Showing posts with label enforced weight gain. Show all posts
Showing posts with label enforced weight gain. Show all posts

Monday 24 June 2024

The Education and Rehabilitation of Miss Caroline Continues...

...although I guess at an early stage (pluss, I like to think locked away somewhere with some other young ladies) Yep! Some more stuff inspiered by that wondreful Lady2Maid Blogspot tale: 'The Education and Rehabilitation of Miss Caroline...

 

The AI does do a nice school uniform when it puts its mind to it but it's a shame I can rarely get the same uniform twice

Monday 13 May 2024

AI, Going Off On A Tangent, Somehow Hits Paydirt...

 ...albeit with a bit of help from the ol' Toyntanen imagination aided and abbeted by my ol' mate: The Gimp! So -  to cut a long story short - I'd written some prompts (instructions to the AI art image generator) involving hypnotic patterns and devices (still persuing the ol' MC thread
I've become fond of over the years) and late teen girls in schol uniforms in various situations, such as private secure psychiatric instituitions and various dubious - and likely corrupt - 'care' homes and so on....and all of a sudden, amongst the dross, weird stuff involving multiple limbs and so on and total failiors out pops this charming little study. I mean, apart for the fact you can just make out the white 'V' of her knickers under the tiny skirt, it's an absolutly innoculous scene...But what of all those hamburgers??? hmmmm???? What, well...MIGHT be going on??? I mean to say: She doesn't seem the sort to be wanting to stuff her face with all that grub! but perhaps...just PERHAPS...she has no, or very little, choice in the matter? Well, that's just how the ol' Toyntanen grey cells seem to work. 


Usualy when the AI throws up something NOT like a photographic image and looking instead as if drawn or painted I pretty much bin it straight away, but not so in this case - there was just something...I dunno...just sort of...charming about it. Ideal starting fodder for to work on using my favorite photo manip package, namely the afformention programe The Gimp!  The storyline, to me at least, was obvious. To be honest I fondly imagined I'd put something together around this as a starting point in a few hours, an evening at worst. It ended up sort of evolving through very many itterations and the result you see here is the result of around two and a half days near continuous work as each idea I managed to succesfully realsise led to the next idea and challange.

 


By the way:I just HAD to put in the, now obligatory, barred window. The idea of an element of some sort of imprisonment or control - whether physical, psychological or both (I've become more and more interested in the potential of psychological manipulation / coercion alone over the years) - seems essential to me in any such storyline.

Please DO let me know what you think..whether positive or negative (come on, folks, I can take it!...Probably!)

Before I go...Here is another spurious image the AI spewed out - this one only today, just a few hours ago - and once again, having very little to do with the type and subject matter of the images I was asking for. Actualy, I'd wager that if I tried actualy prompting for an image such as this the AI would flag up a 'safety issue' ans ask me to modify the prompt accordingly. I might not have been deliberatly trying for this image but now that it's here, let's not waste it!


 

Two questions...What is going through your mind right now as you look at it? And what would you add in order to embelish it - or would you just leave well alone? (Or do you just instantly hate it (some will, I know) becasuse - perhaps - it implies mental health issues?)

Saturday 12 August 2023

One Month In To Year Two In Captivity

 And it's quite remarkablewhat has been achieved with the girls. This one had ambitions to become a proffesional dancer and the girl next to her had been on the verge of a career as a fashion model...

Friday 15 April 2011

Weight Gain and the Recalcitrant Teenager: Encouraged Rather Than Forced - Discuss

Hi folks Back on the 15th of March I posted up a piece I called 'Happy Birthday Polly' (click to read or scroll down the page) which in one way or another lead to a minor discussion (see the appended comments) as to how one might deal with the overweight teenager or - on the other hand - the over-vain self-conscious opinionated stick insect forever preening in the mirror and full of overblown aspirations and ambitions. In connection with the latter 'Orage' wrote "How to deal with the perfectly slim young thing...": quite simple since you've already dealt with that in 'Institutionalised 2': by giving her a girlish uniform, a fattening diet and having her hair messily trimmed." well to be honest this was an aspect that I only touched upon in that volume - and of course as I suggested there, under the right circumstances, and particularly within an institutional setting, it would be quite possible to manipulate the calorific content of the girl's meals to match one's aim without her being unduly alerted (other than for the effects of course, but they would take time to develop and might be camouflaged to some degree).


In fact manipulating the nutritional content of meals and keeping all else the same, the appearance, the consistency etc, is quite common in the annals of dietetic research literature. This is all well and good up to a point but eventually the fact remains that the young lady concerned would likely spot the changes being wrought and tend to try to counteract them - perhaps even subconsciously, resulting in reduced appetite. She might choose to eat more or less as appropriate and there is a limit it to how far one can increase or decrease the calorific content of a meal without it becoming something very strange indeed and the intervention being laid bare.


Obviously in an institutional setting wherein the girl's freedom has been curtailed and strict discipline is the order of the day, the overweight girl can be dealt with simply by withholding food and restricting portion size. Her hunger then also becomes a lever that can be used to further reinforced the institution's control over her through the coupling of behavioural modification techniques with food treats (but only within limits commensurate with the institution's aim). It is true, too, that under such circumstances disciplinary techniques can be invoked to bring about the changes required in the exercise and diet obsessed girl thought overly concerned about her figure, for example by insistence that she clear her plate under threat of the cane or the strap. But all this breeds resentment and that is something one might wish to avoid if in the domestic environment of perhaps even within some forms of institution under certain circumstances.


What if our young lady could be manipulated psychologically in some way to change her behaviour? Perhaps subtly, being encouraged step-by-step along the way with a loving arm around her shoulders so to speak. Food treats used as a form of reinforcement in behaviour modification might under the right circumstances and with the right encouragement become a source of comfort, perhaps to such a degree that the obsessively dieting would be catwalk model or dancer in effect becomes a compulsive eater. Driven by a subconscious compulsion that she can't possibly comprehend a point might be reached when, despite her burgeoning figure that stares back at her from the mirror, she no longer sees the point in all those punishing exercise routines she used to put herself through - and yet the choice to give up would almost seem as if her own. In that way I imagine her gradually slipping further and further under her carer's power. Mind you, one would want to control all those excess pounds and a girdle would seem the way forward (see top of page) - fine and ideal under a nylon work dress (see right) and apron if set to work scrubbing the floor, but I wonder what would work under a school uniform. And one would definitely want to 'apply the brakes' once she'd reach one's ideal, but that in itself opens up yet more avenues for discipline.


Anyway my mind was brought back to this way of thinking having been working on a certain sections of the new book but also having come across, fairly recently, this lovely little illustration (above left) by the most talented Lynn Paula Russell (Paula Meadows as was). True it doesn't exactly tell such a tale but then again there seems little on the 'Web' that deals with either of the above approaches, other than a few short tales of 'fat camps' and husbands punishing their wives over the lack of weight loss. A quick search with the relevent search terms mostly brought up my own blog!

Saturday 1 May 2010

Enforced Weight-Gain / Enforced Price-Hike: Avarice in Publishing and Other Chubby Subjects

Dieting and exercise had been her life - but her stepmother never approved of a career in fashion cat-walk modeling in any case!

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A straight-jacket and a box of chocs! An intriguing little pic I stumbled upon recently that reminded me of a certain section of the new volume that I have part-written - albeit in a fragmented form – and that I have neglected of late. Note to self: Get it finished!!!

The point is; the whole thing - the above text and pic – makes for a nice, if a little diffuse, allegory for the behavior of Lulu (the self-publishing bunch through whom my books are currently distributed). For a long while Lulu charged a flat per download for electronic PDF versions of books. The difference between that fee and the price charged to readers – which the author gets to choose – is the amount the writer receives as a royalty or payment. Fine! It was fine as far as I was concerned even when they upped that fee by around ninety – odd percent a while back. All seemed to have been stable in terms of charges for quite some time; i was happy with my share and did not want to charge my readers any more than absolutely necessary to make it worth my while (which strictly speaking, from a purely economic standpoint it isn't) – which is why I always encourage folk to purchase electronic downloads. As you may or may not know, I have been tweaking volume 2 for some time in preparation for assigning it an ISBN so as to distribute it via Amazon, Waterstones and the like and also to make it available to the Google Book-Search engine. To these ends, to make it more visible to the various search engines (volume 1 is near-on invisible to Amazon's search engine, which by default searches book titles for entered key-words) I have gone in for a little bit of 'search engine optimization' by way of including a rich mix of key words in sentence form (so Google doesn't recognize it as what it is – a list of key words) at the top of each chapter heading page. Having completed that task I had then to replace the existing file on Lulu's site – and all went well on that front. But lo and behold! It now turns out the whole pricing structure has changed (if I had known beforehand I wouldn't have bothered). Not content with collecting their flat fee (which is still levied), the folk at Lulu now want to take a proportion of the 'profit' on top of that fee (a proportion, mind you i.e a percentage!). The long-shot of all this is; in order to receive the same amount per download as before (not a fortune - and neither is there the volume of sales through that channel to offset that fact) I have been forced to increase the price. Not merely by the shortfall though – because Lulu takes a percentage of the profit, their chunk goes up along with any increase one instigates. The long and short of this latter point is that the price-hike is substantial – I now have to price INSTITUTIONALISED volume 2 at £4.95 per download or £9.95 per print copy. This goes against all my principles and further more compromises the original intentions I had when I set out writing (largely for my own amusement but also to fill a hole in the genre). INSTITUTIONALISED volume 1 remains the same price (and hopefully always will) and in addition I hope to have some exciting news regarding volume 1 next time (I'd hoped to have space to tell you this time, but I got side-tracked).

Friday 24 April 2009

Dietary Discipline, Harassment Therapy & Sexual Reorientation – A Reader’s Account Revisited (Part 3 – Walking Down the Aisle…Again & Again & Again

Again, coming under the general banner of 'Truth Stranger than Fiction' here is the third part - Walking Down the Aisle (can you see where this is going yet?) A n interview, of sorts conducted by yours truly by email. Click here to read part 2 - -Click here to read part 1 (if you haven’t already) Something to keep you going while I get on with my proof reading and amending of INSTITUTIONALISED volume 2 (I had to go back to research some stuff about fabrics today, but the result was some fascinating revisions made to a certain young lady's uniform that I'm afraid can only have made it more irksome for her - we try to be kind, but its all good discipline and it is for her own good after all).

Before we get started: I have just this minute added another Yahoo Group to the side bar Yahoo Group list: Eric Stanton Cartoons (the art of Stanton) (Click on group name – in blue – or see sidebar on right)

Also, while your still there: If you enjoy (as I do, quite unashamedly) reading accounts of strict discipline - hands on heads with legs spread - Spartan regimes, late teen girls put back into juvenile uniforms and privileged young ladies brought down to the level of servants and made to wait on table then I can’t recommend enough a story I have just come across on The Spanked Girls Weblog::::: Gymslips & Dormitories (click title to read story or site name to go there – although, as always, it has been added to the sidebar blog list). Also take a look at Spanking Bethie Blog (click) why don't you?...and the yahoo group - Bound Brides (brides in bondage - needless to say...its where I got the bride pic).

Dietary Discipline, Harassment Therapy & Sexual Reorientation – A Reader’s Account Revisited (Part 3 – Walking Down the Aisle…Again and Again and Again)
“Something else [I came across while researching the basis of my treatment] that I found very interesting was something called 'shame aversion therapy'. Apparently it is/was very closely related to chemical and electrical aversion therapy. I had always assumed that my aversion therapy only related to those physical aversives that took place in the treatment room where I was shown the slides, and that the constant ridicule, humiliation and harassment heaped upon me (and the others) while on the ward, was simple meanness and ignorance combined with a desire to control us and keep a 'tight ship'. But now I wonder if these techniques may have been used in concert with the physical therapies such as chemical and electrical. Certainly something for me to ponder and research further.

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The nurses would belittle us and tell the other members of the ward how perverted we were and that God hates us and that we would be going to hell. They would make us stand on a table and recite nursery rhymes. Or makes us recite a prayer aloud for hours on end - often all day, without any break for lunch. Other times we would have to make public confessions about why we were there - our lesbianism and what that meant - and that our parents had disowned us. I had to make stuff up and it was still horrible humiliating - even though it was mostly lies. These 'confessions' usually had to be made at Sister's weekly 'gatherings' where she held up the undergarments of any girls who had failed to meet the required standards of hygiene - and it was on those occasions when even the drooling girls would receive their shares of strokes if they were deemed slovenly - or otherwise failed to meet the standards expected of them.
The nurses encouraged the other patients to harass us - and there was nothing we could do, restrained as we were. If we did try to retaliate, like try to head-butt somebody, it never worked out well for us. Between the nurses and the other patients we were constantly being teased - or being sabotaged in petty ways - like having our pinafores and tabards dirtied.
Shame Clothing
And there were times that we were dressed up in some costume designed to humiliate us. Not that it was always the costume that was inherently humiliating - it was the circumstances. Had it been a dress-up party, or even a regular party, it might have been ok - but being dressed up unwillingly for the sole purpose of humiliating us and amusing the nurses and other patients made me want to crawl away and die. Often it was just a party dress - albeit one better suited to a seven-year old - but I remember that one time I was dressed as a bride - not in some quick dress-up kind of way - but in a properly fitted wedding dress and veil. I was made to do circuits around the dayroom all day as the nurses told everybody who would listen that this was as close as I would come to being a bride.
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On two sides of the dayroom there were areas considered no-man's-land. That was where the windows and climbing bars were situated. No-man's-land was marked with a white line and none of the patients was allowed to cross it - making the windows and climbing bars, and some of the doors off-limits. Indeed we soon learned to give no-man's-land a wide a birth, for even approaching the line would generate unwanted attention from the nurses. But within patient area there was line running around close to the perimeter - and it was this line that we had to follow when we were doing 'circuits'. If I remember correctly I had to do about 200 circuits on the days when I was wearing the wedding dress. It wasn't nearly as many as I might have been made to perform on another day, but I remember having to proceed as if I was proceeding up the aisle. One foot forward - bring up the other foot level with it. Pause. Repeat. So my progress was slow and infinitely humiliating. Our progress, when performing circuits, was recorded by one of the drooling girls who was surprisingly efficient - she had paper with a kind of grid on and she would colour in one of the squares whenever we passed. However there were times when she would become distracted and I'm quite sure there were many times when she would fail to record a circuit.
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Besides those times when we had to parade around the dayroom in our 'costumes' we were assigned circuits for - well, I'm not entirely sure why. Maybe to keep us fit? Maybe as a result of some minor infraction. Maybe to keep us occupied if it looked like we might be heading for trouble. Whatever the reason we each had our own chart recording our progress in performing circuits. Generally the rule was that we had to perform five more circuits than our previous best - so if you were assigned circuits frequently it soon became quite laborious - especially if you weren't smart enough to start out slowly and make sure that you never completed more than the five extra circuits. If you lost count and did extra circuits 'just to be safe' that became your new 'best'. And there were consequences for failing to beat your best by those five circuits. You were not allowed to run, and if the nurses thought that you were walking too fast for 'safety' then you could find yourself hobbled.
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Looking back, I can't help but wonder whether the same concept might have been applied to our aversive treatments. Is it possible that the shocks were increased each time, and so long as we didn't pass out then the new high voltage or duration became our 'best' and had to be surpassed in our next session? It certainly felt like it. I wonder if we could become 'accustomed' to the shocks, so that if we passed out five times in a row from a particular level of shock, whether by the sixth we would be able to endure it without passing out? In the same way as our fitness might increase as we performed circuits in the dayroom.
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I also need to research something called harassment therapy. I remember coming across an article about a girl being kept in sheets and forced to scrub the bathroom floor with a toothbrush. The objective was to make her 'crack' - or something, but I've never understood what this was meant to achieve. But now I think about it, it sounds awfully similar to a lot of my experiences. I
Oddly, some years later I saw The Clockwork Orange and didn't associate the aversion therapy with my own. Talk about repressing unpleasant memories. But now it occurs to me that in The Clockwork Orange they took care to make sure that Alex could not avert his gaze from the images on the screen - they used those funny little gadgets to hold his eyes open. Although they took care to make sure that my head was locked into position consistent with looking at the slideshow they didn't use any similar devices to keep my eyes open or make sure I wasn't averting my gaze. Of course I probably wasn't particularly resistant to looking at the slideshow - it's not as if I was trying to protect my supposed deviancy. I do remember being told to 'look at the screen' from time to time - and not looking may have been part of my therapist's complaint that I was uncooperative, but I don't really know.”
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“As regards being 'encouraged' to eat the disliked foods; you mention the use of 'aversives'. What did they consist of , how were they applied and how did they operate - what was the effect each time they were applied?”
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The treatment to 'encourage' better eating habits used the same aversives that were later used to treat my supposed lesbianism: electric shocks, injection of drugs to induce nausea etc. This could continue for hours at a time - and believe me, after just one such session I was more than willing to eat anything they put in front of me. But they continued such treatment long after I thought I must be eating to their satisfaction - perhaps to ensure that I would not 'backslide'.
Although they initially used the same aversives that would later be used in my therapy for lesbianism, they did not bother using any kind of imagery or measurement - so to that extent it was entirely different. They would just tell me that they would continue the sessions until I could 'eat like a normal person'. In that respect it was entirely punitive and did not incorporate any of the 'scientific' ideas used in aversion therapy - which I assume was meant to be based on the same idea as Pavlov's dogs.”
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“Incidentally, was any form of corporal punishment used to maintain order and enforce compliance?”
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“Yes, but this was no surprise to me. After all we were caned at school - both on our rears and on our hands. You have to remember that this was in the early sixties and I was at a private school. However, I must admit that the corporal punishment in hospital was both more severe and was applied for less serious offenses. All the nurses had the authority to punish us, but the most serious punishments were usually administered by the ward sister, or at least under her watchful eye. Something else that effected my punishments was that I often had a bad nappy rash and my punishment would often be terminated part way through (often one stroke short of completion) to avoid injury, only to have the punishment re-started from the beginning on another part of my anatomy more able to withstand the strokes.”
Inmate Uniforms?
“From what you say about the place and the canvas smocks worn for meals etc I doubt it was permitted to retain own clothes - or were night-dresses taken from home allowed, for instance? If not, what sort of thing was issued by the hospital and was any attempt made to enforce a uniform appearance? I'm just wondering whether nightdresses were worn at all times, for example, or whether other clothing was available for other times of the day, in which case (and assuming all hospital issue) was there a disciplinary aspect to it - for example was it necessary to look a certain way, to appear smart, perhaps, even though the circumstances seem to make such concerns obsolete? (After all it's a nice way of asserting control).”

“Nobody wore any clothes from home. The hospital seemed o have a plentiful supply of clothing that was made on the premises and they strove for a certain degree of uniformity - but you have to bear in mind that for most of the time we 'sexual deviants' were part of a larger teenage ward that had all types of patients - whether mentally retarded, catatonic, psychotic etc. and it would have been difficult to have us all look uniform.

They didn't trust the sexual deviants - they expected us to molest anybody we could get out hands on - whether it was each other, the 'normal' patients, or even ourselves. So we weren't allowed to socialize in the dayroom or move about without some form of restraint - usually what they called jackets, but weren't much like some of straitjackets I have seen elsewhere. There were a lot of variations because they were made for each person in the hospital's brace shop and the nurses could ask for whatever design variations they thought would be helpful. But mostly the arms were laced to our sides unlike the Houdini style jackets that have the arms in front. Many of the other patients were allowed to move about and use their arms so long as they didn't cause any problems. So you would have a number of patients with full use of their arms and then others, apparently armless, moving around the dayroom, looking quite un-uniform. But they did make some attempt to have us properly and modestly attired - perhaps with an added emphasis on modesty given the presence of potential molesters in their midst. Those unrestrained generally wore a mid-calf mid-grey cotton dress, belted at the waist and with slightly puffed sleeves at the shoulder, a white detachable peter-pan collar, white detachable cuffs, and a plain white pinafore. It was neat enough, being tailored to fit each patient, but looked a little incongruous on some of the obviously retarded patients. I take that back - it looked a little incongruous on everybody - but like anything else you get used to it and before long it begins to look normal.

Those of us who were wearing jackets wore 'slips' over them - sleeveless tubes made from the same mid-grey cotton as the dresses. They had the same peter-pan collars and the pinafores were replaced with tabards. There were no belts since we essentially had no waists to speak of.
And then there were a lot of variations. For instance I saw some girls wearing the 'arms crossed in front' style of jacket who were wearing their normal dresses over them - the jacket arms inside the arms of the dress. The jackets were a lot tighter than I have seen elsewhere - presumably because they were custom fitted in the brace shop - either from scratch or modified from an old, often greasy, one. This tightness, especially in the sleeves when they were the 'arms-in-front' kind allowed them to be worn under our dresses instead of over them. So, as you can see, uniformity, if it was a goal, was only partially achieved.

I think I mentioned that I managed to bite one of the nurses when I was being admitted and that turned out to be a big mistake, because throughout my stay the nurse continued to make sure that I 'paid-for-it'. And I 'paid-for-it' in any number of ways. One of them was having to wear a hessian slip under all my clothes and restraints. It was as itchy as any hairshirt must have been and they were always looking for. proof that I must be finding ways to masturbate - and that was in spite of the considerable measures that they always took to ensure that we didn't masturbate. That meant a trip to the brace shop for a very elaborate (and uncomfortable) orthopaedic brace to better ensure my future good behaviour.

I could never really understand why we wore pinafores and tabards. I suppose it was a hold-over from a prior era when such things were more fashionable - maybe when the building first opened - but by the early sixties they were something of an anachronism for anybody but a little girl - an age we teenagers were trying to dissociate ourselves from. They must have been a nightmare for the laundry and we were always getting in trouble for smudging them. But they also served the purpose of identifying us. Every girl on the ward had her number printed in large numerals on both the front and the rear of her pinafore or tabard and the deviants also had 'DEVIANT' printed in large capital letters beneath the numbers, letting everybody know to give them a wide berth - just in case they missed our stubbly heads.”

"As regards their imposition of the punishment diet; you mention a period of three months or more: this is particularly interesting as it implies a long period of residence, if a punishment should go on for three months. How long was the average stay? Was it ordained at the outset how long it should be or could it be extended at the whim of the therapists (or even for punishment purposes)?”

“I'm not sure how long the average stay might have been. I was there for three years - when the program was phased out - and I don't think that I was unusual. I was lucky to be released rather than remaining a patient in one form or another. The problem was that the results of the program and my own treatment were considered inconclusive and the hospital was reluctant to discharge me, still a possible danger to society, only a teenager and with nowhere particular to go.

Dietary Control and Enforced Weight Gain?

“Still on the subject of diets: was there any attempt to weight control? Perhaps weight loss or even enforced weight gain (something that occurs in volume 2 of my book)?”

“I should apologize for not having read your book yet and for not having read very much of your blog. It is very high on my list of things I must do, but things have been very hectic ever since I found your blog - and writing this letter hasn't helped! As for weight control, I'm not quite sure. I do remember overhearing a conversation between two nurses that were discussing what to do about a particular patient. She was extraordinarily beautiful and I think she had been admitted because it was feared she would become promiscuous because she had a number of older boys pestering her. Anyway, the nurses were talking about what might be done and the question of fattening her up or making her too skinny to still be attractive was discussed - but I'm not quite sure what the outcome was. Somehow I think she may have been moved off our ward.

“I'm not sure if this counts, but I do remember that we were often made to wear the braces, and other devices that were made for us in the brace shop, long after they were comfortable. At our age many of us periodically grew quite rapidly. I don't think it was a cost saving measure because most of the people that worked in the brace shop, and certainly almost everybody who worked in attached sewing shop, were patients, and I assume they had to work for nothing. Besides, they showed absolutely no reluctance to take us down anytime they wanted to get us a more 'difficult' brace or jacket or make a modification to our existing brace. So I'm inclined to think that our wearing of braces that we had outgrown was just one more little way in which they needled us. Incidentally I was the recipient of an elaborate brace within a few days of admittance - ostensibly to cure my stooping. Nobody had mentioned it before and I suspect that the nurse I bit was behind it. Of course after a week or so it didn't seem so bad - but it made moving and bending much more difficult - and in that respect I was always conscious of it.”...to be continued...

Thursday 7 August 2008

Enforced Weight Gain: A Possible Story Thread Or Just Too Cruel?

As those of you that are regular visitors may have guessed by the paucity of posts in the last few days, my Internet connection has been decidedly dodgy. There are bursts of noise on my phone line that continually knock the modem off which is why few, if any images, accompany the posts that I have made recently. Meanwhile I've been working away on writing and now have quite a body of work for both volumes 2 and 3 and perhaps even for a fourth volume (it might seem strange working on two volumes at once but I have a lot of ideas and they don't necessarily all fit together in a linear pattern). I am I going to be staying at a friend’s house for the next few days (where they have a good fast broadband connection) while the local telecoms company fixes my line. I have just loaded up all of my old files, scans and images etc onto a DVD, which I am going to be taking with me, so I can load it all on to a computer there and get this blog properly up and running again.

Anyway for now I am mostly posting text, images take a little longer to upload and the connection tends to crash while it's happening. But once I'm working from my friend's address, ie over the next few days, I'll start posting suitably illustrative (I hope) images and start tagging them on to the big, wordy, text-rich things I have recently posted.
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Enforced Weight Gain: A Possible Story Thread?
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Meanwhile: as anyone out there in blog-land ever had any thoughts about the subject of enforced weight-gain? Now, I'm not thinking along the lines of the ‘feeder’ style stories wherein the author's wife, girlfriend or whatever becomes a three hundred pounds blubber-whale. (If you know where there are any suitable weight gain stories or relevant blogs, please let me and I'll add the necessary links to them - one of the things I am trying to create with this blog is a sort of multidimensional multi fetish resource node).

I am not saying that the following vignette or prospective plot development will actually make its way into any part of the INSTITUTIONALISED series, but it is an idea I've been toying with and there is a nice subtlety to the cruelty involved (if exploitative cruelty can ever be subtle). Forget canes, the tawse, martinets, chains and prison bars for a moment - think instead: food (yes, food), mealtimes, weighing sessions, measurement sessions, long hours standing in front of mirrors with hands-on head - think enforced inactivity, think agoraphobia rather than restraints.

What I have in mind is far, far crueller; imagine, if you will, a lithe young thing - always has one eye on the mirror, the other on the calorie sheet. She misses meals but never aerobic sessions; she drops pounds but never dance classes. She has already done a bit of catwalk work and quite successfully at that, but she has prodigious talent and her passion is the ballet, the Royal Ballet at that, nothing less than prima ballerina will do for her - and she has the potential to make it. She has a future place lined up at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, should she wish to accept it, but her problem, as with so many aspiring young things today, is her lack of funding. She has a small regular allowance from her late father's estate but the bulk is all tied up and under someone else's control until she reaches the age of 21. Her father's intention had always been that she should gain financial control of her affairs at age 18 but having suffered a crisis of confidence (and therein hangs another interesting tale) she has fairly recently been persuaded, with some reluctance it must be said, to forego that privilege and accept the more traditional age of majority - a day that lies some five years off, or very nearly.

There is little in terms of part-time work available to her, and more importantly, that she would be willing to accept - she sees herself as flying far above such things. The sun-drenched summer months stretch ahead but that time will pass all too soon – yet that narrow window is all she has if she is to gain her financial independence, drag herself from under her stepmother's thumb and grasp her future.

She finds it hard to believe the amount on offer for just a three month residential stay in a West Country care home as part of a research project. No novel drug trials are involved, she is assured - all the work carried out comes under the general heading of behavioural psychology and involves being monitored in a ‘controlled environment’ (she is uncertain as to exactly what that means - but it sounds safe enough) and undergoing certain simple psychological tests at baseline and from time to time throughout the trial period. She understands that should she fail to complete the full three month trial she will get nothing. But the notion of spending three sun filled months wandering through the spectacular rural hospital grounds depicted in the brochure, occasionally reporting to some laboratory for a few tests, or lying back watching television in a beautifully appointed room that would put most high-quality hotels to shame, would seem to make that caveat a remote possibility indeed.

Of course, as those of you who have read INSTITUTIONALISED volume 1 already know (or as those of you who've ever read any of the extracts or story ideas I have ever posted on the newsgroups etc will now) she is unlikely to see much of those balmy summer days and little of the fluffy white clouds drifting above, let alone the hospital’s lush green conifer-bordered parkland grounds. Not once she is behind the high walls and steel security grilles of that institution and safely ensconced in the protective womb of the secure psychiatric wing…

… at this point, and through discussion with the project’s supervising psychologist, enters the dietician…

(Oh my God! I can see it all, now, it's delicious - if you pardon the pun! I just hope it's not too cruel because I really like it - what does that say about me? No, I don't want to know.)

PS: if you don't know what a dietician is, or does, (and let's face it, not everybody does) just ask – I’m married to one (someone has to be!).

PPS: have dictated this using voice recognition, straight out of my head and purely for the blog. I haven't had much time to check it so it may contain all sorts of strange grammatical errors and typos. When I have a bit more time later on I'll go over it again and correct whatever needs doing as well as add some sort of suitable illustration (possibly).