Drawing on the perspective of aging bodies in order to approach the study of contemporary Canadian women's fiction, the author seeks to understand body criticism in general because elderly physical experiences lay bare crucial assumptions of thinking through the body. It also investigates the mechanisms and effects of constructions of aging in order to combat the automatically negative reactions most readers have to the topic of old age.
New York Times Bestseller * USA Today Bestseller* Los Angeles Times Bestseller * Publishers Weekly Bestseller A guide to wisdom, authenticity, and bliss for women as they age by the author of Reviving Ophelia. Women growing older contend with ageism, misogyny, and loss. Yet as Mary Pipher shows, most older women are deeply happy and filled with gratitude for the gifts of life. Their struggles help them grow into the authentic, empathetic, and wise people they have always wanted to be. In Women Rowing North, Pipher offers a timely examination of the cultural and developmental issues women face as they age. Drawing on her own experience as daughter, sister, mother, grandmother, caregiver, clinical psychologist, and cultural anthropologist, she explores ways women can cultivate resilient responses to the challenges they face. “If we can keep our wits about us, think clearly, and manage our emotions skillfully,” Pipher writes, “we will experience a joyous time of our lives. If we have planned carefully and packed properly, if we have good maps and guides, the journey can be transcendent.”
Karen Grassle, the beloved actress who played Ma on Little House on the Prairie, grew up at the edge of the Pacific Ocean in a family where love was plentiful but alcohol wreaked havoc. In this candid memoir, Grassle reveals her journey to succeed as an actress even as she struggles to overcome depression, combat her own dependence on alcohol, and find true love. With humor and hard-won wisdom, Grassle takes readers on an inspiring journey through the political turmoil on ’60s campuses, on to studies with some of the most celebrated artists at the famed London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts, and ultimately behind the curtains of Broadway stages and storied Hollywood sets. In these pages, readers meet actors and directors who have captivated us on screen and stage as they fall in love, betray and befriend, and don costumes only to reveal themselves. We know Karen Grassle best as the proud prairie woman Caroline Ingalls, with her quiet strength and devotion to family, but this memoir introduces readers to the complex, funny, rebellious, and soulful woman who, in addition to being the force behind those many strong women she played, fought passionately—as a writer, producer, and activist—on behalf of equal rights for women. Raw, emotional, and tender, Bright Lights celebrates and honors womanhood, in all its complexity.
The beloved New York Times columnist "inspires women to embrace aging and look at it with a new sense of hope" in this lively, fascinating, eye-opening look at women and aging in America (Parade Magazine). "You're not getting older, you're getting better," or so promised the famous 1970's ad -- for women's hair dye. Americans have always had a complicated relationship with aging: embrace it, deny it, defer it -- and women have been on the front lines of the battle, willingly or not. In her lively social history of American women and aging, acclaimed New York Times columnist Gail Collins illustrates the ways in which age is an arbitrary concept that has swung back and forth over the centuries. From Plymouth Rock (when a woman was considered marriageable if "civil and under fifty years of age"), to a few generations later, when they were quietly retired to elderdom once they had passed the optimum age for reproduction, to recent decades when freedom from striving in the workplace and caretaking at home is often celebrated, to the first female nominee for president, American attitudes towards age have been a moving target. Gail Collins gives women reason to expect the best of their golden years.
Everyone says they would like to retire early, but Rodney Rothman actually did it—forty years early. Burnt out, he decides at the age of twenty-eight to get an early start on his golden years. He travels to Boca Raton, Florida, where he moves in with an elderly piano teacher at Century Village, a retirement community that is home to thousands of senior citizens. Early Bird is an irreverent, hilarious, and ultimately warmhearted account of Rodney's journey deep into the heart of retirement. Rodney struggles for acceptance from the senior citizens he shares a swimming pool with and battles with cranky octogenarians who want him off their turf. Before long he observes, “I don't think Tuesdays with Morrie would have been quite so uplifting if that guy had to spend more than one day a week with Morrie.” In the spirit of retirement, Rodney fashions a busy schedule of suntanning, shuffleboard, and gambling cruises. As the months pass, his neighbors seem to forget that he is fifty years younger than they are. He finds himself the potential romantic interest of an aging femme fatale. He joins a senior softball club and is disturbed to learn that he is the worst player on the team. Early Bird is a funny, insightful, and moving look at what happens to us when we retire, viewed from a remarkably premature perspective. Any reader who plans on becoming an old person will enjoy joining Rodney on his strange journey, as he reconsiders his notions of romance, family, friendship, and ultimately, whether he's ever going back to work.
After the ceasefire in 1988, the devastation to the landscape of Iraq wrought by the longest war of the twentieth century—the Iran-Iraq War—becomes visible. Eight years of fighting have turned nature upside down, with vast wastelands being left behind. In southeastern Iraq, along the shores of the Shatt al-Arab River, the groves of date palm trees have withered. No longer bearing fruit, their leaves have turned a bright yellow. There, Iraqi forces had blocked the entry points of the river’s tributaries and streams, preventing water from flowing to the trees and vegetation. Yet, surveying this destruction from the sky, a strip of land bursting with green can be seen. Beginning from the Shatt al-Arab River and reaching to the fringes of the western desert, several kilometers wide, it appears as a lush oasis of some kind. The secret of this fertility, sustaining villages and remaining soldiers, is unclear. But it is said that one old woman is responsible for this lifeline.
When men stop making lecherous catcalls and Spanx get comfortable in your lingerie drawer, when marketers target you for Activia instead of $200 premium denim, when you have to start wearing makeup to get that “I’m not wearing any makeup” glow and are “ma’amed” outside the Deep South, it may dawn on you that somehow you have crossed an invisible line: You are not the young, relevant, in-the-mix woman you used to be. But neither are you old, or even what you think of as middle-aged. You are no longer what you were, but not quite sure what you are. Stephanie Dolgoff calls this stage of a woman’s life “Formerly,” the state of mind and body she herself is in now: Her roaring twenties are behind her, but she’s not in hot flash territory, either. My Formerly Hot Life, showcasing Dolgoff’s wacky and wise observations about this little-discussed flux time, demonstrates that becoming a Formerly is intensely poignant if you’re paying attention, and hilarious even if you’re not. From fashion to friendship, beauty to body image, married sex to single searching, mothering to careering (or both), Dolgoff reveals the upside to not being forever 21—even as you watch the things you once thought were so essential to a happy life go the way of the cassette tape. You may be formerly thin, formerly cool, formerly (seemingly) carefree, formerly cutting-edge, but in reading My Formerly Hot Life you are reminded that you are finally more comfortable in your skin (formerly obsessed with your weight), finally following your instincts (formerly ruled by the opinions of others), and finally happy with where you are (formerly focused on the guy or job you thought would take you where you thought you should be). While you may no longer be as close to the media-machine-generated idea of fabulous, you can do many, many more things fabulously. Wildly entertaining and inspiring, My Formerly Hot Life proves that once you let yourself laugh about that which is passing, life is richer, more fun, and more satisfying. Despite what you’re led to believe, growing older most certainly means growing better.
“The remarkable women celebrated in [this] vibrantly illustrated collection . . . offer stirring words of encouragement to any woman, of any age” (Booklist). The glory of growing older is the freedom to be more truly ourselves. With age we gain the confidence to pursue bold new endeavors and worry less about what other people think. In this richly illustrated volume, bestselling author and artist Lisa Congdon explores the power of women over the age of forty who are thriving and living life on their own terms. A Glorious Freedom includes profiles, interviews, and essays from women such as Vera Wang, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Julia Child, Cheryl Strayed, and many others who have found creative fulfillment and accomplished great things in the second half of their lives. Each section is lavishly illustrated and hand-lettered in Congdon's signature style.
At some point after fifty, every woman crosses a threshold into the third phase of her life. As she enters this uncharted territory -- one that is generally uncelebrated in popular culture -- she can choose to mourn what has gone before, or she can embrace the juicy-crone years. In this celebration of Act Three, Jean Shinoda Bolen, Jungian analyst and bestselling author of Goddesses in Everywoman, names the powerful new energies and potentials -- or archetypes -- that come into the psyche at this momentous time, suggesting that women getting older have profound and exciting reasons for welcoming the other side of fifty.
