Flibanserin

Wonder what "Flibanserin" is? Well, let Sophia enlighten you. Flibanserin is the name of the new "female sexual dysfunction" drug that Big Pharma is trying to sell to the FDA. The drug is supposed to address the (apparently rampant) problem of what shrinks (a.k.a. minions of Big Pharma) are calling Female Hyposexual Desire Disorder (HSDD). When Sophia and Sophia's mom were young, this condition was called "frigidity."  Accusations of frigidity were usually flung about when a young woman, for whatever reason, was not sexually forthcoming (oh, the puns this post could generate!) to the entreaties of a young man in the throes of sexual desperation.  Sophia was once accused of frigidity when she declined the advances of a guy she had just met on a group camping trip. Sophia had asked to borrow his extra blanket, because it was freezing cold. He assumed this request really meant "please screw me in the dirt just inches away from ten other people." Sophia isn't sure how her request came to mean this, but it surely did. When she declined, rather vociferously, she was treated to this query:  "What are you, frigid?" Staggered by the originality of this response, Sophia could not help but laugh. She declined to play this game of chicken. "Yeah," she said. "Now give me the blanket, or don't, but keep your hands to yourself."

Could Flibanserin have helped in this situation? We will never know, since the FDA found that it did not, in fact, address the mystery of feminine desire. Men are still "askin" but women aren't "anserin" this question to the satisfaction of (mostly male) researchers.

Sophia wonders if this part of the name was accidental, or an effort to suggest that Flibanserin will give men the "answers" they want to hear when they ask for sex.  The "flib" part sounds like a conflation of "flip" and "glib," which suggests both a sudden change of mind and an immediate response. The names "Pleaseridemecowboy" and Yesyesineeditnow" were doubtless considered and rejected as unsubtle.

In the face of all this scientific stupidity, Sophia is going to help these researchers out and provide some answers herself. In fact, she is going to propose her own alternative to Flibanserin. It shall be called "Foreplayerin."  It's a drug for men, and it comes with a set of instructional videos.

The videos will instruct clueless men in the fine art of foreplay, a skill that, in Sophia's experience, about 80% of American males completely lack. The pill will, like the anti-alcoholic drug antabuse, cause these men to suffer unpleasant but not life-threatening symptoms should they decide to make a dash for home plate before the fans have even taken their seats.

Yes, Sophia is suggesting that the mystery of feminine desire is not a mystery. It is simply a matter of time and skill. Flibanserin is simply another attempt by men--and their female collaborators, who obviously have internalized the frigidity myth--to speed things up for their own convenience.

Sophia is amazed that none of the many articles she read this past week even considered this notion. She feels as if she's slipped into a time warp.  If she closes her eyes, she can still see Creepy Camping Guy. Only this time, he's not simply accusing her of frigidity. He's smiling, and holding out a little pink pill.

Sophia thinks Foreplayerin will get much better results than Flibanserin. She is waiting for Big Pharma to contact her, so she can help them begin working on it.  In case anyone from Pfizer, or Lilly, or Wyeth is reading, Sophia can be reached at www.getaclue.com.

Potlucks of the Damned

Is there anything worse than an invitation to a potluck?  Okay, lots of things. But potlucks are still high on Sophia's list of hateable trends. Truthfully, an invitation to a potluck should read, "come to a dinner party. We will provide shelter from the elements, you bring something homemade and delightful for everyone to eat. Oh, and if you're a single or divorced dad, just pick something up at the store, and we'll understand."  Potlucks are the last bastion of acceptable sexism--Sophia's husband never ever assumes that a potluck invitation has any implications for him beyond driving and eating. 

And the food!  Julia Child no doubt turns in her grave every time a potluck takes place. You know what it's like. Soggy noodles tossed into cold salads that always have One Inedible Ingredient. Like beets, or raisins, or cashews, or something. Alien Meats in earth-toned sauces. Strange variations on the Enchilada Theme, often miniaturized. Herbs that never taste right, like tarragon. Rubbery shrimp. And then, for the finale, some weirdly-textured dessert, often from the "bar cookie" family.

Tragically, potlucks have become ever more popular as we move into the new century. Sophia isn't sure why this is. The recession? A mass delusion of culinary skill perpetrated by the Food Channel? Anti-feminist backlash? Whatever the cause, it must be stopped. Seriously, potlucks are the Tool of Satan. It's just a short ethical hop from a potluck to a Black Mass.

Sophia gets roughly three potluck invitations every two months from the enthusiastic Room Mothers at Percival's alternative school. These potlucks invariably have things made with quinoa, which gives Sophia indigestion, and many, many amateurish Mexican, Thai, or Indian concoctions. Now, Sophia loves these cuisines. When made by real ethnic cooks, not moms with access to the Internet. Eating this food is like listening to some drunk person butcher your favorite song in a Karaoke bar.

Of course, the obligation to cook is the worst part of the whole potluck ordeal. Now, Sophia can cook. She is half Italian, half farm girl, so she can make a fabulous lasagna or, a kick-ass chicken pot pie, or, if the situation demands, an acceptable stroganoff.

Alas, none of these things is potluck-friendly. In fact, Sophia has gone through her entire repertoire of recipes and found only one that doesn't coagulate or gelatinize after sitting on a potluck table for several hours.

Hummus.

During her college years, Sophia was a hippie. Back in the 1970's, this was not the same thing as being an Alternative Person today.  For one thing, there was no consumerist angle. You didn't have to wear certain brands, drive certain cars, or shop at Whole Foods. Pretty much the only requirements were listening to cool music at high volumes, wearing faded jeans, and occasionally inhaling prodigious amounts of cannabis sativa.

Sophia learned to make her own hummus long before this item was available in the grocery store, or there were such things as Middle Eastern Markets. It is pretty good, but it's a hassle to make, and most people today don't see any purpose in making one's own hummus. The window to impress people with this particular recipe closed in 1990.

Of course, there is a performative aspect to the potluck dinner. Your potato salad, pasta salad, mystery dumplings or apricot bars are on display.  They will be judged, if only by how much is left at the end. If you have to take a nearly-full dish home with you, know that you have been found wanting in the eyes of the Evil Potluck Gods. Once, Sophia went to the trouble to make a lovely, healthy carrot cake out of the Tassajara Cookbook. Do you know this Hippie Classic? Before Moosewood or the Alice Waters Empire, there was Tassajara. It's some Zen retreat in California, where they follow the eightfold path and bake stuff.

Anyway, this cake was made in a bundt pan.  Sophia loves the artsy shape of things made in bundt pans, although she mostly likes to look at them in cooking magazines, while she waits to have her teeth cleaned. The cake was kind of heavy, as befits a Tassajara recipe--or any hippie recipe of that era. For some reason, Early Alternative Cuisine weighed a ton. You could plug an undersea oil leak with some of the breads and casseroles Sophia and her friends used to eat.

Sophia felt that she should try to impress the Alternative Moms by making something really healthy, so she made this cake. It looked gorgeous--the quintessence of bundt-ness. A perfect Platonic Ideal.

Except, no one touched it. She had to take this semi-divine cake home and throw it in the garbage, because of course she and her family weren't going to eat it. Alternative Carrot Cakes suck. The only kind Sophia and her family like are the sort you get in bakeries, where the carrot-ness of the cake is more of a metaphor, and less of a reality. There are no big shredded carrot pieces in these cakes. And, they're covered in yummy cream-cheese frosting.

Sophia tried to figure out why her cake failed to impress the mother-(pot)luckers, and came up with this interesting historical analysis. In the old days of alternative cooking, we were into purging the memory of all those Betty Crocker mixes, Minute Rice casseroles, and ground beef in gravy dinners. It was all about counteracting the culinary sins of our mothers.

The second generation of alternative cooking is about something else.  Now, it's about what the food is "free of," rather than what's in it. It has to be free of glutens, or trans fats, or dairy, or GMO's, or peanuts. It has to be untainted by Agribusiness. It has to be un-radiated, un-pesticided, unbleached. It has to leave no carbon footprint.

To use a sports metaphor:  food, these days, is all about defense. Perhaps no one asked Sophia's lovely bundt cake to dance because it looked too Traditional. It was not apparent, upon observation, what, exactly, it was free of.

Then again, maybe it was just personal.

Regardless, one thing is certain. If Sophia's good deeds fail to impress whatever divine arbiters await her after this life, she will surely be condemned to an eternity of potlucking, endlessly preparing "dishes to pass" among her fellow denizens of Hell.

Mammography and Melodrama

Sophia's breasts endured their annual squishing and radiating yesterday. Because she recently changed insurance providers, Sophia is not longer being mammographed at the Big University Hospital in her town. Now, her breasts--and all her other parts--are squished, palpated, and perused at a small regional hospital that will accept her new, cheaper insurance.  She was nervous about this, but it turns out that the small regional hospital is kind of cool. The technician, a fantastic woman named Ellen, even let Sophia look at her Breast Imaging. This mitigated Sophia's anxiety considerably, since she is an Information Glutton. Knowledge is power. Lack of knowledge, in medical matters, leads invariably to paranoia and terror.

Sophia did notice a tiny little white spot in the corner of one breast image. It was kind of oval-shaped, like a little grain of white rice. Could this be the Rice Grain of Death? Stay tuned tomorrow. That's when the Dreaded Call-Back is supposed to occur, if it does. In the meantime, Sophia will treat her readers--okay, reader, since she's only told her mom about this blog--to a short mammary retrospective.

The Early Years

Sophia's breasts appeared unexpectedly on her post-pubescent chest sometime in the summer of 1970, and quickly grew to an inconvenient size.  Sophia, who just a week before (or so it seemed) had been bemoaning the scant contents of her training bra, was stunned by this sudden Development. She had, at age 14, decided to resign herself to a life of breast-envy. Sophia's mother was not surprised. Both she and all of Sophia's paternal aunts were endowed like old-time burlesque queens. Along with left-handedness, right-braininess, and a deep-seated hatred of mayonnaise, a formidable rack had been encoded into Sophia's DNA.

Sophia's relationship to this abundance has always been an ambivalent one. In youth, Sophia's wit and intelligence competed with her breasts for the attention of the opposite sex. Needless to say, the rack always came out on top. So to speak. Her breasts inspired adulation, prurient glances, and embarrassing entreaties. They were worshiped as twin goddesses, sought after like mythic golden apples of the sun, and given way too much attention in basement bedrooms and the backseats of cars. Although she had a very attractive face--not, perhaps, as beautiful as that of the Other Sophia, above, but pretty enough--Sophia often found that men addressed remarks to her breasts, as if they were sentient beings. Sophia sometimes liked this, and sometimes lamented it. Less well-endowed girlfriends doubtless found Sophia's laments annoying in the extreme.

A Digression

On a related topic, Sophia recently read an article about a woman who is suing the bank that employed her for something called "looks discrimination." This woman alleges that she was fired because she was too sexy; her hot body was having a deleterious effect on office productivity. In other words, the men in her office were too sexually aroused by her curvaceous presence to get their jobs done. The newspaper printed pictures of her in various sultry poses--all of which suggest that the attention wasn't unwanted.

Sophia was not this kind of woman. She wasn't smart enough to take her 34-D, an unmerited gift from some god with a sense of humor, to the bank.  And while "The Girls" did get noticed, Sophia never got a single thing she really wanted because she was Seriously Stacked.  This may, of course, be due to her complete lack of marketing savvy.

The Danger Zone

Now that she is Over Fifty, Sophia has even more ambivalence about her breasts. Because now they're not only annoying--they're also scary. In the 1930's, unruly cells colonized the breasts of Sophia's maternal grandmother. By the end of that decade she was dead, depriving Sophia of a lifetime of Christmas and birthday presents, cookies, needlepoint samplers, and other grandmotherly stuff.

So every time Sophia has to get her breasts squished and radiated, she freaks out a little, imagining a renegade battalion of cells marching senselessly to their own destruction, and hers.

She also fears--perhaps irrationally--that the increase in breast cancer in recent years is owing to....mammography! The last time she had a mammogram--before this one, that is--the technicians insisted that her right breast be radiated twice, in the interest of Better Imaging. Sophia was certain, after this event, that her right breast was Doomed.

Despite her ambivalence, Sophia would very much like to keep her breasts. For one thing, Sophia's husband is deeply enamored of them. Sophia is not sure if her marriage would survive the loss of her breasts, which have taken on a somewhat mythic status in the mind of her otherwise rational and temperate mate.

Irony

When called upon to do the one thing for which they were presumably created, i.e., feed baby Percival, Sophia's breasts completely choked.  Despite having swelled to twice their (already excessive) size. Who knew one could wear a 42 F? Not Sophia, certainly. When she read about all the pregnant women who were thrilled with their new voluptuousness, she wanted to scream. No one should have breasts bigger than her baby's head. It ought to be a law of physics, or physiology, or something.

But here's the ironic part. Sophia's breasts, their horrifying hugeness notwithstanding, could not produce enough high-quality milk to feed a voracious 8-pound baby. Sophia's mom called this the "Prohibition Bar Effect."  During the Prohibition years, bars all across America were forced to shut their doors and remove all alcohol from the premises. Like these shuttered establishments, Sophia had all the right equipment, but offered nothing to drink.

Silly, Bouncy Things

Sophia has always found that there's something ludicrous and comic-bookish about large breasts. They are the stuff of comedy, not tragedy. Because really, they look kind of silly, don't they? Unless they're fake, they bounce. One cannot take bouncy things seriously. Once, when Sophia still had girlfriends (more on this later), she and they went to a strip club. There, Sophia saw breasts unlike any she had ever seen before. They were huge, and bounceless. They stuck out like Russian church spires. They made the stripper's head utterly superfluous. Sophia compared her own bouncy, slightly sagging duo to these technological wonders, and  realized that these breasts were a different species altogether. They were perfect, but alien. Inhuman, but beautiful in some weirdly fake way. Fitting objects for reverence, but utterly useless in feeding other mammals. Like Sophia's own breasts, only much, much better!

Still, Sophia's breasts have been constant, if occasionally uncomfortable, companions in the adventure of her life.  She no longer complains about them, even though they are unwieldy, heavy, and mostly useless. In the absence of close girlfriends, they are the best she can do. They aren't judgmental, and they still look pretty good, if one likes that sort of thing. To paraphrase an old Geritol commercial:

My breasts. I think I'll keep them.

The World's Oldest Room Mother

Actually Sophia is not a Room Mother. Her stomach churns whenever she is called upon to do room-motherish things--mostly because she never knows what to talk about with the other mothers. She does not knit, or scrapbook, or bake gluten-free muffins. Sophia's wonderful son, Percival, goes to the kind of school where moms bake gluten-free muffins. Sophia isn't quite sure what gluten is, but she's pretty sure she's not free of it.

Oh, and Sophia was not mean enough to actually name her son Percival. You will doubtless have surmised by now that this is a pseudonymous blog. She does like the name Percival. Just not for a person.

Anyway, Percival is nine years old. Which means that he was born when Sophia was more than a tad over forty. This in itself was an experience. Because when you are An Older Pregnant Woman, the medical profession treats you like a bomb about to explode. Miscarriage, birth defects, preeclampsia, diabetes, premature birth, weak cervix, stroke, insanity...you name it, and the Older Mother is way more likely to get it. Sophia's husband was working in a city with a large and famous University Hospital nearby. Naturally, this is where he insisted Sophia be incarcerated for the birth of His Son and Heir.

Not that Sophia is a natural, homebirth kind of girl. No way. Early on, she realized that drugs were going to be an essential part of getting through the experience of late-in-life childbirth. Sophia's pain tolerance is roughly equivalent to that of an oversensitive two-year-old. A bad headache can make her cry real tears.

In Sophia's birthing class, all the women were asked to hold an ice cube tightly in one hand, to see how long they could endure discomfort. Every one of them held onto those ice cubes as if their unborn spawn depended on it. Sophia watched the water dripping through those tightly clenched fists, imagining tiny little babies nestled deep inside every womblike palm. Inspired by all this bravery, she tried extra hard to hold on to her cube.  Nevertheless, within thirty seconds, Sophia was begging for an epidural.

This birthing class was a surreal experience in other ways, too. The teacher/midwife who taught it was a natural childbirth propagandist. So she showed lots of movies of women giving birth in Natural Situations. Water baths. Rustic cabins. Airport bathrooms. And Sophia's personal favorite, the Amazon Rain Forest. This film was very short. It showed a pregnant Rain Forest Woman walking, then squatting, then whooossh! a rush of water. Seconds later (literally) she holds her hands down there and catches the baby as it slides naturally out. A few grunts, and it's over.

Sophia didn't understand the purpose of these films, since she was quite certain her own birthing experience was going to be nothing like this. What's more, Sophia's husband announced that he'd "had enough" of the class after that, and refused to go again. His comment was simply that he "didn't need to see that."

As for the rest of the pregnancy, it consisted of Tests. Many, many tests to make sure Sophia's egg wasn't defective and her aging body was up to the task. Sophia was swamped with statistics, which she never really understood. A one in seventeen chance of having a Down Syndrome baby. A one is three hundred chance of having a baby with something worse. A one in a thousand chance of having a baby that would end up on the cover of the Weekly World News.

And so on. It was terrifying. When Percival finally arrived--two weeks late, but with all his fingers, toes, and all his internal organs tucked into their proper slots, Sophia felt as if she had dodged about five hundred bullets.

So here she is, Over Fifty, the mother of a nine-year old. Yesterday he entertained a school friend, and Sophia drove the lad home. Little Alfred's mom (okay, not Alfred, but something equally old-fashioned) was about thirty. She had a toddler, and a nose piercing. Or is it a pierced nose? She was very nice, but young enough to be Sophia's daughter.

Sophia is sympathetic to many of the fashions and concerns of younger generations. She has no body ink, but can appreciate a lovely tattoo. She doesn't like rap or hip-hop music, but can understand its allure. People have been rhyming for millennia, after all. There's something viscerally satisfying about insulting someone in a rhyme.  But there are some trends that Sophia simply doesn't get. Chief among these is the fad--mercifully past its apex--of piercing multiple body parts. Sophia had her ears pierced at a department store when she was thirteen. She loves to wear long dangly earrings. But pierced noses, lips, eyebrows and tongues are beyond her ken.

And so, Sophia made what she hoped passed for acceptable chit-chat with this young pierced mom. Then she loaded Percival into the car, put on The Last Waltz, and drove home.

About Sophia

Sophia is over fifty. Not a lot over, but enough that she's started to get used to it. She no longer wears miniskirts, no longer expects to be carded, no longer bemoans the fact that her waistline isn't 23 1/2 inches anymore. And, um, hasn't been for awhile. Sophia still looks good for her age, and no one suspects that she was born when Eisenhower was president. She doesn't remember him, but she assumes he was out playing golf on the sunny California day when baby Sophia first greeted a world that seemed to be populated exclusively by white people who drove American cars and drank martinis after work.

Sophia is glad that the world isn't like that anymore. She's sad that a fair number of people her own age are not glad, however. Sophia's politics are a little bit left of center. They used to be so far left that the center wasn't even visible with binoculars.

But that was some time ago, when she was a wild college girl with Passions. She still has Passions, mind you, but they are smaller and quieter than they used to be.

Sophia is married to a Younger Man. He is not her first spouse, but he is the only one with whom she deigned to reproduce. She has one wonderful child, hatched from the last good egg in her circa 1956 fridge. She is glad she got the chance, at the eleventh hour, to bring this amazing being into the world. This, she thinks, is proof that Grace exists.

Sophia is mostly happy, but she doesn't have a lot of people to whom she can vent about the peculiar problems, questions, anxieties facing her at this odd time of life. Hence this blog.

Sophia will not always write in the third person. But she occasionally has the odd experience of facing a mirror that reflects a stranger. Where, she thinks (for a fleeting moment) is the Hot Babe who used to live in that Looking Glass World? Why has she been replaced by this Moderately Attractive Older Woman?

Because Sophia sometimes feels alienated from her True Self, she will, on those days, pretend she's an omniscient narrator of her own life. It's kind of liberating. In fact, you should try it.

Sophia is happy to entertain comments on this blog, but she will have to moderate them. Because she has another blog, and knows how pervasive the Evil of Comment Spam is, and because she's a bit of a control freak. Rudeness will not be tolerated, but disagreement certainly will be. Sophia is feisty, and loves a heated discussion, provided it Doesn't Get Mean.

Sophia will be back soon, with more of her thoughts on being over fifty.