Fiftyish and Feisty

Weight and body image are really sensitive topics. Through my web wanderings for this post, I’ve learned that no matter what you say, there is an opposing view, and sometimes it’s expressed vehemently, even viciously. I might venture into these contentious, emotional issues another time, but my intention with this post is to poke a bit of fun at my 55 year-old self and the lengths I considered going to in the ridiculous pursuit of a teenage body.

On a recent trip to Mexico, I had a lot of time to contemplate my navel—and the dimply goo around it (truth to tell, in lounge position, I couldn’t even see my belly button because of that gooey fat). My friend said tan goo looks better than white goo, so I donned a bikini instead of my comfy tankini. The bikini lasted only a day. Despite being in good company with all manner of bare goo parading up and down the beach, I’m too self-conscious and ended up nearly oxygen-starved from trying to hold my stomach in.

I’m embarrassed to say I actually considered having this fat pumped out. I know, I know, I can see you rolling your eyes and “Shut up!” forming on your lips if you know me (I’m 5’2 and 115 pounds). Before you judge me and click out of here, I’m not asking for sympathy. I want to talk about how our largely unattainable body ideal still affects us over 50, and share something kind of funny-sad.

My body ideal is stuck in the 60s and 70s, the Twiggy era, when skinny was in and all models were thin. Except for Fat Albert and the Skipper on Gilligan’s Island, I can’t think of any overweight characters on TV. No one on the Brady bunch, the Walton’s or Scooby Doo. There was no Mike and Molly, or Kate on “This Is Us.” You’d never wear a two-piece if you were overweight. At the pool, you covered up your baby fat (at 16?) with a t-shirt or graduated to a one-piece or an apron-like top, precursor to today’s tankini.

I weighed 110 in 6th grade and thought I was fat because my mother’s shorts fit me. I turned to cottage cheese and canned pineapple chunks for lunch, the diet dish of the day. When my family went to McDonald’s, I chose Fish Filet thinking it was less fattening than a cheeseburger. Hah! Joke’s on me: Fish Filet has more calories, fat, and carbs.

At 55, I’m still chasing the elusive Twiggy. When I realized I could no longer get away with just high top undies (the grannie-type Daniel Cleaver discovered on Bridget Jones)  to conceal my gooey pooch under a form-fitting dress, that Sono Bello ad to “instantly get rid of those problem areas” floated into my mind. I’d never really had a flat belly and wanted one for a few years of my life. I wanted to wear clingy dresses and a bikini before I passed the point of no return. Besides, I should reduce my belly fat for health reasons, right? Once this fat oozed in between my organs, becoming “visceral” fat, I’d be at increased risk for diabetes, heart disease and some cancers. Of course, this was my number one motivation, right? Right.

Honestly, I wanted a magic bullet that would give me a flat tummy without giving up my cookies, cheese, chocolate, and wine, or exercising more than I already do. I’m no different than the millions of people on the planet searching for a magic bullet to get what we want without hard work and giving up the pleasures that often cause the problem we’re trying to solve.

For three years I listened to those tempting Sono Bello ads on the radio: non-invasive “laser” surgery, minimal recovery time! Get rid of those stubborn problem areas forever! It sounded so simple, like they just zapped the fat cells with something like a Star Trek tricorder. The ad never mentions liposuction, which I liken to a giant turkey-baster sucking out milky yellow globs of fat cells. [And just where does all that fat go? I took a Google side trip and learned it’s disposed of by medical waste companies and either incinerated or treated and sent to a landfill. Or, according to one doctor, “it may also be processed and re-injected as in the case with a Brazilian butt lift.” Hmmm, plump twerkable butts are in these days and mine is pretty flat—maybe a twofer? Kidding!)

So I finally decided to check it out. If it really was non-invasive fat-zapping by laser, and, say, $500 bucks, why not? What’s to lose, except my gooey potbelly? I Googled Sono Bello and read a bunch of reviews on their site and Yelp. Three steps for 1 great body! More affordable than ever, truly natural-looking amazing results, 90,000 body transformations, highly-trained, board-certified plastic surgeons. After reading both glowing reviews and tragic, painful, disfiguring results at outrageous expense, I decided there was no way I was going to do it. Plus, the zapper can’t reach the visceral fat so there goes that justification. The one benefit some people mentioned was feeling better about their bodies, making it easier to exercise, eat healthy, and treat themselves better.

But…I was still curious about how exactly they did it and how much it would cost to banish my goo forever. I made an appointment for a free consultation. Secretly. I didn’t tell my husband because I knew he’d think I was being ridiculous and dissuade me, and most of my friends would be disgusted with me. I did tell one girlfriend in case I mysteriously disappeared. I had visions of ending up suspended half-alive in a tank so some sick greedy corporation could harvest my organs like in that old movie Coma.

Not surprisingly, the office was posh, quiet, professional-looking. I thumbed through a hardcover album of before and after photos. They do chins, necks, backs, arms, butts, thighs, calves, ankles, ear lobes (kidding, I think). The photos were all black and white, and gloomy, like thunderclouds, and the faceless bodies wore these horribly unflattering panties that puffed out like shower caps. Not good advertising.

I was led into a large office by an attractive young woman dressed to the nines. She sat down at a huge desk and gestured for me to sit in a chair across from her. I told her I just wanted my lower belly done. She explained it would be best to do both the upper and lower belly because if I gained weight, the upper half would continue to fatten up but the lower half wouldn’t. Once you have this done apparently the fat never comes back in that area, so I could have a monstrous overhang if I gained weight (although one review said her fat came back in the treated areas, and bigger than ever). And there’s no magic to the procedure—it’s turkey-baster-fat-sucking, just through a much thinner tube, a “laser” thin tube.

She printed out an estimate right there. I tried to be cool when I read it – $5099.77! $1000 off if I paid in full with a credit card. “Are you kidding me? For this?” grabbing my belly roll. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. And let me be clear—there is nothing medical about this. The woman I talked to was a sales person. She had no medical training whatsoever. I understand from the reviews you don’t see a doctor until you put your non-refundable money down, and often not until right before you go in for the procedure, making it nearly impossible to back out.

Relieved to finally slam the door on Sono Bello, I decided to check out Spanx, which are blessedly non-invasive and cost thousands less than liposuction. They come in all forms, from high top undie goo flatteners to full-body blubber banishers. I couldn’t help wondering how I’d get out of the full-body version gracefully at the end of an evening with a hot date (in my case, my husband Mark, my hot date for 27 years). Push him down on the bed and teasingly croon, “I’m going to slip into something more comfortable…”? (What an understatement!) He’d probably be asleep by the time I wrestled that thing off. If he’s awake, definitely lights off so he doesn’t see all the tell-tale red creases where the elastic cut into my flesh.

Spanx are really just a modern-day take on girdles, those shaping undergarments sketched in the tissue-y yellow pages of the Sears catalog in the 60s, back in the day when modesty prevailed in advertising and photographs of actual women in underwear was just not done. Both boys and girls secretly checked out these pages for clues to the mysteries of the adult female body.

When I finally went to wear my Spanx, it was to a friend’s 60th all-girl dress up birthday party. Getting ready, I tore the tags off and put on the Spanx under my robe. I went to the kitchen to get a glass of wine. From the bedroom I heard my husband say, “Muffin Tamer?” Damn, I left the tags on the nightstand! Caught Spandex-bellied. But I wasn’t alone. At the party, several of us lifted our dresses to show off the various Spanx/girdles/muffin tamers we wore underneath. I was elated to see the full-body version on this one woman whose figure I always envied!

Alas, there are no magic bullets—except maybe accepting and loving our selves just the way we are, not comparing our selves to others, living in the present, and practicing gratitude. In so doing, perhaps we’ll treat our selves and our bodies better, giving them the nutrients, exercise, sleep, and love they need. And buying Spanx.

Google side trip: I am not alone in this pursuit. Despite our cultural shift to a more full-figured body norm, we spent $60 billion on losing weight and more than than $13.5 billion on plastic surgery (“aesthetic procedures”) in 2015. Liposuction was the most popular, then boob jobs, tummy tucks, and eyelid surgery. I was shocked to learn about labiaplasty (yep, what it sounds like: plastic surgery for your vagina, specifically reshaping the labia by removing excess tissue) and that it’s growing in popularity. No judgment, it just never occurred to me to change the look of my vagina. I mean, it rarely sees the light of day! Is there some vagina ideal I’m not aware of? I’m feeling like a clueless prude again (previous blog). Although there are health-related reasons for labiaplasty, I can’t help thinking it’s trending because so many people are seeing pretty vaginas along with impossible bodies in porn and thinking theirs don’t measure up. Hopefully they’re not worried that their vaginas aren’t selfie-worthy, but I gotta wonder since apparently teens are asking their gynecologists about improving the appearance of their vaginas. God am I glad I’m over 50.

Is everyone watching porn? Where have I been? A couple I know is breaking up, possibly in part because he’s gotten into porn and maybe some kinky stuff that she’s not into. I don’t know the details because, despite what men think, most women don’t talk about everything, especially things people might judge or we feel shame about. Like your husband watching porn. A lot.

Based on two brief views of porn years ago and the movie Boogie Nights, I’ve always thought that porn was seedy and vile; that it objectified and demeaned women in the worst ways, and led to unrealistic and unhealthy expectations of sex. I saw no need for it, and never gave it much thought.

Instead of just sticking my head in the sand and clinging to my uninformed beliefs, I did a little research and was shocked to learn that most men, a lot of teens, and a growing number of women are watching porn on the Internet. Peggy Orenstein in her book Girls & Sex writes “40 percent of children ages ten to seventeen have been exposed to porn online, many accidentally,” and “90 percent of men and a third of women had viewed porn during the preceding year” according to a survey of college students. So is porn where they learn about sex? Discover what their bodies respond to and then expect or seek that? Yikes! (BTW, I highly recommend Peggy Orenstein’s book for parents of both boys and girls age 10 and up. And for dads as well as moms.)

I also asked my good friend Google. Skipping the religious sites ranting that porn is ravaging marriages and wrecks the arousal process in the brain, sabotages the ability to enjoy normal sex (some of which I confess I wondered), I found two articles in Psychology Today that gave some balanced perspective.

In her blog post The Real Danger Porn Poses to Relationships, Laurie Watson raises concerns about men using porn in place of their partners because porn is so easy and accessible. Real sex with real women is not as easy as hitting a few keys and wiping up afterward. I’d add that this is especially true as we get older and have to navigate the treacheries of menopause. But she also writes that watching some porn doesn’t make someone an addict and unable to get turned on by and be intimate with a partner, or that the relationship is destroyed.

Marty Klein, PhD, in Pornography: Great Fantasies, Poor Modeling, points out that people, kids in particular, need to realize that porn is not real, not a documentary, and that we shouldn’t compare ourselves or our partners to it. He also doesn’t believe that people prefer masturbating to porn to a healthy pleasurable sexual relationship with a real person. People turn to porn and masturbation because their relationships aren’t healthy but don’t want to talk about it.

Finally, I took the leap and watched some porn on the Internet (I can hear my mother now: “WHAT?!”) I figure I shouldn’t criticize something I know nothing about. I was so afraid I had that sick shaky feeling you get from an adrenaline dump. If I went to a porn site, would porn sites and sex toy ads start popping up on the ad panel when I searched Google? Would one of those mysterious posts show up on my Facebook feed that says “Kim Kelley likes Pornhub!”? I was sure I’d be marked for life and never get another job. My grocer would ban me from the store and Eddie Bauer would kick me out of the Friends program. I’d be shunned by my friends and family because EVERYONE WOULD KNOW I LOOKED AT PORN ON THE WORLD WIDE WEB!

Well, none of this happened of course (not yet anyway; I still have a niggling fear that something’s going to pop up – no pun intended). I was at first outraged and deeply disturbed by what I saw. The number of explicit sexual images flashing on my screen just three clicks in on a porn site menu page was overwhelming. Some I had no idea people actually did and others were just plain perverse.

I did find some videos of garden-variety sex, or what they call “vanilla” porn that wasn’t so bad. Unfortunately you have to know what to search for. I can just imagine the shock of innocent kids the first time they search for porn and they get an eyeful of the really raunchy stuff – stuff they need to know is not normal, can spread disease and cause serious harm, pain and humiliation. They need to know that there are some heinous, criminal things on these websites that no one should ever experience or see. And I’ll be honest, it’s been two weeks since I looked at those porn videos and the images are still with me, appearing in my mind, in vivid detail, out of the blue. I’m not “scarred for life” but that’s because I’m 54 and informed, not 13 and naïve.

Suffice it to say that porn is the fast and easy route to pleasure, release, and relaxation. It can be indicative of problems in a relationship, but isn’t always. Porn is not new, and erotic images, deeds, etc. have always been around. We start masturbating when we’re young and are stimulated by something, be it touch, fantasies we think up in our heads, a scene in a book or movie, Playboy magazine, or today, porn videos on the Internet.

I’m not saying porn is natural, just that we naturally think about and get aroused by sexual images, sometimes offensive things we would never want to do, but still turn us on. I mean, look at the popularity of Fifty Shades of Gray, or Nancy Friday’s books of people’s fantasies. If nothing else these books and their popularity help us to understand that they’re just stories and visuals we might use to arouse or enhance arousal and that we’re not necessarily depraved. After we read them, most of us go have plain old comfy normal vanilla sex with our partners – fat bellies, unmown crotches, sagging breasts and balls and all. And it’s either great, good enough, or not so good. If it’s not good, we can work on it, if we’re willing to talk to each other openly and honestly. We don’t have to turn to porn.

Porn is not going away, and people, including kids, are going to be exposed to it. I think we’re better off being open about it and explaining to kids what porn is and is not. Even going so far as parents sitting down with their kids if they catch them watching it and having a very frank discussion about it with the porn site open. Kids could be really confused about it and appreciate the opportunity to ask questions of someone they trust (I know, I know, says the woman without children). Wouldn’t we rather kids have a good foundational understanding of sex and the difference between normal sex and porn so that when they see unreal, abnormal, violent porn they can tell the difference? I think they’d have a much better chance at normal, respectful, loving sex and healthier self-images if we talked abouat this stuff with them. Sex is confusing enough – porn makes it more so.

I think it’s also helpful to be open about this as adults and talk with our partners about porn. While a little porn might not be a big deal, and can even be a useful tool to revitalize a flagging sex life, I do believe that porn can become addictive and destructive. What happens when one partner wants to explore and one doesn’t?  He or she doesn’t even have to be prudish but just doesn’t want to watch porn or try toys or anal or other couples. Compromise, I guess. But honestly, if my husband insisted we watch porn, or try a threesome, or other kinky stuff, I would have a hard time. Over time and without compromise and respect for my feelings, it would hurt our relationship and probably be a deal breaker. I would lose respect for him as I struggled to maintain my self esteem.

So, am I a prude? No. I was just out of date, and blissfully ignorant in my comfy 27 year-old marriage.

Do I like porn? No.

Does it work? Yes. But so does reading a sex scene in a book (and nobody gets exploited or STIs from a book), an old-fashioned roll in the hay, and my imagination.

Do I think your average Joe who watches a little porn here and there is morally corrupt? No.

Do I think porn should be outlawed? Even if it was it would still exist so I think we just need to face it and provide a healthy counterbalance. Note that child pornography and distributing any porn to minors is illegal. We should educate kids (and probably plenty of adults) on how to have good, safe, respectful sex. There’s a great chapter about this in Girls and Sex titled, “What If We Told Them the Truth?”

Am I going to watch porn now that I’ve crossed that line? No. Personally, I don’t see it adding anything positive to my life. I’ll take old-fashioned vanilla, thank you.

Okay, here goes: my first ever blog. Or is it blog “entry”? Like journal entry? Is the entire thing the blog or is each entry a blog? Such is the mind of a perfectionist (this is not someone who is perfect – far from it – more someone who expects perfection but of course doesn’t achieve it cuz it doesn’t exist, especially for the perfectionist). Usually this would stop me cold and I’d spend 15 minutes Googling the correct usage of blog. But I’m not going to do that today because I’ve set myself a goal of writing without correcting for 30 minutes. I should probably start small, with 15 minutes, since they always say start small so you have a success under your belt, gain a little confidence, and want to do it again because success feels good.

I was just going to pause and read what I wrote, which is another thing a perfectionist wannabe writer like me would do. No wonder I never finish anything! Yes, I used an exclamation point – it’s warranted. I was going to rewrite and say I believe it’s warranted, but dammit, I’m going to speak with authority and confidence and not start out with “I believe, or I think.” That is weak.

Where am I going with this? Oh yeah, my first blog. I’m doing this to challenge my perfectionism, my fear of people reading what I write for fear of what they’ll think of the writing and of me. I’m going to write without censoring myself (well, ok, a little; I’m not going to write about masturbating, at least my own. I might write about masturbation in a blog on sexuality, but not write…well you get the gist), without second guessing every third sentence, re-reading and editing so that I’m basically writing the same damn thing over and over. And it was probably just fine, or “good enough” as my good friend MA has been coaching me on for years, the first time I wrote it.

Such is the life of a failed…no, not failed. A perfectionist wannabe writer. How can you call something failed if you haven’t really tried it? I haven’t been published but I’ve only sent in 3 things. I never heard back, so is that failed? To fail in writing for me would be to stop trying. I keep this quote by Richard Bach by my computer: “A professional writer is an amateur who didn’t quit.”

God it’s getting hard not to read what I wrote. Keep going Kim. Like a train ploughing through snow on tracks in the mountains, or an icebreaker in the Arctic. Just keep going forward. Okay. Gosh when I’m walking or running or driving I have this great stream of consciousness, or even organized thinking. Then I hit the driveway and it’s gone. Now I can’t remember that great line I had. It’s like a thread or yarn you follow back to find the knot or dropped stitch and you reach the end but it’s just the end of the thread in open space.

My good friend LK and I mulled over our perfectionist tendencies – oh shut up! They’re not tendencies, but full-blown conditions. I once went to see a therapist and after 10 minutes of my dribbling on about God knows what, she said, “Oh, you’re a perfectionist, aren’t you?” Ten years later and her reaction has grown in my mind to one of absolute disgust, even horror, her upper lip curling in that way it does when we say “Ew, gross!” to the stench of road kill or your little brother chasing you around with a bugar on his finger.

During editing I Googled perfectionism and was relieved to find that I am not at the pathological end of the perfectionist spectrum, but I am on it: I fear failure, disapproval, and making mistakes; have unrealistic expectations and standards; and prefer order and organization. It does make it difficult to finish things and make decisions (cuz there’s always something better out there. Once it took me two years to find the right bedspread. I actually bought it twice. MA had to come over and tell me it was “good enough” and move on. I still use a TV tray we got for our wedding 26 years ago for a nightstand because I can’t find exactly what I want. I also don’t like and have little time to shop so, ya know what? The TV tray is fine for now. See, I’m getting better.)

BRRRRIIINNNG! Can I not answer the phone? No. I answered. I ignored the text but then when the phone rang, I thought, oh maybe something bad happened and someone really needs to get a hold of me. But I didn’t seriously think that. I was just doing the Pavlovian thing we all do with our damn devices that have replaced our desires. Isn’t that a movie or book – devices and desires? It’s something like that – I’ll have to ask my other brain when I allow myself to Google after my 30 minutes. (It’s an Adam Dalgliesh mystery I read by P.D. James. Excellent mystery series, by the way).

My little brother really used to do that bugar thing. Buggar. Buger. I’m not sure how that’s spelled and neither does spell check. Oh, yeah, maybe it’s booger. Yep, no red squiggle under that one. I chalk up the misspelling to having not written the word or read about boogers for a very long time. I hate boogers, even though I know we all have them and it’s just a bodily fluid but I do absolutely despise them. One of my biggest fears is having one I see in someone’s nose actually fly out when they exhale and land on me. This would be an “Ew, gross!” moment.

Wow, how quickly I become juvenile. I’m actually having fun, laughing all by myself as I pound away on the keys here in my office/guest room that no one sleeps in but me when Mark snores or I have insomnia.

I hope this blog will break me of my perfectionism in writing, and free me to finally write the books and stories and articles I’ve started or thought about for so many years. I can actually find the journal entry where I wrote my very first bucket list and it included write a book. It doesn’t matter if anyone ever reads my blog, though of course I hope someone does and enjoys it, at least a little. I honestly don’t know why anyone would read what I write. I mean, I don’t read anyone else’s blogs. But that’s partly because I don’t have or make the time. I don’t want to sit at a computer or holding a device any longer than the 8 hours I already do for work. I don’t want to get into the time thing write now. That’s a whole ‘nother blog and my 30 minutes is up. I’m not even going to read this first one now, like I usually would and then edit it to hell and destroy it. That phone call was my friend Jen asking if I wanted to come over and swim. It’s 90 degrees and I do so I’m going. And I wrote today so I deserve it! Yay! And it was easy! I feel happy and hopeful. I CAN do it!