Now you see it

Years ago, and well into my seventh month of pregnancy in New York City, it occurred to me one day that, as I would be unable to run from a fast predator, I was lucky not to run into an urban panther. These weekly blogs will consider women's lives from the perspective of one who is now older.

A BBC story this August told of a woolen tunic found on a Norwegian mountainside. It had been buried under snow that is now melting in our changing climate. The tunic was made of wool, had a diamond pattern, was brown in color, had been patched -- and was more than 1,700 years old.

Because cloth and clothing are perishable compared with, say, marble buildings, there just isn’t much old (as in historic) stuff around. We have metal and stone tools and weapons and artifacts from many eras, but not the clothing. It seems to me there would likely have been more cloth than anything else -- not everyone had a weapon, but everyone wore clothing. 

Fiber and cloth have been used to cover the human body from prehistory. And women made the cloth and the clothes. In her book, Women’s Work: The First 20,000 Years, Elizabeth Wayland Barber looks at archeological evidence and sees the work of women in developing textiles -- a critically important advance in craft and commerce and civilization.

Working with fibers, whether from plants or animals, is work that is not dependent on chasing or catching animals. It is not dangerous for little ones to be around. It has many stages, and so can be interrupted without harming the final product. In other words, spinning and weaving could be done by women with young children.

Bronze Age Mesopotamian women ran their own cloth businesses, often supplying their trader husbands with merchandise. Two thousand years later in Athens, women were still making cloth but did so as virtual prisoners in the home. What happened?

Barber says, “We women do not need to conjure a history for ourselves. Facts about women, their work, and their place in society in early times have survived in considerable quantity, if we know how to look for them.” At the same time, she has titled the book’s final chapter, “Postscript: Finding the Invisible.”

Perhaps we all need to be in the business of making the invisible visible.

How quickly we forget

Years ago, and well into my seventh month of pregnancy in New York City, it occurred to me one day that, as I would be unable to run from a fast predator, I was lucky not to run into an urban panther. These weekly blogs will consider women's lives from the perspective of one who is now older.

It seems incredible to me that I have nearly forgotten I ever had a menstrual cycle. This was something I did every month for 40 years, and it was gone from my consciousness within 12 months. In six years or so, it’s entirely out of my memory. 

There’s no stash of feminine hygiene products in the glove compartment of my car or at the bottom of my purse. I don’t have to check the sheets on the bed for stains. My consumption of ibuprofen is down to nearly zero. I have no idea where the hot water bottle is, or even if I still own one.

These alone could be reason for post-menopausal glee, but there’s more. My head is not fogged with hormones. I can trust my moods -- and there are fewer of them. I can make up my mind. My view of myself is not subject to careening extremes.

We’ve all heard that old age is not for sissies. Well, being a woman is not for the weak -- being a menstruating woman takes strength. Although I’m still active, I doubt I’d have the energy now for a monthly cycle; the complexity of chemical and physical changes involved is quite costly energetically.

There is a kind of resistance, an inner resilience, needed to undergo these physical changes every month. A woman has to find a way to come to terms with her cycle, in order to live with it and not be ruled by it. I seriously doubt if you asked some young women what they would like to do with one week every month, that any would say she wanted to bleed. Despite our preferences, that is what happens; it is only smart and self-nurturing to be okay with it.

Perhaps we can think about having a menstrual cycle as training for learning what is important in life. We learn we are not in control of everything, so we don’t have to waste any more time or energy chasing that fallacy. We learn to listen to our bodies, so we get to know what we need. We learn that nothing lasts forever, so we aren’t paralyzed when change occurs.

Somehow this impressive toughness of women became seen in our culture as weakness. But that makes no sense. If you just take a clinical look at what goes on physically, emotionally, psychologically in a woman’s body every month, you come away impressed and awed.

The weaker sex? Not by a long shot.

Keep the change

Years ago, and well into my seventh month of pregnancy in New York City, it occurred to me one day that, as I would be unable to run from a fast predator, I was lucky not to run into an urban panther. These weekly blogs will consider women's lives from the perspective of one who is now older.

Now that it’s autumn -- and it most definitively is autumn, as if the trees all got a memo on the equinox -- I have to wonder if I evolved from creatures that hibernate. All I want to do is eat and then sleep. Does this happen to you?

I’m craving comfort food, though my life is really quite filled with comfort already. My feet relax into socks, and scarves are once again wrapped around my neck. If I had fur like the cat, I’d be brushing it.

It seems true to me that we reflect the natural world around us, and we don’t have to do so deliberately or consciously; it just happens. In winter, we can be cozy and focused within. The spring that follows seems that much more miraculous -- all that life bursting up from the earth -- inspiring us to get moving, plant gardens, make plans. Summer’s warmth helps us find the balance between moving and resting, and the extended days are a gift of time. Come autumn, we can ponder the season’s lesson that what seems to be loss is preparation for new life.

Change is the way of the world, quite literally. And women bodily reflect change every month. So why do so many people fear change, fight change? Why, on this changing planet, do people dream about permanency? Is that the Eden lost so long ago?

Maybe, instead of demanding an immutable existence, we should work on becoming more comfortable with change. A good exercise for this could involve our habits. What if we think of habits as acquired for the sole purpose of breaking them?

There is little else so readily available that tests will or improves flexibility better than breaking a habit. Taking coffee without sugar or putting cream in tea, getting up a half-hour earlier or changing our route home -- making small changes can prepare us for big ones. Changing a behavior pattern can show us our strength and help us believe in ourselves. 

And that’s a good place to be whatever the season.

The body electric?

Years ago, and well into my seventh month of pregnancy in New York City, it occurred to me one day that, as I would be unable to run from a fast predator, I was lucky not to run into an urban panther. These weekly blogs will consider women's lives from the perspective of one who is now older.

Some years ago, there was an amusing television ad; I can’t remember the product or message, but I do remember the ad. Some ordinary-looking men were standing around in a bar or in a locker room or somewhere, and one guy with his back to the camera turns his head over his shoulder and asks the other guys, “Do these pants make my thighs look big?” He might have asked if they made his butt look big; I can’t remember. Either way, it was so incongruous, it was really funny.

Yet what’s incongruous with men is completely normal with women. Haven’t we all asked someone, or at least ourselves, some version of that question? Does this *insert type of garment here* make my *insert body part* or “me” look *choose all that apply: fat, flat-chested, dumpy, thick, scrawny, too tall, too short, yadda, yadda, yadda.

When confronted with a photo (likely altered and air-brushed) of a well-built young man, all defined muscles and tapering torso, we say, “Nobody looks like that.” And we’re right. We recognize that this beautiful man’s occupation depends on his looks, and that he’s unusual. But when we see a photo (quite certainly air-brushed) of a beautiful woman, long-legged and flat-bellied, we say, “I need to lose weight,” or “Maybe liposuction,” or, worst of all, “I’ll never look like that, and I’m ugly.”

I know we’re a visually based, some might say visually susceptible, species. But our species comprises both women and men; why are the women, at least in this country, so much more obsessed with meeting a “model” image?   Those women are also unusual; they’re not typical, that’s why they have their jobs.

When I was a kid, during the Miss America pageant’s swimsuit competition, each contestant was introduced by state, name, height and measurements, as in, “Miss Ohio, Erie Laker, 5 feet 4 inches tall, 34, 24, 34.” 

Reminiscent of a 4H livestock show, that was bad enough, but those body specifics did describe an actual woman’s body attainable without surgical intervention. Now, it’s “Miss California, Simi Dotcom, 5 feet 9 inches tall, 36, 27, 33.” Or, as one fashion show review in The New York Times put it, “... skeletons with artfully arranged blobs of fat.”

Now there's an image.