assassinations of suspected 'drug dealers' in foreign nations.

Are we to be next?
44
I'll raise my hand to say I liked her old nose just fine.
45
Her poor kid. He's not gonna have an easy time of it, years of therapy ahead for him.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/4…
49
@47: That's the funny things about people. We like to claim that "hate" is the worst thing, yet as humans we crave hatred, and hatred makes us feel really good.

But socially, you can only freely hate a very narrow spectrum of people, so we all convince ourselves that socially acceptable hate is justified, or it is ok. People here for example are free to hate and create hate speech/calls for violence against whites, men, and Christians. Anti-Semitic speech is somewhat tolerated here as well.

Because no one wants to admit how good hating feels, and how much it strengthens groups who are not being "hated."
50
@24: She lost weight because she was depressed and anorexic. It's pretty fucked up to see someone with an eating disorder and praise them for getting to a "healthy BMI."
51
This chick definitely seems loony, but thanks to the internet, she has a dedicated group of like-minded crazy white-man-hating feminists that shower her with compliments. All of the negative comments here, though, will just feed her smug certainty that she is fighting an important battle against misogynistic white men, when in actuality, she annoys all races and genders equally.
52
All this progress, all this feminism, the marriage, the divorce, and she is still mightily hung-up on how she appears to men.
I think it takes a helluva lot of guts to admit that, and to admit that her marriage was an attempt to cash in on her man's money and white privilege. Her feminist priorities tell her one thing and her physical self tells her another.
A huge number of women just like her prefer to lie to themselves - declaring they don't want to be 'objectified' or 'coddled' or thought of as 'sexy objects' while they spend the vast majority of their life getting tattoos, pretty clothes, hair dyes, waxing, body piercings, jewel accessories and plastic surgery to improve on their natural assets, and thereby land the CATCH.
This author is confronting her own cognitive dissonance head-on rather than deny it. She is also confronting the societal myths about marriage and family that she had been swallowing whole.
The nose job and tattoo are McGuffins in this essay, the real topic is this woman confronting the falsehoods she chose to live by. That is powerful stuff.
53
lost me at "gypsy band"
54
This literally could've been like three paragraphs.
TL;DR
narcissistic drivel

56
“Why I Bought An SUV: A Mensa Member’s Lament”
57
This is a brave first-person that they are willing to tell in a public space. You can’t knock it until you try it. And PS, “Ima Scientist” Sarah’s support group is strong, and it’s not just “man-haters” but those of us looking to better the world. I encourage you to do the same.
58
# 57 There is a difference between brave and foolhearty. Between constructive and destructive. Between being honest and narcissistic. Between good writing and long-wind drivel. S. Myhre is way over the line in all of these. Some of her text is profoundly disturbing. For example: that she "sanctimoniously back-patted myself for my open-minded choice to marry into a Jewish family". Are Jews some kind of lesser creatures? Is she anti-semitic? And she sees herself "ahead of the line" regarding women, often "fatter, blacker, and browner." Can you imagine what her son will think when she reads this stuff in a few years? And her virulent attacks on folks with differing viewpoints is not a sign of maturity. "Friends" and "supporters" like you, providing her with fawning praise, are simply giving her enough rope to hurt herself. If you really cared, you would quietly tell her to stop this embarrassing, attention-getting, destructive behavior. Your actions are shameful. As is the continuing platform given to her by the Stranger.
59
@14 There's a lot of misunderstanding about what the term "male gaze" means. Basically it refers to society's tendency to objectify women by framing most things (specifically in arts and media) from a male, hetero point of view. It does NOT mean "individual men noticing you." It's an abstract idea, so you can't really "desire" it. Here's the essay that coined the term: http://www.composingdigitalmedia.org/f15… The male gaze refers to a form of cultural misogyny that we've internalized. That's why she says in the same paragraph, "I was, indeed, a vessel of internalized misogyny." I find this article irritating af, but I have to defend the author on this point.
60
Wow, this explains why the divorce rate is so high and also why there's so many single straight men and women out there, too much personal drama! Seems mostly self inflicted, too.
61
If you happen to be a personal friend of this woman, please reach out to her and let her know the damage she is doing to herself as a spokesperson for the issue of climate change. The next time she is talking to an audience about such an important issue she does not want them to be thinking "oh, this is the woman who thought it was edgy to marry someone Jewish, and then immediately after her divorce get a nose job and tattoo - documenting it all in The Stranger". I go to events to hear people talk about climate change. After seeing this article I would not go to an event where she is speaking.
62
You were worth more when you were married. Now your legacy will be that of a damaged woman. You'll die alone, unless you shack up with some other damaged woman.
64
TLDR; "I played the 'nice, good girl,' got an early divorce, and decided being good was overrated. One tattoo and nose job later, I'm still a bit of a people-pleasing, overthinking mess, but I have a better-looking nose and a pretty bitchin' tattoo."

You do you, girl.
65
Maybe I'm thinking myself morally superior or maybe I'm sad I'm one of the women brought down a notch by her rising sexual worth, but it's hard to imagine a person with the void in human values this displays.
Such a warped view of the world and humanity. It's easy to see why her friend said she didn't like who she was in the world. I'm sorry to inform you, dear *beautiful* scientist, it likely had zero to do with your appearance and everything to do with your wretched personality. Enjoy your sex romps - they are unlikely to become lasting relationships.

You do you? Sure, keep vomiting your judgemental, shallow, warped, insecure, and weak insights on the world.

If you had any foundation of character at all, this might be worth the time of day. The saddest part of it is that you don't. It's not about you being shallow about beauty. It's about you actually thinking that your ideas are worth considering.

Such lack of insight into yourself and the world makes me question how anyone could care that you are a scientist.
66
As a confessional piece, it is a little incomplete, but I can see where the author is going with this. I would like to see what she writes in the future reflection and if there is remorse or redemption waiting for her.

My favorite line, the truth stings-- "women know what they are not worth; they know the women ahead of them in line and they know the women, often fatter, blacker, and browner, behind them."

Please wait...

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