Apparently I Need Help…….

This may not come as a shock to those of you who know me and I do wonder myself some days but I was quite surprised to be told that I need help by a journalist. The fact that it wasn’t just me she was addressing but all ‘women over 50’ didn’t make me feel any better! So, what now? Another bit of me is going to dry up or drop off? A scientist has decided that I should stop going to the gym because my skeleton is busy crumbling to dust inside my wrinkled skin?

Nope, none of the above. Apparently I need help to find a swimming costume (WTF? I hear you say, as well you may). It seems that, as a result of my advancing years, I will develop a phobia of 20 something girls in bikinis and, every time I go swimming, I’ll need to tread water for days at a time in case one of the young lovelies sees me and mocks my aging body. Apparently, for me, bikinis are no longer an option because my ‘jiggly belly’ will be exposed and my boobs have plunged.

The journalist advocated that, to avoid all this trauma, I should spend £140 on a swimming costume which is the aquatic version of Spanx; apparently the low cut leg and wide straps should make me feel less ‘self-conscious’. What is the thinking behind this I wonder? Does the journalist assume that an over 50 lady garden will have run riot to the point that a high cut leg will be unable to contain the expanding hedgerow? Maybe she’s thinking of the back view, perhaps 50 year old arses cannot be trusted to remain contained in anything other than reinforced long drawers? Will the wide straps ensure that my boobs won’t try to make a bid for freedom and swipe someone round the back of the knees?

I’m not really sure what I’m more insulted about to be honest:

• The fact that my advancing years mean that I no longer have the mental capacity to  buy a swimsuit without ‘help’
• The fact that it’s been suggested that anyone over 50 shouldn’t be wearing a bikini
• The fact that, allegedly, reaching your 50th birthday comes with a free gift of paranoia and a fear of what 20 something’s might think

All of the above I think. I bought 2 bikinis this summer, all by myself. They are both halterneck and high leg and, to my knowledge nothing escaped (well except that time when I went diving and one boob fell out but, what the hell, I was under water and managed to pop it back in before anyone noticed).

Whilst I am ready to admit I have a certain degree of envy when I look at the perky little 20 something’s in their dental floss bikinis I certainly don’t imagine that they have any thoughts about me at all. All they seem to be thinking about are the 20 something hunks, flashing their abs and their perfect white teeth which is just as it should be!

At the end of this journalistic master piece the author asked “Is it just me”? Yes love, it’s just you; I’m not giving up my bikini any time soon for you or anyone else……

What do you think? Should older women be more ‘discreet’ in what they wear or should we be free to let it all hang out and have fun? Let me know, I’d love to hear from you.

Lisa x

Just Do it 3 Times……

Have you ever read something on the internet and thought ‘that just has to be a joke’ and then you realise that it isn’t and you start banging your head gently on the nearest hard surface and wondering when everyone went mad? It’s never anything major, just a little something which immediately brings to mind the immortal words of John McEnroe, “You cannot be serious!”

The latest of these seems to be an attempt to alter basic biology whilst at the same time making men feel guilty about something that is in no way their fault. It’s lauded as being a way to ‘bring colleagues together’. What am I talking about? The menopause. Apparently it should not be a ‘women only‘ issue. Hmmmmmm? How’s that going to work then?

Is someone going to follow all the men in the office with a portable steamer in hand and shove it down the front of their shirt every hour or so? Will their skin be given a good going over with sand paper and then blasted with salt every few days? Will they be woken up in the middle of the night by someone drenching them in warm water? Perhaps someone will invent a mood destabiliser that will take their emotional state from ‘I love you so much’ to ‘Will you stop annoying me! If you have to breathe do it quietly’ in a matter of minutes. There could be a scientists out their right now working out how to artificially dry out their lady bits……oh no wait they don’t have lady bits…….

Nope we can forget all that, apparently the way to bring colleagues together is for men to say ‘menopause’ during the working day, preferably 3 times; presumably they then click their red slippers and instantly have a hot flush. What the actual F is wrong with these people?????? Is there more to it than that you ask, well yes there is; does it make any more sense you’re wondering? No, it doesn’t.

The other thing menopausal women can do to help colleagues understand their symptoms is to jot them down in a communal book, I wonder how that would read?

“I just accidentally sat on a spider and now it’s dead, I can’t stop crying”

“If John from accounting doesn’t stop with that ridiculous laugh of his I’m going to go over there and force feed him his stapler”

“I’ve just taken off 4 of my 5 layers of clothing, my hair’s all over the place, I’m sweating, my face is like a boiled beetroot and someone just had a go at me for wearing my vest in the office…..and now I’m freezing, has anyone seen my jumper?”

“I think I’m going to have to stock up on my supply of KY jelly on the way home”

“My boobs are going to end up touching my navel at this rate”

“When did my skin start looking so old”

It could be one woman jotting all this down before lunchtime. Please tell me how it will be of any benefit at all to her male colleagues to have this kind of insight? Would the women in the office benefit from knowing, in lurid detail, the emotional and psychological problems caused by erectile disfunction? Perhaps companies could start a book for that:

“Vigorous stimulation last night caused slight friction burns and I think I’ve got a touch of RSI”

“Is it wrong that I only succeeded last night by visualising Joan in the warehouse, sitting on the forktruck in nothing but thigh high waders?”

Perhaps, instead, we should stop all of this bloody nonsense and remember that men and women are different and no amount of sharing or chanting the word ‘menopause’ 3 times a day is going to change that.

What do you think? Is this a forward thinking initiative or a load of old bollocks?

I’d love to hear from you :O)

Lisa x

 

 

 

 

This Post is Not for Everybody…

So, if you’re not a menopausal woman whose deepest desire is for someone to invent a stylish hat with an inbuilt fridge, you can probably look away now. For those of you still with me, if the bain of your life is hot flushes (flashes for the American contingent),  I think I’ve found something that will help.

I’m a huge fan of acupuncture because I’ve never had anything that it couldn’t treat (except a polyp in my colon but that required someone chopping bits out of me) and my current acupuncturist knows pretty much all there is to know about Chinese herbology. Bearing this in mind I asked her what she could recommend for hot flushes as it’s currently over 30 degrees here and several times a day I feel as though my head could, quite literally, explode.

This is what she came up with and 3 days in, guess what? It works!!!!!

Take the rind of a watermelon (you can just eat the flesh – that’s what I did ;O) ), chop it up and leave it to stew in a cup of hot water for a few minutes and then drink. It’s that simple; hot flushes are now down to one or two a day as opposed to one or two an hour.

Thought I’d share this with you, my fellow sufferers, let me know if it works.

Have a good one

Lisa x

Is it a Man’s World?

Good morning :O) Um, sorry, excuse me, could I just have the attention of bloggers of the male persuasion for just a minute, I have a question for you if you’d be so kind:

If a woman was to greet you with a kiss on either cheek  would you consider that you had been subject to sexual harassment?

If a woman were to put her hand on the small of your back and tell you that you had beautiful eyes, would you consider that you had been harassed or subject to inappropriate comments?

Sorry, that’s two questions but, if either of these things happened to you, would you feel degraded or abused in some way; would you report the woman and call for her to lose her job and her credibility? I’m just curious because that seems to be what’s happened this morning according to a news report. I’m hoping at this point that there are some women reading this because I’d like to know if they’re shocked that this sort of thing could happen to a prominent female figure who’s a leader in her field. Oh, another thing, she’s in her 80’s………..doesn’t all this just seem wrong to you???? Aren’t you a little bit outraged on behalf of this woman?

If you are then please just bear that in mind when I tell you that it wasn’t a woman but a man. Still feel the same? Still think that it’s wrong? No? Why? What’s changed?

I’m all for equal opportunity, I fought hard, as a woman, to be successful in business in a male dominated sector, but I really don’t like double standards. Am I wrong? Love to hear your comments

Lisa x

 

Did She Deserve to Die?

At the age of 9 she was giving blow jobs in exchange for cigarettes. She was physically and sexually abused by her Grandfather. She had a incestuous relationship with her brother. At the age of 14 she had a child, the product of a rape committed by a friend of her Grandfather. After the birth of the child she was thrown out of her house and lived rough, whatever the weather. She never knew her Father but he was a paedophile who committed suicide in prison; her mother left her in the care of her abusive Grandfather when she was 4 years old. She had no-one so, to keep herself alive, she turned to prostitution while she was still a child…………This woman died aged 46.

She survived a childhood, if one can call it that, which she left without ever having known real love or affection. The male role models in her life inflicted nothing but pain and suffering on her and her female role models left her – her mother, voluntarily, when she was 4 and her Grandmother, who died, when she was 14.

She seemed to crave affection but her only experience of it was through the act of sex; she ‘dated’ a young man regularly but, because of her promiscuity, he wanted nothing to do with her in public and would throw rocks at her and be verbally abusive if she approached him in front of other people. She was ostracized by her peers and rejected by her family. When she was living rough, it was in some woods close to where she lived, not in a city where she may have had the chance to interact with others and find some sort of help; she was isolated both physically and emotionally for a period of 2 years.

She eventually moved away from her home town, hitchhiking and offering sex in exchange for money; she had no experience of what we would call a normal life but, somehow, she survived.

When she was 21 her brother died of cancer; although their physical relationship was incestuous and we cannot know whether it stemmed from affection or not, this was another loss in her life, someone else who had abandoned her. Her life as a sex worker continued; she was used by men who thought no more of using her than they would a paper tissue – something to fulfill a physical need and then throw away afterwards…

10 years later she seemed to have given up all hope of finding  a man to share her life with and so she turned to a woman instead. She claimed to have found her true love and we can only assume that she had finally found a degree of happiness, despite the fact that her lover was content to be supported from her earnings as a prostitute.

At the age of 33, she stumbled into the path of a convicted rapist and, after that her life would change forever………..

Do you feel pity for this woman? For the awful, shitty life that she had? Do you wonder what became of her after she met that rapist?

She killed him.

Her name was Aileen Wuornos and, after she shot this man, she shot another 6 and was branded a serial killer. I watched a documentary about her last night and it strengthened my conviction that the death penalty is fundamentally wrong; there is no doubt that Aileen was a murderer and her terrible experiences in life cannot be used as a defense for her actions. However heinous her crimes, they were probably carried out as a result of the appalling abuse that she had suffered from men throughout her whole life. Her punishment was death, the same ‘punishment’ that, in her eyes, she had inflicted on the men that she killed. We can only imagine the psychological trauma that she suffered both as a child and as an adult but we have to assume that those who pronounced sentence upon her were of sound mind. So, on the one hand we have death in the name of anger and frustration and, on the other, we have death in the name of righteousness. One is premeditated, cold blooded, murder and the other is the death penalty: considered in depth before the act and carried out without any emotional involvement.

What do you think? Did she deserve to die?

 

Do You Love Your Boobs?

Here’s a question for you: do you love your boobs? If your answer is no, you’re not alone. It’s a sad fact of life that, except for a few short years, our boobs are rarely where we want them to be and sadder still that they are seldom the size or shape that we would wish for. It’s  a bit like Goldilocks and the 3 bears; ‘they’re too big!’ we cry or ‘they’re too small!’ How many of us say ‘they’re just right’? To be honest, how many of us would dare to say that we are perfectly happy with our boobs for fear of getting dagger stares from other women?

If the problem is that Mr Gravity has given your boobs a hammering or having children just seems to have sucked the life out of them, there are some things that you can do to improve the situation. If you’re over 30 it’s highly unlikely that you’ll get back the upwardly pointing perky globes that you had in your late teens but you can try some exercises to stop them hitting your knees 10 years down the line.

Essentially our boobs are just sacks of fat and the heavier they are, the more Mr Gravity will try to drag them downwards. If we are overweight, losing a few pounds will certainly help in that department but we also need to strengthen the muscles in our chest to give us back an element of lift. If you don’t fancy going to the gym, swimming is an absolutely excellent boobercise and you’re not limited to the breast stroke either as crawl and butterfly are also going to really work those pecs!

If you don’t fancy that , here are some other exercises that you can do to help you be perky and proud:

Chest press (or bench press) is a great pecs exercise and you can do it with free weights or on machine

Chest fly with weights and wide armed press-ups will also really get those chest muscles working!

Don’t forget, as our boobs contain ligaments which will stretch over time it’s best that we don’t let them go flying about all over the place so it’s important, especially when running, that we invest in a great fitting and supportive sports bra.

There is nothing worse for our silhouette than an ill fitting bra (or if you’re boobs are heading south, no bra at all). Little tiny scraps of silk and lace with little spaghetti straps may look pretty but they’re  not going to keep anything in place if you’re larger than a B cup so speak to someone who knows what they are talking about and have a proper fitting and invest in something that’s best for your shape. (Despite what he might say to the contrary, Dave, the local butcher, is not the ideal person to advise you on underwear!)

This picture brilliantly illustrates the difference that a well fitting bra can make. The boobs are in the right place, there’s no spilling out under the armpits and the straps don’t look like they are trying to cut through the poor woman’s shoulders. Yes it might cost a little more to find your perfect bra but, come on, don’t your boobs deserve it?

If you’re thinking ‘if all else fails I could have a boob lift’ then, yes, that is an option but

• Consider whether or not you want to have your nipples cut off and then stuck back on somewhere else because, apparently, it’s difficult to sort out the sagging without it
• Even if you have implants, that will make no difference to Mr Gravity so, over time, your boobs will still sag.
• As with any surgery, there are risks so have a good think about that before going under the knife

So, there are things we can do to fight the sag but, at the end of the day, we are who we are and we should love ourselves – boobs and all ;O)

Lisa x

 

Realistic Expectations?

Say Goodbye to aging skin? The models we seen in some of these ads haven’t even said “hello” to aging skin!! Do we really believe that we can slap some cream on our wrinkled skin and we’ll wake up the next morning looking 25 again? I’m not going to say ‘yes’ but we all live in hope don’t we……;O)

I wonder who comes up with all these ideas of what an ideal woman should look like? From what I can make out we should all have long, shiny hair, white teeth, flawless skin, no wrinkles, a toned and perky body, full lips, cheekbones you could shave ice with and legs up to our armpits. In the 1700’s Barbara Villiers was considered a great beauty and referred to as ‘perhaps the finest woman in England’, that’s her in the portrait below; alongside her is Selena Gomez, one of the great beauties of our age. Aside from nose size, the two women are very similar in many ways – dark, heavy lidded eyes, clear skin, rosebud mouth….so does this mean that our tastes haven’t really changed in over 300 years?

This is Barbara Villiers, mistress of King Charles II. She considered a great beauty in the 1700’s

This is Selena Maria Gomez. She was voted one of the most beautiful women in the World in 2017

Barbara Villiers was reportedly overwrought when Chancellor Clarendon, her great enemy said to her:

“Please remember, if you live, you will grow old”

I believe that she was about 27 at the time (she eventually died at the age of 68 from dropsy). So it would seem that not only have our ideas of beauty not really changed, women’s attitudes to growing old haven’t really moved along either!

If women weren’t obsessed with trying to look younger and thinner, the manufacturers of beauty products wouldn’t make the billions of $ that they do every year so why do we do it to ourselves ladies? Is it for our own self-esteem, to attract others? Or is it because we are constantly bombarded with images of how we should look and we do what we can to fit within those pre-determined boundaries?

I, like everyone else, can only speak from personal experience and, to be honest, I’m not 100% sure that I can answer. Some of it definitely has to do with self-esteem; while this may have feminists scowling at me across the ether, it does boost my confidence if a get a smile from a guy or an approving look. I live in France and I was once the recipient of an oh la la! in a supermarket and that kept me smiling all day! Did I look any different that day from any other? I honestly don’t remember but I do remember the compliment. However, if I was 100% comfortable in my own skin I don’t suppose I would have even thought about it after the event.

I don’t leave the house without make-up but, if I’m at the beach and go swimming, I don’t worry if it all washes off or leaves me looking like a bikini wearing panda. I’m not overweight but that’s simply because I love exercise and don’t enjoy junk food. I sometimes look in the mirror and think ‘shit! what happened’! but I probably have more confidence in my appearance than I did when I was in my 20’s.  My hair is really short but it looks terrible long and I really can’t be arsed to spend longer than 5 minutes faffing around with it every day. Do I wish I looked younger? Yes. Do I wish I felt as I did in my 20’s? No definitely not! I was a seething mass of neuroses and insecurities.

So what’s the answer??? Say goodbye to a negative self-image, learn to love yourself for what you are, accept what you can’t change and change what you can and just remember that, when you’re really having fun, you won’t give a crap what you look like :O)

Lisa x

 

What Do Women Really Want?

The question that has plagued men since the dawn of time and one which, apparently, has never been answered to anyone’s satisfaction. Maybe it’s because men and women are intrinsically different or could it be just that we are all individuals and we don’t have the first clue what motivates each other but it’s easier to divide us into 2 categories rather than 7.4 billion?

Why do we try so hard to understand other people? At the end of the day, if we are really, truly honest, we want other people to be like us – we get us, we’ve spent time with us and we know how we tick, we’re comfortable with us…….

We want to change everyone else to be like us and that’s why so many relationships fail and why there is so much conflict in our every day lives. We don’t like people who disagree with us, we look for people who think in similar ways, who like the same things, who conform to our view of ‘normal’.

We spend so much time putting people into categories that we forget that we are all just people – amazing, wonderful, flawed. Perhaps if we took like and dislike out of our vocabularies and just accepted others for who they are without trying to understand them we’d all be a whole lot happier.

What do women want? Exactly the same thing as men and every other living this on this beautiful planet – to be free and to be happy ;O)

x