Wouldn’t Change a Thing, by Martha Thomases – Brilliant Disguise | @MDWorld

April 12, 2014 Martha Thomases 1 Comment

There are two different products currently being advertised on my television designed to make sexual intercourse “easier” for women who have been through menopause.  Both ads feature women of a certain age lolling around in a bedroom, in full make-up, looking knowingly at the camera.

All I can think about when I see these ads is how horrible the focus groups must have been.

Menopause can make sexual intercourse difficult and painful for some women.  This isn’t news.  Aging can also make sexual intercourse difficult for some men.  There are commercials selling products aimed at men who suffer from these conditions.  None of those men are shown in bed, heavily made up, staring at the camera with “come hither” eyes.  No, men are active, working on cars, striding through airports, doing chores in the backyard.

In other words, at least in the world of these commercials, men have busy lives that include sex, and women sit around and wait for men to appear so they have something to do.

As a consumer, I am not affected by this in the slightest.  The ads are so offensive to me that I would never consider buying the products.  Also, as a woman who has gone through menopause, I know enough about sex in general (and my own body in particular) to know that there are a lot of fun activities involving an aging body that don’t require medication.  Just imagination.

Women my age, part of the 800-pound demographic gorilla that is the Baby Boom, are redefining what it means to older.  Too much of this redefinition is still about how we look.  However, some of us have been feminists for more than a half century, and we are determined to define ourselves as individuals, not sex objects.

Which is one reason the Republican Party is going to have problems in the years ahead.  By opposing the concept of equal pay for equal work, they put themselves at odds (again) with the real lives of average Americans.

(Side note:  Yes, I know the White House also pays its women staffers less than men.  No, I don’t approve of that.  At least the White House makes noises about trying to fix it.)

I recently saw an amazing TED talk that brilliantly examined the many ways women are diminished in our society.  Many of these may seem trivial to the non-women among us, but I can testify that, taken together, these indignities result in a Death of a Thousand Cuts.  I already know that my biggest regret on my deathbed will be the amount of time I’ve spent worrying about what I eat and how I look in my jeans  My second biggest regret will be that the knowledge I already have about how ridiculous this is doesn’t stop me from doing it.

To end this on a more positive note, a brilliant artist in Georgia has been creating provocative work that challenges the objectification of women.  She does this without a ton of rhetoric, but with wit and a take-no-prisoners attitude.  It must be working, because some of the men in her neighborhood are threatened enough to graffiti over her work.

Martha Thomases, Media Goddess, hopes this meets the approval of her son’s girlfriend, a doctoral candidate in gender studies.