78uuu lumière des étoiles

Dusty:Starlight:Culture



better stock up on anti-aging toothpaste
2007-01-14   11:22 a.m.

Well look at that, it's 2007. I joked - but not really - to a friend the other night that this is "the beginning of the end of this decade". And it is. She wigged out. She's also turning 35 this year. That's not old but it's old when in your head you're still-and-forever 25, or just sort of floating in an ageless haze that belies a conscious recognition of your age. To suddenly recognize you've lived x-number of years/decades, or that you're x-number from 40, 50, 60, whatever, it's all sort of humbling or sobering or some word like that.

I think it's this phase of life. Steve gets it too; just the other day he said "Am I 32, or 33?". I reminded him he was turning 33 this year. And one day last week, when I had to remember a bunch of dates for something, I spent the entire day thinking I was 27, until I actually went through and counted. I was turning 29 this year, not 28. And not that that really matters - it's all sort of arbitrary, but culturally speaking, especially lately, it's so significant.

Take, for example, an article I read while waiting for my mother in a doctor's office, just last month. To put this in some context, for a moment - my mom was having surgery for a vein condition that I likely have or will have as I age; it's genetic, common to women, etc. But I'm not sweating it now, and as far as genetic, family-pattern problems go, I'll take the survivable vein issue over schizophrenia and cystic fibrosis any day. But back to our family's defective chromosomes: my mom was discussing the pattern and history of her condition with a nurse, and citing ages she started having the problems, started having children, started having shifts in her menstrual cycle, etc. She had to remember years, ages, dates, and periods of her life, which she did with ease. But it made me think of my life, relative to hers - where she was at my age, when I might start having these problems, having children, or hitting certain walls, medically speaking. The nurse didn't help: she was sort of involving me in the conversation, and projecting issues for me, which medical folks often do.

So my mom goes in for the procedure, and I'm left alone in the waiting room to think about myself in some future age, to think about whether or not I might have children and what may or may not happen to my veins as a result. I'm also still all wonky over the fact that I own a significant amount of property and a nice house, and am now, as my boss pointed out, "on the wrong side of the revolution". That's pretty grown up, I guess, so I have to also recognize my place as a tax-payer, mortgage payer, homeowner's insurance policy holder, etc. - all things that place you in a certain time-continuum as well.

To distract myself from getting caught up in how short life is and how fast we age and how quickly years fly by, and all that, I decided to read a magazine aimed at women's health issues. Most of the content was devoted to "your baby-ready body". First: barf. Secondly, let me say this: I've never seen a woman's body, culturally or physiologically speaking, so picked apart. And as I've said before, this seems to be the new thing to focus on in mainstream media for women & health. I understand that certain facts, medically, hold true: there is an optimum time for women to get pregnant and deliver, if, in fact, this is what they would like to do; there is a period of increased danger and potential for problems as women age when it comes to pregnancy and delivery. But is this new news? Something we don't know? Something we need to be reminded of constantly?

So I'm past my optimum pregnancy time, or should have had a child by now, or something. But that's ok, as long as I treat my body as "pre-pregnant", as I've seen other publications, including government websites, encourage me to do.
Since that term sort of pissed me off, I googled it and found this great Washington Post article, called "Forever Pregnant", that sort of sums up nicely why I was, in fact, so irritated at the term:

New federal guidelines ask all females capable of conceiving a baby to treat themselves -- and to be treated by the health care system -- as pre-pregnant, regardless of whether they plan to get pregnant anytime soon.

Among other things, this means all women between first menstrual period and menopause should take folic acid supplements, refrain from smoking, maintain a healthy weight and keep chronic conditions such as asthma and diabetes under control.

While most of these recommendations are well known to women who are pregnant or seeking to get pregnant, experts say it's important that women follow this advice throughout their reproductive lives, because about half of pregnancies are unplanned and so much damage can be done to a fetus between conception and the time the pregnancy is confirmed.

It's so great to watch folic acid intake "from the point of first menstruation" until death (I guess), it's so great to not smoke, and it's so great to eat well, for many, many reasons. But to be conceived of, or treated, medically, in a constant state of pregnancy? Pre, post, etc.? For every woman to be "pre-pregnant"? I do find that a bit odd - and a bit too freaky in a Handmaid's Tale sort of way. That we co-opt women's bodies and make them public domain is nothing new, but I sort of miss when it was more subtle and came out in more implicit ways. At least then someone was making an attempt to have the appearance of offering choices or considering women as something aside from just breeding vessels (imagine that!).

So now medically we're also sort of reduced to a time line directly relative to age, assigned a value based on where we are in the pregnancy scale (Pre-? Pre-pre? Post-pre? Pre-30 but post-25-? Pre-40 but Post-35?). Not surprising, and again, not new. But more involved, certainly, and just another set of someone else’s standards for us all to stress about.

Speaking of all this, I saw Children of Men and thought it was really interesting relative to this kind of topic, given that the movie takes place in a future time when no one can conceive and no children have been born for nearly 20 years. This is part of the plot also of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, which I mentioned before, only in her novel there few women who can conceive are rounded up like cows and passed out to high ranking gov’t officials to “breed”. Don’t think it wouldn’t happen – look how we already consider women’s bodies public property, open to public inspection, scrutiny, and claim.

But I’ll review that movie next time – we’re off to Home Depot to drop another hundred dollars on more things that we need to make sure the house doesn’t explode or fall down.