Pageant mom fed daughter tapeworms to make her lose weight

[snopes]

A pageant mom in Florida is the subject of an upcoming episode of Untold Stories of the E.R. after forcing her daughter to ingest tapeworms in order to slim down for competition.

http://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2014/08/...2341408633717/

[ganzfeld]

Hardly sounds plausible. Especially this part:

Having passed the parasites, the teen was then assumed to be fine. But one question remained -- how did she get the tapeworms in the first place?

Right. Oh, you had tapeworms but inexplicably and suddenly they came out of your behind. Well, you're fine now - no need to go through any treatment or anything, no - but how in the world did you get them because, hey, it couldn't be undercooked food; it's got to be something even more unlikely than the rest of this story... What? OMG! It is! Probably because it's a complete crock!

[Alarm]

After an apparent fight between the mother and daughter, it became clear the mother bought a pill of tapeworm eggs in Mexico and forced her daughter to take it to lose weight for an upcoming pagent.

Oh, those Mexicans. They'll sell anything for a buck!

Like she couldn't have gotten that from disreputable people in the U.S.*

*Notwithstanding the fact I'm not even sure how someone would go about making a "pill of tapeworm eggs".

[Elkhound]

There is a story that the opera singer Maria Callas lost weight by deliberately infecting herself with a tapeworm and then taking a massive antibiotic dose afterwards to get rid of it. I don't know if I believe that story, but it is around, so it shows that there is precedent for this sort of thing.

[ganzfeld]

Actually, no, she didn't (and there really isn't any well-evidenced precedent):
http://www.snopes.com/horrors/vanities/tapeworm.asp

[Elkhound]

Originally Posted by ganzfeld

Actually, no, she didn't (and there really isn't any well-evidenced precedent):
http://www.snopes.com/horrors/vanities/tapeworm.asp

By "precedent" I didn't mean actually doing it--I meant for the idea. And I said that I didn't believe it, just that the story was around and well known.

[Crius of CoH]

Related aside: the concept of using milk and cookies to lure out a tapeworm is something I first encountered in the Foxfire books - but it was a bowl or glass of spoiled milk which would lure out the tapeworm. So it's part of Appalachian folklore.

Onward; nothing more to see here.

[GenYus234]

My Dad told me the tale about the tapeworm and cookies except it was an oyster cracker and it was to be inserted rectally*. The part about the hammer when the tapeworm comes out to demand the missing treat was the same.

* Yeah, I come by it honestly. Mom is even worse.

[ganzfeld]

Originally Posted by Crius of CoH

I first encountered in the Foxfire books

Oh, my, I read and reread those books. (I didn't remember that one.)

[Sue]

Originally Posted by Elkhound

By "precedent" I didn't mean actually doing it--I meant for the idea. And I said that I didn't believe it, just that the story was around and well known.

I never heard it about Maria Callas but I remember reading something to do with the tapeworm diet and Marilyn Monroe. I don't remember now if someone was claiming to know she specifically did it or if this was just one of those "all Hollywood stars do this" kind of stories.

[Crius of CoH]

Originally Posted by ganzfeld

Oh, my, I read and reread those books. (I didn't remember that one.)

Having been reminded of this, I went and looked up the books on line (the copies I read belonged to a friend, and that was back in the mid-80's).

There is stuff missing from the first five books. There are things I distinctly recall that are no longer in later editions of the books.

Now, it may be my brain is misfiring on all cylinders. But Foxfire was the only source of legitimate Appalachian folkways and folklore I ever read, and there were two things that stuck with me vividly from those books. One was, putting a hair from a horse's tail in a pail (not necessarily full of water) would create a snake, and the other was spoiled milk will draw out a tapeworm. It is so unlikely that I'm misattributing this; I am usually very aware of when I can't remember the source. In this case, it's a function of "not many sources for me to have drawn upon". My only recourse is that perhaps the material was in book 6, which I cannot find online to read. But I was pretty sure the snake thing was in book 1, which has "snake lore" as one of it's chapters, and it's not in there.

Backing this up, on further web research I have found comments in several forums that later editions were edited, removing some materials present in the first edition.

Gah! Physical copies of the books run for hundreds of dollars on eBay. Gotta look up some old friends and see if they still have their first editions....

[LizzyBean]

I remember reading somewhere the horse jockeys used to do it to keep their weight down.

[crocoduck_hunter]

Originally Posted by Crius of CoH

One was, putting a hair from a horse's tail in a pail (not necessarily full of water) would create a snake,

Yeah, that one is at least is because of horsehair worms.

[thorny locust]

Originally Posted by Crius of CoH

There is stuff missing from the first five books. There are things I distinctly recall that are no longer in later editions of the books. [ . . . ] Gah! Physical copies of the books run for hundreds of dollars on eBay.

Hmmm. Need to remember that when sorting the bookshelves.

I'm fairly sure I have one or two of those somewhere, but am not sure which ones or how old they are. -- mid-market season is not the best time to turn out all of the bookshelves, however. Maybe this winter. (Yes, I know. Really organized people would know which shelf to look on. Really organized people don't pick up books to look at them, put them down in a different room on any handy horizontal surface, and then stick them on the nearest shelf when clearing up in a hurry. Repeat for several decades . . . )