failure to thrive

When infants or children show signs of not growing according to standard projections, "failure to thrive" might be the diagnosis. The cause or causes might be a host of medical, nutritional, biological, genetic, psychosocial, or environmental factors. Sometimes the cause is undetermined. 

In some cases, failure to thrive, or FTT, is attributed to abuse or neglect. 

Some researchers have focused on maternal touch as a contributing factor to FTT. These studies examine mother-infant tactile interactions: their frequency and type (unintentional, intentional, during play, during feeding). In some cases, the mother or child may exhibit an aversion to physical contact.

Failure to thrive.

The term has poetic gravitas, a resonant summons for us to reflect.

In the Age of Coronavirus, will infants, children, adults, including the ill and the elderly, experience failure to thrive? Will our necessary, imposed self-isolations, self-quarantines, add the unintended affliction of FTT? At a minimum, will our severely restricted social interactions, our social distancing, cause human thriving deficit, or HTD?

We are social animals.

I know I am.

I already have a burgeoning case of HTD.

How about you?

And in the bigger picture, from a global standpoint, from a species perspective, how much FTT or HTD can the human race sustain? And for how long?

Oh, the longing for touch, our ardor for human texture, pining for skin and pulse, hungering for hugs and human scent, blood, sweat, and tears, tactile tension and tangible tenderness.

the end of fragrance?

Is it the end of fragrance? Does social distancing stretch the molecular cone of influence that perfumes and allied fragrances emanate? Will future fragrantial formulas need more potency to pierce, ever so gently and invisibly, the social distance bubble? And will new, stronger fragrantical formulations disturb the infinitely delicate harmony that fragrance chords thrive on?

Weighty questions, on International Fragrance Day no less.

And indeed what are the ends of fragrance? Why do we adorn ourselves in such evocative olfactory raiment? To what ends, what purposes?

The coronavirus moment gives us a perfumed pause to ponder answers to these unanswerable questions.

The bride throws the bouquet. The bouquet is caught. The bouquet is portentous, a sign suggesting love and marriage, says the tradition. And what of our personal bouquets, tossed by any one of us at any point on the gender spectrum? What are we to make of our fragrance bouquet?

What do I expect from wearing my signature chords, my inimitable and idiosyncratic bouquet of arranged self scent, sprayed-on or rolled-on eau de parfum or cologne or eau de toilette (typically Tom Ford, if you must know)? Do I expect a compliment, a stranger's jolt of je ne sais quoi, a passport to Dallianceville or amorous abandon? Whatever I have expected or will expect is nuanced by the strictures of social distancing, at least for now.

Picture this: a terminally ill patient in hospice. Her matted hair. His swarthy face, beard growth of five days. Her chipped, unpainted nails. He petitions the volunteer to comb his hair, to shave him. She asks for a perm, gets her nails done. Why? They ain't going nowhere, as Bob Dylan put it. 

It's for dignity. Aesthetics. Pride of ownership. Something incalculable, more solemn or sacred, having no word in our vernacular.

And the same with fragrance.

She puts it on. Wears her favorite, most alluring fragrance. She is quarantined, lives alone, will not leave the house today.

He does the same. He is running low on his favorite fragrance. He applies it anyway, judiciously and jubilantly. Self-isolation permits this. Demands it.

In fragrante delicto.

fear the beard?

Is there a difference between growing a beard and simply not shaving?

A look in the mirror presents the unkempt appearance of an unshaven social misfit, though that sounds unduly harsh. (Can you be harsh, but not unduly harsh?)

Unkempt. The second syllable sounds so German, and it is by way of Old English, we are told by etymologists (not entomologists; stop bugging me!).

Uncombed.

Can you comb a beard, when you come right down to it?

So, you can be kept kempt, Kokonuts.

Carry on.

Laugh, or else.

Food for Thought, and Thought for Food

By now, you've heard about the study in today's news concluding that obesity is socially contagious, as is thinness. The study is no Mickey Mouse effort. It covers some 32 years and over 12,000 people. It was conducted by Harvard Medical School and University of California San Diego researchers. (The figure shown is from James Fowler of UC San Diego, and it depicts the close correlation of obesity and social networks. Or so I gather. For all I know, it's illustrating vomit dispersion or aerial demographics of Berlin graffiti artists. It took years to create. Anyway, it's gorgeous, Jim.)

This story fascinates me on many levels.

1. I love the term "socially contagious." It's probably old hat to you hipper academics, but it's new to me. A cursory Google search yields hits related to obesity, homosexuality, gun violence, smoking, organizational misbehavior, substance abuse, and materialism. For starters. I'm sure I'm misstating or intimating core arguments incorrectly for each of those topics. But I predict this study will catapult the term socially contagious into the front lines of discourse, including as a weapon in the U.S. presidential election campaign (which really cannot claim to reach the heights of something called discourse). And then we will grow socially weary of this contagious phrase. (Perhaps you already have done so.)

2. The concept is hardly surprising. After all, sober people choose sober friends; boozers hang out with other drinkers; gangstas congregate with other gangstas; willowy ballet dancers associate with other willowy ones. From what I discern, though, this research says it goes deeper than that. The study seems to say we don't merely reinforce and validate each other's behavior but actually cause it by setting social norms. (I'm only surmising this, based on the linked summary. Don't ask me how or why. What do I look like a sociologist?)

3. This underscores the need for social research on eating. Here's what I mean. My eighth-grade science teacher, Mr. Charles Robinson at Burdick Junior High School in Stamford, Connecticut, extolled the virtues of how we eat, not just what we eat. He pointed out the healthy habits of ethnic and ancient groups who ate as a group. Eating for them was (is) communal, unhurried, and entirely social. Contrast that with modern America: eating is solitary, fractured, rushed, or distracted (or some mixed salad of all those adjectives). There's no doubt in my mind that cancer research should focus more on how we eat at least as much as what we eat. That's why, if I owned the company, no one would be allowed to eat at their desk while working, ever, and a lunch break with real food would be mandated.

Chew on that.