Believe it or not
I had lunch today with two friends, who swore that some image-obsessed New York women stay slim by taking black-market pills that contain tape worms. When they reach their desired weight, they take de-worming pills. I was all fired up to post about this craziness, but I took a quick detour to Snopes, the site that debunks urban legends. I wasn’t all that surprised to see the tape worm pill story.
I wonder if urban legends ever work backwards, and inspire copy-cat incidents in real life?
December 20th, 2004 at 6:29 am
they had an episode on medical investigation the other day where one girl had done this. they showed an ultrasound of her stomach with the worm in it. pretty gross!!!!
December 22nd, 2004 at 9:00 am
Girl- The fun thing about urban legends is that they frequently have something to do with reality. I read a great book on the topic that discussed this in some detail - including covering all the classics and whether there was any truth to them. Many (like this one) speak more to “the times” or to teaching specific lessons than to reality.
p.s. Kiss your system administrator. Full feeds rock!