How To Win If Your Middle-Aged Man Dumps You For A Teen-Aged Woman

We’ve all heard stories about middle-aged men who dump their middle-aged, menopausal wife for a teen-aged woman. Most people attribute such behavior to a man’s so-called “midlife crisis.” And most people (other than fellow middle-aged wife-dumpers) tend to view this midlife crisis behavior as entirely inappropriate.

This is especially true because the whole thing ends up being a bigger crisis for you, the middle-aged menopausal woman, than it ever was for your middle-aged wife-dumping meandering man.

But I’m here to tell you that there’s actually a way for you to be the winner of such a crisis, and come out on top. All you have to do is mimic your middle-aged man’s behavior with a teen-aged man-boy of your own!

Think about it:

If your 54-year-old man goes out and finds himself an 18-year-old woman to get great sex … all because you’ve lost your interest in sex (with him), he’ll be shocked if you find yourself a hunky, sexy sex machine. You’ll be a 54-year-old woman with an 18-year-old man. And there is nothing on earth more sex-charged than an 18-year-old man!

And face it, both mathematically and sexually: 18 goes into 54 many more times than 54 goes into 18. Sexually-speaking, you’ll have a lot more great, hard, satisfying sex than your middle-aged man can even recall having when he was young. That’s for sure!

You win!

And, when you think about the emotional effect of all that great sex, you can come out on top there, too.

His little 18-year-old woman is gonna fall in love with her “daddy.” And she’ll want to get married. If your ex-middle-aged dumper wants to keep her from dumping him, he’ll have no choice but to button his lip & get hitched.

But marriage is the last thing on your 18-year-old man’s mind. All he cares about is having fun sex. Commitment and a long-term relationship are completely foreign to him. So you’ll get care-free sex. This is perfect for you. The last thing you want at 54 is to adopt another man for whom you have to function as his mother.

So, you win on that, too.

Of course, once she forces him to marry her, your former middle-aged man’s teen-aged woman is going to get pregnant so fast that it will make his head spin faster than his sperm can swim. And he’ll have to deal with a pregnant woman’s hormones, which are definitely as wonky as … if not more wonky than …menopausal hormones.

And if she doesn’t get pregnant right away, your ex-middle-aged man will have to deal with her menstrual hormone rollercoaster. At least with you, the hormonal rollercoaster days were a distant memory.

But your hunky teen-aged man won’t think about wanting kids until long after you’ve kicked him to the curb for some reason or another. And his hormones will just be at a steady high all the time. You’ll have no worries about having to deal with any fluctuations. He’ll be like a machine that you can control: On when you want him for sex, and off when you don’t.

Win, win, win!

And then when your old middle-aged man has to deal with raising a whole passel of screaming kids all over again, he’ll be kicking himself for starting all over again at such an old age. He’ll wonder how he ever managed all this the first time around with you. But, alas, he’ll realize that he didn’t manage this; you did.

But while he’s trying to figure out childrearing 101, you’ll be free to do as you please. You’ll have lost your bonding hormone oxytocin, and have no desire to be around anybody. And you won’t have to be. Your kids will be grown and on their own. You won’t have a man around the house to bother you. And you’ll have peace and quiet.

Win again!

Just when your previously rich old man thinks he’s gotten ahead, it will be time for him to fork out the dough for college educations and weddings. Back to the poor house he’ll go, while you sit on your nice nest egg, secure in the thought that you are set for the rest of your life.

That’s another big win, a monetary one.

But there’s more.

Menopause is inevitable. So, after dumping you because of your menopause, your exhausted, financially-strapped, rapidly-aging ex is going to have to deal with menopause all over again … hers! That’s probably when it will finally dawn on him that, had he just stayed with you, he’d have been a lot better off all around.

There really just isn’t any way for you to lose on this. It’s all a matter of how you look at it. So, cheer up. Your middle-aged man’s midlife crisis could be you’re your freedom license.

Don’t Let Your Housekeeper Repair Your House

Have you ever thought of your medical doctor as a repairman? That’s really what he or she is, you know.

I mean, think about it: You go to your doctor when you’re in need of repair. You’re sick or damaged in some way. Your doctor is not in the business of keeping you well. Those professionals belong to an entirely different industry: the wellness industry. I guess you could say they’re “housekeepers.” They keep you nice and tidy so that you don’t need your doctor to repair you.

So, if doctors are repairmen and wellness professionals are housekeepers, why do so many people expect their housekeeper to repair their house?

Over and over again, I encounter women who consult their naturopath for thyroid dysfunction. Your naturopath is a wellness provider … a housekeeper. He or she has no medical education, no license to prescribe medications, and no business trying to fix your broken thyroid gland. Naturopaths are only capable of keeping your already-healthy thyroid healthy. In other words, they are housekeepers.

It’s not uncommon for women to use their herbalist to treat the symptoms of menopause. Menopause is the result of a hormone deficiency, and estrogen is the deficient hormone. But, herbalists are housekeepers. They can reduce symptoms, but not alleviate them completely. More importantly, they cannot replace the deficiency. That falls into the realm of repairs. And the only professionals who can repair the deficiency are doctors.

This lack of recognition between housekeepers and repairmen is not without consequences.

Just think about it: How would your house fare if you asked your housekeeper to repair your house? If your roof were leaking, it would continue leaking. And the leak would get worse and worse until the roof collapsed. And, when it collapsed, your household belongings would get ruined, making things worse still. The cost of repair would be much greater than it would have been if you’d hired a repairman in the first place.

And the converse is true, too.

If you’re not in need of repair and you consult a repairman, the repairman is either going to roll his eyes at your assumption that you have a large enough problem to warrant their services, or he’s going to repair something that isn’t in need of repair.

Time after time, women tell me that they are appalled at their doctor’s reaction to their desire to manage various disease risks using diet and lifestyle options. They can’t understand why any doctor would say that diet has nothing to do with disease risks. Sometimes, they accuse the doctor of wanting to push drugs.

The fact is that your doctor is a repairman, not a housekeeper. Reducing your risk for diseases falls within the realm of housekeeping, not repairing. And doctors receive no education whatsoever on keeping you healthy (or housekeeping). Their entire education entails learning how to repair you once you’re broken.

In essence, using your medical doctor for your housekeeping will result in failure simply because you are seeking the guidance of the wrong professional.

Successful management of your health and disease both require that you use the proper professional. Use housekeepers in the wellness industry if you’re well. They include naturopaths, herbalists, acupuncturists, and hypnotists. Use repairmen in the medical industry if you’re not well. They include medical doctors, some osteopaths, and some nurse practitioners.

Just don’t confuse keeping your house with repairing your house. And never let your housekeeper repair your house.

Are You Losing Your Memory, or Losing Your Mind?

As you approach or progress through your menopausal transition, are you noticing that your mind just isn’t as sharp as it used to be?

Do you find yourself fishing for words? You know, that “tip-of-the-tongue” phenomenon when you know you know the word, but, for some odd reason you just can’t spit it out at the moment you need it.

Do you substitute “what’s his name,” or “whatchamacallit” for the missing word a lot? Or maybe your go-to substitute word is “jiggamabob.”

Do you forget what you were going to say just seconds before you planned to say it? And just a moment after you thought of it?

Do you forget why you went into a room?

What about misplacing things? Are your keys in your hand one minute and “lost” the next?

And how’s your general concentration?

One of the most common and frustrating symptoms of menopause is less-than-clear thinking. There are many names for this phenomenon, including “menofog,” “fuzzy thinking,” “cloudy thinking,” “forgetfulness,” “brain fog,” and the list goes on and on.

The women who have this describe it as an inability to think clearly. Their minds are not nearly as sharp as they were before they started their transition into menopause. They find it difficult to concentrate, difficult to grasp information quickly, and difficult to remember anything they did grasp. They worry about their performance at work. They make mistakes that they never made before.

So, what’s going on when you have this early symptom of menopause? Is it just a temporary, almost laughable, matter? Or is it something more than that? Are you losing your memory or are you losing your mind?

Estrogen loss is at the root of everything that happens at menopause: all the symptoms, and all the diseases.

I liken menopause to a tree. The trunk of the tree is estrogen deficiency. Each branch of the tree is a consequence of estrogen deficiency. And, boy, are there a lot of branches! There are three big diseases that result from estrogen deficiency: Heart Attack, Osteoporosis, and Alzheimer’s Disease. And there are 22 symptoms of estrogen deficiency, involving every part of your body from your head to your toes. And one of those symptoms is the forgetfulness that makes you wonder if you’re losing your memory … or your mind.

One of the big overriding principles of estrogen loss at menopause is that estrogen was your fountain of youth. So, when you lose it, you start aging on the outside and on the inside.

Most of the symptoms represent aging on the outside. It’s the stuff you can see: Your skin gets dry and wrinkled; your hair falls out; your vagina gets really itchy; your urine leaks; your joints hurt; your sex drive plummets; your mood becomes more irritable; and on and on.

What you can’t see is the aging on the inside: Your heart arteries start to harden, your bone starts to disappear, and your brain starts to shrink. The problem is that you can’t feel any of these things. They’re silent until the big event when you have a heart attack, sustain a bone fracture, or receive a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s.

So, the big question is this: When you have these memory slips, are you losing your memory or losing your mind?

Well, I hate to tell you, but it’s both.

In the short term, you are losing your memory. But of course, you witness direct evidence of that.

But if you extrapolate that over the next 20, 30, or 40 years, you are actually losing your mind. Those memory lapses are your brain trying its best to give you a wake-up call. It’s screaming, “Hey, my estrogen receptors are empty up here. I can’t think without them. In fact, I can’t survive without them. They’re my fuel. Give me my fuel or else I will shrink and disappear.”

And, that’s precisely what’s happening to your brain: You’re losing it, literally and figuratively.

So, wake up! Pay attention to your brain’s cries for help. Do what you can to prevent losing it … both your memory and your mind.

Technological Gadgets Are Brain Hatchets

We humans are such odd creatures! We all want to avoid Alzheimer’s Disease; yet we live our lives doing everything in ways that cause Alzheimer’s Disease.

This is mostly due to the fact that your brain has a default mode of “lazy.” That’s right. Your brain will always seek the easiest possible way to do every task so that it doesn’t have to do any work. And, if that sounds logical to you, it’s a perfect example of your own brain’s default mode of “lazy.”

What the human brain needs for prevention of Alzheimer’s is mental challenges. It needs to calculate equations, recall spellings, focus on one thing at a time, and figure things itself. I guess this constitutes the old-fashioned way of doing things … using your head (as my father used to say).

But it seems that the more sophisticated we get in terms of functional ease, the less resistant our brains get in terms of disease.

In the old days, if you needed to calculate something mathematically, you either did the equation in your head, or you put pen to paper. Then you figured out the equation yourself using your good ole’ brain. And, while your lazy brain may not have liked it, you still came up with the answer.

But now, humans use neither their brains nor pen and paper. Instead, they use calculators. When was the last time you figured out a mathematical equation (even a simple one) in your head instead of using your calculator? When was the last time you pulled out pen and paper to do a mathematical equation?

You see? Your brain’s default mode will force you to reach for that calculator in a heartbeat.

Before we had computers, you used a bound dictionary to look-up and spell words correctly; you edited your writing; and you felt embarrassed if your spelling or grammar were poor. You took the time to make sure you wrote as well as you could.

But now, you probably have “spell check” on your computer. In fact, because the collective conscious of the general public is on “lazy” default mode, spell check is probably an automatic feature on your computer. Most likely, you can’t even turn it off. The makers of your computerized devices can’t imagine any human who would actually want to check his or her own spelling!

So, the computer inserts red underlining for any word that isn’t a word.

Oh, but that’s not all! Instead of merely notifying you of the misspelled word, your computer actually corrects if for you! Ahhh, but it does not do so with the logic of your human brain or the sentence you intended to write. Instead, it just changes it to the word the computer finds most similar to your misspelled word.

The result is sentences that make absolutely no sense at all. Why? Because your brain’s default mode is just too enticed by the option of letting the computer do the spelling.

Before we had computers that enabled you to cut and paste, you had to reconstruct anything you edited. It wasn’t quick, and it wasn’t easy. But, because you had to actually do the reconstructing yourself, the process forced you to re-read and edit your work. In so doing, you discovered all sorts of little mistakes. And you corrected them.

But now that you can just cut and paste huge chunks of text from one place to another, you don’t bother re-reading. You assume you wrote everything just fine the first time. And, thanks to your lazy brain, you don’t have to bother going over it again … especially if the computer’s spell-check function hasn’t highlighted anything. If the computer thinks it’s fine, your brain is fine with that.

That’s why you find all sorts of websites, books, documents, and articles with glaring errors these days. Nobody bothered to check them before publishing them. Nobody seems to care that the mistakes are a reflection on them. Your lazy brain agrees.

And humans don’t even want to do anything even as simple as reading anymore. Instead of reading written books, we listen to audio books. Your lazy brain says, “Why read the book yourself when you can let the machine read the book to you?”

Even map reading is a thing of the past. If you want to navigate, you don’t even have to see where you’re going on a map. Curiosity be damned! Your GPS does all the work for you, and your lazy brain is just fine with your ignorance of geographical location and direction.

Can your already-lazy brain get any lazier?

Before we had such advanced technology, you had to do just one thing at a time. You had to focus. Your brain loved that because it really can’t handle more than one thing at a time. And, although that’s in keeping with its lazy default mode, it actually serves to make it stronger. Focus forced your brain to work the way it is intended to work.

But now, with all the distractions that the technological world has presented, your lazy brain is in a constant state of overwhelm. So, instead of trying to ignore the endless distractions, it just flits from one thing to another as quickly as the technological gadget can. Of course, you only retain bits and pieces of this and that, and you get no real education on anything. But that’s okay with your lazy brain, too.

School children assume they can concentrate with music blaring their ears from an iPod or their cell phone. Total silence is “disturbing” to them simply because they’ve never experienced it before. They can’t imagine being detached from their beloved music or cell phone.

Technology is now a part of your every minute of every day. Your phone pings every few minutes with a text message. If you don’t stop what you’re doing and turn all your attention to the phone, it pings again. The television screen has little ads and messages popping up in the corners while you’re trying to watch a show. If you go to a website, there are ads for things you recently bought flashing on and off the screen to entice you to buy more of them.

Your lazy brain just can’t take all the stimulation, distraction, and action. So, it just turns off. The technology has really replaced the human brain. Most people don’t even bother trying to use their brain anymore. It’s been edged out by all the computers and technology.

I guess you could say that technological gadgets are brain hatchets! So, think twice before using these technological gadgets rather than your own brain.

But, what am I thinking? Your lazy brain doesn’t even want to think once! It definitely isn’t going to voluntarily think twice!

Like I said, technological gadgets are brain hatchets.

You’ve Got a Long Way to Go, Baby!

You’ve Got a Long Way to Go, Baby!

By Menopause Taylor 

Back in 1968, the phrase, “You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby” became very popular. It implies progress. And, even though it was an advertising slogan for Virginia Slim cigarettes rather than anything expressly political or social, it symbolized these long, slender cigarettes that were tailored for women, with their long slender fingers and such.

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Pre-vention, Inter-vention, or Fixin’

 

Pre-vention, Inter-vention, or Fixin’

by Menopause Taylor 

I’ve often said that doctors are repairmen. The entire four years of medical education and the four to five years of residency training are all devoted to learning how to repair people once they’re broken.

Of course, the tools for fixing broken people aren’t the same as those for fixing broken objects. Instead of wrenches and glue and such, they’re pharmaceutical drugs and surgical procedures.

And, if you completed your medical and residency training in Texas, as did I, fixing isn’t pronounced “fix – ing.” Instead, it’s “fixin’.” Texans have their very own unique vernacular.

In fact, the entire so-called “health care industry” isn’t really a health care industry at all. It’s a “disease care industry.” It consists of doctors who are trained to recognize disease so that they can fix you when you need fixin’.

The wellness industry is really the “health care industry.” It’s designed to keep you well so that you don’t need fixin’.

This would be fine if it didn’t confound your ability to get the tests you need to stay well.

Take the guidelines for bone density testing, for example. You would expect them to recommend your first bone density test at an age when you can prevent bone loss due to osteoporosis. That way, you could diagnose early bone loss when all you need is pre-vention.

At the very least, you’d expect them to designate an age for your first bone density test somewhat close to the age at which you start losing bone. Then you could discover bone loss early. That would give you the opportunity for early inter-vention.

You start loosing bone when you lose your estrogen at about the age of 50. And you lose 2% of your bone each year in the first five years of your post-menopause. Then, you continue to lose 1% of your bone every year after that.

But, despite all that bone loss, there are no early symptoms to tell you you’re losing bone. Most women discover that they have osteoporosis when they suddenly fracture their spine, hip, or wrist from things that should never cause a fracture, like sneezing, sitting down forcefully, or clapping.

The fact that osteoporosis is a “silent disease” — without symptoms to warn you that you have it — would seem like reason enough to designate an age close to 50 for getting your first bone density test.

But, alas, the age designated for getting your very first bone density test by all guidelines is … da da da da: 65!

Hot diggedy dog, as they say in Texas. By age 65, you very well could have already lost a whopping (or whopping,’ in Texas) 25% of your bone.

Well, that’s not going to warrant pre-vention or early inter-vention. It’s gonna require fixin’.

And it won’t be a quick fix or an easy fix.

In fact, with guidelines for your first bone density test at age 65, you very well may already have suffered a fracture. And that makes the fixin’ even harder.

In Texas, people often say they’re “fixin’ to do something.” But, you can’t really “fix to do something.” Usually, it’s the other way around. You do something else first that leads to the need for fixin’. Or, in the case of following the guidelines for bone density testing, you don’t do something else (such as getting a bone density test before the age of 65) first … which leads to the need for fixin’ because your osteoporosis is so advanced.

Besides, they say a lot of illogical things in Texas. For instance, there, the plural of “you” isn’t “you.” It’s “you all.” But Texans don’t pronounce it “you all.” They say, “ya’all.” And they even have a pluralized form of the already-plural “ya’all.” It’s “all ya’all”!

Whether you’re a Texan or not, you’re a lot better off gettin’ yur bone density taest a whole heck if a lot sooner than age 65. Fork out the cash yur own self if ya have ta. Ferget the gaadelines.

If all ya’ll get yur bone density test when ya lose yur estrogen at ‘bout age 50, you’ll do a whole lot more pre-ventin’ and early inter-vention, … and a whole lot less fixin’.

South African Hair Affairs

Have you ever thought about just how preoccupied humans are when it comes to their hair? It can be a critical part of our identity. How often do you describe someone without saying word about his or her hair (or lack thereof)? “The redhead.” “The bald guy.” “You know, that girl with the long blond hair.” We even ascribe the overall tone of our day by it when we say we’re having “a bad hair day.”

Hair is nothing but a dead, fibrous protein called keratin. That’s the same stuff that makes up your fingernails, and even rhinos’ horns. It’s surprising that we put so much energy, time, emotion, and importance into this dead fiber.

We wash it, condition it, brush it, and blow-dry it. We cut it, and then we cut it some more or cut it differently. We color it, and then we scramble to color the roots as soon as they grow out. We highlight it to make some strands a lighter color and low light it to make some strands a darker color. We straighten it if it’s curly and curl it if it’s straight. And let’s not forget all the braiding, dreading, and extending we do to hair. To contrast all that, some people just shave it all off, which is as much of a fashion statement as all the other hair-dos.

I say, “we” when, in fact, some of us (including me) just neglect it. I wash my hair twice a week, don’t even own a brush, and only use one hair product—lots of conditioner (which I leave in). On the days when I don’t wash it, I do nothing … absolutely nothing to it. I don’t color it or even have it professionally cut. I just trim it myself … bent over in the shower with my hair in front of my face like “Cousin It” on the Addams Family. I haven’t even been to a hairdresser in over 20 years.

And maybe that’s why I pay so much attention to all the things that other people do to their hair that I don’t do.

Hair plays a significant role in the history of South Africa. During apartheid, the Population Registration Act of 1950 classified people as White, Black, or Coloured. But it wasn’t always so easy to place people in the proper category based on racial heritage alone. When there was a question about someone’s racial category, the South African authorities utilized “The Pencil Test.”

This test involved poking a pencil into the hair of the person of questionable race. If it got stuck, the person failed, and was labeled as “Coloured.” (Of course, Black people would fail, but they weren’t of questionable race.) If it fell out, he or she “passed” and was labeled as “White.” There were exceptions to the rule under certain conditions with qualifying evidence. These racial labels determined how many rights a person had. Whites had the most rights, followed by Coloureds. Blacks had the fewest.

An alternate version of the pencil test was available for Blacks who wished to be reclassified as Coloured. It was what I call “The Pencil Shake Test.” The Black who aspired to be classified as a Coloured person would stick a pencil in his or her hair and then test it with a shake of the head. If the pencil fell out, it constituted a passing grade and reclassification to Coloured was granted. If it stayed in place, it was a failure and the person remained Black.

From a genetic standpoint, hair is like any other phenotypic feature, such as eye color. And just as all family members don’t have the same eye color, they don’t all have the same hair texture. So, the pencil test resulted in tearing families apart because some family members had pencil-gripping hair and others didn’t.

And what if someone shaved his or her head and didn’t have hair with which to conduct the pencil test? What if someone’s hair was too short to even give the pencil test a try? South Africans remember the test as one of the most ridiculous and disturbing aspects of apartheid.

Here in Cape Town, I see all sorts of hair treatments that intrigue me. I think the vast majority of Black people alter their hair in some fashion. Some of them create absolute masterpieces. The intricacy looks like it took days to accomplish. I’ve seen heads with so many braids on them—long ones—that I estimate a weight increase of at least a kilo or more due to their hair alone. As a person with arthritis, I can only imagine how much that extra weight on my head would make my neck hurt.

I’ve also seen more people wearing wigs here than I have anywhere else. I wonder if they’ve damaged their hair so much with all the other treatments that there just isn’t any left. I guess they’re not fond of sporting the bald look like some people are.

I direct the normal allotment of attention most people dedicate to their hair to my nails, instead. It’s all keratin, just the same. And when I’m at the salon getting my pedicure and manicure, I stare at the activity in the part of the salon dedicated to hair. And there’s always plenty of activity in there!

One of my gym friends, Hilary, goes to the hair salon every other day. She says she’s never even washed her own hair! Philipe, the coiffeur does it. The salon is called Yemaya, and it offers a full spectrum of services—hair, facials, manicures, pedicures, make-up application, hair removal, and tanning. It’s in the same building as my gym—right across the street from our apartment. Since Hilary goes to the gym every day, it’s easy for her to stop by the salon almost every day.

What confuses me is that Hilary is White, really White. She has naturally blonde hair. And it appears to me that it would be quite easy to handle her hair. It’s thick and shiny and always looks perfect. But, with Yemaya Spa right there, why not stop by and let Philippe do it?

One of my other friends, Vanessa, is black. One day, I commented to her about my fascination with the hairstyles I see here. She looked at me, shook her head, and said, “Let me tell you something: Nothing … I mean nothing … gets in the way of a black woman having her hair done. The bills may go unpaid or they may have to cut back on groceries, but the hair is going to get done!”

“Really?” After a pause, I asked, “How much does it cost to get hair braided with all those little braids?”

“A lot! Hundreds of dollars, at least. Sometimes, it’s over a thousand.”

“U. S. dollars?”

“Yep. U.S. dollars.”

Shocked at this, my jaw dropped. “And how often do women have to do this?”

“Every few months. Can you imagine? What the hell!” (although, when she says this, it sounds like, “hay-ul”).

I reflected on my residency training in Obstetrics and Gynecology. The indigent patients we took care of used food stamps to buy junk food, and would spend what little money they had on cigarettes and lotto tickets. It always seemed to me like they had their priorities mixed up.

“What about the time commitment? How long does it take to get your hair braided like that?” I asked Vanessa.

“Hours. Sometimes, it takes a couple of days. And women just wear a wig until it’s finished.”

Always curious to learn more and focused on the consequences of various behaviors, I probed deeper: “But, what about damage to the hair? It just looks like it would ruin whatever little hair you do have by gluing long, heavy extensions to it and weaving it into tight little braids.”

Vanessa nodded. “It does. What the hay-ul! Sometimes you have to wait for it to grow out again before you can get it braided again.” Then she cocked her head, grinned, and said, “And would you believe that it is extremely painful?”

“Well, it does look like it feels heavy.”

“No, I mean painful!” She opened her eyes wide to emphasize the point. “Hay-ul! The hairdresser pulls on your hair to get the braids tight, to the point of making some women even cry or scream. And your scalp hurts so much for about three days that you can’t even lay your head on a pillow. If someone even touches your head in the day or two after getting it braided, it’s excruciating. And all black women know to take medicine to relieve the pain for a few days. I know. I’ve had it done before.”

“But not anymore!” I laughed. “Just think of all the money you’re saving and pain you’re missing!

Vanessa has had medical treatments that resulted in some hair loss, so she has just decided to capitalize on it by sporting the bald look. And she looks great! Her head is nice and round and really looks perfect without hair. Her husband is bald, also. They’re Americans who are living here in Cape Town for a year, and they send out regular newsletters with a joint name for the two of them. I think they should call themselves “(Round and Bald)2. ”

Recently, I’ve witnessed a couple of hair rituals that were new to me.

One day, I was crossing the street on my way home from the gym. (That constitutes the majority of my trek home from the gym since we live right across the street.) When I got to the other side and began walking the few steps to our front gate, I heard a woman making a ruckus on the other side of the street. She was hollering at someone in temper-tantrum fashion. Two women who work at the laundromat right below our apartment were standing just outside their doorway on the sidewalk, watching a possibly-deranged woman temper-tantrumming on the other side of the street. They were laughing at her. One kept saying, “Oh, whashe gonna do naw?” I got the feeling that they found her entertaining. Maybe they see her often and look forward to her antics.

Whatever the case, it was clear to me that they didn’t want to miss the show. They were watching her every move.

So, as I reached where they stood, laughing just next to our entry gate, I joined them and looked across the street.

There, on the other side, was a Black or Coloured woman (I’m not good at these labels and haven’t applied any pencil testing). She was wearing shorts (in the winter time). She stood on the sidewalk facing the wall of glass next to her, which was the front window of a restaurant named Knead. Specifically, she was looking into Knead. Only she wasn’t looking at the restaurant; she was looking at herself. She was using the window as a mirror.

She had set her floppy plastic bag on the pavement, and reached into it and withdrew a white rag. It looked a lot like a wet paper towel or a baby wipe. As she looked at the window-as-a-mirror, she used the rag to wash her face. Then she reached back into her bag, retrieved another rag, and proceeded to wipe it all over her head, washing … or wetting … or conditioning her hair. (I can only guess here. Who knows what she would call it.)

Then, she reached back into her bag, deposited the used rags and took out a clear plastic shower cap. She put it on her head over her now-washed and conditioned hair. The ladies on my side of the street were bending over, slapping themselves on the thighs, howling with laughter: “Oh, whashe gonna do naw? She gotta shaurcap on ‘er head! Haaaah!”

The lady grooming herself in the Knead window then reached into her bag and pulled out a bright yellow T-shirt. She held it up by its short sleeves and then placed it on her head. With this, the laundromat women cackled loudly. “Lookathat. She placin’ it onner head. Haaah!”

I’ve never been one to walk around with a camera or even with my cell phone. If I have it with me, it’s usually tucked away deep in my purse or cart.

But, seeing how interested the laundromat ladies were, and realizing that something fascinating was unfolding, I grabbed my iPhone just in time to (barely) take a few photos.

In a flash, the grooming lady grabbed the edges of her T-shirt, twisted it, and voilá, she’d formed it into a perfect headdress that looked like a tight-fitting scarf around her face and a colorful bun at the nape of her neck.

She took a final look at herself in the Knead window, bent down to pick up her bag, and headed down the street. She strutted away with a confident “I’ll-show-you-how-to-be-fashionable-without-all-the-fuss” gait.

So, despite all the dollars we spend on our hair, there is an inexpensive way to play the hair game. Just wipe some wet rags over your head and wear a T-shirt headdress!

The very next day, I was at Yemaya Salon for my nail appointment, watching for Hilary. I sat there chatting with Martha, my manicurist, when we heard crying from the hair salon area just steps away. They were obviously the cries of a child, and I assumed it was a baby crying over the typical things babies cry about—hunger, fatigue, etc. But the crying morphed into more mature wailing, and then I started to question my assumption about it being a baby’s cry.

“Someone’s really upset about something,” I said. “Maybe some woman hates her haircut!”

Martha shook her head, rolled her eyes, and said, “Who knows?”

And just then, the crying sounds headed our way.

We both looked up to see a mother with her two children approaching the area between the salon and the reception area. The older, bigger child of about 11 years was bald and quiet. But the younger, smaller child was howling.

As I looked at the crying child, I thought it was a girl of about five or six years of age. She was clawing at her mother, obviously very upset. The child’s hair was a big, loose Afro … far from anything that looked like it had just been cut. And just behind the family came Antonio, the hairdresser.

Antonio is a swishy, adorable gay guy who wouldn’t hurt a flea. He’s always smiling and shows kindness to everyone he sees. He approached the child with a green blow dryer and proceeded to dry the Afro as the child remained standing and thrashing about.

I looked at Martha and said, “That little girl did not want her hair cut.”

“Actually, that’s a little boy,” Martha responded.

After five minutes of trying to dry the child’s round bush of hair, the family finally stepped toward the registration desk to pay. Antonio came toward us. As he got right next to us, I said, “Antonio, you’re a mean, mean man!”

Antonio raised both hands in a gesture of flamboyant surrender, let his neck flop to one side, and rolled his eyes. “They let the hair just grow and grow for months, without even touching it. No washin’, no brushin’, no nuthin. Then they want me to fix it. I try not to pull on it, but it’s just so mahhtted that I cahhn’t help but hit the tahhngles. I feel so bahhd.”

We chuckled and told Antonio he was the nicest guy the kid could have found. But what a traumatic experience for that little boy.

I looked at Martha, and we both laughed.

What we go through for our hair! What an affair! I think I’ll stick to my hair-neglect plan. I’m due for another manicure soon.

Fifty Shades of Black

A couple of weeks ago, I was riding in a South African taxi cab. The driver was a middle-aged fellow, with dark chocolate skin and pinkish lips. He’d been born and raised in Cape Town.

It’s my habit to talk to cab or Uber drivers. I like to show genuine interest in and kindness toward others. So, I strike up conversations about various issues — political, cultural, meteorological, familial, and the like.

On that particular day, we were talking about Eskom, the electric company.

I said, “I just can’t figure out what’s going on with the Eskom load shedding schedule for when the electricity will be turned off. They send out a warning that it’s going to happen … and then it doesn’t.”

The cab driver responded with, “That’s because Eskom is run by Black people, and they can’t get anything right.”

Huh? I was confused. Was our Black driver implying that he wasn’t Black but the Eskom people were?

A few days later, it happened again.

I was chatting with some of the employees in a shop on our street — two young Black women. They complained about their salaries, saying, “The Blacks discriminate against Coloured people. They never pay us enough.”

I changed the subject because … well, I really had no idea what to say. “You look dark enough to be Black to me” would have been inappropriate, although that’s what I was thinking. I was definitely confused.

My ex-husband, George, recalls an incident way back in the 1970s, when he was a hitchhiking hippie, catching rides from Cape Town to Nairobi. Most commonly, White people picked him up, since they were just about the only ones who owned cars. But once, an old jalopy stopped for him and he climbed in to join four other people … all of whom were Black. And as they rode down the street, George was taken aback. His fellow passengers and driver repeatedly pointed at Black people on the roadside and called them “the N word.” To George, there was no difference in the skin color of the people in the jalopy and the ones outside it.

So, what’s the deal with race in South Africa?

As it turns out, there is much more than just “Black” and “White” here. There are many shades of black in between.

Until 1991, there were four racial categories according to South African law: (1) Black, (2) White, (3) Indian, and (3) Coloured. Since then, these categories have been abolished, but South Africans still view themselves (and others) according to these categories. And that’s because the apartheid regime over-emphasized the differences between the racial groups and turned them against each other. The result was that the racial hierarchy was socially, culturally, legally, politically, and economically entrenched.

To an outsider, the population of South Africa appears to fall into only two groups: Black and White. But locals are adept at classifying people much more specifically. Here, there are multiple crucial shades of Light Black between Black and White.

“Coloured” refers to people who are of mixed Black and White descent. Most of this resulted from intermarriages between White settlers and African natives in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. But not all Coloured people possess the same ethnic background. Thus, they can have a variety of different features. Genetic studies suggest that Coloureds have the highest levels of mixed ancestry in the world.

In Cape Town, the discriminatory skills for distinguishing between Blacks and Coloureds are fine-tuned … and the discriminatory practices for detesting Blacks or Coloureds is also rather evident.

Coloureds are sub-classified into mixed race, biracial, light-skinned, and who knows how many other categories. But to be truly “Coloured,” both parents must be “Coloured.” If one parent is Black and the other is White, you’re not Coloured. To South Africans, Barack Obama isn’t Coloured. He’s biracial.

And while “Coloured” is a derogatory term in other parts of the world, here in South Africa, it has no such connotation. It’s no different than saying someone is Hispanic. (Granted, while there are really only three races in the world — Negroid, Caucasian, and Mongoloid — most people confuse “race” with “ethnicity.”)

The common theme for Coloureds is that they are too White to be Black and too Black to be White. But in South Africa, the differences in these shades of black go well beyond skin color: they’re cultural. They include language, folklore, religion, major holidays, rites of passage, living conditions, food, clothing, family life, education, heritage, employment, crafts, and social problems. Due to Apartheid, race, social class and culture have become inextricably linked.

So, as I ride with various Uber and taxi drivers, I hear occasional disdainful comments from various black-skinned individuals about other black-skinned individuals regarding this or that. And no matter how much I think I know my colors, I’m usually wrong. Black isn’t black; it’s a spectrum of color more nuanced than anything I ever imagined … all of which seem Black to me.

I wonder why there’s only one shade of White.

Beauty and The Beast

Remember the fairytale “Beauty and The Beast”? The beauty was the lovely young, feminine, elegant, sexy, desirable, kind woman who seemed to have everything going for her. The beast was a big, hairy, ugly, mean, cursed animal who inflicted pain and misery on others.

In the story, the names “Beauty” and “Beast” clearly distinguish the two characters as diametrically opposed in terms of their significance. Ahh, but the tale ends when the beauty falls in love with the beast. So, somehow, the beauty realized that the beast wasn’t so bad after all.

So, how is it that something so wonderful as the beauty can recognize the goodness in the beast? And how is it that something as horrific as the beast can actually have some redeeming qualities?

The tale of “Beauty and The Beast” was never my favorite … until I assessed it in a slightly different way.

Day after day, I hear women talk about how estrogen is bad. It causes cancer! It will kill you!

And it makes me wonder, is estrogen both the beauty and the beast?

When women make disparaging remarks about estrogen, I respond with questions:

“So, estrogen surged through your body from the time of puberty until the time of menopause. Let’s see, that was about 39 or 40 years. And it made you feminine, soft, sexy, fertile, attractive, beautiful, strong-boned, healthy-hearted, and witty. And all that time, you loved it. You felt great.”

“But then, at menopause, you lost your estrogen. And, suddenly, you had 22 symptoms that made you feel awful. You had hot flashes, night sweats, insomnia, forgetfulness, irritability, joint pain, dry skin, hair loss, whiskers, an itchy and shrinking vagina, urinary incontinence, weight gain, and acne. You felt so miserable you thought you were going crazy.”

“So, you felt fantastic with estrogen. And you feel miserable without it.”

“At what point did estrogen convert from being the beauty to becoming the beast?”

The funny thing is that those women never have an answer.

So, I ask you: Can it be both?

Is it “the beauty” while your own body still produces it, but “the beast” once it doesn’t?

Or is the estrogen your body produced “the beauty,” but estrogen that you take as replacement “the beast”?

And why is it that you think it’s the beast only after you’ve lost it? Was it the beauty making you a beauty while your body still produced it, but became a beast once it didn’t?

I don’t understand the logic. It just doesn’t add up. Does it make sense to you?

If estrogen were the beast, we would expect it to make us feel terrible all the while that our bodies produce it. So, from the time of puberty until we transition into menopause, we would be sick all the time, have the cancers women attribute to it, and feel doomed to live with the beast for far too long.

And then. when we went through menopause and lost the stuff, we’d feel ecstatic. All the beastly effects of estrogen (whatever they may be) would disappear. And we’d feel better than ever before. Menopause would signify ridding ourselves of the beast.

Oh, and without the beast, we’d become more beautiful.

If such were the case, women would long for menopause. They would praise the day when they no longer had to be plagued by the beast.

But, oddly, the reality is that it’s the other way around.

So, my confusion lies in understanding how the very thing that make you feel wonderful is the beast. And how in the world did it transform from being the beauty to being the beast?

As far as I’m concerned, this story line about estrogen the beauty becoming estrogen the beast is more of a fairytale than the actual fairytale. It’s magical, unrealistic, full of fantasy, and completely irrational.

What do you think?

While You Weren’t Sleeping

Not sleeping! We all hate it.

While you weren’t sleeping, you were lying in bed wishing you were sleeping, but to no avail. Then you started searching for the reasons you weren’t sleeping.

All the tossing, turning, re-positioning, thinking of things that might have put you to sleep. And all the while, you were assessing just how many hours were left before you had to get up and start your day. Tick, tick, tick. Your entire night inched by, leaving you exhausted even though you hadn’t done anything but lie there … not sleeping.

The irony is that the longer you weren’t sleeping, the more anxious you got about not sleeping. And the more anxious you got about not sleeping, the more you weren’t sleeping.

And then you tried to figure out why you weren’t sleeping.

Was it stress? Too much caffeine? That argument you had with your spouse? Or perhaps it was some environmental disturbance, like a noise or the room temperature. But, he’s sleeping soundly. There’s certainly nothing in the environment bothering him.

And then it hits you: This must be menopause!

Sure, there have been other times when you weren’t sleeping very well. The most memorable was right after having your baby. But back them you weren’t sleeping for an obvious reason. It was all about the baby. The baby was hungry. The baby was wet. The baby was sick. Even though not sleeping was tiring, it made sense that you weren’t sleeping.

But now, at menopause, the fact that you aren’t sleeping is one of the most bothersome and senseless symptoms of all.

Of course, there’s an obvious reason that you aren’t sleeping: loss of estrogen. But, unlike the obvious reason you weren’t sleeping with a newborn, loss of estrogen just doesn’t seem a worthwhile reason for not sleeping.

I mean, you weren’t sleeping when you’d had your baby, and now you aren’t sleeping when you don’t have your estrogen.

You can dissect the sequence of events that characterized your night … last night and every night … while you weren’t sleeping:

First, you weren’t able to fall asleep. Whereas you normally drifted off to sleep when your head hit the pillow, on the nights when you weren’t sleeping, it took an hour or two just to get to sleep.

But then, you had night sweats. The night sweats were like the hot flashes you had during the day. You felt a wave of intense heat throughout your body as if it was coming from the inside out. And it swept its way from head to toe, leaving a thick film of slimy sweat behind. And, along with it, your heart started pounding heavily, wildly, as if it was going to jump out of your chest.

Of course, that made you even more anxious and constituted an obvious reason as to why you weren’t sleeping.

And since the heart-pounding resolved after a couple of minutes, you thought you should have been able to go back to sleeping.

But you were drenched. Your nightgown, the sheets, even the pillow were damp. They were so damp that they were cold. So, you had to get up and change your nightgown. And once you were fully awake doing that, you realized that you had to change the sheets, too, lest they dampen your new nightgown.

That required waking up your snoring spouse, who saw no reason to care about soiled sheets. He actually accused you of wetting the bed. And that made you angry enough to bite his head off … and really wake yourself up.

Finally, after all that, you went back to sleeping … but only for an hour before the whole cycle repeated itself again.

Needless to say, you woke up after you weren’t sleeping because of all the interruptions throughout the night.

And that set the stage for a profound feeling of fatigue in the morning. Even lifting the coffee mug to your lips seemed like a huge effort. You didn’t bother to put yourself together for the sake of appearance. It was just too much work. But off to work you went, moving slowly, feeling sluggish and old.

Because you weren’t sleeping, you also couldn’t seem to remember anything. Forgetfulness became the theme of the day. You couldn’t remember what you were supposed to do or when you were supposed to do it. So you spent the entire day scrambling to make up for lost time, covering your mishaps, and forgetting the next thing while compensating for the last forgotten thing.

It was really exhausting. And it was all because you weren’t sleeping when you should have been sleeping.

Within the first couple of hours of your day, you’d had had it. You became irritable. No one could say or do anything without upsetting you in some way. You lashed out at your co-workers, and even your boss.

Then you felt badly about it and tried to make amends. You were sugary sweet for about ten minutes. But then, wham! Something made you angry again. Over and over, all day long, you had mood swings like a pendulum. One minute you were be mad as a wet hen; the next, you were be calm as a cucumber. Eventually, everyone around you … at work and at home … felt like they were walking on eggshells. So they all started distancing themselves from you.

And when you realized that you’d alienated virtually everyone in your circle of family, friends, and co-workers … all because you weren’t sleeping … it made you depressed. The full-on gloom and doom enveloped you.

And your depression made you unable to sleep.

So now, you aren’t sleeping because of estrogen loss on top of not sleeping because of depression.

It’s a vicious cycle … not sleeping at night leads to all the events that follow because of it:

Insomnia Night Sweats Interrupted Sleep Fatigue

Depression Irritability Mood Swings Forgetfulness

So, while you weren’t sleeping, a whole lot of other things were brewing to really affect the quality of your life … negatively! Not sleeping is not just a sleepless night anymore.