I'm Menopausal, and This is My Friend, Obese

I like WebMD - usually. I write a health and wellness newsletter, and its upbeat, prevention-focused newsletters perk me up when I hit my morning email, even though they arrive by the bedpan-full. 

Menopausal and Obese, copyright, Teece Aronin. 

The articles are informative and life-affirming, like how to get fit playing with your dog; how to compare Paleo, Mediterranean, and DASH; how to cook with spices; how eating your main course off a salad plate makes you feel full faster. 

WebMD also addresses mental health topics with a balance of optimism and realism, and its photographs are vivid, colorful and otherwise eye-catching. 

But WebMD lost its Wellness Motivator of the Year Award when I came across this recent headline in its newsletter:

Exercises that Address Menopausal Weight Gain: About 30% of Women Ages 50-59 Are Obese. Learn How to Keep from Joining Them . . .

Really now. 

I've already established that I'm an avid WebMD reader. What I haven't mentioned is that I fit the demographic of "women ages 50-59," am menopausal, and, while I strive for a sort of va-va-voom quality, I am obese - at least temporarily. 

And true to the demographics, at least 30% of my gal-pals are too. Shouldn't WebMD presume that women like me are readers of its newsletter? I'm thinking it would have been better, dare I say nicer, to say something like this:

Exercises that Control Menopausal Weight Gain

And then just shut up. 

The WebMD  newsletter could have dropped a few pounds just by cutting that subtitle and that would have set a good example for what it seems to consider the 50-plus fatties. 

While its prevention-oriented articles are great in a lot of cases, WebMD is not Prevention magazine; Prevention magazine is Prevention magazine and can get away with that kind of article with a lot more justification, based on the name of the publication. Still, the subtitle is atrocious, and I would hope Prevention would have come up with something else, just as I think WebMD would have - ordinarily. 

Maybe if I write a letter to WebMD, they'll be impressed enough by my keen editorial eye to hire me. Then their articles would kick off more like this:

About 30% of Women Ages 50-59 Meet the American Medical Association's Criteria for Obesity. If this Sounds Like You, and You'd Like to Drop Some Weight, Here Are Exercises that Can Help . . .

WebMD . . . shape up!

Imported from Detroit

I was born and raised in Pontiac, Michigan, a once thriving factory town and home of the Pontiac automobile. The last time I drove through my old neighborhood, I saw boarded-up houses and empty lots, and the streets looked like the grins of gap-toothed skulls. I sobbed all the way home. 

Photo by Liz Weddon on Unsplash

But people still live on that street, some of them my old neighbors, and where there's life there's hope. I love Pontiac. I would never have had some of my best friends and many of my happiest memories without it. 

The other day I was loading groceries into my car when a woman who was parked nose-to-nose with me yelled, "Hey! Excuse me!" I walked towards her. She was a black woman, middle-aged, with glasses and a not quite trusting smile.

"What's that mean on your windshield?"

I looked and saw that she was talking about the decal at the top reading: IMPORTED FROM DETROIT. It was there when I bought the car, used, a year or so before. The salesman explained that it was part of an auto industry marketing campaign and meant that the car was as good as any import. Once he said that, I didn't give it a second thought.

"Oh!" I smiled, oblivious to the potential for confrontation. "It was there when I bought the car. I think it's just a little poke at the imports."

"You sure it doesn't mean Detroit's no better than a third-world country?" 

She didn't look like someone trying to pick a fight. Instead, she seemed to be trying to avoid a fight when there was a possible affront staring her in the face.

My eyes got very wide. "Honestly, ma'am, I never took it that way at all, and if I'd thought that's what it meant, I would have had the salesman take it off. I bought the car used, and it was already on there. I always took it as pro-Detroit, not anti."

"Oh!" she laughed. "That sounds better to me. You see, I'm from Detroit, and I was just about to go a few rounds with you if that was your opinion!"

I smiled back. "Well, ma'am, I'm from Pontiac, and I think people like you and me ought to stick together."

"I think you're right!" she laughed. "You have a blessed day now!"

Life would be a lot better for everybody, and maybe last a lot longer for some, if we listened and talked before jumping to conclusions. 

I know that two men could have defused this tense situation just as amicably. Still, I think it's a good argument for pumping estrogen into city water supplies, just to help things along a little bit. 

  

Maybe Baby - Hope in the Current Political Climate

This past week, I felt sadder than I have in a long time. 

Image by Teece Aronin

I felt sad because so many of the people who share the U.S. with me are coming undone. Too many hate each other. Too many are afraid. Too many had great expectations and now are caught like cattle in the crossfire. 

And when it comes to politics, everyone is cattle, either all the time or part of the time; we just don't all know it. 

Cattle, for our purposes, are the innocents, the voiceless, the held back, the poor, the easy to manipulate, the under-educated, and the powerful. The word is not necessarily a slam. 

This kind of cattle has little to do with gender. A steer or a bull could be a woman, and a cow could be a man. The key difference between a bull and a steer is that the steer has been castrated. Hang in there; it'll make sense in a minute.  
Some cattle are calves: At the start of the Obama administration, calves stepped into the light, cautious and blinking, hopeful that their world was now safer. They are the undocumented, fleeing treacherous homelands. They are the LGBTQIA-plus community, victimized in disproportionate levels of gender-based or homophobic violence. They are the working poor, scrambling to live on less than livable wages. They are a lot of other people. Calves are anyone who is unfairly vulnerable. 

But back to the steers: Steers can be naive or easily led, and while most don't fully understand their part in the current political climate, many are convinced they know it all. Steers can hail from any party. When they are castrated, they lose their voices and the critical thinking skills they might otherwise have developed. They can bellow but not articulate. Steers have only wet coal in their bellies where there could have been fire. 

Next come the bulls. Bulls are anyone with power - educational, financial, political - anything that can get or keep them ahead. 

Cows are underrepresented, underestimated, marginalized, and economically disadvantaged people, many of them women, and sometimes they overlap with the calves. The over-simplified reason most cows are held back is because that's what happens when unscrupulous bulls are in charge. People of color, indigenous people, people who lack access to the internet, college educations, and quality healthcare free of bias, are pushed down, trampled, and left behind. 

Since the election, Donald Trump has expressed a willingness to use Obama's Affordable Care Act (ACA) as a framework for a restructured healthcare system, but many of the cows and calves haven't heard this news that might have given them a sliver of hope. 

That slow news drip down to the cows and calves is what makes developments such as Trump's seemingly softer stance on the ACA something like trickle-down economics. It doesn't matter if the news is good or bad or vitally important - because the cows and calves scrambling for survival can't hear it. They don't sit down to read The Wall Street Journal on smart phones over a sushi lunch because they can't afford a smart phone, can't afford sushi, or can't afford lunch.  

Singer, songwriter, and poet Leonard Cohen died Thursday at age 82, right smack in the midst of all this hoohah. His song, Everybody Knows summed up the bitterness many people feel about sinking systems such as ours. It would fit no matter which candidate won last week. 

Everybody knows the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor the rich get rich
That's how it goes
Everybody knows
Everybody knows the boat is leaking
Everybody knows that the captain lied
Everybody got this broken feeling
Like their father or their dog just died

How dare Cohen die, leaving us in this mess when he was clearly so savvy about what caused it? The answer, I think, was to pursue his muse, Marianne, who died just three months prior. But that's a sad story for a sad essay and a sad day. 

Today, I am focused on hope.

To those of you who say of Trump, "My God, why all the stress? He hasn't even done anything yet," please understand that you probably support Trump and wait with anticipation to see what he does next. You can't imagine the fears of every cow and calf. 

Speaking as a cow, even I can't.  

If you are LGBTQIA-plus, undocumented, have a green card but don't know in which country you'll feel safe in a couple of years, are a working poor person, or one of any number of upended calves, your tender legs quivering in the air, take heart: 

We really don't know exactly what a Trump presidency will look like. Try not to worry. Instead, think constructively. Learn which rights you do have. Look for legal loopholes. Take strength from the like-minded, and respect those who oppose you with respect. Be a helper. Do everything you can to help yourself and others.  

No president delivers on every promise or threat made during a campaign. Trump might prove himself more even keeled than the persona he invoked to win the White House.

Maybe his beltway outsider status and business experience will give him an edge in fixing what politicians haven't. 

If you give him a chance and he still performs poorly, hope for minimal collateral damage and help to repair it.

If like Bill, you're still married to Hillary, maybe she'll get another shot. 

Maybe Michelle Obama will run for President. Thanks to the ground Clinton paved, she wouldn't be the first former First Lady to seek the Oval Office. 

Trump is rolling back much of the angry rhetoric. Besides claiming he will use the ACA as a framework for remodeling our healthcare system, Trump met with President Obama for what was expected to be 10 minutes but lasted for about 90. Unless one of them tied the other to a chair, it's likely there was a meaningful dialog. And when Trump promised to call on President Obama for future counsel, my heart soared. Will it happen? I don't know, but the fact that Trump said it at all gives me hope. 

The fact that we're all cattle isn't as bad as it sounds since cattle are among the finest of creatures. We should combine the bovine qualities we seek to keep with the higher intelligence, gumption, and purposeful kindness that come with our humanity. 

In the meantime, let's try to not kill each other.

According to My Specs

Last week for the first time, I couldn't find my glasses - because I wasn't wearing them. 

I might keep a few extra 

pairs of glasses around the house - 

or around my face. 

I yelled for my daughter who searched while I trailed her, whining over and over that I couldn't find my glasses without my glasses.

When my daughter found my specs, I put them on with the nerve-racked, shaky-handed gratitude of someone handed nitroglycerin tablets in just the nick of time. I sat on the edge of my creaking old quilt-covered bed, and it hit me: 

- I'm a woman of a certain age. 

- I need my glasses to find my glasses. 

- The bed wasn't creaking, it was me!

Then I realized that glasses had been dangling my future dotage before my failing eyes for years. 

I didn't have children until I was in my forties. When I was forty-three and getting an eye exam, the optometrist broke the news that it was time for my first pair of bifocals. Hand to God, the words that flew from my mouth at that moment were: "I can't need bifocals - I have babies at home!" 

For years I'd thought that dual umbilical cords were carrying sustenance from my ovaries to my eyeballs and that having children that late in life, my eyeballs were returning the favor. But for that to be true, my inner workings would have to look like an Escher print. 

Then there was the adult movie with a scene that depressed me for years. This movie (which I might have heard about, not necessarily seen!) depicted women, age 50-plus, getting a lot of, shall we say, attention, from younger men. A woman in one of the vignettes was wearing reading glasses and never took them off despite them slipping ever closer to the end of her nose. Now I understand that she didn't take them off because she needed them to see what was happening.

Forgetting where I've left my glasses is bound to happen again. And blaming my glasses, as though they're at fault by forgetting where they put my face, won't help. It's time to accept the facts. I'm getting older. 

But that doesn't mean I can't still love who I am, and even who I see whenever I look in the mirror.  And it doesn't mean I can't see myself in the best light possible even if I need the best light possible to see myself. 

We crawl, then we walk, then we walk a little slower. All the better for seeing what's most important and what is truly beautiful.  









  

Is it My Fault He Was a Fraud?

I love men, but like unrefrigerated mayo at a Fourth of July picnic, men don't love me back. 

I'm still sorting out an experience where there was enough of what I can only call malevolent relationship weirdness going on that for just a minute, I wondered if it was my fault.  

Was it my fault that after nearly a year of dating a man, he told me something jaw-droppingly "surprising" about himself (no, he wasn't married) followed by his unilateral decision that this issue was too big an obstacle for a continued relationship? And all just one week after encouraging me to be freer with him? 

When he told me all this I cleverly pointed out: "But this is just one week after you encouraged me to be freer with you." 

It seems that when I became freer with him, I became happier with him and we couldn't have that in part because the surprise he'd just shared, aka the bomb he'd just dropped,  might not be conducive to my continued happiness. 

When asked, "Why didn't you tell me this sooner?" he replied, "Because you couldn't have handled it sooner."

Interesting how Jack Nicholson here knew what I couldn't handle when I'd handled much bigger bombs from much better men. 

"What do you want to say to me?" he asked, dipping his head tenderly to one side so that it appeared he really cared.

"I have nothing to say to you," I replied.

"Well, if you did have something to say to me, what would it be?" he coaxed.

I won't quote myself here because my response was lengthy and contained a lot of Fs. 

He smiled and said he understood.  

It would be a huge leap for me to imagine how this man could profess to know what I could or could not deal with much less understand how I felt. For me it had as much to do with the deceit I perceived as the revelation itself.  

And that's where I come in again: Was this somehow my fault?

Maybe it was and maybe this is the reason: Maybe I just happened to attract a man who knew not that his secret was something I couldn't handle, but that it was something I should never have to handle. And instead of being open with it, or better yet, not pursuing me in the first place, he helped himself to almost a year with me under false pretenses.

In short, maybe I'm the reason because I'm the one who just happened to attract a fraud.

Gloria Steinem is 81 and Still Cool

Gloria Steinem is 81!

Fish Without a Bicycle
Illustration, copyright Teece Aronin

And she doesn't look all that different from how she looked back in the day, back when we could expect something just a little cutting but still elegant, to fly from her lips to the media's ear on an almost daily basis.

But I'm throwing water on one of the fiercest arguments Steinem ever made, that a woman's looks don't define her, and, of course, she's right. 

I mention Steinem's looks only in the context of her being 81, and how it seems the cosmic force that launched her into 1960s psyches now stirs something into Steinem's coffee with a magic spoon, making her close to ageless so she can continue to challenge and guide in the form with which the world became so enamored years ago.

If I don't embrace every Steinem message, I have a sense that she's closer to right than I am and that I often miss her point. Remember when she quipped, "A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle?" I take some exception to that, particularly since fish and bicycles would make pretty weird-looking offspring. But I probably should aspire to a more full-on embrace of Steinem's point of view.

Then again, perhaps I have. After all, I have reached the point where I don't see myself as needing a man, simply preferring to share life with one. And where Steinem artfully articulated contempt for the notion that women need men, sometimes I really do need a man because I've never ridden a bicycle that . . . well, once maybe.

And if a woman wants to get someplace on a bike while enjoying a man's company and not having to pedal, she needs a man. Just ask Katherine Ross. After Paul Newman rode her all around the barnyard in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Ross' beautiful bum no doubt ached for days, but at least her legs didn't get tired.  And since that's always the trade-off in that situation, I prefer to see the bike tire as half full.

I wonder if I'm now guilty of objectifying men. Ugh, liberation, equity and equality can be tricky. Let's just say that I have a great liking for men, for many of their perspectives, and for their hard work and companionship. And yes, I do see the genders as equals. 

But what really gets me, I say as I miss Steinem's point yet again, is that I'll never look that good when I'm 81. There are recent photos of her all over the internet promoting her memoir, still lean, still clad in tight-fitting jeans and body-hugging tops and with a belt loosely draped around her slender hips.

Arriving home at the end of a long book tour, does Steinem groan as she eases onto the edge of the bed? Does she whine as she pulls off her boots? Does she grimace while removing her jeans? Does she then step gingerly into her walk-in tub, "perfect for the senior with mobility issues?" And does she have this walk-in tub because she can't get out of an ordinary tub unassisted? I think not. Something tells me Steinem has a regular bathtub and that she gets in and out of it as easily as ever because Gloria Steinem is just that cool.

And because Steinem probably needs a walk-in tub like a fish needs a bicycle.

To a Few of the Gentlemen on OKCupid

Dear Gentlemen:

Man with the Twitchy Mustache by 

Teece Aronin. Available on products at

redbubble.com/people/phylliswalter. 

Thank you all so very much for taking the time to "view," "like," "favorite," etcetera my profile and for all your lovely messages.

Since each of you was memorable in your own way, I am writing this letter in an effort to acknowledge the unique impression each of you made on me.

First, to God'sGift, no, Heaven isn't missing an angel, but I'm flattered that you thought it might be. Hell might be short one little devil, though, you little devil, you. ;-D

And Iamblessed451, thank you for saying that if there was anything in this world that God took His time creating, it was the perfection of my beauty. Actually, I think He spent no more than a few minutes whipping me up and if you saw me first thing in the morning, you'd think so, too.

To CarnivoreYum who wrote: "Oh yes, you are meaty where I like it," believe it or not, I wasn't thinking of you when I threw all that junk in my trunk mindlessly eating my way through last winter. But if it works for you, it works for me. 

Howfine69: I liked the way you didn't beat around the bush when all your message said was: "have sex with me?" You didn't even waste time capitalizing the H. Very swift, bold move, 69, but I'm afraid it still missed because, well, your message kind of creeped me out.  

And speaking of creeped out . . .

KittyLiquor - While it would be mice to meet you, too, I really must pass. My cat gets crazy jealous, and whenever that happens, she throws up in my shoes. But thank you.

James: While your message was charming, I was a little confused when your picture was of a beautiful young woman. I think that in your rush to scam me, you neglected to switch out the female profile photo with one of a man. But don't be embarrassed, James; that kind of thing happens to scammers all the time. It must be hard keeping track of all the little details, like if your scam target is a man or a woman. If I'm wrong, and you really are a beautiful young woman named James, please accept my apology, and know that if I were wired a little differently, I would definitely go out with you. In other words, it's not you, it's me.

I still have more of you to thank and in the meantime, I'm sure others of you will step forward with your own unique ways of sweeping a girl off her feet.

But until then, buzz off -

T

A Most Reluctant Cougar

Online dating is downright surreal when you're middle-aged, especially when you're a little on the shy side.

One of the biggest shockers is my appeal to certain men in their upper teens and early twenties. Actually, these aren't men at all; they're unsupervised Boy Scouts with Internet access.

Occasionally the messages they write me are sweet, almost innocent and I imagine Ron Howard in Happy Days asking a girl to the prom. I send them on their way with a "Thank you and I'm very flattered but . . ."

Sometimes this is enough to redirect their attention to the flat-tummied twenty-somethings with whom they belong, or on to other women old enough to be their mothers. But often they return, more aggressive, asking if I'm afraid I can't handle them. Then I write back, "Oh, don't worry about little old me. Run along now."

Some of my friends (and I like these friends), offer a flattering theory as to why this happens; that these young men have had some experience with girls and want to know what a woman is like. Sometimes these friends even call me a cougar. I like that. Cougar.

Of course we all know I'm about as cougar-y as a house cat - a timid, spayed and lazy one. I'm more likely to crawl into a man's lap and fall asleep than to use my claws for anything other than scratching dried smutch off a kid's face. 

Other friends (the ones I don't particularly like because they're honest), shoot me this jaded look that says, "Seriously?" And then words like kept and credit card and sugar momma float by my wounded self. 

At least twice now these kids were med students at the local university (possibly on the fence about geriatrics as a specialty) and another of them was in law school. 

The law student kept writing back, obviously amused by my rejections, and trying to trip me into agreeing to "date" him. I wrote and explained that first of all, NO, and second, that I was going through a divorce and didn't want to have to explain him in court.

He came back with, "Well, don't tell them about me."

"And if they ask?" 

"Then just lie." 

"But I might be under oath." 

"So?"

I wrote, "I'm shocked to think that you, a law student, would suggest I lie under oath."

He wrote back, "Hah-hah!"

He'd obviously been in law school a while because he had a firm grasp on how our legal system works. 

Eventually he gave up, concluding that by the time he managed to talk me into anything, both of us would have teeth in a glass by the motel bed.

But what do I really do when a 22-year-old asks me out? 

I politely decline while addressing him as dude, call up all my friends (except my honest ones) and flaunt it like hell.