my email to Michelle Malkin

and while i like most of your work, and secretly wish you weren't married ;-) i do have some things i wanted to point out from said article

(A new music genre -- "emo" -- is associated with promoting the cutting culture. )

Emo is not a new Genre, it has been around since the 80s. It is a genre very popular with people suffering from depression.

( This madness would not be so popular among young people if not for the glamorizing endorsement of nitwit celebrities such as twentysomething actress Christina Ricci. Several Web sites I researched highlighted the same quotes from Miss Ricci describing her experiences with self-injury: )

As cutting is normally a form of depressive behavior , as the Ricci quote described, i think it is less an issue of glamorizing

Now here is to Ms Ricci talking about her depression:

""I wanted to see if I can handle pain. It's sort of an experiment to see if I can handle pain." Depressed folk have a pain obsession.... as they can't "feel" happy they work with a form of feeling they can control

"No. You get this endorphin rush.... like you really don't feel anything. It's calming actually." by not feeling anything she is describing her depression

so this doesn't glamorize to kids who aren't already suffering from problems

"...You know how your brain shuts down from pain? ...and I wouldn't be as anxious. It made me calm." he continuing to show herself as depressed

people who cut are mentally ill, not social misfits

("I just found out this week that my 14-year-old daughter is a 'cutter.' She has a 4.0 average, eighth grade, goes to a good school, and is well-liked by all who know her. She is popular, has two homes (mine and her dad's) with supportive, loving families in each.)

I don't know the kid but it sounds like her life is focused around presenting a false image, when she is really feeling like utter tripe inside which is a standard cutter pathology. since she has to be everything to her friends, family, and school for her cutting is the only way to control her life and not be the puppet of everyone else.

(She had links to Web rings about cutting, suicide and broken hearts as well as images and poetry. Her friends all feature cutting/suicide links, icons and song lyrics as well. )

More signs of depression here

( "The counselor at her school told me this: At her middle school, '70 percent of the kids here cut or know someone who does. It's cool, a trend, and acceptable. Boys do it as well but are more public about it. ...)

#1) this school counselor is an idiot as cutting has been known to be a sign of mental illness since at least the 70s ( as i have a friend in his thirties who set off a red flag with his school's guidance counselor over it)
#2) 70% of the kids cut or know some one who cuts... well if 65% of those kids know the 5% who do that sure is different then say a 35/35 split ergo.... guidance counselor=idiot
#3) It isn't a trend when it is a diagnoses mentally ill behavior. when you commit a behavior that is accepted by the clinical mental health community as mentally ill.. it ceases to be a trend ergo.... guidance counselor is an idiot


your article probably would have been better if you had consulted some one with a mental health expertise on the subject

so remember there were signs of depression everywhere in your cutters

the ramblings of a depressed celebrity will only effect depressed people

and the guidance counselor was an idiot