Cracking the “Bitch” Glass Ceiling


Very interesting commentary from Judith Timson of the Globe and Mail on Thursday, writing about the Pennsylvania primaries and Sen. Clinton’s victory there. The op-ed piece went on at length about Clinton’s “macho” campaign and Sen. Obama’s rather weak response to the full metal jacket approach of Team Clinton. 

My favorite quote in the article was a quote from Maureen O’Dowd:

In fact, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd mischievously wondered: “As the husband of Michelle, does he know better than to defy the will of a strong woman? Or is he simply scared of Hillary because she’s scary?”

I have to say that men mated to strong women certainly do know quite about more about that old saying of discretion being the better part of valor then most, but it makes a person wonder if Obama’s approach to politics isn’t a bit too Christ-like for his own good. How many cheeks does the man have? And more importantly, how much longer is he going to duck real issues with his “dazzling oratory skills”? As a woman, I can tell you that there is only one oral skill that counts and unless Obama is planning to use that to get himself enough votes to defeat McCain in November, he’d better start putting some facts and plans where his mouth is and stop trying to channel JFK via MLK or vice versa. This is no time to be charismatic wonder bread. The United States is in trouble with even more on its way in terms of the ecomony, health care and the looming Social Security obliterating Boomer bomb that is set to go off in a huge way about three years or so from now.

Timson’s piece voiced the opinion that Hillary Clinton’s campaign has been good for women because she has shown that a female doesn’t have to be “nice” when competing in politics just to avoid the “bitch” label. That term loses some of its punch when the woman being labeled so don’t retreat into apologetic nice girl form. When did “nice” become synonymous with being female in the workplace? Work/career is about the job and while good manners should apply, making friends is not the objective, getting the job done is what it is all about. Clinton has broken that “bitch” glass ceiling making it possible for other women to follow. Whether she wins the nomination (and I don’t think “they” are ready to let a woman run for president yet), she has done something important.

Chasing Youth


A recent headline story at MSNBC that discussed the downside of plastic surgery and other medical beauty enhancers and age “restoratives” got me thinking, yet again, about the fact that I am approaching fifty.  There is a great line in the film When Harry Met Sally about turning forty when the Sally character wails to Harry that she is going to be forty soon and when he reminds her that this “soon” is still eight years off she replies, “But its out there.”  And I think probably every woman understood what she meant. Old looms for women in a way that it doesn’t for men.  And it’s not that men aren’t judged physically – they are – but more in terms of weight and fitness than for getting older with its requisite wrinkles and hair loss. Women are condemned for it all. The loss of skin tone. The weight gain. The wrinkles. The graying hair. Mainly just for the fact that we can’t stay twenty. Although seriously, who wants to stay twenty?  Aside from the youthful appearance and stamina, there is the larger issue of the lack of common sense and wisdom that only life and experience can bring.  Speaking for myself only, I would not trade who I am and what I know to be the twenty year old girl I was again.

Still women, many of them, will try just about anything within their budgeted grasp (and a few beyond) to keep the obvious signs of age at bay. The trouble is that anymore these methods of age eradication are too easy for the average person to spot which leaves them not marveling at the woman’s youthful appearance but trying to guess just how old she really is.

Botox is a curious thing. It’s poison really, but it is used to paralyze facial muscles which has the effect of smoothing wrinkles. The dangers were supposedly minimal but the most recent studies have found that contrary to what doctors who use botox have told patients, the toxin can and does cross the brain’s blood barrier.  So in addition to a smooth, expressionless face, a person is also exposing brain tissue to a deadly toxin.  Who knew?  Well not the people who touted Botox as some miraculous fountain of faux youth, and they really should have.  Known that is.  It’s not as though patients need to be wrinkle free to make it through a day as opposed to say migraine sufferers who also receive injections of Botox as a form of preventative treatment.  If a person were to weigh the benefits against the risk, which group of people are taking the bigger chance?

We women bear some of the responsibility for this obsession.  We willingly support industries which hack none to subtly at our self-images.  We buy the magazines, the cosmetics and the hair dye. We diet or jump on every exercise bandwagon to roll by or swallow dubious pills that tout even more dubious results. I don’t know that we can be entirely blamed though.  Would we know that we should be unhappy with aging if the end result – being marginalized – were not so evident in our culture?

I admit I highlight my hair to hide the loss of pigment (I can’t call it graying because the strands are snow-white), but I haven’t succumbed to a full on dye because I know I am too lazy to maintain something like that.  And I exercise but this stems back to my fat pre adult teen years when I was “such a pretty face”. The trauma lingers. I also have a pretty strict diet though this owes nearly entirely to my food allergies and loss of gallbladder than a love of self-deprivation.  So am I part of the the problem? Fifty looms – five and a half years – and I can’t say that the idea is welcome or repugnant at this point. I really don’t know what I will look like by then though I am sure that my husband will still find my bum luscious though I doubt that I will be attracting any whistles from the population at large (though interestingly I did get a whistle while running last week at the gym – not bad for forty-four.)

Youth is best left to the young. The rest of us might be better off redefining what beauty looks like at 40 or 50 and beyond rather than letting the standards be set for us. Or better yet, we might try focusing on things that are real aging issues like maintaining our health and our minds.

A Drink a Day Brings Breast Cancer your Way


Judith Timson at the Globe and Mail penned an opinion piece about the latest breast cancer worry for women. A study has found that women who drink daily are more likely to suffer from breast cancer. Add this to the other risk elevators, some proven like taking HRT’s and others speculated like high fat diets, lack of exercise, not breast-feeding your babies or having those infants late in life or not at all. One of the things I found interesting is the tendency to downplay the cancer risks that are more out of our control than our heredity and that is the effect of pollution. I started thinking about this recently while reading the Devra Davis books, When Smoke Ran like Water and The Secret History of the War on Cancer. Both books are fascinating in that they detail studies and events dating back to the early part of the last century that clearly show that many of the chemicals and pollutant by-products that we absorb, drink, eat and breathe in daily have been known to cause cancer by the companies that make and use them and by the United States government. In the first book there are two chapters, one detailing Bella Azbug’s call to the war on breast cancer and the other discussing known risks to the male reproductive system that should lay to rest the idea that men and women can do much to prevent themselves from becoming cancer victims. 

Bisphenol A, in the news lately due to Canada’s possible ban, is one of those supposedly benign modern wonders that has infiltrated daily existence at what we have come to discover is our own core levels. We should exercise, eat healthy and lean and just say no to alcohol, but how do we avoid plastics? How do we keep ourselves and our children safe from genetic damage that we inherited from our own parents?

If you have the time and inclination, I recommend checking out Ms. Davis’s books. Readable, fascinating and horrifying, they are eye-opening to facts about the effects of modern life on our bodies at levels not detectable until it’s too late and about how companies and the government have known all along yet chose to ignore the evidence in the name of profit and for the good of the economy. The economy, after all, is why the United States exists, right?