Venus Girls/Boomer Beauty

Two of my close friends and I are Venus Girls. This refers to the signs Taurus and Libra, ruled by the planet Venus—goddess of love, relationship, beauty, peace, and justice. Venus’s love of justice is why the Scales of Balance symbolize the astrological sign.

When an individual has an abundance of these planets in her chart or has Taurus or Libra Rising, she is influenced or “ruled” by Venus. This is the case for the Venus Girls Trio. When we go to lunch, you could recognize us by overhearing these kinds of conversations:

Wendy: So, would it be so awful if we had just a little work done sometime? A little nip ‘n’ tuck?

Lucy: I’d be for that. Nothing too unnatural; after all, we’re all into natural …

Me: Maybe we could get a package deal with a local plastic surgeon and do it together. Maybe he’d consider a quantity discount! Take a few crinkles from around the eyes. Nothing drastic or too artificial …

Wendy: A trio facelift! We could play soft music, have a massage therapist come, do aromatherapy, recover together …

Lucy: Yeah! Sip herb tea and hold each other’s hands.

If you know even the slightest bit about these signs, you’re laughing out loud at how typical we are, creating ambience by the yard, worried about our good looks and being beautiful—so into relationship, we can’t even have our faces fixed without each other.

Boomer Beauty
Whatever your astrological or bare minerals make-up, turning the corner on 50 or 60 leads you smack into the issue of how you will handle aging from a cosmetic perspective. To one degree or another, we all bow—or refuse to bow—to the Goddess Venus.

Genes and self-care both play a role in how “well” we age. I’m lucky to have great skin, but my bottled auburn hair has very gray roots, nearly every one of them. I have friends my age and older without a single gray strand in their entire heads, but some of them show visible signs of aging in other ways such as wrinkles or liver spots.

How each of us handles the transition to a more seasoned look is a personal choice. I’m not willing to have my face drawn and quartered, the kind of work that ultimately looks fake and more unattractive than au naturel … but if I could afford it, I might go for a mini-lift, just because looking youngish and vital is more uplifting than my Maidenform bra. And believe me, at this stage of the game, I need all the uplift I can get!

I am in no way ready to see myself in a head full of gray hair, although I often wonder, as I risk potential brain cancer every time I use those chemicals on my head, if I don’t have a hole in it. Then there is the practical consideration. If I ever wanted to grow it out, how would I do that without looking like I took an ugly pill? A gorgeous gray highlighted wig, I’ve decided, as a transitional stage, “when the time comes.” (Around 95?) Meanwhile, Lucy told me just tonight that she knows of a holistic plastic surgeon.

Beauty is important to me. When I look as good as I can, I feel like I’m doing my part to help keep America beautiful. I don’t deny that I’m vain, but Venus types honestly resonate to beauty and harmony so much, we are miserable without it. Almost nauseous.

More Fundamental Questions
The bigger issue, of course, is our inability to see the inherent beauty in every age and stage of life. If we worship Venus, the Goddess of Beauty, it’s only because we worship Youth like a god even more. Granted, so much of our obsession with this false idol stems from advertising, Hollywood, and our belief that men are only drawn to nubile creatures. (I bet Demi is glad no one told Ashton.)

As women, we buy into these stereotypes, too, and the sexism perpetuated in aging men who have “character” while aging women “need work.” We buy into it by our desire to maintain a maiden appearance when we’re long into the crone stage of life.

Yet baby boomers are expected to redefine aging itself.

How Will We Do It?
It is a big job. Appearance is just one issue. To redefine aging is more than skin deep, because our skin will again never look like the ads we see in Glamour, if it ever did.

I don’t have all the answers. I think a lot of them are individual. Just like some girls go through a tomboy stage, others, like me, never had one and preferred dresses to pants from little girlhood. Some never got out of their tomboy stage, never were much for make-up and frills or high heels. That’s who they are—as natural to them as primping, preening, and color coordinating are to me.

Part of me thinks that looking as youthful as possible is OK, at least until we evolve more in our group-think about beauty in all stages of life. Looking young and feeling young and vital seem to be linked somehow, and no one would fault us for a second for wanting as much vitality as we can hold all the way to the finish line.

Yet, another part of me feels like a traitor. I am part of the community of boomer women, and our mindset toward aging and beauty won’t change unless or until I, too, change my mind. That sort of change creates a divine domino effect.

Hints from a Pro on Stretching Appearance

I’m fond of the movie, The Birdcage, especially its anthem of self-expression, the song, “I Am What I Am.” In this 1996 comedy Robin Williams stars as Armand, a gay cabaret owner. He and his drag queen companion, Albert (Nathan Lane), agree to put up a false straight front when their son wants to introduce them to his fiancé's conservative parents. Her father is a U.S. Senator (Gene Hackman). As with all comedies, things go horribly awry. While I always thought Albert’s attempts to look womanly fell a little short, he manages to charm and convince the Senator, who is quite taken with him as “her.” But when the paparazzi threaten to storm the house conjoined to the cabaret and splash the Senator’s presence at it in the tabloids, it’s time for drastic measures. All bets are off; all secrets must be revealed. Albert rips off his wig and sings “I Am What I Am.” It’s a tune of the ultimate freedom—of self-acceptance. I hope I can sing it proudly, someday, when it comes to being what I am as a woman of a certain age.

This is a “think post.” No answers, just questions to ask yourself.

The question I keep asking is why the statue of Venus is depicted with no arms. Like Venus, many of us have no arms to wrap around true beauty just yet … and when we acquire them because of a change of heart, Beauty herself will be What She Really Is.

Photo Credit: Venus deMilo Statue, (c) Maninblack/Dreamstime.com

Yellow Highlighter ...

… orange or lime green … take your pick from the pallet of hues for giving emphasis to points you want to remember when you’re reading. I can’t imagine life without these handy tools to help me see at a glance what’s important. They are memory joggers I have used ever since I can remember (high school? college?). They are even bigger godsends in these days when our minds are increasingly stuffed with too much information.

But there are other markers for highlighting, and they are figurative, not literal. They work as a cosmic hint for getting our attention--or as bookmarks for a place in memory that we need to note for later follow-up. They can mark a specific incident or verbal exchange. In the moment, they stir a feeling of discomfort or significance, often that we can’t yet identify.

Here’s a recent example, which takes a little intro:

My close circle of women friends—my spiritual support team—take an annual trip near Lake Tahoe to the cabin of one of our members. Over the past couple of years, we have started to do Soul Collage, a great artsy and intuitive way, essentially, to make your own personal tarot deck. If you’re familiar with tarot and know the collage based Voyager deck, think of a process where you create your own unique version.

Running late, as ever, I was eating my cereal the morning we were leaving for Tahoe. In-between spoonfuls, while chewing, I was cutting last-minute images out of magazines for our Soul Collage session at the cabin the next day. An ad with a $100,000 bill caught my eye. I said to myself, “That goes in one of my cards,” and I snipped it.

I had these errands left to do: chiropractor, get gas, get coffee, and get cash. I hoped to combine coffee with cash, thinking that if I used my ATM card, they’d give me cash back. Not Starbucks’ policy. Drat.

That meant that I’d have to go a few doors down to the Safeway and hit the ATM. My bank, Wells Fargo, has a branch inside the grocery store. After getting my 40 bucks, I put my purse on the little podium with the ATM envelopes and various banking program brochures.

Something caught my eye … a brochure with a $100,000 bill on the cover. The $100,000 bill I had clipped less than an hour before out of that magazine was still in yellow highlighter in my visual memory. I picked it up.

It was a contest for financing your dream, and the bank was giving a $100,000 prize for the best short essay … but the deadline was that day. There were only two ways to enter, by mail and online, and it was too late to post something …

… so I phoned ahead to my friends and asked someone to take their laptop on the trip so I could spend an hour cranking out my 250-word essay. With a little help from my friends—we have great synergy—we titled it Banking on Boomer Insights. It’s a proposal to create a press that would help me and other boomers write and distribute our memoirs and books on other topics of interest to the More Experienced (ME) Generation.

As I say in Hot Flashbacks, we need to reclaim the custom of indigenous people everywhere of giving back our wisdom to our communities … of teaching them how to really live …

… and if learning is the subject, we’ll need those highlighters. I can almost hear them squeaking …

Not only do I hope I win the contest; I’ll be just as happy to know I illustrated how opportunity is in plain sight if we only learn to play the symbols. Think of the chances we pass up just because we don’t get the hints the universe puts right in front of us every day.

Here’s to having the eyes to see yellow—and the ears to hear that delightful squeak!

Bounty Hunters

It’s the occupation of Stephanie Plum, the wacky Janet Evanovich character in her numbers novels (One for the Money, Two for the Dough). I love her crazy antics and terminal ineptitude as she bumbles through life with a cast of equally hilarious characters trying to catch the bad guys or gals who have jumped bail.

Most of us are a different kind of bounty hunters. We seek the fruits of a life well lived: good food, good friends, a fabulous family, a comfortable lifestyle, and a sense of purpose.

One of my favorite symbols is the cornucopia, the horn of plenty. The harvest celebrates abundance, one of the main purposes of the feast, Thanksgiving.

But there is another even more important purpose—the thanks.

From the earliest age, as tiny toddlers, “please” and “thank-you” are among the first words we learn. I wonder why I bother with the child who doesn’t even let me know my gift arrived, much less says thanks. I’m much more willing to keep giving to people that acknowledge my efforts.

The universe works the same way. The more we say thank-you, the more it wants to give.

That’s why it’s important to develop your sense of gratitude all year long. Gratitude isn’t a season. It’s a way of life.

The word Christians use for communion—Eucharist—means thanksgiving. Catholics have a concept of being Eucharist to each other, which is the ultimate “being there” for someone. They can rely on each other in community to meet all those needs that the cornucopia represents. I’m sure there are many other traditions that uphold this concept of each feeding others, and in doing so, becoming the food that never stops giving—a perpetual loaves and fishes—in a divine domino effect of loving kindness.

To get that relationship with All That Is, you have to be part of the giving—starting with giving thanks.

Developing an attitude of gratitude isn’t just easy; it’s fun. Here are my two favorite bounty boosters:

• Every day, or as often as possible, write in your journal at least 10 things you’re thankful for. They can be of any size or subject—it didn’t rain today, I got a raise, my cat kissed me on the nose. Whatever it is, when you write it down, you send out waves of attraction for more good of the same kind.

• Create a gratitude box. Do the same thing as often as possible, only write them on slips of paper. They become your a self-made cornucopia. Especially on a blue day, you can dip into the box and find one, two, or fifty of your blessings. You know the old song Bing Crosby song from White Christmas, Count Your Blessings Instead of Sheep. Why not? Toss the Lunesta. Visit your personal gift box instead, even if it’s just the one in your mind.

Gratitude is a simple awareness of the blessings all around us … how much good there is when we have the eyes to see it and bother to say hello to the Source.

Let this Thanksgiving kick off the next 365-day cycle of bounty hunting. To get really radical, and possibly to focus more on gratitude than gluttony, here’s one last exercise. Before dessert, draw names out of a hat of everyone present. Go around the table. Each person then expresses their gratitude to the one they have drawn. It can be for something he or she has done during the year or some ongoing quality or action.

Not only will this give your poor, overtaxed digestive system a rest before assaulting it with pumpkin pie; I have a hunch it’ll become a new tradition and the new whip cream.

Cool Mini-Flashes

While most of my Hot Flashbacks and Cool Insights take at least a chapter to build up a string of experiences to synthesis, here are some nuggets I call mini-flashes, single insights or moments of aha gleaned from the longer Hot Flashbacks tales with their chapter names noted. Enjoy!

"Once a Catholic, always a Catholic,” the nuns used to singsong. I
always thought this litany was pure religious propaganda. Except it turns
out to be true. I don’t even bother to say ex-Catholic anymore. Doesn’t
matter if you don’t practice it. It’s still your orientation, like
sexuality—something you can’t help. A friend recently said, “It’s in
your genes.” I believe Catholicism runs that deep. Someday, I fully
expect someone will discover a DNA marker for it.

--Apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary

When we were barely teenagers, my first boyfriend Tommy Shire and I used to meet while I walked our boxer dogs, Duchess and Lady, in the weedy vacant lot next to our suburban Chicago townhouse. We’d steal kisses between dog droppings. Little did I know at the tender age of twelve how much that scene symbolized life.

– That Doggone Hit Parade


The first time I heard the odd expression “golden handcuffs,” I could not get over how well it described my career in government. I had not considered seriously; I had been abducted by benefits and was being held hostage by my own need for comfort and security. What’s worse for my colleagues and me and anyone seduced by these goodies, whatever their job: We all suffered from Stockholm Syndrome, falling in love with our captors—ourselves and our own bullshit.

--Golden Handcuffs


The Twenty-Third Psalm has always been one of my favorite prayers, even though it’s mostly said at funerals. I used to consider this morbid till I got old enough to realize how fragile we are as humans--how much we live at death’s door at all times. That’s why I love that prayer, especially the line: Yea, though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me.

As you get older, the Shadow gets thicker. It goes from partly cloudy to seriously overcast, the closer you inch to the unknown finish line of life. There are only two ways you can deal with this fact. You can be bummed out or you can do what you did when you were a kid—get your thrills off living on the edge.

--Valley Girl

I am convinced that even the horniest people on earth cannot spend more than five to ten percent of their relationship in bed over the long haul. We have to make a living, raise children, pursue our interests. Since the vast majority of a relationship happens outside the bedroom, how can we expect to form a sound one when it starts there …and we never really want to get out of bed?

--Where Are My Keys? I Need a Sex Drive!

That boom in our name: It can do more than blast through the old way of aging that gives up and gives out. It can be the blast of reality, a fiery sword of truth that mediates between these conservative (‘50s) and rebellious decades of our youth (‘60s/’70s) and these extremes within ourselves. What makes us so special is our wiring to be weavers of wholeness within—and within today’s world.

--Sixties Reprised