By Any Other Name: The Words We Call Ourselves
By Any Other Name: The Words We Call Ourselves When I write about the creative joy of women after midlife, one challenge is just what to call our cohort of women. When I wrote Aphrodite’s Pen: The Power of Writing Erotica After Midlife, I looked at how other authors name us, and found no consensus. […]
Book Club Reading Guide for Aphrodite’s Pen
Reading Guide for Aphrodite’s Pen Download PDF Version In the Introduction to Aphrodite’s Pen, Stella says it is important for older women to write erotica as a way to combat ageism. Do you agree or disagree with the author on this point? Did your opinion change as you read, and if so, how? The book […]
See It Then Be It
See It Then Be It Geena Davis did not worry about all those stories of movie roles drying up for women in their forties, until it was her turn. After making a movie every year throughout her career, and starring in huge box office hits like Thelma and Louise and A League of Their Own, the […]
A Sex Goddess for Older Women
The world is made of stories, not atoms. – Muriel Rukeyser Myths are Ideas and stories and images that shape how we see the world. Celebrating and creating myth is one way to see and be seen. A Sex Goddess for Older Women? Last year I asked a friend who is a mythology buff to […]
Making Women Visible After Midlife
Making Women Visible After Midlife The anthropologist Margaret Mead married a series of men, each one a researcher about to travel to a place she wanted to study. At the end of an assignment, she divorced and married anew. An extreme method, perhaps, and yet it enabled Mead to examine and write about cultures all […]
Sexual Agency Beyond Midlife
Sexual Agency Beyond Midlife In her 2016 book, “Girls and Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape,” Peggy Orenstein describes the pressure on American women to perform sexually from an early age, and to please young men while doing so. In many cases, their own pleasure is not the focus of how young women view sex. […]
