London Visit Opens my Eyes to the Burqa Issue

My family's few days in London were fascinating. The city is truly international. When my daughter's British soccer coach jokingly asked me how I "liked the English blokes" I had to pause. Other than a few taxi drivers and the Beefeater who gave the tour at the Tower of London, I didn't meet any. Like us, everyone we met seemed to be from somewhere else.

This was especially apparent at our hotel, the Mariott Marble Arch, located just off Edgware Road. The stretch of Edgware Road north of Marble Arch is the Arabic capital of London. The street is lined with colorful middle eastern cafes and shops, patrons smoking hookah pipes on the sidewalk, movies in Arabic playing at the Odeon. In addition to being the center of the large immigrant population, the area is a hub for visiting Muslim tourists. Many of the women at our hotel and on the street wore the hijab - headscarf and modest attire - which I have to admit, was a bit disconcerting. My head felt conspicuously bare.

As we settled into the neighborhood, it didn't take me long to realize that the practice of hijab is open to wide interpretation. Some women wore a simple headscarf over regular street clothes or jeans. Others wore the scarf with a full length tailored coat. Teenage girls pushed light gauzy scarves back on their heads to reveal glittery headbands. Other women wore full black robes, edged in gold trim. Many of the more covered women sported designer sunglasses and expensive bags. Their eyebrows were fabulous.

But a few women were completely covered by a burqa, and frankly, it made me uncomfortable. No, wait. It made me mad.

With their covered faces and shapeless limbs, the burqa-clad women seemed worlds apart from the rest of the London population, which I guess is the point, but it seems so cruel. The women had trouble walking down the street or opening their handbags - ultimately dependent on their companions for help to do the most basic things. And despite their helplessness, with no facial expressions to mitigate the severity of their heavy black veils, they looked sinister. I've since read that covered women suffer vitamin D deficiencies from not being exposed to sunlight. Could a woman possibly choose this attire for herself?

French President Nicolas Sarkozy doesn't think so. Recently, he announced that the burqa is not welcome in France. He claims the burqa, as well as the niquab which leaves the eyes uncovered, is "a sign of subservience and debasement" often forced upon Muslim women by their husbands and fathers. But it's not that simple.

Although hard to understand by Western standards, some Muslim women wear the burqa by choice, as a sign of religious devotion and commitment to their faith. These women claim that their robes, which do separate them from public society, bring them closer to God. Legislation against the burqa would violate these women's rights, no?

I don't know the answer, but I'll tell you this. It's a gorgeous summer day and I'm about to hit the beach. I'm going to display my hair, neck, arms, legs and even my flabby stomach for all the world to see. And while it may not bring me closer to God, it will certainly give me a chance to appreciate the beauty of nature, as well as dose of well-deserved vitamin D.

Off to Ireland and on to London - Cheerio!

I'm off to Ireland with my husband and kids - we go every other year to visit Liam's parents and siblings in Cork. We're making a quick stop in London on the way back home. I'm sure I'll have lots of interesting experiences along the way, but I won't be blogging about them until I return home. Enjoy the summer!

How to be a Good Sports Parent - Cheer More, Forget the Score

Here's a link to an article I wrote for TribLocal.com about parenting young athletes. The three coaches I interviewed - Pete Caragher of the Flying Fish Swim Team, Rob Etheridge of Euro Soccer Club, and Michelle Casati, tennis pro and former #18 singles player - give some great advice.

We want our kids to do well in sports, but sometimes we aren't aware how our own behavior affects them. Basically, we parents need to -

1. Pay attention to the process of learning a sport, not just the results.
2. Let the sport belong to the child.
3. Encourage our kids, not coach or critique them.

To read the full article, click here.

Wanted: Mature Women in the Movies

I've been continually surprised to find that life after 40 is so exciting. I've done things that I only dreamed of in my 20s and 30s - got in shape, completed a degree, started a new career, sung in a band, kayaked with Orca, took some chances. At 46, I feel more confident, alive, and "me" than ever before, and when I look around at other women my age, it's clear they feel the same.

It's a great time of life, yet I never looked forward to it when I was younger. I figured I'd be sidelined by forty - irrelevant, unattractive, uncool. Why was I so misinformed?

Partly because there aren't enough movies made about older women.

Think about it. How many movies have you seen with older women (and by this I mean over 40) as leads? Or any women at all who aren't desperate for a man, victims of horrible crimes, or knocked up? Where are all the brave, funny, intelligent women who are running businesses, leading communities, creating art? Not in Hollywood films, that's for sure. And the absence of mature female role models is damaging to women of all ages.

According to Debbie Zipp, founder of In the Trenches Productions, an organization dedicated to promoting women over 40 in film,

"Art is a reflection of life. Limiting the roles mature women play in films is not an honest or true depiction of real life. We are many things besides somebody’s mother or grandmother; today’s women over 40, 50, 60 and beyond are also sexy and powerful. If this is the only way our children see women on television and in film, we subliminally tell them that women should take a back seat after they hit 40."

Amen, Debbie! In our youth-obsessed culture, women need to know that the second half of their lives can be every bit as meaningful and thrilling as their first. Let's demand more movies that depict women's lives after 40 the way they really are. And if the male Hollywood establishment won't comply, we mature chicks should make 'em ourselves.

Whoopi Inspires Eyebrowless Trend

A hot trend popping up in NYC clubs and fashion magazines is the absence of eyebrows, reports the New York Times. Fashionistas are erasing their eyebrows, either by bleaching them or removing them altogether. Apparently, one of the inspirations for this style is Whoopi Goldberg.

Wow, I've never noticed that Whoopi has no eyebrows! Perhaps their lack does contribute to her open, friendly, and somewhat androgynous image. Another unlikely influence cited by the eyebrowless is Buddhist monks.

What's your opinion about this look? For me, I'm thinking this is one trend I'll brow out of.

Procrastinators be Proud: We're good at getting stuff done as long as it's not important.

You know why I'm writing this? Because I don't have to. I updated my blog just two days ago. What I should be working on is the feature article I promised the local Tribune. It was due like, yesterday. But I'm a procrastinator, so instead of working on that project, I'm spending time here. Last week, when I really needed to work on Forty Fabulous, I was too busy redecorating my daughter's room.

It's a myth that we procrastinators aren't productive. We're actually very good at completing non-essential tasks. It's the big ones we avoid. Jobs that are critical and time-sensitive (like paying the bills, for example) stress us out so much we get busy with a lot of little things that don't really matter. We empty the dishwasher, take the dog for a walk, clean out the junk drawer. Now, if those tasks were on the top of our lists, we'd probably pay the bills to avoid doing them!

I learned all this in a wonderful essay called Structured Procrastination by John Perry, a Stanford professor and cohost of NPR's Philosophy Talk. According to Perry, there's a way to harness the power of procrastination. All we have to do is put some bogus tasks at the top of our to-do lists, then trick ourselves into thinking that the stuff we really need to do is completely optional.

Perry acknowledges that this practice requires a certain amount of self-deception, but doesn't see it as a problem.

"Virtually all procrastinators have excellent self-deceptive skills," he says, "And what could be more noble than using one characer flaw to offset the bad effects of another?"

Okay, I'm up for trying this technique. I'm going to put "File Financial Statements" on the top of my list (ensuring it absolutely will not get done) and move "Write Trib Article" down toward the bottom. That way, maybe I'll come at least close to hitting my deadline.

Dating Younger Men - How low can you go before it gets icky?

My experience dating younger men has been limited to my husband, who is a measly 5 months younger than me. But I've taken a vicarious delight in the the current Cougar trend. Why shouldn't a woman date a man 10 or 15 years younger than she is? I think it's empowering for women - a leveling of the playing field, so to speak. The idea of being in a relationship with a buff, open-minded, uncomplicated young guy is appealing. But after seeing the movie Cheri starring Michelle Pfieffer, I think I've found my limit.

In the film, Michelle Pfeiffer (51) plays Lea, a turn of the century French courtesean who takes a colleague's 19-year-old son under her wing and quickly, into her bed. Her bad boy lover, Cheri, (played by Rupert Friend, actually 27) is a vapid, self-absorbed dolt. But Lea manages to overlook his moral and intellectual failings and their six year romance blossoms - almost entirely between the sheets.

Michelle Pfeiffer is gorgeous, but the 30 year age difference between the characters made me queasy. And while the plot and characters in Cheri are fictitious, there are recent real-life relationships with age disparities that clearly cross into "ick" territory, such as:

Linda Hogan (49) and boyfriend Charlie Hill (19)
After splitting with hubby Hulk Hogan, Linda quickly found new romance with one of her daughter Brooke's high school classmates. Apparently Brooke isn't too happy about it. Okay, let's agree on this. If the dude is younger than your kids, just stay away.

Madonna (50) and model Jesus Luz (22)
Madonna has made a career out of being provocative, so at first her new young stud didn't surprise me. Then I thought back to Madonna's marriage to Sean Penn in 1985. Gals, let's also abide by this rule - don't date anyone who wasn't alive at the time of your first wedding, it's tacky.

To be fair, there are plenty of older men/younger women relationships that are even more repellent, such as Billy Joel (60) and soon to be ex-wife Katie Lee Joel (27.) The worst is probably Woody Allen (73) and his wife Soon Yi Previn (38), since Soon Yi is the adopted daughter of Woody's former lover, Mia Farrow. But we women should aspire to higher standards than those guys. It's one thing to have a relationship with a younger man, but perhaps after 40, we need to leave the boys alone.

Affair-Proof Your Marriage – Lessons from Cheating Politicians

Oh great, another politician caught cheating on his wife. South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford’s longtime affair was exposed last week after he returned home from an ambiguous holiday. Although aides claimed the gov had been hiking the Appalachian Trail, it turned out he had flown to South America to meet his Argentine mistress instead.

Sanford is just one in a long line of high-powered public servants caught with his pants down. John Edwards, Elliot Spitzer, and Bill Clinton also had extramarital relations, even though their wives were brilliant, supportive women and their marriages appeared rock solid. But for these educated public servants to risk so much for a piece of tail, their marriages must have really stunk, right?

Not necessarily. In a recent article, The New York Times reported that one of the strongest risk factors for infidelity “exists not inside the marriage but outside: opportunity.”

Male politicians certainly have opportunity. They travel, they meet a lot of people, they have power, they’re charismatic - women are attracted to them. According to Elizabeth Edwards, her husband’s relationship with Rielle Hunter began when the videographer told John Edwards, “You are so hot.” Not the most original line, but apparently it worked.

If even strong marriages are vulnerable to cheating, what’s a spouse to do? According to infidelity researcher and author Peggy Vaughan, the key to preventing affairs is for partners to honestly talk about their feelings of attraction to other people. According to Vaughan, discussing these attractions actually decreases the likelihood of acting on them, and “shedding the cold light of day on secret desires goes a long way toward diminishing their power.”

For the sake of my marriage, I’ll open up about my attractions to other guys. I confess, I did think the guy who hung our bathroom wallpaper was kind of cute. And as soon as my husband returns from his week-long business trip to Mexico, we’ll have a nice, honest discussion about it.


For more on cheating pols, check out my blog post from last year about Silda Spitzer.

I Need a Vacation from Summer Vacation

My kids couldn't be happier that summer is here - but for me, not so much. They're reveling in their newfound freedom; I'm lamenting the loss of mine.

I like a schedule, okay? I write from home, I need a couple quiet hours everyday. When the kids were younger, I could create a little space for myself with a good daycamp. But now that Nick is 15 and Emma is 12, they have other plans. Unfortunately, their ideal day creates a lot more work for me. Here's how I've been spending my summer.

1. In the Kitchen
With the looser schedule, there's always a meal in progress. I'll put away the orange juice from Nick's 11am breakfast and Emma will wander in looking for a tuna sandwich. By the time I've sliced up strawberries for an afternoon snack, it's time for dinner. Even when my kids make the meals, the kitchen is never clean, the floor is sticky, we're out of milk. Let me outta here!

2. In the Car
Kids need to be driven places, I know that. But in summer, the driving is erratic and impromptu. "Mom, can you drive me to the beach?" "Mom, can you pick us up from the mall?" I can't plan, I can't focus - I'm constantly on edge, car keys in hand. And now that Nick has his driving permit, the stress level of ordinary carpool trips is through the roof. Being in the passenger seat with a 15 year-old boy at the wheel is a singular experience - I've never felt so helpless.

3. On Guard
Summer ushers in a whole set of new worries. I let Emma ride her bike to the beach for the first time; she didn't call me or check her cell phone for my frantic texts for three hours. Nick had a friend sleep over and they rented Saw 5 ("extreme violence") for 23 minutes before I even noticed. There's an incessant checklist going on in my mind - are they sunscreened, helmeted, hydrated, saying no to drugs? It's exhausting.

Oh, how I long for September and the school bus, hot lunches, and six hour stretch where the rules are enforced by someone else! But for the present, I'll put another load of beach towels in the washer and mix up a batch of frozen lemonade. I may not get much work done, but my kids will have a great summer. And I take comfort from knowing I'm not alone in my plight. As one of my dear Facebook mom friends said about her summer:

"I'm freaking out. I can barely get through a long weekend, for cryin' out loud!"

When things get really bad, there's always Chardonnay.



For another take on summer, check out my post from last year: Backyard with Benefits

Success! It took a little while, but I lost 4 pounds with Sharon's 4 Fs

I've been focused. I cut out the junk food and am eating lots of fruits and veggies. I'm working on my fitness with short but effective cardio and strength training workouts.

After almost 3 weeks, I reached my goal. Success is nothing but fun.