Shame on ME

An opinion piece on New York Times piqued my interest recently. It was titled, "This Column is Gluten Free."



Now, if you followed this blog for any length of time, you would know I was diagnosed with celiac disease years ago and have managed my diet ever since. My diagnosis was pretty graphic as every time I would eat gluten, my overloaded system would respond with some sort of extreme reaction such as angioedema (large hives) that covered the bottom of one foot. So needless to say, I tend to read lots of articles that provide strategies to keep that from happening again.

But this article was different. This highlighted how individuals use food allergies to further perpetuate the ME culture.

If you are unaware of this phenomenon, the ME culture is something that started tangentially by the baby boomers and has lifted to new heights with millennials thanks to constant social media pandering. Facebook is the number one social media platform for marketing because it is so widely used, you get unprecedented access to people's lives. This is followed closely by Instagram, a platform solely dedicated to the selfie.

Sadly, this isn't just a millennial issue. As a social media manager, I'm required to have three social media accounts of my own to do my job. I chose Facebook, Twitter and Instagram which  call the triumpherant.  It's hard not to notice that everyone is obsessed with themselves, including many of my peers. When they aren't photographing their face, it's their kids, their food, their dogs, etc.

Now before you blast me, I have taken a selfie or two. I have even run a blog for over a decade that chronicles my bathroom habits, terrible things my kid says, my obsession with the Foo Fighters, my divorce and subsequent dating and the time I nicked an nipple.

Those who live in glass houses should not drink whiskey, strip naked and wander around reading trashy magazines... or however that saying goes.

Either way, it still seems as a society we have a problem with ME. We use twitter to bash and revile someone we don't even know because WE must share our opinion. We put a book by a woman with no discernible skills but who can take selifes on the New York Times Bestseller's list. We even stage Instagram photos to make our life seem way more exciting than it is.

Now the thing that makes us special, highlights the ME, is your raging, possibly fake food allergy.

"...most conspicuously in the most aggressive, competitive, unequal, individualistic, anxiety-ridden and narcissistic societies, where enlightenment about food has been offset by the sort of compulsive anxiety about it that can give rise to imagined intolerances and allergies."

Isn't it about time to stop??