Blog fodder is always a challenge. A fellow blogger and I were commiserating about this when we decided that it might be fun to write a series of blogs in which she takes the female side of an issue and I take the male side of the same issue. Sort of a “he said/she said” format. Here is our first topic:
MENOPAUSE VS MANOPAUSE: IS REACHING MIDDLE AGE HARDER ON WOMEN OR MEN?
Conventional wisdom would probably lead you to think that women struggle more with aging than men and that men are oblivious to aging in the same way a bug is oblivious to the windshield that is about to hit it at 70 mph. However, if you look closely at the middle aged man in your life, what you might find is a tortured soul, dealing with a failing body and struggling to come to grips with his mortality, sinking ever deeper into an abyss of self-doubt while he takes stock of his position in life and his relationships; constantly asking himself “did I do the right things, did I say the right things, have I made a real difference, and will this sentence ever end?”
The operative word here is “might.” You’re actually more likely to find a 14 year old boy trapped in a 50 year old man’s body making race car noises with his mouth while he drives his new sports car to the drug store to pick up his Viagra prescription. But that doesn’t mean that reaching middle age isn’t HARD.
(I’d like to note that the last paragraph isn’t a description of me. I sold my sports car.)
So why is reaching middle age so hard on a man? I begin with two words: “Prostate Exam.”
Every man reaches this humiliating rite of passage near their 50th birthday, but for me it was even more traumatic because I have a woman doctor. Having a woman doctor has always made the “turn your head and cough” exam bad enough, but it brought a whole new level of embarrassment to the prostate exam. After she explained that is was time for that part of my physical she clapped her hands and exclaimed “now we get to see a little skin!” I saw that as a bad omen, and it only got worse. Being a woman, she couldn’t be in the exam room alone with me while I was undressed so she asked a female nurse to come in and observe. Therefore, I had two women watching when I heard the words that strike mortal terror in the heart of every man; “bend over and spread your cheeks.”
Of course, many of you middle aged women are going to bring up the point that you’ve endured the last several decades with your feet periodically up in stirrups while your gynecologist (often a man of the opposite sex) prodded around inside you like a Roto-Rooter technician looking for a lost wrench. All I have to say about that is “no comment.”
There is also the issue of body image. I will admit that men, as a species, are uniquely able to stand in front of a full length mirror, arrange their three remaining hairs over their shinny scalp, pull their stained undershirt down over their enormous belly and think to themselves “I am SO fine” with absolutely no sense of irony. This doesn’t mean, however, that they are not dealing with body issues on some level. Do you have any idea how hard it is to hold in your stomach when a group of college girls walks by at the mall? I’m sure there are probably documented cases of men passing out from the effort. There is also the issue of eyebrows. Around a man’s 50th birthday they begin to stand straight up like demonic party favors and I’m not even going to mention ear hair. So ladies, the next time you’ve spent three hours plucking, tweezing, waxing, exfoliating, coloring, combing, curling, and moisturizing to get ready to go out to dinner with your man, remember that he too struggled to look his best by asking tough questions such as “should I wear my tennis shoes or my hunting boots?” before sitting down on the couch for 2 hours and 55 minutes to wait on you to get ready.
Finally, I believe that age-related regret is more of a problem for middle aged men than for middle aged women. Sure, you no longer have an opportunity to compete on “American’s Next Top Model” but you don’t look at the owner of your company who is 35 years old and wonder “why don’t I own my own company?” Ok, maybe you do, but it doesn’t effect your fragile male ego the way it does for men. We middle aged men wallow in pools of self pity thinking “I’m never going to be a professional athlete, I’m never going to climb Mt. Everest, and I’m never going to steal Hugh Hefner’s job.” We suddenly realize that much of life has passed us by. So while you’re going back to school and becoming neurosurgeons at the age of 58 we’re engaging in self destructive behavior like tattoos and Harleys.
For the record, I will admit that I may have indulged in behavior of this sort. At 45 I learned to sky dive and at 50 I learned to scuba dive. At 55 I fully intend to base jump off the Chrysler building while I’m on fire, even if I have to launch myself off my walker to do it. This doesn’t mean that I’m trying to hold onto my youth at a point in my life when I should be content with slowing down. It just means that I’m not going to let some piss-ant 22 year old jock show me up at any physical activity, even though the most strenuous thing I do on an average day is adjusting the volume on my car radio.
So while it may be true that reaching middle age is hard on both men and women it is obviously we men who have it tougher.
At least if you measure it on a whining meter.
Please check out my friend's blog to read the female perspective on this subject here:
http://carespodikirby.blogspot.com/2011/03/men-no-longer-pause-in-fact-im.html
You nailed it!
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