aging

Raging Grannies: The Action League

priyanka — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 00:00:00 +0000

If you’ve been to a demonstration during the last two decades you’ve likely seen them: Bold, sassy, elders calling themselves The Raging Grannies. Mixing street theatre with costuming, their zany hats, political buttons, and boisterous, if often off-key, singing sets them apart from other protesters. They’re fun—and they defy stereotypes about what old women can and should be doing.

Whether the grannies are reliant on motorized wheelchairs or are healthy enough to dance in the streets, these feisty dames have not only captured media attention, but have become an irrepressible presence at rallies and political events throughout the U.S. and Canada. Since the founding of the first Raging Granny group in 1987, they’ve opposed war and challenged the isms that stymie human progress. Sometimes, this involves writing new words to such familiar songs as "When The Saints Go Marching In." At other times it involves militant resistance and many of the grannies have risked arrest to assert their will.

They’re a great subject for a documentary.

Pam Walton’s thirty-minute film starts off well, zooming in on an all-Caucasian band of rebels from California’s Bay area. In fact, the film opens with a shocking revelation: The National Guard Surveillance Unit spied on the Grannies during a Mother’s Day protest at the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, DC. Although we’re not told the year of this monitoring—or if the group sued the government to stop it—the Unit’s 2005 dismantling is championed. As viewers take in this information, however, it quickly becomes clear that the film is flawed, giving us a glimmer into something that transpired while, at the same time, not providing enough information to fully explain what took place and why.

This happens repeatedly and makes Raging Grannies less inspiring than it should be. While the film introduces numerous intrepid women—some of them activists for fifty-plus years and others who are new to political organizing—the interviews are rushed and we get little sense of the participants and what motivates them. It’s a question of scope. The film simply tries to cram too much into too short a time frame. We see the Grannies marching in DC, sitting-in at the local office of Congressman Mike Honda, being interviewed by FOX Television’s Bill O’Reilly, picketing at the Romic Waste Disposal Plant in East Palo Alto, and demonstrating at the California offices of the Occupational Health and Safety Administration. Rather than an in-depth analysis of strategies and tactics—or a look at the ageism and sexism endemic to all-too-many social change efforts—the camera sprints from subject to subject.

This limits the film’s usefulness, especially if it is shown to people who have never been to a demo or seen the Grannies strut their stuff. Indeed, viewers unschooled in the day-to-day machinations of community resistance will need an expository supplement to Raging Grannies—perhaps a speaker or book list—so that they will be able to make sense of the women’s activities. That may be okay, but had the film said more about less, a wider audience would have been able to benefit from seeing the Grannies in action.

That said, by turning the spotlight on elderly women who refuse to be quiet and docile, Raging Grannies reminds us that Margaret Mead was right: Sometimes small groups of people acting together can make a real difference. As Granny Ruth says, “We take a licking but still keep ticking.” And they do—ticking off the powerful and having lots of fun as they challenge authority and shake-up the status quo.

Written by: Eleanor J. Bader, December 8th 2010

Hannah Free

admin — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 16:01:00 +0000

Directed by Wendy Jo Carlton

Wolfe Video

If LOGO and the Hallmark Channel had a baby, they would name her Hannah Free.

The story goes like this: an aging lesbian couple, together for four decades, both now find themselves confined to the same nursing home, but unable to see one another. Free-spirited butch Hannah (Sharon Gless) is paralyzed after falling off a roof, and is denied access to her comatose lover Rachel (Maureen Gallagher) by Rachel's bitter born-again Christian daughter Marge (Taylor Miller of TV's All My Children).

Bedridden and lonely, Hannah spends most of her time napping, journaling, reading mail, and talking to an imagined younger version of Rachel (Ann Hagemann). It is through these (highly contrived) plot devices that the audience is taken back into chapters of Hannah's history: her childhood chasing after little blond Rachel through wheat fields, her Depression-era youth happily roughing it in Alaska, her WWII military service as a pilot in the Women's Army Corps. Her younger version is played by relative unknown Kelli Strickland, who spends the majority of her onscreen time locked in tepid PG-13 sex scenes with Hagemann's Rachel.

One day, following a tense interaction with Marge, a young woman named Greta (Jacqui Jackson) wanders into Hannah's room, all wide eyed and with polite questions. She draws out from Hannah her unfortunate circumstances, and quickly offers to come by at 3 a.m. to take Hannah to see Rachel. We soon learn that Greta is not just motivated by altruism; she is Rachel's great-granddaughter, and herself a lesbian. Hannah and Greta strike up a friendship, and Hannah later shares her journals with Greta; more flashbacks ensue. The third act sees Hannah, Marge, and Greta come together to make a very difficult end-of-life decision on behalf of the woman they all hold dear.

Notice my usage of the term third act? It's a common term in references to films, but it is especially appropriate in the case of Hannah Free, a film adapted for the screen by playwright Claudia Allen. Film buffs are aware that play adaptations fall into two distinct categories: those that successfully make the leap from stage to screen (e.g., Crimes of the Heart and Steel Magnolias) and those that don't. Sadly, Hannah Free just doesn't.

I appreciate issues-driven cinema as much as the next bleeding heart liberal. Admittedly, Hannah Free does address a variety of pertinent topics. These include the concepts of a loving versus “legal” family in regard to LGBT relationships and which decisions each partner is allowed to make regarding the other; the general dearth of quality elder care, specifically care for aging LGBT folks; and living openly in rural communities. With its story told by a predominantly female cast, and emphasis placed on both respect for lesbian elders and multi-generational lesbian representation in families with the character of Greta, the film also has a decidedly feminist bent. Still, Hannah Free is heavy-handed—and hokey.

As it relates to issues of health, family, and LGBT equality, Hannah Free is a relevant film. As a worthwhile cinematic experience, however, it falls woefully short.

Written by: M. Brianna Stallings, July 20th 2010

Forced to Care: Coercion and Caregiving in America

admin — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 08:00:00 +0000

By Evelyn Nakano Glenn

Harvard University Press

Evelyn Nakano Glenn is a professor of Women’s and Ethnic Studies at University of California, Berkeley and author of Forced to Care. Perhaps because of her vocation, the book has a bit of a textbook flavor to it, but as it progresses, she lets go and begins to fill it out with a more humanistic view.

Forced to Care begins with a look at those who are responsible for the lion’s share of caregiving in America. Glenn’s findings basically confirm what most of us know already: in most cases, women of color, women at the low end of the socioeconomic scale, and illegal immigrants are the ones caring for our nation’s young, disabled, and elderly.

The author then takes her inquiries one step further by tracing the roots of caregiving back to colonial America in an effort to discover why such a disproportionate amount of paid and unpaid caretaking falls to these individuals. Glenn does a terrific job of leading the reader through the individual events that occurred politically, socially, industrially, and economically to reinforce the notion that it is a woman’s duty to take care of needy family members. Following the shift from an agricultural, self-sustaining, family-based society to a market economy, Glenn shows just why gender divisions still remain with respect to these types of jobs. She illustrates, through the use of an amazing amount of research, just exactly how American women with very few other choices have been coerced into providing care for others to the detriment of their own needs for centuries. Our society’s continued devaluation of these kinds of “homemaking” services serves to perpetuate the problem.

It is clear that the author encourages a sea change with respect to both paid and unpaid caregiving, but she refrains from demonizing any particular groups or individuals, instead offering a clear, concise look at how we got ourselves here, and why we need to get out of this mess while we still can.

Glenn advocates for both care providers and those receiving care and uses her vast knowledge of the history and foundation of the problems to offer concrete solutions to the difficulties both face as our aging society pushes us closer to a crisis in the fastest growing segment of healthcare in America.

Before picking up this book, I was nearly certain that I would be called upon to care for elderly family members at some point in my life, although hopefully not until my children are grown and gone. Despite my fears of being able to do so with grace and love versus resentment and frustration, it was nonetheless something I didn’t see a way out of. I can’t say that Forced to Care allayed my fears in any way, but I gained a tremendous amount of insight as to how and why I might be called upon to provide such care and how, if I am so inclined, I might join in efforts to increase the availability of resources and respect for caregivers as a whole.

While the book is not an easy read—I didn't settle down with it in my lounge chair next to the pool—it is an absolutely eye-opening look at something many of us take for granted; that we as women will eventually be called upon to care for those family members who cannot do it for themselves.

Written by: Kari O’Driscoll, July 10th 2010

The Love Ceiling

admin — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 08:00:00 +0000

By Jean Davies Okimoto

Endicott & Hugh Books

As I started to write the review for this book, I realized that this is one of two books I have recently read about artists, more specifically painters—The Danish Girl being the other book that centered on artists/painters. I found the story of The Love Ceiling intriguing because the protagonist is a sixty-four-year-old wife, mother, and daughter of a famous artist father and long suffering Japanese-American mother who has recently passed away from cancer.

Like many women of the so-called sandwich generation, Anne Kuroda Duppstadt has finally given herself permission to pursue her passion—that of becoming a painter—when she finds herself once again tending to the needs of her family: her thirty-two-year-old daughter moves home after discovering that her partner, Richard, has been cheating on her with a colleague at the hospital where he’s a resident, and Anne’s husband is not handling his impending retirement well and struggles with bouts of depression. This leads her to reach the conclusion at a certain point in the novel that “there is a glass ceiling for women... and it’s made out of the people we love.” Amidst all of this, Anne finally finds the courage to stand up to her domineering father, a man who demands center stage at all times and told her many years ago that she didn’t have what it takes to be a real artist.

I’m not sure why this is the case, but I rarely have the opportunity to read a book that features a sixty-four-year-old protagonist. Being a forty-something single woman, I wasn’t sure I would relate to this character, but I found myself immediately drawn into her feistiness, sense of humor, and honesty that is revealed as the reader progresses through the novel. I also enjoyed the author’s description of the natural beauty of the surroundings through the eyes of an artist (Anne is a gifted landscape artist). Painting with words came to my mind as I was reading this book.

I also had to admit to myself that I made the mistake of assuming that the internal life of a sixty-four-year-old wouldn’t be as interesting a read as that of a younger person, but that was definitely not the case. I found myself inspired by Anne’s character as well as that of an older female artist she meets at an artists’ workshop that she enrolls in to reclaim her dream of being an artist. In that sense, reading this book was also an educational experience for me because it challenged my assumptions about what it is to be an older woman in our society—that no matter how old you are, you can still be a vibrant, active participant in life.

My only criticism of the book is that one scene involving dialogue between Anne’s daughter and a friend in a coffee shop stood out as somewhat superfluous and unnecessary to the story line. Other than that, I found The Love Ceiling to be an excellent read. The book made me realize that sometimes it may take a lifetime to confront the demons of our past, but if life is a journey, it’s not how long it takes you to reach these epiphanies, but what you learn along with way.

Written by: Gita Tewari, June 28th 2010

29: A Novel

admin — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 08:00:00 +0000

By Adena Halpern

Touchstone

If there is one book that will certainly be made into a successful film, it is this one. All the ingredients are there for an entertaining feature-length romp. The plot is quite simple: a seventy-five year old grandmother celebrates her birthday and, while blowing out her candles, makes a seemingly unattainable wish, to be twenty-nine again. Through the magic of Adena Halpern’s imagination, that is exactly what happens the next morning, with the ensuing hilarity and zany situations–including some saucy details!–which make this day-long trek through Ellie Jerome’s “new” life quite an exciting one.

The “flashback/forward to your own life” cinematographic genre is not a new one, and many films (that I admittedly have not seen) have capitalized on this popularity, such as 17 Again with teen heartthrob Zac Efron and 13 Going on 30, starring Jennifer Garner. Like Halpern’s book, this type of movie capitalizes on the public’s regrets and fantasies about our own lives. Who hasn’t had one of those “what if” moments or wished they could opt out of a difficult situation? Ellie, the main character of Halpern’s novel, upon seeing her granddaughter Lucy at her party, wants to live her life differently than she had: marrying young, a man with whom she does not think she was really in love, and always doing what was expected of her as a lady. And, for those of you who will read the book, or see the film version, I will not give away the ending or moral of the story (of course, it contains one!).

Amidst the book’s seeming superficiality and overt sentimentality, there lies a very real social phenomenon. As our elderly population grows and lives longer, how are older women reacting to the societal changes going on around them? How do they reconcile their lived experience with that of their descendants? Given her young age, Halpern manages to convey realistically the mental state of the “granny” figures in the book and their relations to the younger women and men. She also skilfully paints the granny-granddaughter relationship and promotes inter-generational connections and understanding amongst women.

A former columnist for Marie Claire magazine, Halpern has previously authored two books, the fashion memoir Target Underwear and a Vera Wang Gown and the novel The Ten Best Days of My Life. She also holds a Masters degree in screenwriting, a fact that shines through in this new novel. A film version cannot be far behind. My bets are on actresses Glenn Close and Amanda Seyfried to play the aged Ellie and the younger Ellie. Bets are now on!

Written by: Sophie M. Lavoie, June 26th 2010

Face It: What Women Really Feel as Their Looks Change

admin — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 16:01:00 +0000

By Vivian Diller, Jill Muir-Sukenick

Hay House

As the authors of Face It explain in the preface to their book, women who came of age during and after feminism's second wave were brought up to believe our looks don’t have to define who we are or determine our possibilities. What mattered more in this 'enlightened' new age were our brains, our talents, our degrees, our abilities, and our ambition. The paradox is that women continue to receive conflicting messages from the media and our culture about the role appearance plays in our lives. Because many of us have never attempted to unravel our ambivalent feelings about our appearance, the way it impacts our self-esteem, and how we relate to our family and friends, we deny these feelings when we see the first signs of aging—or react with a vengeance to try to arrest the aging process.

Face It is all about guiding women through this potentially treacherous time, during which many of us feel the very ground shifting beneath us. Like many adolescent girls, aging women cling to what the authors describe as “masks” that take the form of "workaholism," addiction to cosmetic surgery, excessive exercise, and dieting to protect ourselves from the sadness and loss we feel at the change in our appearance. In this thoughtful and engaging book, the authors, both psychotherapists and former models, present the stories of how different women approached the aging process. Runway models, nurses, homemakers, and businesswomen, who range in age from early thirties to mid-sixties, tell us their stories.

Some women never felt their appearance played much of a role in their lives, and were taken by surprise when they felt a sense of loss, or even panic, about their changing looks. In contrast, the models interviewed for the book were aware of aging, given that it pushes them out of their profession at the youthful age of twenty-five, and experienced a range of feelings and emotions similar to what many women face when they enter midlife. For women who believed that their intelligence and ambition were their ticket to success, it was often embarrassing to admit to friends and family how their changing looks were impacting them, because it seemed frivolous or superficial.

The authors use the experiences of these different women successfully navigating this challenging time with the use of an innovative six-step program that forms a pathway to a new acceptance and understanding of the aging process. This program involves taking an honest inventory of one's experiences with beauty and acknowledging how family and culture shapes one's identity as a woman. While the authors stress that they aren’t against using plastic surgery to enhance one's appearance, they want to give women the tools to make decisions about it from a place of strength and appreciation for their unique attributes, not out of a panic to "stay in the game."

As a forty-something woman, I found this book intriguing and was pleased to discover that it lived up to its billing of helping women navigate such a challenging time in our lives. Face It helps women of any age to gain an understanding of how to fully own the aging process and not react out of fear to our changing looks and bodies, but to, instead, appreciate and learn from the journey.

Written by: Gita Tewari, April 23rd 2010

Baba Yaga Laid an Egg

admin — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 00:00:00 +0000

By Dubravka Ugresic

Canongate

When she sleeps, her nose scrapes the ceiling of her small cottage. Her breasts hang from a pole over the fireplace, and she has a leg made of iron. She lives alone in a hut on chicken legs, and her gates are topped with human skulls. Passing heroes can flatter her and order her to do their bidding, but heroines must serve her in order to win her favor. Baba Yaga, a complicated crone from Central and Eastern European mythology, is a theme explored and exploded in Dubravka Ugresic's Baba Yaga Laid an Egg.

The novel has three parts, all set in Central and Eastern Europe. In the first, a woman deals with her aging mother's increasing senility and travels to their hometown in search of memory and meaning. In the second, three old women visit a health resort to relax and rejuvenate; romance and death follow. The final part is a meta-level, scholarly treatise of Baba Yaga written written from the perspective of a minor character in the first story and as though a folklorist had teased out all the feminine symbols woven throughout the previous two stories.

Baba Yaga Laid an Egg is an exploration of women growing older in a post-Soviet state where distance between people is becoming the norm. Like Baba Yaga, the older women in these stories are dealing with their aging bodies, are often alone or isolated, and are frequently misunderstood, though they help or hinder other characters as they please. While these women are marginalized, they are definitely not powerless. They have the power to transform lives, and this is usually done through wealth they've accumulated during their younger years.

At its core, this is a book about women, bodies, and journeys. While Baba Yaga Laid an Egg is a thicket of fairytale symbols and references to life in the former Soviet bloc, it can be enjoyed by those who don't have a prior interest in either fairytales or the locale. Ugresic is a clever writer who shows in this book that imaginary lands are dangerous places and little old ladies aren't as toothless as they may appear.

Written by: Catherine Nicotera, April 2nd 2010

American Thighs: The Sweet Potato Queens' Guide to Preserving Your Assets

admin — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 00:02:00 +0000

By Jill Conner Browne

Simon & Schuster

Jill Connor Browne, the self-proclaimed Sweet Potato Queen, is fifty-five and lives in Jackson, Mississippi. Her newest book, American Thighs, is an amusing but lightweight look at aging from an older Southern woman's point of view. She can be quite funny—I love the phrase “our inexorable trudge into Geezerdom”—though the topics she covers tend towards the trite: how a new hairstyle won't help you get a new job or boyfriend, how silly it is for her daughter and her college classmates to dress up in fancy gowns for football games, and so on.

The book is a collection of anecdotes from Browne's life and those of friends, acquaintances, and readers, and with each chapter on a distinct subject, it lacks a unifying theme. In “No Matter What Skin You're In,” she relays several stories dealing with the importance of skin care and visiting your dermatologist. She notes that attitudes towards skin damage prevention have changed noticeably from when she was younger, when it was most people's goal to get a deep tan in the summer. “For many hapless White people, this was and is simply a physical impossibility—not that they allowed the absolute absence of melanin in their skin to serve as any kind of deterrent or discouragement.”

Using a semi-bawdy humor that is sprinkled throughout the book, Browne also tells an amusing story of a man who went to the dermatologist to have a mole near his genitals removed. The nurse administering his shot said, “Just a little prick.” Poor Jud could only respond, “That's just adding insult to injury.”

Another chapter, “Howdy, Sports Fans,” contains a story about Browne and two female friends catching a big fish on a lake, the football game rituals at her daughter's college (Ole Miss), and an inspirational story of a sixty-eight-year-old woman who became the gold medalist in the long jump in the Senior Olympics, although she had never been a fitness buff before. It's a good representation of the mixtures of smartass observations and incredible and inspiring stories in the book. Sprinkled throughout the text are Browne's “Asset Preserving Tips,” which include such epiphanies as “karma does not like smug,” and emphasizing the importance of exercise for both your body and mind.

I was put off by Browne's penchant for capital letters and colloquial phrases. Yes, you may say “prolly” instead of “probably” when speaking, but in a written text, please use the correct term. And while selective capitalization can effectively highlight big ideas, when used five times on a page it loses its punch.

Browne has a bit of the “folksy wisdom” some find endearing in Sarah Palin, but Browne is a lot smarter and isn't afraid to swear when the occasion calls for it, which makes for a rather refreshing antidote to the Southern belle persona. Like many “advice” books that are really anecdote collections, American Thighs does not offer anything revolutionary. It contains stories that are by turns cute, amusing, and inspirational, and reading it will certainly add some lightheartedness to your day.

Written by: Karen Duda, March 17th 2010

The Third Chapter: Passion, Risk, and Adventure In The 25 Years After 50

admin — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 08:00:00 +0000

By Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot

Farrar Straus and Giroux

It turns out that Madonna is not the queen of reinvention. That title belongs to Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, who truly is reinvention royalty. Lawrence-Lightfoot’s The Third Chapter offers a wise and uplifting guide to creating a new life or to drastically improving the one you’ve got. Although the bulk of advice is directed at folks actually in their “third chapter”, anyone in need of a transformation can benefit from Lawrence-Lightfoot’s advice and from the experience of the forty post-fifties she interviews.

As Lawrence-Lightfoot points out, our society expects seniors to retreat. But the book’s subjects—all in their fifties, sixties, or seventies—refused to see their “third chapter” as retrenchment or, worse, stagnation. Rather, they viewed their third chapter as an opportunity to resurrect old dreams and to create new ones.

The characters include a doctor who decides to study opera singing, a policy wonk who leaves a prestigious position to attend divinity school, and a successful businesswoman who becomes a relief worker in Kosovo. Many others revisit artistic passions. In one poignant story, a former professor begins painting a portrait of her best friend. Over time, as she tweaks and shades, her own face emerges from the canvas. As this new artist and so many of Lawrence-Lightfoot’s subjects discover, the post-fifty years are prime time for discovering one’s true voice and for new learning.

New learning is the crux of The Third Chapter and it is a theory from which readers of any age can benefit. Paradoxically, the first step to new learning is unlearning. Successful unlearning means dropping the unhealthy habits that most of us have picked up by high school: people-pleasing, guilt, aggressive competition, valuing external rewards over self-fulfillment, measuring ourselves by others’ high and low expectations, and allowing the harsh critical inner voice to suffer from terminal logorrhea. These are traits, practically reflexes, that many women will recognize. Appropriately, the theories of Mary Catherine Bateson and Carol Gilligan figure prominently.

Unlearning is only the first step, but once taken, self-consciousness, fear, and other limitations drop away. Only then can new learning kick in. Lawrence-Lightfoot, one of new learning’s pioneers, provides an excellent description of the extraordinary ways it pays off. A willingness to embrace collaboration, to take risks, and to practice strategic restraint (i.e. talking and acting less, listening and observing more) all turn out to be great methods for identifying and following one’s true passions and for hearing one’s own unadulterated voice. New learning also includes embracing struggles and setbacks as additional sources of knowledge, not as confirmation that one’s self-doubt was well placed (that’s so old learning).

While new learning requires maturity and experience, its principles can be applied at any age and with potentially unlimited benefits. By the end of the book, I was wondering why I hadn’t figured all this out already (I know, the self-chastising is ripe for unlearning) and equally pondered the unexpected and shocking revelation that, according to Lawrence-Lightfoot, at age forty-eight I am almost into the third chapter myself.

The meaningful takeaway is well summed up by someone else who accomplished much in the third chapter: “It’s not the years in your life, but the life in your years [that matter]." Abraham Lincoln said that; he became president at age fifty-two.

Written by: T. Tamara Weinstein, March 16th 2010

The Private Lives of Pippa Lee

admin — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 13:27:00 +0000

Directed by Rebecca Miller

Elevation Filmworks

It's always a relief when the author of a novel decides to take its film adaptation into her own hands, especially if the author also happens to be a fairly seasoned writer-director for the screen. In The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, Rebecca Miller recreates her original character study in her own image, bringing the story of a misguided youth-turned-Stepford Wife to brilliant, riveting life.

The film starts off quietly, with the kind of domestic dinner party scene we've come to expect from tales of unfulfilled suburban housewives such as these, but the event actually turns out to be in honor of Pippa's fiftieth birthday. I must admit it took me more than a few minutes to accept Robin Wright Penn (Forrest Gump, Nine Lives) as a fifty-year-old woman; even with the aging makeup, the forty-three-year-old actress' youthful glow still manages to emanate. However, there is a method to this casting choice; it quickly becomes apparent that Pippa's physical appeal is an integral part of her character, a beguiling mask that has always brought her just as much trouble as it has helped her to avoid.

Pippa is a doting wife to her much older husband (Alan Arkin) and a loving mother to her son and daughter, even in the face of their disapproval, but there is little life or substance to her. Penn's interpretation of the character is a remarkable transformation, as she uses a much higher vocal register and carries herself with almost no conviction or purpose. Her Pippa—at least for the first part of the film—is a bit of a ghost, a stark contrast to the independent, inaccessible roles the actress has often portrayed in the past. When Pippa makes the terrifying discovery that she is having a nervous breakdown, the character is inspired to reexamine all the traumas that have led her to her quiet suburban life, and she—and Penn—take an acute turn right before our eyes. Pippa gives up her mask, revealing a resilient woman who is both piteous and funny as she drives herself mad.

If you haven't read the book (which I haven't), the film is delightfully unpredictable. I was pleasantly surprised to be transported to Pippa's unorthodox childhood, to spend so much time on her carousel of questionable caretakers, from her speed addict mother (the wonderful Maria Bello) to her über-cool, über-liberal Aunt Kat (Julianne Moore). As a Gossip Girl skeptic, I gave a huge sigh when Blake Lively first appeared as teenage Pippa, but she turned out to be surprisingly effective, standing her ground in the formidable shadow of Penn. A scene between Lively and Bello in which Pippa takes her mother's drugs as an experiment in empathy is absolutely heart wrenching.

Winona Ryder is also a surprising highlight as Pippa's extremely neurotic, needy, and often hysterical friend. She provides a hilarious counterpoint to Penn, sweating the small stuff very publicly while Pippa suffers a lifetime of disaster in complete silence.

To reveal more about Pippa's past (and future) would detract from the joy of watching it unfold on screen—and it is an utter joy, even as upsetting as the protagonist's circumstances sometimes are. Though I have yet to read Miller's book, I would imagine that Pippa's tale of rediscovery could not have found a better interpretation.

Written by: Caitlin Graham, January 13th 2010

Euoko’s Y-00 Instant Precision Cellular Masque / Leaf & Rusher’s Active Serum

admin — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 09:01:00 +0000

By Euoko

Air pollution is one of the biggest environmental hazards in India. Caused largely by vehicles with aged diesel engines and industrial emissions, the same technology that is moving the country forward in the global economy is moving people backward in terms of individuals’ health. Half of the children in Bangalore are now afflicted with asthma, and Kolkata has the highest number of cases of lung cancer in the world. High levels of pollution also have adverse effects on our skin, and while pollution may be causing the Taj Mahal to lose some of its outer gleam, there are ways to prevent it from hindering your own personal glimmer.

In addition to washing your face daily with soap after rising in the morning and then before you rest at night, adding a weekly routine of using Euoko’s Y-00 Instant Precision Cellular Masque will help enrich your skin through a deep multi-vitamin cleansing. Made from Amazonian clay, antioxidants, and free-radical annihilating acai, a warm tingling begins the minute you slather a coat of the thick, muddy cream onto your face. which made me a little nervous at first: is this supposed to give off so much heat? I looked at the package: “Human tested. This product has not been tested on animals. Euoko does not perform or endorse animal testing and does not engage others to do so.”

Okay, so I was just being silly. It has been a while since I’ve used a face mask, much less one made from such a sophisticated combination of ingredients. Euoko is a truly multi-national company that produces its luxury skin care line using 102 ingredients from Switzerland, Spain, France, Canada, the United States, the Amazonian Rainforest, the Kalahari Desert, and Denmark. They scientifically test their concoctions in clinical studies held in France, Mexico, Canada, and Denmark; manufacture them in Canada; and have a base of operations in Toronto, San Diego, Geneve, Milano, and London. All that effort of input pays off, as the output of using the Y-00 Instant Precision Cellular Masque is well worth the lavish price tag for the 1.7oz opaque container.

Couple this cleansing mask with Leaf & Rusher’s Active Serum for Sensitive Skin, and you’ve got the makings of a beautiful skin care friendship. Intended for daily use, the Active Serum is used to “improve the skin’s texture, tone, and firmness.” Having watched my dimples deepen and my laugh lines become more pronounced in recent years, I find that my feminist desire to age gracefully is in conflict with that other part of my self that wants to remain physiologically youthful. I doubt I’m the only one dealing with the presence of this contradiction. So while I’m working it out internally, I’ll be working it out externally with the Active Serum.

Leaf & Rusher are two guys—one a medical doctor and the other a registered nurse—who are serious about skin care, and the Active Serum is their most popular product. Made of ingredients I can’t pronounce, the serum is a dollop of smooth oil that glides over the skin and dries almost instantly. It has a smell so faint that you might just miss it, as it disappears on contact. I’ve been using the Active Serum for three weeks now and, to my surprise, have noticed a new glow and increased firmness in my skin. It’s not simply marketing folks; this is the magic of modern science.

While using Euoko’s Y-00 Instant Precision Cellular Masque and Leaf & Rusher’s Active Serum won’t decontaminate the air or reverse global warming, they will help to purify your skin and combat noticeable aging. If you want to do something to stop pollution, well, you’ll have to take your pretty face to your local politician and tell them that taking steps that benefit the majority of human lives is more important than monetary gain for a deplorable few.

Written by: Mandy Van Deven, November 11th 2009

Easy on the Eyes

admin — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 00:31:00 +0000

Jane Porter

5 spot

On the heels of her 2006 book release Flirting with Forty—which would become a Lifetime movie—Jane Porter shines in her latest novel Easy on the Eyes, which focuses on a woman fighting the ravages of time. Written with power and emotion, you will not only feel for but also fight with main character, TV entertainment show host Tiana Tomlinson, as she struggles to save her job, navigate her personal life, and all out survive in the fast-paced celebrity world were image is everything.

At thirty-eight, Tiana seems to have it all, but she’s just now coming out of the haze of her life. She is a woman who has always worked hard to get where she’s gotten, but it seems she’s gotten a little too comfortable in her position as host of America Tonight, one of the top entertainment news shows out there. She gets a reality check when her boss wants to make her one-woman show a two-woman gig, adding on fresh talent found in the bubbly twenty-eight-year-old Shelby.

While Tiana tries her hardest to find angles to save her job without doing exactly what her agent, boss, and other industry peers are pushing her to do (get "work" done on her aging face), fate seems to be playing a cruel game with her as she keeps being thrown together with Dr. Michael O’Sullivan (aka Dr. Hollywood), the devastatingly handsome plastic surgeon to the stars whom Tiana hates more for what he represents than who he really is.

I was very impressed by how Porter was able to delve into a world many of us hardly acknowledge and still keep true to her characters. While the scenes are written with powerful emotion and gripping realism, there is still a lightheartedness and romance as Michael and Tiana dance around just how much they may not actually hate each other. Easy on the Eyes is another Jane Porter highlight showing readers and, in this case, Hollywood just how tough women over the age of thirty can be.

Written by: Nina Lopez-Ortiz, October 9th 2009

Youth Knows No Pain

admin — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 04:07:00 +0000

Directed by Mitch McCabe

HBO Films

Four viewings of Mitch McCabe’s documentary, Youth Knows No Pain, have me scratching my head. I am puzzled over exactly what McCabe was attempting to say with this film. Is Youth Knows No Pain a love letter to McCabe’s deceased plastic surgeon father or an obsession with mortality? Is this is a commentary on the consumerism and increasing narcissism of Western society? How about a meditation on how youth obsessed Americans are? An exploration of how ageism and sexism conflate to render women of a certain age invisible? Youth Knows No Pain is all of these things and none of these things. The film is rather unfocused, never deeply delving into any of the issues raised.

The film all too often degenerates into navel-gazing. McCabe is obsessed with her own image, and there are no fewer than forty shots of McCabe gazing into mirrors or taking photographs of herself. McCabe admits she spends exorbitant sums on wrinkle creams, despite $70,000 of debt. She also says she would happily let her health insurance lapse so that she can afford salon visits every six weeks.

Youth Knows No Pain’s other subjects are equally shallow. Shelley soothes the pain of an impoverished upbringing with unabashed materialism; dropping $35,000 on plastic surgery in one year, she states that she misses being the target of street harassment. Lyndsay feels its her asymmetrical mouth that holds her back from a career in broadcasting. Dr. Zein Obagi injected his fifteen year old daughter with Botox. Erica, another daughter of a plastic surgeon, aspires to appear in Playboy. Erica’s father, Frank, regularly criticized his daughter’s appearance during her teen years, going so far as to ask her if her breasts were symmetrical. And I wanted to slap the taste out of Gary’s mouth when he suggests Hillary Clinton is long overdue for plastic surgery because, according to him, no one wants to see a woman looking “old and haggy.”

All of the subjects state that plastic surgery makes people feel good and that alone is a sufficient justification for it. The subjects equate aging with being ugly and alone, an assumption McCabe seems to share as she never challenges it. Many of the subjects insensitively insult McCabe’s appearance, but McCabe doesn’t have the salt to call any of them on it. She seems not the least bit interested in the “grow old gracefully” position, either. Two interviewees expressed outright disdain for cosmetic procedures, decrying society’s fear of the aged, but neither woman is identified by name and neither gets more than two minutes of screen time.

The film’s title is belied by an interview early in the film. One subject bursts into tears upon seeing a picture of himself at age twenty-four, stating that he was thinking of all the things he put himself through at that age. He also remains unidentified and is never seen again. Freak Out Over Aging would have been a much better title for this movie, which premieres tonight at 9 p.m. EST/PST on HBO.

Written by: Ebony Edwards-Ellis, August 31st 2009

Where Did I Leave My Glasses?: The What, When, and Why of Normal Memory Loss

admin — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 09:40:00 +0000

By Martha Weinman Lear

Wellness Central

I knew Where Did I Leave My Glasses? was for me the moment I read its title; by the time I finished the first chapter I was sure that it would be my ‘Bible’ for rest of my life. This informative book on memory loss by Martha Weinman Lear assures us that “memory loss” is perfectly normal as we age. Well, aging may not be a very comforting thought (at least for me), but once we accept this fact “gracefully,” we will accept “memory loss” as its accomplice.

Ms. Lear makes the book very readable and entertaining with amusing life experiences and good humor. She explains the “technicalities” of the human brain in simple words and with simple examples. Who wouldn’t understand if the complex works of neurons, neurotransmitters inside the brain is compared to the big O—Orgasm!

This well researched book includes excerpts of the interviews and expert opinions of neurologists, biologists; cardiologists, psychologists, anthropologists, and many other “ologists” (and some amazing combos like neuropsychologists).

The best part of the book is the tips Ms. Lear gives for memory retention like repetition and word association. Did you know, for example, that aerobics boosts your memory? Ms. Lear distinguishes between “normal” and “not so normal” memory loss, which gives us the clue when to start worrying about memory loss.

This book is a must read for the types like me who have “what’s his/her name,” “tip of the tongue,” and “what I had for weekend’s lunch” issues. Though I know that I am getting older, that at least is much more comforting than to know that I have amnesia.

Written by: Sunitha Jayan, July 7th 2009

The Blue Cotton Gown: A Midwife’s Memoir

admin — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 09:10:00 +0000

By Patricia Harman

Beacon Press

By the time Patricia Harman finished writing The Blue Cotton Gown, she was no longer working as a midwife. Instead, soaring malpractice fees had caused The Women’s Health Clinic of Torrington, West Virginia, a practice Harman runs with her husband, Dr. Tom Harman, to provide only general obstetrical and gynecological care to the patients it serves.

Harman is a nurse-practitioner and her memoir tracks a handful of women for approximately a year, zeroing in on the many variables that impact their health and well being: rampant drug and alcohol abuse, poverty, violence, mental illness, and inadequate information about staying healthy, among them. It’s a gripping account. At the same time, the book is as much a meditation on aging, marriage, and parenthood as it is a look at the obstacles and challenges endemic to the provision of healthcare in the U.S. This makes it both intensely moving and intensely, if obliquely, political.

Harman describes herself and her spouse as former hippies, people who found their professional calling in their thirties, after years of organic farming and communal living. Their countercultural impulses have made them compassionate, and their work is motivated by love of medicine, not love of the dollar. Not surprisingly, these tendencies have led to managerial problems. To whit, an inattention to finances—and way too much trust in accountants who could care less about the Harman’s ethos of providing the best care for the best price—led to monetary miscalculations that threatened to shutter the practice. When the IRS came calling, tensions built and the Harmans and their ten-person staff had to work tirelessly to forge a survival strategy. They did—the practice was saved—but not without both dents and dings to numerous personal relationships.

Meanwhile, they had patients to deal with and their own personal crises to address. Harman calls it “running in front of a plague of locusts.” There is Nila, pregnant for the eighth time, who fears that her ex-husband is molesting her four-year-old. There is Heather, a teenager pregnant by a nineteen-year-old drug addict, and Holly, a forty-five-year-old menopausal realtor whose bulimic daughter is perched on death’s window ledge. And there’s Rebba, worried because she has never had an orgasm, and Shiana, a college student who needs to have a condom extracted from behind her cervix.

Closer to home, the elderly parents of staff get sick and Harman, herself, becomes ill. Within the span of a few months she needs to have a gangrenous gall bladder removed and has a complete hysterectomy.

Throughout, there are constant money troubles—big ones—and the tension and stress are palpably presented. To her credit, Harman is not looking for either sympathy or accolades but her matter-of-fact descriptions of how difficult it is to provide high quality, patient-centered care is simultaneously enraging and shocking. While she never discusses the need for a national health plan—she also barely mentions abortion as an option for her oft-pregnant patients—her chronicle of the trials and tribulations of one nurse practitioner is riveting.

Yes, The Blue Cotton Gown could have been more politically prescriptive. Nonetheless, readers will find their immersion in the daily affairs of this off-the-beaten-track health center emotionally engaging, engrossing, and inspiring. Indeed, in an era of rampant medical discontent, the determination and persistence of Harman and her Torrington colleagues seems almost miraculous.

Written by: Eleanor J. Bader, June 17th 2009