Great - we’ve entered the “goddess” phase of our life, only to find that we are androgynous. We are growing beards. The first time a Venus feels that coarse “hair” poking out of her chin, she is equal parts horrified and fascinated. Unable to reconcile this new reality with her view of herself as a member of the feminine gender, she obsessively strokes and touches it to see if it truly is still there. Perhaps it is a new mole, a zit, or just a figment of overactive imagination. She can’t believe that she is actually hoping for a pimple. And when she realizes that the hair truly is protruding from a follicle on her own face, she rushes off for tweezers, hot wax, or electrolysis.
All of us goddesses suffered from this, but each of us feared we were the only real (werebeast, until we came together. So while we are still horrified, at least we now know that this is NORMAL. But the hairy difficulties don’t end there.
Sensitivity to Hair
In our youth, we certainly had bad hair days. These were temporary and referred generally to how our “do” looked at a specific time and place. However, now we find ourselves visited by the oxymoronic “permanent change”. Our hair actually turns against us. We are being attacked by our own tresses - in the tiniest puff of wind, individual hairs will reach out and TOUCH your skin! Like a dozen tiny spiders crawling all over your cheeks, forehead, FACE. Some Venuses have seriously considered taking a pair of scissors and just hacking it off. (The scissor attachment on my micro Swiss army knife was inadequate to the task or I might have done it at the lunch table one day.) Much calmer now, I just carry a small pump of hair spray so I can shellac it into a helmet when the torture begins.
My husband observed when we were in a restaurant recently that nearly all the women appeared to be over 50. "Look around at them. What do they all have in common?" he asked. When I shrugged my shoulders, he laughed, "They ALL have short hair!”
(Adapted from our upcoming book "Venus Comes of Age, The Wit and Wisdom of Menopausal Goddesses" If you'd like to comment, share or be part of our menopause community, we'd love you to visit our main blog at menopausegoddessblog.org )
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