The Last Time I Wore A Dress Paper PDF
The Last Time I Wore A Dress Paper PDF
The Last Time I Wore A Dress Paper PDF
Memoir Paper 2
The Last Time I Wore a Dress highlighted mental patients and mental hospitals so bluntly
that it made me, as a reader, a little uncomfortable. In general, mental patients have a certain
label or stigma that our society has associated them to. They are considered unstable, crazy, and
not capable of surviving in “normal” society. It’s also not uncommon to think of patients in
mental hospitals as dangerous to themselves and others. After reading through this book, I would
say that there is some truth to these generalizations, but there is so much more complexity and
shades of gray than people realize. I think that as a society, myself included, people tend to
forget that patients at mental hospitals are still humans, with real, complex emotions. I think that
our tendency as humans is to disassociate from things that we don’t know or understand with
mental disorders being the perfect example of this. In The Last Time I Wore a Dress Daphne
Scholinski, or Dylan Scholinski as he likes to be called now, forces the reader out of that
For every generalized truth about mental hospitals, Scholinski relates to it from a human
perspective rather than an academic one. An example would be the assumption that residents of
mental hospitals are dangerous. There are some people that Scholinski talks about that need to be
looked after for both their safety and the safety of others. The first example that comes to mind is
Anne. Anne was a woman with eight different personalities and who consistently tried to hurt
herself and others. Anne scared Scholinski, even threatened to kill her, and yet as a reader you
weren’t scared of her. In fact, there was a sense of vulnerability to Anne that made you want to
help her. I felt this especially strong when Scholinski upset her by telling her that her family was
on the way. Her family was obviously a source of distress and fear for Anne and that
vulnerability made me want to sympathize with her. It’s hard to sympathize with something that
you don’t understand but Scholinski’s blunt way of narrating forced me out of my comfort zone
and highlighted characteristics that forced me to do exactly that. It also made me realize how
I never gave a lot of thought to mental hospitals because I was wary of them. I never
attempted to understand the people behind their diagnosis. I just took these stereotypes as facts
because that is what I always heard growing up. Scholinski revealed an uncomfortable fact about
myself that I didn’t know I had. The Last Time I Wore a Dress forced me out of my comfort zone
and made me realize that not everything is about a diagnosis. It made me remember that there’s
actual people behind those diagnosis with emotions, fears, and hope. A diagnosis doesn’t define
a person, in fact psychiatrists can be wrong. Before reading this book, it never occurred to me
Scholinski exaggerated her alcohol and drug use to distract from her problems with her
gender. She exaggerated her alcohol and drug use so much that she was put into the rehab unit
when she transferred to Forest Hospital. This wasn’t the first time that she lied to her therapist
about her symptoms. During her stay at Michael Reese Hospital, Scholinski and some other
patients made bets on what different disorders they could get the doctors to add to their charts. It
shocked me how easy it was for them to fool the doctors and add random disorders to their chart
that they don’t have. The fact that these teenagers were so easily able to influence these trained
doctors was scary, especially because the disorders that they were adding to their chart seemed
so farfetched from the reason why they were in the hospital in the first place. I don’t know
whether Scholinski and her friends were that skilled in acting that they could successfully pull
off symptoms for different disorders or if the doctors in charge were looking for any opportunity
to label them with another diagnosis. It seemed to me, that therapists wanted their patients to
have more than one disorder, otherwise known as Comorbidity (Beidel, Bulik, &Stanely, 2016).
From out textbook, I know that disorders are complex and that they can’t be so simply defined
by one single disorder (Beidel, Bulik, & Stanely, 2016). I know that comorbidity allows for a
more encompassing diagnosis, but I got the feeling that there was another motive in the
Scholinski’s case.
Dr. Browning, Scholinski’s psychiatrist, seemed to think that the more disorders that he
could diagnosis her with, the more validation he would receive. It would mean that he’s doing
his job right, and he never tried to delve deeper into these “issues” that would randomly spring
up. There was no investigation into the causes of these new symptoms, it was just anther label
that was put onto her. I think a lot of problems could have been solved if Dr. Browning or any of
the nurses attempted to see through the distractions she caused by her exaggerations and lies. It
seemed like her doctors and nurses did what many people in our society do with regards to
mental disorders. They looked at Scholinski and her friends as experiments rather than human
beings and because of that she was able to easily distract them from her real problems with her
gender identity. Out of all the disorders she was diagnosed with gender identity disorder was the
one she related to, and because of that, it’s the one she tried her hardest to hide.
The way that Scholinski was treated for not being girly enough frustrated me throughout
the entire book. I know that this book is set in the 1980’s and that the idea of gender and Gender
Dysphoria wasn’t something that many people were comfortable with (Beidel, Bulik, & Stanely,
2016). I wasn’t alive during the 1980s, but I know that even now, some people can’t understand
how someone’s biological sex and gender are different, and I could only imagine how gender
and Gender Dysphoria were viewed back then. Scholinski is diagnosed with Gender Identity
Disorder, and she doesn’t like that label, it made her feel abnormal, like a “freak”. Reading about
the treatments that Scholinski had to endure because she wasn’t what society thought a girl
should be, caused me to become frustrated. My irritation was fueled by the fact that people who
Her parents should have been her two biggest sources of support, that’s what parents are
meant to do. They’re meant to protect their children, especially while they are young and
vulnerable. Scholinski’s parents didn’t do that. Both or her parents went through traumatic times
in their lives and because of that their ability to be good parents was almost non-existent. I think
that both parents were suffering from Posttraumatic stress disorder (Beidel, Bulik, & Stanley,
2016). Scholinksi’s mother grew up in an abuse, controlling household, while her father suffered
and broke down during the Vietnam War. Each of her parents dealt with their PTSD in different
ways, none of them were healthy, and all of them hurt Scholinski. Her dad would become angry
and frequently beat her, while her mother ran away from her children and her responsibilities.
Whenever Scholinski went to stay with her mother, she would never get any attention, and in
most instances her mother acted just as immature, if not more so than Scholinski herself. Many
times throughout the book, Scholinski would talk about her parents and the feeling that if she
disappeared, her parents would be relieved. This feeling of being a burden was also very
apparent in the book that we read for our first memoir paper. Both books had very different
disorders and experiences but, their relationships with their parents had some similarities. In both
books, the parents blamed their children their existence. Both sets of parents had their own
undiagnosed mental disorders that they didn’t handle well, and the biggest commonality is that
In Scholinski’s case that lack of support continued with all of the adult authority figures
in her life. Whenever Scholinski did feel a shred of that support from an adult, she would do
anything to keep that support in her life, so much so that it became obsessive and unhealthy. In
turn, that unhealthy obsession would drive away that source of support and again she would find
herself without a support system. We saw a perfect example of this in form of her attachment to
a nurse she had at Michael Reese Hospital named Kay. Scholinski desperately wanted love and
attention, and if she ever received just a little, she would latch on to it with all her might. Nurse
Kay would listen to Scholinski and would give her that positive attention she craved and because
of that Scholinski desperately wanted Nurse Kay to adopt her. All she wanted to be part of a
normal loving family and she thought that Nurse Kay would be the one to give it to her. When
Nurse Kay left the hospital for a brief period, Scholinski sent Nurse Kay letter after letter telling
her how much she loves her and trying to convince Nurse Kay should to adopt her. I think that
Scholinski was experiencing some of the symptoms of Separation anxiety disorder (Beidel,
Bulik, & Stanely). She grew attached to Nurse Kay and didn’t know how to act when she was
gone. Unfortunately, her separation anxiety and her fear of being abandoned caused her to latch
onto Nurse Kay in an unhealthy manner and Nurse Kay ended up distancing herself from
Scholinski. The only people that Scholinski seemed to have was the other residents of the
As a reader, I got the feeling that Scholinski found comfort in the fact that she wasn’t
considered as abnormal as other residents in the hospital. It seemed like she never took anything
thing that the nurses or the doctors told her seriously. Outside of the hospital walls, she would be
exhibiting very Abnormal behavior (Beidel, Bulik, & Stanely, 2016) but compared to the other
residents her behavior seemed extremely tame. I think that’s part of the reason why she made
such exaggerated stories, so she would be able to fit in with the rest of residents. Scholinski
didn’t feel like she fit in anywhere. She didn’t fit in with “normal” society because of her
behavior was different from the societal and culture norms that she was supposed to follow,
while at the same time she felt too “normal” to fit in with the residents of these mental hospitals.
She was in this in-between stage where, her riding a bike down the street shirtless broke an
important societal norm, but she also had to exaggerate her alcohol and drug use in order to be
considered “unstable” enough to belong at a mental hospital. She never felt like she belonged,
not inside of the hospital, not outside with her family, not even in her own body. She lived a
really lonely existence and I couldn’t help but sympathize with her and I had such a strong desire
to help her while I was reading this book. I wanted to help her understand this disorder they
In the ending of The Last Time I Wore a Dress, Scholinski gives a definition of Gender
Identity Disorder according to a book called the “Diagnostic and Statistical Manuel of Mental
Disorders”. Scholinski didn’t agree with the manual’s definition, in fact she called it “ludicrous”
and she couldn’t relate to it. I wondered whether this was because she didn’t have Gender
Identity Disorder, or if the definition itself was so biased and constrictive that she couldn’t relate
to it. My curiosity caused me to do a little more research on Google, and the first thing I found
out is that Daphne Scholinski is now Dylan Scholinski. He decided to transition away from his
biological gender. I still referred to Scholinski as a “her” throughout this reflection, simply
because Daphne Scholinski is still penned as the author of this book. She still identified as a
female throughout this book, so that’s the pronoun I used when talking about her experiences
during this time period. This research did satisfy my curiosity and gave me the answer to my
questions. I think that the definition in the DSM was biased and had negative connotations to it
Modern’s society’s view on gender dysphoria and transgendered people in general isn’t
perfect and our society has a lot more work to do in terms of education, but I think that
Scholinski would have had such a different experience, had only she been born a few years later.
This book not only educated me on the flaws that occur within the mental disorder community =,
but it also made me think how many other people have been told that they’re crazy or wrong for
being themselves. It made me wonder how people just lumped everyone with a mental disorder
together. It made me think about my own opinions and subconscious prejudices and what I can
do to better myself. No matter how uncomfortable or frustrated this book made me, I think I’m
Beidel, D. C., Bulik, C. M., & Stanley, M. A. (2016). Abnormal Psychology: A Science