Archive for August, 2009

Ready For Your Sexy Makeover?

Are you looking for a way to exude sexiness but get uncomfortable in sexy clothes? Try a new approach – the sexiness makeover from the inside out.

Oprah online did a piece called “Hello, Sexy!”

Well, “Hello back at you!” I thought as I read the article. “You must be reading my blog because I am so about getting the sexy on.”

In fact, I think about it only 50,000 times a day. And gosh darn here I go again.

The Oprah series showed some spectacular before and after sexy makeovers. You look at the before shot of one woman who says she “lost her sexy.” And, I hate to say it but it’s true. She looks like a zombie mom in her before shot, dressed in Adidas sweats (the original ones, from the 70’s), and a t-shirt that fits like a muumuu.

Oprah says, “We’ve done enough shows over the years to know that when a woman shuts down her sensual side, she loses a vital and powerful part of herself.” There’s no question that this woman has lost more than her sexy – she’s lost her self, her identity, her style, her spark plugs, and her smile.

But then, here comes the after shot, preceded, of course, by a creative director, a beauty director, a celebrity stylist, a hairstylist to the stars, a makeup artist, and eyebrow expert.

Suddenly zombie mom looks like she wouldn’t be caught dead in anything less than D&G, Jimmy Choo, and at least enough hair product to shellac her three adorable Corgies.

Yes, I’m gearing up for a mini-rant here. Though I love and endlessly adore Oprah, I’m a little riled by this piece.

I know Oprah knows better than to ever mislead by suggesting sexy is just a matter of expensive stuff to buy and apply. She knows it’s attitude, too, according to an article that notes, “Sexiness is more about attitude than clothing, so wipe your mind of any age bias and think young.”

It’s the “think young” that gets me. I’m done with thinking young; I’ve entered the “think me” phase of my life. And those outrageous makeovers – is that’s what’s required to look sexy these days?

The makeovers remind me of that scene in the movie Awakenings, the story of a group of patients who contracted sleeping-sickness after World War I. Frozen in a decades-long sleep, they were given up as hopeless until given the drug, L-DOPA, which had an amazing, explosive, “awakening” effect.

But then the drug stopped working and they returned to the deep freeze, hopefully all memory of having just experienced their own death being quickly obliterated.

Which brings me back to the “sexy” makeovers. What are you when the dress and the makeup and yes, even the shoes, come off? Do you want a sexiness that depends on a bunch of external stuff or something deeper and enduring?

You know where I’m going. We’re not dolls whose paint needs freshening up after so many decades of being tossed around by life. We’re feeling, thinking women who want to press reset and take everything we’ve experienced and learned about life and renew ourselves at a higher level.

We want to strip down to our essential selves because that’s where the true beauty hides – along with the confidence and honesty, the humor and wisdom, and yes, the sexiness that is our very own and has nothing to do with what outfit you’re wearing.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for dressing up. But to suggest that’s what it takes to look sexy? I’m not buying. I don’t know about you, but I’ve struggled my whole life to be seen for who I am. Why would I come this far only to have a dress upstage me now and steal my sexy thunder?

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How to Get Married Over Forty

Calling all 40 Over Women. If you want to know how to get married (because it’s next to impossible) then start with this relationship help for older dating from the new book, How To Meet A Man After Forty (And Other Midlife Dilemmas Solved).

Take a look around you. How do you compare with other women over 40? Do you look good for your age (GFYA)? Or, do you look more like Every Inch Your Age, or EIYA? Because if you look EIYA, then will probably never have sex again, and you will definitely never ever get married. At least that’s what I got out of Shane Watson’s new book, How to Meet A Man After Forty, And Other Midlife Dilemmas Solved.

Categorizing women 40 plus into GFYA or EIYA is just the beginning of the book’s silliness. Check out her idea of a “midlife dilemma” (hot off the back cover):

• Should I wax my mustache?
• Am I told old for a leather jacket?
• Am I having the right amount of sex?
• Am I good for my age?
• Why do I hate my best friend?
• Am I turning into my mother?
• Can I be single and happy?
• Is it just me, or is life getting much, much weirder?

If those are midlife dilemmas, I’m a disposable cell phone. Clearly somebody’s been spending a little too much time shopping or sucking up fumes at the local nail salon.

Weird.

Are You A Natural or a Plastic?

The, so called, “Naturals,” (women who [stupidly] think they can age naturally) better start worrying. Plastic surgery and youth worship have so affected our perception of beauty, the author argues, that even though “The Plastics” (women who believe plastic surgery can stop aging – think [yikes] Faye Dunaway) might look “weird and inhuman” next them, “you [The Natural] look crumpled and saggy and ill…the exhausted old crone who let herself go.”

By way of supportive evidence, she later informs us, “there is a cutoff age—let’s call it 38 for the sake of argument—after which some men think single women should be supplied with gray uniforms and kept in camps on the outskirts of towns so that they don’t interfere with normal, healthy interaction between the sexes.”

Oh, oh, now I’m feeling insecure being the dreaded Natural Camp. I sure hope she’s joking but then again, how can she be? She’s not funny.

Weirder.

Some Things You Must Know to Get Married

Her advice on friends gets down to editing out the ones that make you look old or bad (because they’re better at something than you – those “showoffs”).

If challenged about being single at your age, lie. Here are some suggestions: “Who says I’m single?” Or, “Well, it could be that I shouldn’t have spent the nineties on Easter Island.”

She unravels such mysteries as:

• Do men prefer heels? (They “adore” them)
• Do men like underwear to match (“It’s a bummer, but they do.”)
• What do men make of unfitted or unisex clothes (“Men just don’t get clothes that have no desire to be sexy.”)

Tips for Turning A Date Into A Mate

If that isn’t helpful enough, she really shines with her advice for turning a date into a mate (or at least a second date). The key, she warns, is to not be so intimidating – “tone it down, way down.” For all you professional powerhouses out there who have forgotten what that means:

• Smile
• Forget your work
• Don’t take control (at least not all the time)
• Don’t tower over him (if you’re taller)
• Keep it light
• Don’t sound like you’ve done it all
• Go easy on the irony (he might not get it and it may come across as nasty)
• Laugh a lot, “like a madwoman”
• Be intensely interested in everything he says
• Don’t talk about yourself, unless pushed and then keep it brief
• Disappear at some point (create a little mystery)
• Make him responsible for you (Say, “Would you get me a drink?” Or, “Would you let me lean on you while I do up my shoe?”)
• Flirt with other men (while still making sure he knows he’s number one)

Get Married And You’ll Be An Expert Too!

Watson’s claim to relationship gurudom rests with the fact that she got married for the first time in her mid-forties. Apparently, this single act is so improbable, so verging on impossible, that it’s enough to launch her to “iconic status.”

At the end of the book we learn she married an older guy (“men get better with age”) with three teenagers. Hmmm, all that doing-every-thing-it-takes-to-not-look-40-ever and then acting like nothing’s changed since the fifties only to end up as a Stepmom who has mastered the art of making drop-scones?

Weirdest.

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Is Sex Over?

As you can imagine, lots of women (and men) talk to me about sex because they know I have a blog and assume I’d be riveted by their every move between the sheets.

And I guess that’s true except for lately, when I’ve noticed that those sheets are laying low. In fact, the general feedback I’m getting is that a lot of women are a little less than impressed with sex these days.

I can’t say exactly what’s going on. Maybe the older we get, the more honest we become about our feelings towards sex. Let’s admit it, we Americans aren’t that big into sex. Oh sure, we think it’s okay to make money off it—sex really does sell. And we love talking and reading about it. Even Harlequin romance novels have advanced beyond the bodice ripping to the body gripping.

On the other hand, getting sexual satisfaction personally, on a regular basis—well, that just sounds like too much work and worry now, doesn’t it?

Almost as taxing as trying to have a relationship. Which we all know is next to impossible—which is why there are as many books about how-to-have-a-relationship as there are about how-to-lose-weight.

In fact, the whole thing has got so out of hand that there’s a whole new movement afoot—what I call, the so-over-sex-ists.

A diverse collection of folks, the so-over-sex-ists includes such splinter groups and sleeper cells as:

- The multiple cat collectors

- Those with bumper sticks reading ‘I’d-rather-be-cuddling (and-preferably-with-another-woman). Oprah did a whole show on women who “switch sides” later in life.

- People too busy for even their vibrators

- All chocolate addicts

- Women who have impatiently awaited the onset of menopause, presenting as it does, the ultimate excuse for, “Not tonight, honey, in fact, not ever again.”

- And, “2-D lovers,” a phenomenon I read about just the other day in the New York Times. 2-D love describes a thriving subculture in Japan in which people indulge in relationships with an imaginary character—like a lumpy pillow with a drawing of a big cartoon face (ie, the soul mate).

The article explained that the rise of 2-D love could have something to do with the difficulty many young Japanese have in navigating modern romantic life.

Modern romantic life? How about the difficulty of navigating life period?

In her recent article in The Atlantic, Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off, Sandra Tsing Loh talks about the demise of her marriage. “Given my staggering working mother’s to-do list,” writes Loh, “I cannot take on yet another arduous home- and self-improvement project, that of rekindling our romance.“

Translation: bye-bye sex.

Laura Kipnis in her recent book, Against Love, writes about how monogamy stifles the sex out of us by setting up “police state conditions that people consent to live under to achieve it, and to make sure their partners are in compliance. The problem is being asked to commit to boredom and unmet needs as the supposed price of social stability.”

Translation: bye-bye sex.

But hey, let’s not despair. One woman’s magazine says all it takes is a little scheduling to get your sex life back on track. For goodness sake, ladies, Just pencil it in!

I want to write the editors to explain that you got to want it before you’ll make time for it. And if you want, you always make time for it. I dated a guy who ran millions of companies all over the Milky Way. He’d walk out of board meetings without a second thought if his penis needed a little quality time.

Nope, in my big and unsolicited opinion, sexual satisfaction is about reframing. It’s about perspective. In fact, it’s about not focusing on sex at all.

I know that sounds a bit crazy but about 10 years ago, I realized all the expectations and hopes I was bringing to sex were actually destroying it.

Back then, sex had become the equivalent of jumping off the edge of the Grand Canyon. I’d fuss and fret, trying to figure out the right timing, the best wind patterns, my exact landing spot, the perfect gear (tested multiple times), the plan “B, C, D, and E”, and especially, how to keep my hair and makeup in tact.

Come jump time, all I could focus on was everything that could go wrong, and the fact that with one more step, I’d be under the control of a force so powerful, so unstoppable, that the only direction to go would be down.

Translation: bye-bye sex.

Somewhere along the line, I decided to focus on the only thing I knew for sure—what I was feeling.

So instead of thinking of sex as a life or death jump into the abyss, I came to see the act as a kind of tea ceremony. You pour the tea, sip it while hot, have a nice little “conversation,” and then it’s over. A lingering buzz from the caffeine maybe to help jog the ‘ol memory.

Thinking of sex in this way helps defuse all the heaviness of expectation, analysis, and judgment. The only thing I consider now is, ‘Do I feel like having tea with this person or not?’

I mean isn’t everything in life made up of an endless series of tiny moments anyway—not some momentous single leap, marked by a roar of terror and followed by a terrible thud?

I don’t know. It works for me.

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Vibrators To Die For

Do not gently into the dark night. Like we have to be told. Most of us decided long ago that we’ll be going kicking and screaming. And, hopefully moaning with pleasure, if my friend, Susan, has her way.

Approaching 70, Susan walked away from a power career as an environmental attorney long ago. Now, she’s got dogs, lives in rural New Mexico, and survives as a retired worker on minimum wage and minimum social security payments. She works in bookstore because that’s where the good conversations are—most recently one of Plato’s dialogs came up.

And she loves her vibrator, the Minipearl. Some people wouldn’t be caught dead with a vibrator. Susan wouldn’t be caught dead without one. So much so that when they send her packing to “a home,” she says, it’d better be one that has no rules against vibrator use.

Thankfully, she writes and I begged her to send me this piece—edited for length.

Retirement Home? Can I Bring My Sex Toys?

By Susan Tixier

I am not afraid to go to “a home” when the time comes, but I am afraid they won’t let me even talk about Minipearl, let alone bring one in. When we took Mom to Aspen Terrace Rest Home, we filled out forms about money and medicine, about religious preferences and food allergies. We made sure she had toothpaste, brush, soap, shampoo and, because she asked for it, her deodorant. Asking her if she needed a supply of triple A or double A batteries would have been confusing to her demented mind and, frankly, there was no need of hers that required them. At least, I think.

One day I’ll be going into a home and when that happens, let me be clear that I’ll need that (1) Minipearl can go with me, (2)  I have plenty of batteries, and (3)  there are no rules or reasons against my using it.

I don’t mind dying. Everyone dies. But I am in love with living; I would love to live long enough to see what is going to happen to this world. When the times comes to plan for my future, I want to make sure that the how and where for my Minipearl, my tiny, little, perfect battery-operated sex “thing,” has been specifically addressed.

Are rest homes ready for an old lady having frequent and multiple orgasms at the flip of a switch? Ought we not find this out, ladies? Seriously. Seriously!

My first Minipearl came from a shop not far from Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco. The shop specialized in corsets and was owned and managed by an ex-Public Defender. She and I had more than the law in common. Corseting is a wonderful, sexy technique of being tied into a made-for-you corset. With the slow pressure on hips and waist, buttocks and breasts held firm, the corset makes every muscle significant when you move. Sitting straight is all one can do.

My lover bought me a corset at that shop. I chose a black over the hip model which cost a fortune and required no fewer than 32 specific measurements of my body which were then shipped off to England, where the corset would be made. My lover asked me to wear the corset under my blue wool business suit, with nothing else except very high-heeled pumps. He took me to lunch at the fine vegetarian restaurant, The Greens. Many women were there in elegant business suits, but none sat so straight as I, and none felt their ample bosom swell out between the top two buttons. Dementia will never take that moment, that lunch, that sexy feeling away from me.

Back at the corset shop one day, I asked the owner to recommend a vibrator and she told me about the Minipearl. It is teeny but oh so effective vibrating egg of a thing, not one of the huge faux penises. My lover bought it, used it, and I have never been without one. The vibrator, that is, not the man, which, unfortunately, I have been too long without. But that is another story.

I have gone through many since that first Minipearl, which says nothing about the adequacy of their construction, but more about the frequency of use, I suppose. Recently, I had my 67th birthday and a dear friend sent me a new Minipearl. It occurred to me then that there would be a birthday – not too soon, one hopes – when I’d be in a home and I would probably be prohibited from receiving such a gift. That thought gave me a fright.

What would I do? Could I ask the caretakers to organize an outing to a sex shop? Would it put off other customers to see a gaggle of old people in diapers, using walkers and wheelchairs, shuffling around as they tried to find their favorite sex toy? Maybe I’d have to organize a smuggling ring?

I have no idea idea if my fears are real or not. But I’ll tell you this much. I need to know. Now or at least very soon! So please if you know anything…

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