Daily NewsMix Bonus Edition: The Chemical Trickster Behind the Middle-Aged “Spread”: Sandra Tsing Loh Loses Patience With Us All

How That Bulge Got There: Dr. Laura Berman (who’s known to some woman as “the other Dr. Laura” to distinguish the sex therapist from Dr. Laura Schlessinger) writes in this week at Todayshow.com on  that “middle aged spread.” One item caught our eye, in addition to the familiar discussion of metabolic changes, insomnia and high stress levels. From perimenopause on, Berman says, women’s fullness-signaling system is wrecked by dropping estradiol levels:

Our appetites change: When we eat, our stomachs sort the contents into proteins, carbohydrates and fat, which the body uses for different purposes. Both enzymes and hormones help the food break down. If the body is off-balance hormonally (such as during menopause), its ability to proceed with digestion is interrupted. If digestion is not taking place as it should, feelings of fullness do not register in the brain. This is because when estradiol level drop, so does a hormone called cholecystokinin, which is produced during digestion. This hormone signals the gallbladder that it’s time to empty. In our body’s language, this tells our mind we are full and to stop eating. Instead, during menopause, the body begins tricking the mind into thinking it needs to eat more.

Berman also points to what she calls the “What’s the point?” mentality, which can “deplete [womens’] motivation”  to do the only thing that can balance it out — exercising, even as little as 20 minutes a day. Still, she ends the piece by noting what Newsmix readers already know: that “Getting active even for a short amount of time can boost feelings of confidence and happiness,” and that “Women in their 40s, 50s, and beyond are more active and vibrant than ever before." And next to Berman on Today’s Web site is some evidence to support the latter, with Meryl Streep  singing her ‘Mamma Mia’ songs and telling Matt Lauer:  “There’s no sell-by date on my forehead.”

Choices are messes, says Sandra Tsing Loh: The 46-year-old radio journalist performance artist, and mother of two wades into the work-or-home debate in the Atlantic Monthly. With Linda Hirschman’s Get to Work … And Get a Life, Before It’s Too Late Mother’s Work: How Feminism, the Market and Policy Shape Family Life and Neil Gilbert’s in hand, Loh reflects on the disparities between what women aspire to do in the workplace and what they end up doing. Her own profession, she says, is hardly that portrayed in Sex in The City, and gets less so as midlife takes hold:

I want to
spend my days like “writer” Carrie, lolling in bed in her underwear,
smoking and occasionally updating her quasi-bohemian equivalent of a
My­Space page.

In real life, female journalists (particularly sex columnists) have
frightening stalkers, dour editors who begin phone conversations with
“This is not your best,” and paychecks so thin they trigger not just an
amusing episode in which some Jimmy Choos must be returned but years of
fluorescent-lit subway rides to a part-time job teaching ESL at some
community college on Long Island. In an ugly if typical turn, one’s
column is suddenly moved from the Manhattan section to the North Jersey
“auto buy” section because of the arrival of a younger, hotter writer.
In real life, workmen would unceremoniously peel Carrie’s ad off the
side of the bus and replace it with an ad touting the peppy new
relationship blog of Miley Cyrus.

Hirschman’s "marvelously cranky" Get To Work!  makes similar points, says Loh, especially about young women who major in art and end up "answering the phones at some gallery in Chelsea, hoping a rich male collector comes to rescue you."  But Loh goes on to writ that Hirschman, like many academics, may have an overly rosy view of what the work world has to offer most women as  an alternative to staying home with your children. She then turns to Berkeley sociologist Gilbert, who himself admits to being sheltered by his ivory tower.

Many [academics and pundits] can set their own hours, choose their own workspace, get
paid for thinking about issues that interest them, and, as a bonus, get
to feel, by virtue of their career, important in the world. The
professor admits that his own job in “university teaching is by and
large divorced from the normal discipline of everyday life in the
marketplace. It bears only the faintest resemblance to most work in the
real world.” In other words, for the “occupational elite” (as Gilbert
calls this group), unlike for most people, going to work is not a drag.

After exploring the history of women’s work in too much detail to recount here, Loh ends by speaking for her mid-40s generation, which often ends up blending work and home in unexpected ways.  Which may, she cautions, mean sacrificing the tidy homes of which early feminists felt themselves prisoner:

The bottom
line (and this fact will become more so as humans live longer):  We all fantasize about work that
uses our creativity, is self-directed, happens during the hours we
choose, and occurs in an attractively lit setting with fascinating
people—you know, jobs like women have on TV. Oprah’s job! However,
since in reality—even in Sweden—so many roads lead to a wet wipe, I
myself feel grateful and lucky to be here in California while I type
this essay … which I am actually doing in bed, clad in my sweatpants
rather than in high heels and a bustier (as, fortunately, I am not a
fantasy character on television—not unless they did a Sex and the City
“lumberjack” edition). Later, I will feed the cats for my single,
working-gal neighbor, who has a real office schedule, complete with
commute. Perhaps I’ll also fling Popsicles at my latchkey children in
the next room, mesmerized by a Princess video. (How much money have I
earned while running Princess videos? I should pay Disney! Well, maybe
not.)

Work, family—I’m doing it all. But here’s the secret I share with
so many other nanny- and housekeeper-less mothers I see working the
same balance: my house is trashed. It is strewn with socks and tutus.
My minivan is awash in paper wrappers (I can’t lie—several are evidence
of our visits to McDonald’s Playland, otherwise known as “my second
office”). My girls went to school today in the T-shirts they slept in.
But so what? My children and I spend 70 hours a week of high-to-poor
quality time together….What I’d say to  [radical feminists] over a distance of 30 years is (Ching! There’s the microwave!) … you can have it all—if you run your house like a man.

By Chris Lombardi

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