As a writer, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate the freedom and spontaneity of writing a blog. There are no publication deadlines, no limitations of distribution, and no delay in making updates available. When things change, the ability to share the information in a blink of the eye is astonishing. That’s sheer ecstasy for a writer.

However, as you can tell from how infrequently I post, I have lost the focus needed to keep this blog vibrant and up to date.

As Paula’s Choice continues to grow (we had a brilliant year: my international distributors are doing great, and I launched some of the best products I have ever formulated), I just don’t have time to do my blog justice and neither does my team.

Aside from the many responsibilities I have of running my company and formulating products (thank God for the team I have around me), I have a fervent desire to make the information and articles on PaulasChoice.com and my other intertwining websites—Beautypedia.com and CosmeticsCop.com—more dynamic, current, and scrupulously accurate.

As a result of all this, our brains and energies are maxed out. The reality (and this was a big wakeup call) is that none of us have room in our schedules to pay attention to this blog so it can flourish.

Therefore, as of today, January 6, 2011, the Beauty Bunch blog will become inactive. I will definitely miss your feedback and the questions you shared here. To those who took the time to comment, whether it was positive or negative, thank you for joining the conversation.

Going forward, my team and I will be more involved on Facebook (I sporadically go on to answer questions live). We will announce the updates we do to articles and product launches that appear on PaulasChoice.com or CosmeticsCop.com at our Paula’s Choice Facebook page, as well as @PaulasChoice on Twitter.

I want to thank you again for sharing this incredible forum with me. In the future I look forward to reading your comments and concerns on Facebook!

Warmest regards,

Paula

CEO and owner of Paula’s Choice

www.PaulasChoice.com

For a lot of men, there is nothing new about the three-step approach to the morning skin care routine. Unfortunately, these three steps often only consist of drinking coffee, showering, and shaving. Most guys are professionals at using as few skin-care products as is humanly possible. The thing is, how we approach this morning routine says a lot about how we see ourselves. Confidence starts (or can be boosted) with better care of your face, and an effective skin-care routine can be both easy and quick.

Do you fit into this classic “I could care less about skin-care” category? If your morning grooming routine is strictly about shaving and nothing else—ignoring sun damage, oily skin, blemishes, or rosacea (lots of guys have rosacea)—you may worry that skin-care is a strictly feminine concern. Beyond the razor everything else is irrelevant and well, not “masculine.” And honestly, taking care of a guy’s skin is not any different than it is for women, just like taking care of a cut or burn has nothing to do with gender.

This stubborn mindset prevents us from taking really great care of our skin. Don’t kid yourself: Blemishes, sun-damaged skin, and razor burn impress no one. I am not suggesting you obsess over your appearance, nor is it necessary to adopt a ten-step skin-care routine. The basics of a man’s skin-care routine can be just that, basic. Easy, no sweat! Here’s what you need to know:

• Just because a skin-care product comes in masculine-looking packaging doesn’t mean you should buy it. Packaging tells you nothing about what’s inside.
• The vast majority of products aimed at men are pathetically formulated, mostly useless, and often overpriced—one more reason to ignore gender when shopping for the best skin-care products.
• Repeat after me: skin care has nothing to do with gender. A blemish is a blemish and sun damage is sun damage whether you’re male or female! Guys do not need stronger products because, in most cases, “stronger” means “irritating” and that’s not a manly move. Men need products that work without damaging their skin!

Aiming for well-formulated essentials that will protect your skin should be the goal, and that’s where the Cosmetics Cop Team comes in. However, you can also check the ingredient label yourself and avoid ingredients that literally hurt your skin such as alcohol, citrus oils, fragrances, menthol, peppermint, and sodium lauryl sulfate. Using products that contain irritating ingredients is almost as bad as neglecting your skin entirely.

Finding great products is simpler than it sounds, stick with me for a moment longer—going from shower to out the door in the AM can still happen in a blink. Here’s how it shakes out:

• A well-formulated daily facial cleanser that’s easy to rinse is the backbone of your routine.
• Choose a proper exfoliant based on your needs. Are you battling acne or blackheads? Go for a BHA (beta hydroxy acid, listed as salicylic acid) to exfoliate your pores and use a benzoyl peroxide disinfectant to kill acne-causing bacteria.
• If your skin is sun damaged and you have normal to dry skin consider using an AHA (alpha hydroxy acid, listed as glycolic or lactic acid) exfoliant. An AHA will greatly reduce the damage done from too many days without sunscreen.
• During the day, a broad-spectrum sunscreen rated SPF 15 or greater is the last and most important step. You can find options that double as moisturizers if you have dry skin. If you have normal to oily skin there are lightweight sunscreens you won’t even feel, which most guys love.
• At night, if you have normal to oily skin a lightweight gel or liquid “moisturizer” loaded with state-of-the-art ingredients is incredibly helpful, or if you have dry skin a more traditional lotion or cream moisturizer loaded with great ingredients is essential. Check out Paula’s article about what makes a great moisturizer here.

Wondering how that new skin-care product you’re eyeing shapes up? The Cosmetics Cop Team product reviews at Beautypedia.com lists all our top recommendations. Following these simple tips can change how you feel about yourself, and on how others perceive you. You’ll see in no time that it’s so easy to improve your appearance!

If you would like information on which Paula’s Choice products may be right for you, call our Customer Service Department at 1.800.831.4088, email us at custserv@paulaschoice.com, or talk to us in a live chat session.

I received this letter from a reader:

Hi from Spain. I am independent journalist in nutrition and cosmetics and I have been reading your new book The Original Beauty Bible (its great) and I noted you talk about anti-inflammatory diet. First of all I believe you are so influenced in nutrition by Dr Weil, but the original creator of anti-inflamatory nutrition is Dr Barry Sears (read for example THE ANTI-INFLAMMATION ZONE). Second, it’s so odd for me that you recommend anti-inflammatory diet and then you say diet is not linked with acne and there aren’t studies about this. Really there are many important clinical and published studies about how a high glycemic diet and a low Omega 3 diet worsen acne. You can read chapter 8 of “Cosmetic Dermatology” (2009) by Leslie Baumann MD or all literature of Loren Cordain (in “The Dietary Cure for Acne” explains based on studies how diet affects acne, for me the very best book about this topic). And really all my readers have improved their acne condition following an Omega3 anti-inflammatory diet.

Here are my comments:

While I apprecaited the feedback and the great compliment there were a few things wrong with the assessment. First, in terms of influence, I actually rarely use Dr. Weil, rather I use a vast number of research journals that I have online access to. In terms of Cosmetic Dermatology, I know that publication well and have a subscription to it, though it is a bit suspect because so much of the research published is paid for by manufacturers of skin care products (both prescription and non-prescription brands) and some of the doctors who write the articles are on the payroll of cosmetic companies.

Yes, nutrition is important to skin care, after all if we don’t eat we die and then we don’t look so good, but the research about a specific diet and skin care is lacking, especially for acne (research about diet and wrinkles is also sparse but growing).

In terms of diet and acne I have seen the research about the glycemic index association but that is hardly conclusive and is more theory at this point then anything else.

Here is some information you may find interesting from the American Academy of Dermatology:

The American Academy of Dermatology (Academy) still says that diet does not cause acne. After all, haven’t research studies found that certain foods cause acne? If you have acne, you may even have noticed that when you eat certain foods you break out. With all this evidence, why does the Academy still say that food does not cause acne?

What the Research Really Shows
While studies have been conducted, more research is needed to conclude that what we eat can cause or prevent acne. What these studies have found suggests that diet may play a role in acne. Here is what the research has shown so far.

Milk and acne. Could drinking milk cause acne? One researcher reports that between 75% and 90% of the milk and milk products consumed in the United States come from pregnant cows. Could acne develop because drinking milk exposes us to the hormones that cows produce when they are pregnant? We know that hormones clearly play a role in acne.

To answer these questions, researchers began by asking people to recall what they ate. One such study asked 47,355 women to remember what they ate in high school 9 years prior. Another study asked teenage boys to recall what they ate and to determine the severity of their acne.

After analyzing the foods eaten, researchers concluded that there was one association. Sodas, chocolate, and even potato chips were not associated with acne. Only drinking milk was.

These studies had limitations. Trying to accurately recall what you ate years ago — or even days ago — can be difficult, so the collected data cannot be considered entirely reliable. What the data does show is that there maybe an association between drinking milk and acne. An association means that more research is needed to prove whether this is just an association or a cause.

It is possible that other causes were at work. These studies did not account for known causes of acne, such as heredity. Acne is known to run in families, and some of the women and teenage boys may have had acne because they inherited genes for acne. The researchers acknowledge the limitations of these studies and conclude that more research is needed.

Western diet and acne. Some researchers hypothesize (explanation that needs to be proven) that more than milk could be causing acne. It could be our Western diet, a diet rich in refined carbohydrates. A few studies have looked at this possibility. One study observed that people in 2 non-westernized societies — Kitavan Islanders (remote islands off the coast of Papua New Guinea) and the Aché hunter-gathers of Paraguay — did not have acne. The researchers attributed this to the people’s low-glycemic diet. A low-glycemic diet consists of fresh fruits, vegetables, and lean proteins.

When people eat a low-glycemic diet, the body works more efficiently. The body needs only produce relatively small amounts of insulin to keep blood glucose levels (glucose gives us energy) within the normal range. When the body works this way, the person is said to be insulin sensitive. This means the body requires relatively small amounts of insulin.

A high-glycemic diet can lead to insulin resistance, which means the body needs to produce a lot more insulin to maintain glucose levels. Insulin resistance can cause numerous health problems including high blood pressure, heart disease, and diabetes.

The researchers concluded that a Western diet, which often causes insulin resistance, might also be fueling known causes of acne such as the production of excess sebum (oily substance) and inflammation. More research is needed to find out if a low-glycemic diet can prevent acne and lead to clearer skin.

To find out, small studies have been conducted to look at the effect of a low-glycemic diet on acne. These studies suggest that a low-glycemic diet maybe helpful, but further research is needed to explain the role that diet plays.

There are still many unanswered questions. One question researchers must answer is why every obese person does not have long-term acne. Individuals who are obese generally have had insulin resistance for years. If insulin resistance leads to acne, then everyone living with diabetes would be expected to have acne. Why is this not the case?

The diet-recall studies also did not show an association between eating high-glycemic foods such as soda and chocolate and acne. Why is this?

More Research Needed
While the research shows that there may be an association between diet and acne, the researchers conclude that more evidence is needed to prove this association. Until research proves that diet causes acne, this site will continue to state what the research shows. To date, the research does not prove that diet causes acne.

References:
Adebamowo CA, Spiegelman D, Berkey CS et al. Milk consumption and acne in teenaged boys. J Am Acad Dermatol 2008; 58: 787-93.

Adebamowo CA, Spiegelman D, Danby FW et al. High school dietary dairy intake and teenage acne. J Am Acad Dermatol 2005; 52: 207-14.

Arbesman H. Dairy and acne–the iodine connection. J Am Acad Dermatol 2005; 53: 1102.
Bershad SV. Diet and acne–slim evidence, again. J Am Acad Dermatol 2005; 53: 1102; author reply 3.

Cordain L, Lindeberg S, Hurtado M et al. Acne vulgaris: a disease of Western civilization. Arch Dermatol 2002; 138: 1584-90.

Danby FW. Acne and milk, the diet myth, and beyond. J Am Acad Dermatol 2005; 52: 360-2.

Smith RN, Braue A, Varigos GA et al. The effect of a low glycemic load diet on acne vulgaris and the fatty acid composition of skin surface triglycerides. J Dermatol Sci 2008; 50: 41-52.

Smith RN, Mann NJ, Braue A et al. A low-glycemic-load diet improves symptoms in acne vulgaris patients: a randomized controlled trial. Am J Clin Nutr 2007; 86: 107-15.

Smith RN, Mann NJ, Braue A et al. The effect of a high-protein, low glycemic-load diet versus a conventional, high glycemic-load diet on biochemical parameters associated with acne vulgaris: a randomized, investigator-masked, controlled trial. J Am Acad Dermatol 2007; 57: 247-56.

Thiboutot DM, Strauss JS. Diet and acne revisited. Arch Dermatol 2002; 138: 1591-2.

Treloar V, Logan AC, Danby FW et al. Comment on acne and glycemic index. J Am Acad Dermatol 2008; 58: 175-7.

Webster GF. Commentary: Diet and acne. J Am Acad Dermatol 2008; 58: 794-5.

However, what is 100% certain is that anecdotal feedback about what helps acne makes for good reading. Yet anecdotal information isn’t solid research. Someone’s individual success, and I’ve seen it all, includes things that could not possibly help and if anything can hurt skin. For example, you can start a diet at the same time your hormones are changing (such as associated with stress or someone’s menstrual cycle) and you would mistakenly associate that with your diet. When the acne returns you may not be the one to hear about it (that’s the nature of anecdotal information). I do suggest experimenting with diet and I mention the relation to certain foods to see what may work for you, including specific allergies to nuts or milk, but that is still not fact, just theory and personal experience.

I have been thinking about the Britain’s Got Talent showcase of Susan Boyle. Her appearance and vocal rendition of “I Dreamed a Dream,” from Les Miserables was captivating. Then came the endless news stories and the blogs. I’m still struck by the hoopla. From what I read and heard I think people aren’t getting it and are missing the obvious.

First of all, she wasn’t an older woman, she was 46 going on 47, by any standard other then someone in their teens or twenties; she wasn’t old. She was dowdy, but what did that have to do with anything. There are lots of powerful, talented, successful, influential women who aren’t beautiful by traditional standards and who you could absolutely call dowdy, Margaret Thatcher, Oprah Winfrey, Janet Reno, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Maya Angelou, Kathy Bates, to name a few of the thousands upon thousands of women that are not cover girls.

And on a smaller level there’s people like me. Without my coifed, dyed hair, makeup, heels, and tailored clothing covering my ample hips, I would be Susan Boyle. I have never been traditionally beautiful or even attractive without a lot of work. But even without that, there are millions of average looking women who excel by the grace of their talent, flexibility skill, creativity, strength, brains, fortitude, stamina, and willingness to put themselves out there. In reality there are lots of women who can do that and lots of women who can’t. Not everyone can be a “star” or successful. Not everyone has what it takes to propel themselves to the next level, and the next, and the next.

Being beautiful isn’t a guarantee of anything. If anything it can get the way. Beautiful women can get all the dates they want but you only have to look at Hollywood to see beautiful women who can’t get jobs, have miserable, painful divorces or short-lived relationships, and grow old with the embarrassment that they no longer meet the standard of beauty they had in their youth. Bad face lifts abound to prevent the inevitable change in status.

Women like me and other average looking women don’t have the expectation traditionally beautiful women have. I like that. I don’t need to date Brad Pitt or that stunning looking guy with the muscles who is sitting across the bar from me flirting with the 25 year old blonde. I know happiness and success is never about looks. It takes more and at the end of the day success is only one measurement of life and there are many ways to define that. What happens to Susan Boyle will be interesting, but what it will be about in the long run is how well she can handle the requirements of a new job. Just like all of us that can mean success or failure. Actually, given everyone fails along the way, how we handle failure of any kind defines how successful we really are, beautiful or not.

I was up late writing, trying to finish the last section on the new edition of The Beauty Bible. Every now and then I take breaks from writing and flip through channels on the TV. It was 2 a.m. and I stopped on one channel that had a woman dressed like she was getting ready to pose for Playboy or Hustler magazine. She was selling a male enhancement product. I could barely believe it. I was transfixed.

I thought only women liked being lied to about skin care products building up collagen and getting rid of wrinkles. But men believing that these types of products would make their private parts grow? I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

This perky spokeswoman, with balloon-like fake breasts, deep revealing cleavage, a waaayyyy too short skirt, and long tousled hair was explaining how the testimonials from men who use this male enhancement product she was hawking had amazing results.

In a breathless voice she said one grateful man said he had gained an inch. Of course my immediate reaction was give me a break…no one believes this crap. Could some men not discern that if this product could grow their privates an inch, then if they kept taking it, their privates would keep growing? That first inch would become 5 inches and then 10 or 15? They’d eventually need help carrying it around!

The final thing she said that just floored me: “We will send you a week free trial, would we do this if we thought it didn’t work?” Now there’s a claim. Pose a question without stating the fact. I could see where some men would exclaim wow, then it must really work, as opposed to thinking it’s just marketing nonsense. Of course they would send out something free to get me to order and they never said it really worked anyway. Plus it wasn’t “free” you needed to pay for shipping and order the next month’s worth!

Men and women like being promised miracles and can’t tell when they are repeatedly being lied to. It seems that the only difference between men and women is the area where they get taken advantage of. Women are figuratively smacked in the face and chest with false promises, while men get hit below the belt!

The following blog entry was submitted by Elizabeth C. from Chillicothe, Ohio. Elizabeth is a Paula’s Choice customer and fan of Paula’s work. As the presidential election draws closer, Paula and her team thought that Elizabeth’s musing were timely and amusing!

I will apologize for this short zinger right up front, it is just a late night rant. While the entire world frets about financial and credit crises, someone must be alert to the more mundane items. I don’t know who will win this election, and for purposes of this discussion don’t very much care who deserves to run the country. I am however irritated when I catch video or photos of the inimitably handsome Barack Obama and less handsome but still dapper John McCain during the more important of their myriad press encounters. McCain appears so pink you’d think he’s got sunburn and the foundation coverage so heavy his eyes, brows, and lips seem to actually LOSE definition. Obama’s natural skin color is a beautiful cool-toned deep African shade of mahogany that is gorgeous on its own, regardless of the owner’s political credentials, yet every time a big press event arises he is coated down in streaky layers of over-yellowed BRONZE that I find distracting and offensive. In both cases these men look worse for having consulted a make-up specialist. What’s up with all this? I have even seen Bill Clinton recently looking like he also was visited by an intoxicated Pancake Fairy, with suboptimal results. Can’t we get men’s make-up right? It appears I was not the only one to notice these cosmetic blunders, because after watching snippets of the last presidential debate, I had these observations concerning the candidate’s appearance:

The TV set was built to create a more intimate feel, I saw more angular shadows in general, but did not feel either candidate was sitting ‘in the dark’ a great deal. Bill Moyers appeared not to have been as lucky for either facial enhancement, camera angles or lighting. Didn’t see streaks or obvious jaw-line cut-offs with foundation, didn’t catch any shiny foreheads or scalps. McCain struggles with facial lymphedema and he could have used more contouring, his brows begged for better definition which would go a long way toward de-emphasizing the lymphedema below. Likewise a pale lip liner even without filling in would have been helpful. Once again Obama’s naturally dark lips appear to have been muted with pancake or lip color, which just doesn’t do a thing for him. A little espresso lipstick would be more like it, as far as I’m concerned. All three esteemed gentlemen suffered with overly pale eyelids which was unattractive, but won’t change my voting preference.

Happy Election!

If you have a blog entry you would like to see published on the Beauty Bunch, please submit it for consideration to: deborah@paulaschoice.com.

Last week, a woman I know told me that she was really worried about getting her annual mammogram. I asked if she had any risk factors such as family history. She said, “No, but with so many women getting diagnosed these days, she said, I guess my risk factor is being a woman.”

Even though more women die of heart disease, it is breast cancer we seek out. Breast cancer is the only cancer we’re supposed to look for with dedicated regularity. We’re supposed to have a built in search and destroy protocol for our breasts. Every month we’re supposed to examine our breasts. Hey! It’s time to look for cancer. Let’s look for a lump. Who needs that in their lives? After all, our breasts are meant to be about life. But they’re now also about fear. And many of us live with the fear no matter what side of breast cancer we’re on.

But early detection, which we all know, is the key to survival, means looking for cancer. Now that’s scary but it’s also hopeful, because we can do something about it. All of us diagnose, live with the threat of recurrence or metastases, even if we have an excellent prognosis. An excellent prognosis is still a prognosis, which isn’t a good thing. We don’t know if we’re in the 5% or 95%; the 80% or 20%. Living with odds is so bizarre. And ultimately, irrelevant for any single person, because, as one woman said to me, for any individual it’s binary: you get cancer again or you don’t, my personal odds are 50/50. So, we remain vigilant for signs and symptoms.

And there will be things that trigger your fears for the rest of your life. It’s normal. You feel good, you feel great, you’re three years past treatment, you feel healthy and cured. Then you get a backache that you can’t explain and the terror hits like a tornado. Surviving breast cancer leaves you with a fear that the ordinary can become a life threat. We find again a resting place in hope until the next time and then go on with our lives.

As creatures of hope, we are capable of wondrous imagination and extraordinary creativity. It’s the foundation of our magnificence, of our ability to create beauty and art, the Sistine Chapel, the statue of David, Hamlet, La Boheme. It makes us the little Energizer Battery Bunnies of life. We keep going and going. It is the foundation of the vision and genius that enables us to discover penicillin, to map the human genome, and to develop Taxol.

This ability, however, creates some dilemmas. It also leads to our fantasy of control over cause and effect. For example, in our culture, medicine and science rest on assumptions about our ability to determine cause and effect, the ability to predict and control, knowing all along what we learned in Pysch 101, correlation isn’t causation. Now don’t I sound like a party pooper. But …. two things happening at the same time, most likely mean absolutely nothing.

Despite all the evidence around us that things just happen, we approach bad things by trying to find causality. Although on one hand, this offers a palliative hope of control, on the other hand, it often causes a lot of needless stress and self blame. We want to believe that eating enough broccoli can prevent cancer. That if someone else gets a recurrence, it’s because they weren’t exercising as much as they should have, as much as we are.

I caused my cancer; we believe. It will come back if I do… whatever. It won’t come back if I do…whatever else. We all make up our own whatever’s. At sometime after diagnosis, most women come up with their personal theory about why they got cancer. It was because…those whatever’s. But the truth is, we don’t know why one woman gets breast cancer, and why one woman doesn’t. We just don’t know.

One woman told me she was shocked to find out that a friend had a recurrence. She vehemently asserted that her friend had eaten a completely macrobiotic diet, exercised daily, did yoga and still…cancer. When I got diagnosed, my step son said to me with indignant shock, but you’re the healthiest person I know. I was one of those people that could check off every item on that list of what you should do to be healthy and ward off disease. I was doing all the right things and I still got cancer.

Then my unconscious said to the cancer, I’ll show you. So, I proceeded to take control of giving up control and I stopped exercising, drank a lot of wine, ate a lot of brownies and gained twenty-five pounds. I kept getting on the scale. You know how they’re weighing you all the time during treatment. I’d say, cancer’s really fattening.

Now I’m trying to find some balance between knowing what I can control and what I can’t and how I want to live and establish quality of life for myself within that uncertainty. Finding some balance. You know what I realized? Fat or thin, I’m still gonna die. It’s not good news. It’s not bad news. It’s not even news. It just is. And it doesn’t matter what the definition of is, is. So what matters is how I live, day by day, moment by moment, mammogram by mammogram, martini by martini, laughing, loving, and at times even feeling like I will live forever.

I want to earn a Growing-Old-Well badge.  It will take its place of honor next to the Sewing badge on my ancient Girl Scout uniform.  Currently, I’m working on my Feeling-Beautiful-Without-A-Face-Lift badge (though I have had my eyes lifted so I can see, as it was going, my upper lid was becoming a blindfold).

I think of all those badges I sought when I was young, now attained or irrelevant.  Fourteen, first kiss; sixteen, go steady; nineteen have sex but don’t get pregnant, twenty-one, figure out how to have great sex, (I’m still working on that one), get into and out of college, first job, first husband.  Today, health and stability rank at the top of my to-accomplish list.

I want to protect my breasts and colon from cancer and my arteries from heart disease.  I get a thrill from a good cholesterol reading and happiness from aches and pains that respond to Advil.  I love taking vacations and returning home to my family, my friends, my dog and Peet’s coffee.

I get a kick out of seeing a good movie, reading a good novel, and working up a good sweat in aerobics class.  Notice the operative middle way goal of goodness.  Aging has softened my drive for the peaks.  In my fifties, good is the great of my thirties.  Who has the energy for great anyway?  The gym is ten minutes away, CSI is on Wednesday nights, Chinese take-out Fridays. Life is good.

However, there is one great pleasure I pursue unabashedly, the company of my women friends.  These friendships are a stretch of sandy beach on an island where the trade winds are a tender caress and it doesn’t matter how I look in a bathing suit.

Now in our fifties as we sip martinis, we know dark things swimming beneath those blue seas, will soon to surface. Remember the ominous theme music from Jaws: da Dah da Dah… da Dah da Dah. That’s the sound of our mortality and our youth. We all hear it, a distant hum. Sometimes we listen to it. Sometimes we laugh over it. Sadly, it never really goes away because we know too much.

Looking at the lovely faces of my girlfriends, I see a new reason for wanting to live a long life. I want to be part of our collective old age. We are the women who demonstrated, rebelled, experimented. We had casual sex before it was casual. It was just daring and fun. We saw movies when they were films. We suffered the disillusions of Viet Nam and assassinations of our heroes. We demanded more than one path for women, and often we had groin pulls from trying to walk two trails at the same time.

It’s time again to break old molds and build new ones. We are the first generation of women where the fifty decade is astonishingly young and we might measure our future life span as no other generation has before us. Moreover, we do not intend to hide our lives away, alone in a condo in Miami, playing cards in the afternoons. We are about to change what it means to be older women.

The possibility of years stretched out before me feels like summers when I was a child. I remember the last day of school, the clang of emptied lockers, the confetti of discarded papers, the smell of sunlight and dust. Most intensely, though, I remember the enchantment of being on the verge, the heady abandon of stepping off into summer. This was the fourth grade equivalence of anticipating a love affair.

However, as do love affairs, summers end. The difference for us is that our past-middle-aged summer doesn’t end with going back to school in the fall. It just ends.

Beautiful young men call me ma’am. Now there has to be some compensation for that, doesn’t there. Time again to be pathfinders and explorers. Remember our aches and pains still respond to Advil. And whatever else happens, I have every intention of earning my growing old well badge.

I was trying on clothes at Nordstrom yesterday. I looked over my shoulder into the mirror at the panty line wildly distorting the seat of the slacks, when I noticed an ad taped to the dressing room wall.

Does trying on bathing suits make you anxious and depressed?  (What a question!) Do you feel all bathing suits are designed for preteens?  After trying on bathing suits do you feel you need to go to the gym and work out for hours? If you answered, “yes,” to any of these questions, (the ad continued) you need to come in on May 15 to meet Jeanette, our bathing suit fitting expert.” I thought, if you answered, “No,” to any of those questions, you are a man and you’re in the wrong dressing room.

I dread buying a bathing suit, it is the worst part of summer or a vacation.  For most of us over twenty-two, our thighs are dimpling somewhere between nervous anticipation and abject terror.  We are among the world’s most educated and emancipated women, yet bathing suits bring us to our knees.  This isn’t good.

What can we do about this?  Not much actually.  Society won’t let us rest.  The standards serve as constant reminders that our bodies are unattractive.  We feel ashamed and unappealing.  The question is how to handle those feelings?  Here’s some ideas for dealing with the ever-present nagging comparisons and negative self-evaluations.

First and foremost, tell yourself you have better things to do.  Tell yourself your body works.
Then tell yourself I’m too smart and self-aware to be shackled by body image.
Let’s cut our anxiety and lead with our strengths.  Think of the power you would feel if you, the burden lifted if you could look at your thighs and say, Hello girls!  You serve me well. You’re sturdy.  You take me where I want to go.  I no longer want you to take me down the runway to be crowned Miss America.  I no longer want you to give me the credentials to be a movie star or a super model.  You are not the lead line on my resume.

Next point: beautiful thighs don’t make you happy.  Ask any person with beautiful thighs.  “Hello, I notice you have killer thighs.  What do you talk to your therapist about?” Hollywood is filled with beautiful thighs and miserable people with their pain splashed across tabloids and People magazine.

As a young psychologist, I remember seeing a very beautiful woman patient.  I was confused.  Here she was the standard against which all women measure themselves and she was unhappy.  It violated all my beliefs about beauty making you happy.  Then there are all those rich unhappy people, but that’s another story.
What is the goal?  What should we make time for?  What do I have to offer as a human being, as a woman?  Well, for one thing I can make people laugh.  I can help heal people’s emotional wounds. I can share laughter with my friends. I can make my home beautiful.  I make my husband happy. I take good care of my children.  The list goes on.
My thighs are neither an asset nor a detriment in any of these endeavors.  What makes me feel worthwhile are my skills and my compassion.  What make me happy are my health and the health of the people I love.  When I sit in my garden with my dog reading a good novel, my thighs are irrelevant to the peace I experience.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I wouldn’t want to have the standard of beauty our culture exults.  It’s just that chasing it forever doesn’t really give anyone what is really of value. What a waste of my wisdom to keep trying to achieve what I think it will give me, which it probably won’t.  Let’s refocus.  Let’s reach for something else.  Let’s stop reading “Seven Ways to Shape Up for Summer.”  Life is way too short for that.