Reading the Women's Health part of About.com, on symptoms of perimenopause.
Due to reduced estrogen levels, the body faces challenges regulating temperature. Check. Have been finding myself turning the air conditioning in my car on and off every three minutes or so all summer, and this weekend I kept feeling feverish and worried I had the swine flu.
Mood swings. Absolutely. I feel like I'm 13 years old again - bloated, grumpy, sensing an imaginary audience watching me at all times and judging everything I do not good enough. Speaking of which...
Weight gain around the waist. I was doing so well for so long, without even trying, but now I'm my fat teenaged dumpy awkward out of shape self again.
Memory lapses. Big time. Trouble concentrating? That too. Especially anything with a number or someone's name in it. Or driving directions. Or what I was about to do on the computer, before I started checking my email. Or what day it is.
Reading glasses and hot flashes and memory lapses are not very rock and roll. Perhaps I will invent a drug-fucked past, and blame it all on my really heavy smack habit I had back in the 80's.
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Friday, September 11, 2009
It's a girl thing
It's Friday night and I've been watching a marathon of fashion television on TLC - about fiftyleven episodes in a row of Say Yes to the Dress, a show about brides shopping for wedding dresses, and then one episode of Trinny and Suzanna, the British What Not to Wear ladies, in America helping Americans dress better.
Trinny and Suzanna were helping a girl in Savannah, a woman actually, 37 years old but looked mid-twenties, who had a frumpy and blah wardrobe with no color. On this show the people turn themselves in, so that was her description, not theirs, but she was right, no color at all - a closet absolutely stuffed with black, white, beige and brown. They counted out her pairs of identical beige chinos and there were like twelve of them.
Thing is, the woman had been a dancer, and had taught dance and theatre to at-risk school kids for ten years. She had recently burned out and left that job, though, and was now a cook in a candy story, making taffy and caramel apples and things. She'd been in some kind of relationship that had broken up, but now had no boyfriend, no kids. She mainly just worked, the midnight shift, and then went to church.
In talking to her, they found out that she had a flamboyant personality locked up inside all those drab clothes - she talked about how she felt she couldn't let herself be too loud or too expressive at church because she would alarm people, her phrase was, "I think of it as 'Tropical Bird Syndrome'". Well, the ladies latched right onto that, and transformed this woman into the same tropical bird on the outside that she felt like on the inside - bold, bright colors, mixed and matched, some bold fashion statements, high heels, sexiness, elegance - and she blossomed right out. The best staement I thought was one by Trinny: "We want you standing out. Not standing out in a difficult way but in a way that you're inspiring to others."
(As someone who has her own version of Tropical Bird Syndrome when she gets really worked up about something at work (I've been getting the word "passionate" on all my performance reviews lately), I know that desire to just turn yourself way down and wrap yourself in drab beige so as not to scare people. So I should remember that phrase, "inspiring to others".)
Then another moment was on Say Yes to the Dress. A woman came in, a tall, classically beautiful black woman, with her mother, bridesmaid, and a gay fashion consultant male friend of hers. The woman had been in beauty pageants from the age of 16, and had been in Miss Virginia three times. So she knew about gowns. As the consultant summarized, her wedding dress had to be even more special than all those gowns she had worn, and it had to make her feel even more of that feeling. But her instruction for what she was looking for was a classic, traditional wedding dress, not something pageanty, not something that looked like a beauty queen gown.
She had looked at 3000 dresses online and had tried on about 80 in shops, and the wedding was getting closer so there was a bit of pressure.
She tried on three gowns. Her family and friends all thought she looked gorgeous in each of them - well, she was gorgeous - but she would just shrug and shake her head and say, "no....not the one." This went on and on. Frustrations mounted, and the consultant was worried because she really needed a sale to make her monthly numbers (we in the audience knew this but not the prospective bride, of course). Finally the consultant went out on a limb, picked up an elaborate coffee coloured dress with white tulle insets in the pleated skirt, and lots and lots of figured applique and who knows what all up and down the bodice. It was a sale dress, originally priced $17,000. Very haute, very designer, made a real impact.
The woman tried it on. She looked stunning. She frowned. She came out and showed it to her friends and family. They were stunned. They told her it was gorgeous. She said, "Is it like a pageant dress?" The consultant said, with some conviction in her voice, "But that's what you like, that's what you were used to." The customer was troubled. Her brow furrowed, and she walked off the pedastal off to the side. She turned and looked her gay friend straight in the eye, and asked, firmly, "Do I look like a bride? Or do I look like a beauty queen?"
There was a beat when no one in the room answered, and the answer was so completely obvious. You look like both. Because you are both - you are a beauty queen, and now you are you, getting married. She had been fighting it, thinking a bride had to somehow be the opposite of that, and she had tried on 83 boring dresses and hated all of them, because she hadn't come to terms with herself and who she really was. And this dress, being so couture and exquisite, was actually more than a pageant dress. It really did take it to the next level, and she looked radiant and amazing, like a goddess. It was so moving, though, watching her stop running from her identity, stop trying to fit someone else's idea of who she should be and what she should wear, and embrace her identity and radiate it. I'm sure on her wedding day she stood out in a way that she was inspiring to others.
Trinny and Suzanna were helping a girl in Savannah, a woman actually, 37 years old but looked mid-twenties, who had a frumpy and blah wardrobe with no color. On this show the people turn themselves in, so that was her description, not theirs, but she was right, no color at all - a closet absolutely stuffed with black, white, beige and brown. They counted out her pairs of identical beige chinos and there were like twelve of them.
Thing is, the woman had been a dancer, and had taught dance and theatre to at-risk school kids for ten years. She had recently burned out and left that job, though, and was now a cook in a candy story, making taffy and caramel apples and things. She'd been in some kind of relationship that had broken up, but now had no boyfriend, no kids. She mainly just worked, the midnight shift, and then went to church.
In talking to her, they found out that she had a flamboyant personality locked up inside all those drab clothes - she talked about how she felt she couldn't let herself be too loud or too expressive at church because she would alarm people, her phrase was, "I think of it as 'Tropical Bird Syndrome'". Well, the ladies latched right onto that, and transformed this woman into the same tropical bird on the outside that she felt like on the inside - bold, bright colors, mixed and matched, some bold fashion statements, high heels, sexiness, elegance - and she blossomed right out. The best staement I thought was one by Trinny: "We want you standing out. Not standing out in a difficult way but in a way that you're inspiring to others."
(As someone who has her own version of Tropical Bird Syndrome when she gets really worked up about something at work (I've been getting the word "passionate" on all my performance reviews lately), I know that desire to just turn yourself way down and wrap yourself in drab beige so as not to scare people. So I should remember that phrase, "inspiring to others".)
Then another moment was on Say Yes to the Dress. A woman came in, a tall, classically beautiful black woman, with her mother, bridesmaid, and a gay fashion consultant male friend of hers. The woman had been in beauty pageants from the age of 16, and had been in Miss Virginia three times. So she knew about gowns. As the consultant summarized, her wedding dress had to be even more special than all those gowns she had worn, and it had to make her feel even more of that feeling. But her instruction for what she was looking for was a classic, traditional wedding dress, not something pageanty, not something that looked like a beauty queen gown.
She had looked at 3000 dresses online and had tried on about 80 in shops, and the wedding was getting closer so there was a bit of pressure.
She tried on three gowns. Her family and friends all thought she looked gorgeous in each of them - well, she was gorgeous - but she would just shrug and shake her head and say, "no....not the one." This went on and on. Frustrations mounted, and the consultant was worried because she really needed a sale to make her monthly numbers (we in the audience knew this but not the prospective bride, of course). Finally the consultant went out on a limb, picked up an elaborate coffee coloured dress with white tulle insets in the pleated skirt, and lots and lots of figured applique and who knows what all up and down the bodice. It was a sale dress, originally priced $17,000. Very haute, very designer, made a real impact.
The woman tried it on. She looked stunning. She frowned. She came out and showed it to her friends and family. They were stunned. They told her it was gorgeous. She said, "Is it like a pageant dress?" The consultant said, with some conviction in her voice, "But that's what you like, that's what you were used to." The customer was troubled. Her brow furrowed, and she walked off the pedastal off to the side. She turned and looked her gay friend straight in the eye, and asked, firmly, "Do I look like a bride? Or do I look like a beauty queen?"
There was a beat when no one in the room answered, and the answer was so completely obvious. You look like both. Because you are both - you are a beauty queen, and now you are you, getting married. She had been fighting it, thinking a bride had to somehow be the opposite of that, and she had tried on 83 boring dresses and hated all of them, because she hadn't come to terms with herself and who she really was. And this dress, being so couture and exquisite, was actually more than a pageant dress. It really did take it to the next level, and she looked radiant and amazing, like a goddess. It was so moving, though, watching her stop running from her identity, stop trying to fit someone else's idea of who she should be and what she should wear, and embrace her identity and radiate it. I'm sure on her wedding day she stood out in a way that she was inspiring to others.
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