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150 DOI: 10.7330/9780874218909.c07 7 From Oral Tradition to Cyberspace Tapeworm Diet Rumors and Legends1 Elizabeth Tucker Twenty-first century Americans live in a complex, fast-moving society. With free-flowing information from the Internet, television, and radio, it can be difficult for people to distinguish fact from fiction. At times of crisis, rumors and legends articulate borderlines between safety and danger , health and illness, and boredom and excitement. Sociologist Tamotsu Shibutani defines rumors as pieces of information that help groups solve problems (1966, 227). According to folklorists Gary Alan Fine and Bill Ellis, some rumors about immigration, terrorism, trade, and tourism are “too good to be false” (2010, 5; italics in original). These rumors express anxieties about globalization, emphasizing threats to established beliefs and perceptions. Organ-theft rumors, for example, express resentment of powerful nations and concern about children’s vulnerability. Legends make rumors more persuasive through their development of exciting, controversial story lines that seem to have a kernel of truth. Folklorist Linda Dégh explains that legends debate belief: “Short or long, complete or rudimentary , local or global, supernatural, horrible, mysterious, or grotesque, about one’s own or someone else’s experience, the sounding of contrary opinions is what makes a legend a legend” (2001, 97). Besides expressing anxieties and concern about truth, legends show how we adapt to uncertainty in our global economy. Tapeworm diet rumors began in the 1960s, when people wondered whether swallowing a tapeworm would make them slender and attractive without any exercise or reduction in food intake. In the late 1960s, promoters of a weight-loss candy called Ayds told stories about people who had From Oral Tradition to Cyberspace 151 lost massive amounts of weight by eating two pieces of Ayds candy with a hot drink before meals (“Ayds Diet Candy” 2003). During this same time period, people enjoyed sharing legends about famous-but-foolhardy doomed dieters and jokes about cute but obnoxious tapeworms that demanded food. These rumors, legends, and jokes did not specify the tapeworm’s scientific names, but we should recognize the two names most applicable to diet rumors and legends: Taenia solium (pork tapeworm) and Taenia saginata (beef tapeworm). This chapter will trace patterns in tapeworm diet rumors and legends from the 1960s to the present, exploring how digital folklore expresses the shift toward fear of a country where health and safety threats arose in 2009. I will also examine tapeworms’ symbolic significance as monstrous , voracious creatures that express a societal code. My interest in tapeworms began during my first research project as a college professor. In “The Seven-Day Wonder Diet: Magic and Ritual in Diet Folklore” (1977), I analyzed some amazing and disgusting legends circulating among middle-aged women and college students in upstate New York who worried about their weight. Among these narratives, the most horrifying legend described a tapeworm crawling out of a woman’s nose while she lay in bed next to her husband; she had swallowed a tapeworm in an effort to become thinner.2 This legend reflects Americans’ interest in quick weight loss during the 1960s and 1970s. In 1977 I found that many female dieters dreamed of quasi-magical changes, of shapeshifting from unsatisfying bodies to beautiful Cinderellas. Since the early 1990s, when many people began to use the Internet, diet rumors and legends have proliferated. Quick and easy access to information has fed dieters’ desire for rapid bodily transformation, encouraging them to expect awe-inspiring weight loss with very little waiting time, but it has also made them ask more questions and heightened their awareness of danger. The Internet has made it possible for users to read and send messages while watching videos and working on projects. This simultaneous involvement in multiple media has added intriguing layers to the process of rumor- and legend-sharing that has existed orally for so many years. As Henry Jenkins explains in Convergence Culture (2008), active participation in new and older media has caused a cultural shift that brings together both innovative and traditional forms of communication.3 Media scholars James Hay and Nick Couldry (2011) identify four ways that the term convergence has been used, including one that applies to communication about tapeworms: “as a technological hybridity that has folded uses of separate media into one another” 152 Elizabeth Tucker (473). Before turning to examples of media uses, I will consider the symbolic resonance of tapeworms, which makes them powerful and complicated. Worms’ Symbolic Meaning Why have tapeworms fascinated...

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