
The hard part of helping survivors recover comes months later - dwaxe
http://www.vox.com/2015/9/11/9301089/911-survivor-recovery
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acobster
Good article. Confronts the emotional reality of brutal trauma without being
invalidating.

Just one critique: why does Maria have to be dressed like a "sexy librarian"?
This risqué suggestion is jarring and out of character with the rest of the
piece.

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pritambaral
> why does Maria have to be dressed like a "sexy librarian"?

A quite liked the explanation suggested here[0] to the same question.

[0]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12466454](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12466454)

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benbs
"All of 5-foot-2 and dressed like a sexy librarian — snug blouse and pencil
skirt — Maria usually counseled homeless patients at Bellevue Hospital, the
institution famous (and infamous) for treating New York City's poorest and
sickest."

I do not understand why the author made this characterization. It seems to
undermine their point.

~~~
brudgers
I suspect that the author characterized the therapist's physical description
in that particular way because it was relevant to the opening scene: the man's
come on line was to define his 'PTSD' as 'post traumatic sex disorder'.

The therapist's physical appearance and gender add explanatory context for her
ability to predict the man's inappropriate behavior. And suggest why she was
the target of the man's inappropriate behavior in the first place.

~~~
13of40
I think "sexy librarian" speaks volumes about American gender and social
roles: In order to understand the phrase you first have to assume librarians
are mostly female and aren't, on the whole, sexy. Then you need to understand
what a librarian is assumed to be - probably someone who's interested in
"smart stuff" in general, but not a specific field, and not in an outwardly
focused way like a professor or a scientist or an engineer. Then you need to
imagine the appropriate age for this creature - not a young 20-something girl,
and not 50 years old (like some of us). Nay, though she's a ripe, ripe
blossom, she's been _protected_ and kept _clean_ (but perhaps a little dusty)
until now by her love for books, her yester-decade choice of apparel, and
those ubiquitous wide-lensed spectacles. Yes, she's been waiting for you all
these years. _In the stacks._

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LeoPanthera
My second protest about posting clickbait titles. Please don't.

~~~
curtis
I don't really like the title either, but in this case it is the actual title
from the source. Despite my reservations about the title, I think it was worth
a read, and I upvoted it. Also, I'm not sure what a better title should be,
and I'm not sure it's reasonable to expect the submitter to think up a better
one when submitting. In fact changing the title from the source is kind of
frowned upon on this site.

~~~
x1798DE
> In fact changing the title from the source is kind of frowned upon on this
> site.

I think it's perfectly acceptable to change clickbait headlines to simple
factual ones. In this case something like, "First hand account of a case
worker in the Salvation Army disaster recovery center following 9/11". Or even
just the existing headline without the "The worst part was 6 months later".

~~~
dang
> _I think it 's perfectly acceptable to change clickbait headlines to simple
> factual ones._

Not only acceptable, but explicitly called for by
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).

When we do change a title we try to use representative language from the
article itself, rather than making up a completely new one. In the above case
we've taken the linkbait bits out of the original title and reordered the
result to make it grammatical.

