Now and Forever--Let's Make Love (21 page)

Let’s begin with one of the most basic problems that comes with aging: our body image. Although I’m discussing it here, body
image can be a problem at any age, and I’m living proof.

As a young person, I had a Nose. Not a nose with a small
n
but a Nose with a capital letter. Actually, the rest of my face wasn’t half-bad, but, as I saw it, who could ever know? My
large nose overshadowed the rest of me. When I was beginning to think about boys, at about thirteen, I asked my mother if
she thought I was pretty. She answered, “You’re good-looking, Joan, and an attractive person. And you may not have as many
first dates as some of your friends, but you’ll have lots more second dates.” That was nice, but not what a budding teenager
wanted to hear.

Over the next year, I watched my pretty friends start to date. Me? Nothing. So my mother and I seriously considered plastic
surgery. We talked about it and then finally visited a doctor and had an evaluation. I decided to have the surgery, and my
mother backed me up. So, at fifteen, on the day after my graduation from high school, I had my Nose done.

It was a relatively simple procedure, and when I was wheeled down from the operating room, I was groggy but conscious. “I’m
gorgeous,” I said from below two black eyes and a swollen forehead. And I believed it. My whole personality had changed. I
went from feeling like an insecure teenager to a self-proclaimed dazzler of members of the opposite sex. And it was a self-fulfilling
prophesy. I began to date and I had an active social life throughout college, meeting, dating, and, I suppose, dazzling my
future husband in the process.

Had I changed that much? No. Everyone said that after all the healing was complete, I looked like a well-retouched photograph
of myself. But my feelings about myself had changed dramatically, and that was all that mattered. That was my first taste
of the power that body image has on us—that time, for the better.

It wasn’t all smooth sailing, however. My problems with body image surfaced again soon after the birth of my first daughter.
When I got pregnant, I weighed only about 115, and at five seven, that wasn’t really quite fleshy enough for my husband. “Maybe
after you have the baby,” he said at one point, “you could weigh a little more. I’d like a bit more meat on your bones.” What
could be better for a pregnant lady? French fries, hot fudge sundaes, and Milky Ways. Life was good.

My body changed dramatically almost immediately. In my first month of pregnancy, my bra size went from a 34B to a 36E. My
husband was delighted, but I was less than thrilled. Not only did my clothes not fit properly but also I was extremely sore
and uncomfortable. Despite my eating habits, however, I didn’t gain scads of weight during my pregnancy—about twenty pounds,
as I recall, six pounds twelve ounces of which I lost during childbirth. By the time of my visit to my obstetrician for my
six-week checkup, I had lost most of the weight I had gained and was doing what I could to flatten my stomach. And, to my
husband’s disappointment and my very mixed feelings, I was back to my 34B bras.

My obstetrician gave me a thorough going-over and pronounced me healthy and ready for the first comfortable sex in fourth
months and the first sex of any kind in eight weeks. “Okay,” he muttered, “let me just make a few notes here.” He mumbled
as he scribbled on my chart. As I dressed, one muttered phrase leapt at me through the curtain: “Breasts, pendulous.”

I looked down and saw that there was lots more skin than there was stuff to fill it up. Breasts, pendulous. I looked in the
mirror that covered one wall of the dressing area and had to admit that he was right. I drooped. I had a few stretch marks,
an old but quite large appendectomy scar, and pendulous breasts. I was devastated.

I can’t say it ruined my life. I returned to my adequate, if uncreative, sex life without too much change in my attitude.
But many times as I dried after my shower, I glanced in the bathroom mirror. Breasts, pendulous. And I’ve been self-conscious
ever since.

Let’s talk about body image. Answer these four questions for me—quickly and without censorship.

1. Thinking of yourself above the neck, what’s your worst feature?

2. Thinking of yourself above the neck, what’s your best feature?

3. Thinking of yourself below the neck, what’s your worst feature?

4. Thinking of yourself below the neck, what’s your best feature?

Don’t read on until you’ve answered all four questions as honestly as you can.

Okay, now that you’ve got your answers firmly in your mind, you can forget them. I don’t care what your responses were. What
I’m more interested in is the length of time it took for you to answer. I’ll bet that if you’re honest with yourself, it was
a lot easier and faster to think of your worst features than your best. We’re conditioned that way. Find your imperfections
and work on them, we’re told. Fix them. Diet, work out, get plastic surgery, have liposuction. Use face cream, eye cream,
neck cream, hand cream, thigh cream. Be beautiful and be happy. Be imperfect and be miserable. Well, if you weren’t miserable
before the commercials, you are now.

The kind of perfection the commercials and all the other subliminal gimmicks insist on is unattainable. There’s always a bulge
here, a hollow there, a wrinkle here, a pimple there. We can’t win. Even those pictures on the front cover of
Cosmo
are carefully retouched.

I remember the heyday of
Charlie’s Angels,
now newly popular in rerun. God, those women were fantastic. Gorgeous, smart, and good shots, too. I remember the incredible
popularity of Jaclyn Smith, Kate Jackson, and Farrah Fawcett.

Then I read an interview with Farrah Fawcett, sex goddess for an entire generation of men, sex idol for a generation of women.
In the article, she said she thought she had fat thighs. Fat thighs! I think that was the moment when I decided to try my
best to resist the lure of physical perfection. It’s not easy to weather the onslaught of the constant messages, and I admit
that I still use face cream and hand cream, but the panic is muffled. I am what I am and I try to be happy with that. And,
after all, my good skin, gray hair, and pendulous breasts are all a result of genes and nature and nothing more.

Here’s something I want you to do. Take awhile and think of that part that you decided you’re particularly happy with—the
one above the neck and the one below—or select one now if you copped out on my little quiz. Go into the bathroom and look
at yourself in the mirror if you need to. You may have to think for a while because you’re not used to concentrating on your
good parts. Your toes? Your fingernails? Your shoulders? Maybe it’s your earlobes, or your hairline, or even your eyebrows.
Pick one thing above the neck and one below it. Do it.

If you’re like most of the rest of us, the last thing you look at when you leave a mirror is the one part of your body you’re
most unhappy with. You check the full-length mirror on the back of the bathroom door to assure yourself that your hips haven’t
expanded in the past fifteen minutes. You take one last look at your prominent chin or large ears when you finish shaving
or complete your makeup.

Okay. Now, every time you leave a mirrored area, I want the last thing you look at to be that “best thing” of yours. Let your
eyes linger just a split second on that one part of you that you’re most happy with. Nice calves! Nice eyes! It won’t create
miracles, but it will change your perception just a bit.

I can give you women one suggestion about the way you look. Nothing makes a woman look more dated or more out of touch than
her makeup. If you’re still using heavy dark eyeliner the way you did twenty years ago, or still brushing on the light blue
eye shadow, get one of the fashion-oriented magazines and look at the makeup ads carefully. Compare the way those disgustingly
gorgeous women use blush, lip liner, and eye color, not so you look like them, but so you look like the best of yourself.
Try a light foundation if your skin is uneven. Use a concealer if you have dark areas beneath your eyes as I have. If you
can afford a session with a cosmetic specialist, do that. If not, have a small makeover at the local department store and
treat yourself to a new product or two. It will do wonders for your morale and for your body image.

Men, I have a suggestion for you, too. Modernize your wardrobe a bit. Are you still wearing the tie-dyed shirts you wore in
the seventies, or the wide-collared shirts that went with your leisure suits? Wander through a men’s store at the local mall
and see what men are wearing. Update yourself with a new shirt or a pair of slacks that really fit. Men’s vanity amuses me.
Many older men pride themselves that they wear the same size pants they wore twenty years ago. And they do. The waistline,
however, is now substantially lower, their belts resting below their overhanging bellies. I don’t care about the belly; it’s
the poorly fitting clothes that make a man look older.

Men, look at those long strands of hair that begin just over your ears and get combed up and over the top. You’re really not
fooling anyone. Bald may not be more beautiful than the luxurious head of hair you used to have, but it’s not uglier, either.
It just is. Ask Michael Jordan. Remember Telly Savalas and Yul Brynner? Consider returning those long locks to the side of
your head where they belong.

Body image is much more about the way you feel about your good and bad points than about how you actually look. There was
a story in the previous chapter about a man who bought his wife a lace bodysuit to try to fight her problems with body image.
In the story that follows, Mark helped Gail learn a lesson about body image one evening by using a different sex toy.

Gail was almost seventy and Mark was seventy-two. Their sex life had been very satisfying throughout their forty-three years
of marriage. Recently, however, Mark had begun to suspect that Gail was avoiding the sexual side of their relationship. He
wasn’t horny all the time, the way he had been as a teenager, but he enjoyed sex with Gail and wasn’t willing to give it up
completely. He had tried to talk to his wife about it, but she staunchly denied that there was a problem.

For her part, Gail had begun to hate the sight she saw in the mirror in the bathroom after her shower each morning. Her skin
had lost its elasticity and sagged in many places and her beauty marks had multiplied. Her breasts had lost the little uplift
they had when she was younger and, as what seemed to her like the final insult, her pubic hair had almost disappeared. How
could Mark look at her as a sexual being? How could he really be interested?

When Mark broached the subject of his disappearing sex life with his son Andy, the younger man said, “Hey, Dad, it’s hard
enough just imagining you and Mom having sex, much less you two doing it now that you’re old. No offense, Dad.”

“No offense, son.”

Gail lightly touched on the subject of her disappearing sex life with their daughter. Liz had responded, “You know, sex is
nice, but it’s a strain, especially for Don and me, with the two kids and all. I think about how comfortable it must be for
you now. You should be happy to slow down. Anyway, is all that sex stuff good for older people? You know, you’re not kids
anymore and Dad’s heart isn’t as healthy as it once was.”

Gail sighed and changed the subject.

One afternoon, Mark decided that he would give one more try to reestablish the playful sexual relationship he and his wife
had shared. He went to the video store and took out an XXX-rated video, one he remembered he and Gail had enjoyed several
years earlier. That evening, sitting in the living room after the late news, Mark put the video in the tape player and pushed
the button.

“What’s that?” Gail asked.

“Its a video we both used to enjoy. Just be patient.”

After the FBI warnings, a picture flashed on the screen of a woman walking through a misty landscape. “I think I remember
this,” Gail said. Then, as recognition dawned, her eyes widened. “It’s that hot one about the couple who get trapped in the
maze. The one with all the food. But why did you rent it now? We used to watch it, back when …”

“That’s exactly why I rented it.” He pulled the shoe box in which they kept their sex toys from under the sofa, where he had
hidden it earlier.

“Where did you find that?” Gail asked. “We haven’t used it for years.”

“More’s the pity.”

“Come on, Mark, be real,” Gail said over the rising music from the video. Parroting their daughter, she added, “We’re not
kids anymore.”

“And what does that have to do with it? All the sex experts say there’s no reason why we can’t enjoy sex forever if we’re
so inclined. And I’m so inclined.”

“But you’ve had one mild heart attack….”

“And Dr. Shapiro says that exercise is good for me.”

“Exercise?”

“I asked him about making love, and he’s all for it. He told me it would do me good.”

“You talked about our sex life with Dr. Shapiro?” Gail moaned. “I’ll never be able to look at him again.”

Mark put the box of toys on the coffee table and draped his arm around Gail’s shoulders. “Be quiet and watch the movie.”

On the screen, two lovers had become lost in an old-fashioned British hedgerow maze and were consoling each other with the
knowledge that they would get out eventually. As they wandered, they came upon a clearing with a stone bench, several stone
statues, a blanket, and a picnic basket. How those items got there was never explained in the film, but who really cared anyway?
For several minutes, the two lovers fed each other goodies with their fingers; there were close-ups of them licking and sucking
each other’s fingers and lips and lots of sensual noises.

His eyes on the screen, Mark took a potato chip, dipped it into the low-fat sour cream and onion dip they had been eating,
and fed it to Gail while they watched the lovers. Playing along, Gail did the same. Then Mark dipped his finger into the soft
white goo and offered it to Gail.