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 name an erotic goddess for older women. He was stumped. “The closest I can think of is Baubo,” he said.
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 over the world. Decades later, when her work was already famous throughout the first world, it amused Mead that her
Dress Like You Have Diamonds at the Meeting of your Thighs “Does my sexiness offend you? Does it come as a surprise That I dance like I have diamonds At the meeting of my thighs?” — Maya Angelou, “And Still I Rise” We have all read those articles, the ones that tell us what not to wear at our age. “No self-respecting woman over someage would be seen dead wearing that”. “Who does she think she
The Grandmother Hypothesis In the 1980s, American anthropologist Kristen Hawkes observed Hadza hunter-gatherers in Tanzania, and realized that the older women spent their time collecting food for their grandchildren. This freed up the mothers to have more children. Hawkes hypothesized that the fittest grandmothers had the most grandchildren, which created selective pressure for longevity well past menopause in humans (as opposed to other apes, whose lifespan ends just after their childbearing years). Hawkes suggested that
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. Orenstein believes that how sexuality is portrayed in popular media and online contributes to this problem. Studies have long shown
Blonde at 65 or The Tale of the Peacock What have peacock tail feathers ever done for the peacock? They are heavy, they harbor ectoparasites, and they add nothing to the bird’s ability to eat, drink, or move. So why have they persisted, generation after generation? A peacock’s tail is a prime example of an elaborate display of reproductive fitness. According to evolutionary scientists, a bird that has so much energy to waste on mere
