women

Everything New is New Again

By Lisa Scottoline

You’re not getting older, you’re getting golder.

At least, according to ABC-TV.

I’m talking, of course, about The Golden Bachelor, which is the latest entry in this insanely successful TV series in which people meet and get married after three dates, a large helping of projection, and a scary helicopter ride.

This is yet another description of my second marriage.

Only we never got anywhere near a helicopter.

It just felt that way, pitching and yawing high up in the air, with too much noise.

Ain’t love grand?

Actually, it is, provided that you get it right, and that’s what people are trying to do in these TV shows, to meet a guy or a gal in real time and get married with a ring that somebody bought for them.

Honestly, maybe that’s where I went wrong.

I should’ve married Neil Lane.

If you watch the show, you know that he’s the jeweler to the wannabe stars.

If you don’t watch the show, congratulations.

You have better judgment than I do.

In any event, ABC is just launching the golden bachelor and the pitch is that a 72-year-old man is looking for love among a beautiful array of women, all of whom are in their sixties and seventies.

So right there, you know it’s fiction.

Most seventy-year-olds think thirty-year-olds are a good start.

Hats off to ABC-TV for the whole concept, but for starters, I’m wondering where the golden part comes in.

You may remember a TV show called Golden Girls, in which one of the women was in her eighties and the others were in their fifties.

Back then, the fifties were considered your golden years.

That’s changed, thank God, and for a scientific reason.

People who write television shows are getting older.

They think they’re aging like fine wine rather than avocados.

I do, too, so let the fiction begin.

That’s why these days the sequel to Sex & The City, entitled And Just Like that, features a bunch of fifty-year-olds who are the same age as the Golden Girls used to be, but those crazy kids are having the time of their lives, back-sliding with boyfriends, wearing statement jewelry, and looking better-dressed that any sixty-something I know.

Okay, me.

But then again, who wants a TV show about a lady in a T-shirt and Patagonia shorts.

And those are my dress shorts.

You don’t even wanna know my normal shorts.

Anyway, I can’t wait for the Golden Batchelor show, which brought me to wonder, would I want to be on the show?

After all, I’m golden.

In fact, I’ve been golden all my life, and so have you.

Joni Mitchell said so.

We are stardust, we are golden, and that’s the story I’m going with.

In any event, I’m famously celibate, I mean, single, but I don’t know if I’m single enough to go on television and wait to be picked by some guy.

Frankly it’s not the TV-part that bothers me. And I wouldn’t be embarrassed because I’m hardly ever embarrassed anymore, by anything.

If you ask me, that’s a gift of old age.

We stop worrying about what people think of us, which leads to normal shorts.

But I don’t think I would like the wait-to-be-picked part.

When I look back at my life, I think my problem was that I waited to be picked rather than doing the picking.

It was like being asked to dance only it ended up in a post-nup.

Another term we had back then was wallflower, and that was the girl who stood along the wall because nobody was picking her.

I’m hoping that term will become as obsolete as bachelorette.

Oh, wait a minute.

In my day, girls had to wait to be asked for a date or to the prom, and in fact, at my high school, there was a Sadie Hawkins Day, in which the girls were supposed to ask the boys to the dance.

So one day of the year you had agency.

The other 364 were up for grabs.

I’m not the type of woman who sits in a chair and ways to be handed a rose anymore.

I would think, just one?

And in the words of the immortal Miley Cyrus, I can buy my own flowers.

Obviously the rules of romance are changing, and the great thing is there’s no rules. You can make them go up as you go along, and you probably should. The only thing I’ve learned is that they should be your rules, not somebody else’s.

Love is not one size fits all.

If this Golden Bachelor continues, next will be a show starring Platinum Bachelors, who are age eighty and over.

I personally have no problem with any of this.

I’ll take experience over youth any day, in any situation.

And as a logical matter, it means the marriages that will last the longest are the ones made on the Golden Bachelor.

But those of the exact people who have the least time.

Ironic, no?

That’s not something that even science can fix.

Yet.  

copyright Lisa Scottoline 2023

Waiting Room

By Lisa Scottoline

They say the country is polarized, but I think it depends on where you go.

Follow me.

Into the waiting room for your mammogram.

Before I begin, let me first state the obvious.

Breast cancer is a serious subject and I don’t mean to make light of it.

However, my job is to brighten your day.

So with that in mind, read on.

And don’t think I’m a boob.

So let’s go into the waiting room for a mammogram, where there are Republicans, Democrats, and Independents, but none of us is wearing our red or blue team colors. We’ve put our clothes away in a locker and we’re all wearing the same thing, like a uniform for a school you never wanted to go to.

It’s not the silky black robe that they give you at the hair salon.

Or the paper gown they give you at the gynecologist.

I’ve mastered only one of these items of apparel.

Every time I go to the gynecologist, the nurse hands me a paper gown, tells me to get changed, and rattles off the directions. Then she leaves the room and I have no idea what to do.

Bra off?

Underwear off?

Does the opening go in the front or the back?

I mean the opening of the gown.

I know the location of the other opening.

I’m not that dumb.

Anyway in the early days, I took everything off and put the paper gown on with the opening in the front, which seemed to make the most sense.

Then the doctor came in with her nurse, and they tried not to laugh.

I was like, What?

I looked like the star of the worst porno ever.

You would never pay to see my porno.

Somebody would have to pay you to see my porno.

Title?

Pap Porn.

I do better with the hair-salon robe, but I always drop the belt it in the toilet.

Please tell me I’m not alone in this.

I can’t be around a belt of any kind.

My waist is allergic.

To return to point, the most luxurious robe you will ever get is the one for your mammogram. The one I had was a soft and gray, which was chic, but too on-the-nose for a mammogram.

Like, am I going to live, die, or somewhere in the middle?

Especially those of us who have dense breasts.

By the way, this is every single woman I know. I don’t think there’s a woman on the planet who does not have dense breasts.

And I’m not really sure what having dense breasts means except that you’re going to have to take the mammogram two or three times, which is no fun but may also cause what happened to me the other day.

Which was a waiting room party.

Because I was stuck in the little room of dense-breasted women who were on their second or third try, like retake day for school pictures without the free comb.

And I started making conversation because I don’t get out enough.

I said something like I was nervous, and then we all started talking about how we were nervous, and we shared all the hopeful and scary stories we knew, and when each one of us got called out to retake the mammogram, we waited in suspense for her to come back.

Luckily we all got good news, and each time, we burst into relieved applause and cheers for each other.

A group of total strangers, who had nothing in common except breasts.

And hearts.

Because we know that every day, some women are not so lucky.

All human beings are subject to the same fears and joys.

And when you strip us down and put us in a robe, we can find that commonality.

And not just in a mammogram waiting room.

Because in truth, we’re all of us in a waiting room, all the time.

Whether we’re female or male.

We’re all going to get bad news someday, and if you keep that in mind, then you see that life is in one big waiting room.

It’s not about the mammogram.

It’s about the big picture.

Copyright Lisa Scottoline 2023

I Gotta Crow

By Lisa Scottoline


Bradley Chicken Cooper (left) Goldie the Hen (right)

It’s not Hot Girl Summer, it’s Hot Girlpower Summer.

And I’m here for it.

Let me explain.

We begin at home.

Or rather, in my henhouse.

I have a flock of ten hens and a rooster named Bradley Chicken Cooper.

I mean, why not?

By the way, I didn’t want a rooster because they don’t lay eggs. In fact, in the upside-down world of poultry, everybody wants hens and nobody wants roosters.

Roosters are Just Ken.

I ended up with a rooster because I got him as a chick and they mistakenly thought he was a girl.

Which ruffled his feathers.

To return to point, everything was fine in the chicken coop, where Bradley Chicken Cooper crows every morning.

If you saw A Star is Born, you know he has a great voice.

But the other day, I noticed that his crowing sounded different, so I went to the coop and discovered that it wasn’t him crowing, but one of the hens.

Hens don’t crow, they cluck, but the crowing hen was Goldie, an otherwise docile Buff Orpington, which is a breed with pretty golden feathers. Anyway I looked it up online and found out that hens will crow to assert new dominance in the pecking order.

Goldie’s still crowing, and I don’t know if she’ll stop.

Would you?

So it turns out we girls can do anything.

Who knew?

Answer: Barbie.

Barbie is the first movie to gross $1 billion made by a woman, Greta Gerwig, proving not only that women make great directors but also buy tons of tickets.

If you didn’t see Barbie, go.

It’s not a movie, it’s a religious experience.

I cried at the end, leaking the last of my estrogen.

The theater was packed with women of all generations, and there was even a gigantic Barbie box in the lobby, in which I took a selfie with my best friend Franca Barbie.

We had to wait in line behind eight-year-olds.

Which was tough because our bedtime is earlier.

The movie isn’t only about women, but also about how traditional views don’t do men any favors, as illustrated by Ryan Gosling as Ken.

I know, I need to get a goose to name Ryan Gosling.

Another example of Hot Girlpower Summer is Taylor Swift, whose Seattle concert got so many women shaking it off that they actually caused an earthquake.

Yikes! I mean, Yay!

Taylor Swift even gave massive bonuses to everyone who works on her tour, so she’s Straight-up Goddess Barbie.

And it’s no coincidence that this summer also saw the appearance of a female roundworm that had been dormant in Siberia for 46,000 years, then suddenly came to life and started having babies. She’d been living in a frozen hole 130 feet below the surface, which coincidentally is a description of my second marriage.

Scientists can’t explain how this happened, but I can.

She finally woke up.

I feel you, girl.

Better late than never.

I think something is happening this summer, in that the world is finally opening up for women, hens, and roundworms.

We’ve been at the bottom of the pecking order for a long time, and we’re finally making our way to the top.

I know there’s a backlash of misogyny, but I guarantee you, it’s not going to win in the long run.

It’s a new day, and we girls are learning to crow.

And you know what?

We sound great.

Copyright 2023 Lisa Scottoline

Chick Wit Classic: Half Full

by Lisa Scottoline

I just read in the newspaper that an Italian lingerie manufacturer has instituted a program whereby women can return their used padded bras to the stores to be recycled into insulation for home construction.

Bravissimo!

I was wondering if this would work in the United States, but I don’t think so. Why?

We don’t throw out our old bras.

I don’t have evidence on which to base my opinion, but I bet I’m right. I confirmed my theory by asking my girlfriends if they throw out their old bras. All of them agreed with me, which is why we have girlfriends.

I cannot throw away an old bra. I don’t know why. Even if I don’t wear it anymore, I keep my old bras in my drawer, where they ball up in a tangle of frayed lace, spent elastic, and underwires that could put out an eye.

I can tell the oldest ones because they’re black and red, a veritable checkerboard of youthful enthusiasm. And they’re made of nylon or some sheer synthetic that was eventually replaced by good old-fashioned white cotton, like an old Maidenform commercial.

From the days of maidens.

One of my friends does exactly what I do. Rather than throw away her old bras when her drawer gets too full, she simply starts a new drawer. And she buys new bras more often than I do, as she has a more active personal life, if you follow. I don’t get a new bra unless I get a new husband.

So right now, I have ex-bras.

I don’t know why my friends and I save our bras, except that it may have to do with the price. I remember when a bra cost twelve dollars. Now, you need a second mortgage, especially if it’s what we used to call padded, which they now call formed. And instead of the soft cottony stuff they used to pad them with, they now use removable things called cutlets, which you can stuff in your bra if you like wearing veal.

I like the old padding better, of course. I have one bra that’s padded with some sort of airy honeycomb. It used to make a minefield of bumps on my sweater, telling the world that not only I was wearing a padded bra, I was keeping bees.

The price of bras reaches its peak with a brand known as La Perla. The more financially prudent among you might not know about La Perla, so you’ll have to trust me on this, as you should in all things. I’ve never lied to you, and will tell you now that a La Perla bra cost as much as a strand of pearlas.

How I came to possess a La Perla is a boring story, but the short of it is that I was going on TV, and the saleswoman told me I needed a special bra for TV, so I tried it on and it fit me like a cupcake pan in which the cupcake doesn’t quite rise, if you follow.

Though I prefer to see the cup as half full, not half empty.

Anyway, the cup’s shape was amazingly breast-like, though completely fake, which made it perfect, so I told her to add it to my bag without really checking the price. And when I looked at the receipt, it was too late.

But I have a solution.

I’m putting it in my will.

There’s financial planning for the future.

Heirloom underwires.

Copyright Lisa Scottoline