A State of Flux?

After reading a few racy blog posts recently, I got to thinking how totally tame my blog is compared to much of my old writing, like the feature articles I wrote in Playgirl once upon a time. What used to be a sure-fire way to embarrass my daughters is now referred to in hushed asides or cackled over as entertainment during a girls-only weekend.

Read the one about the merkins! Do the one about the queefs! Does Size Matter? Ex Sex? Tasty Spunk? (Okay, that last one was fiction. Seriously. It did not happen.)

Out of Playgirl mode for a couple years and living with my daughter and her 5- and 2-year-olds have effectively sanded off my saucier edges. I think all women tend to supplant their younger, more adventurous, wild woman for their inner manager and caretaker at some point; and they do it so often and for so long that they sometimes forget how to have fun, how to be adventurous, how to be playful. And when you realize the wild child is still in there -- timid now and nostalgic for the old days -- maybe you're not so sure how to resurrect her or breathe any life back into her at all. Those doubts, that you might not even have known you had, triple in size when you become single again.

Me? I am always self-censoring in case the little ones overhear something; always stashing the porn and paraphernalia into secret hiding places where I forget about them (until the cat drags them out); always walking that fine line between the sassy, sensual, sexual being that I am and the stereotypical cookie-baking midlifer who gives up, gets fat, and goes to knitting classes where she laments cellulite, varicose veins, and thinning lips. I'm not sure what people expect of me these days because while those things are on my radar screen, I still feel like I'm 30-something -- but infinitely smarter, bolder, and sassier. So how is it I still feel like I'm fighting against a stereotype?

Fifty is the new forty. Forty is the new thirty, etc. etc. I agree. But those numbers still carry stock images of what women those ages are supposed to look and act like. Now a lot of us are called cougars, and with that comes a whole 'nother set of misperceptions (and a whole 'nother post). The category of "older women" is in a state of flux, and I'm feeling a bit like I can't win . . . Is it just me? Or do other women feel this way?
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