New Lovers, Young Lovers, Old Lovers

Is this not the same for a man?  People fade in all sorts of ways.

Giselle Minoli I guess I have read it differently. Especially when he says “I have a new goal: making sure that the wishes of the Lady in Question have been fulfilled, that I have done all I can to make her laugh or smile. My study is to be attentive, to please and to praise.” that does not seem to me that he is lingering at all on her looks, but rather on her presence.

Presence can be beautiful (most often is) in itself, with or without the accepted formal lines of physical beauty. A partnership, a long-lasting partnership, seems what he is talking about.

And if he sees her still as the young one 40 years before in a Greek island, it is not because he wants to forget her current looks, but rather because he can see both, and they become metaphors for each other. Parents do this to their children all the time (sometimes to a fault!) and it is not about denying them their adulthood, but because they can suddenly see time passing in a concrete way. It is awe-inspiring, scary, and a joyful thing to be celebrated.

lovers, true lovers, have very very long vision…

I don’t think it’s actually possible to fall in love with beauty. I wonder if it’s just something we men tell ourselves to mask the inherent vulnerability of being in love with a person. So maybe the story he told himself was, he loved her for her beauty, when all along that was never really the case.

p.s. this is a response to your post only; I will read the article as well

moving pieces, both Giselle. Thank you for your thoughts on this as well as the link to the article which I should never, otherwise have seen. I am, of course, too close to this in so many ways – time moves on so fast. But at the same time very blessed as you know, in ways I scarcely merit. Giselle Minoli . I felt no disquiet from reading that piece. More of a comfortable familiarity. Make sense?

Mark Palmberg Do you mean do we women look at men in the way the Begley describes himself looking at his young love?  I think less so.  My husband doesn’t like his grey hair, but I love it.  Women, on the other hand, think that if they let their hair go grey…it is a sign that they are old now and their men don’t want to be with a woman with grey hair.  It is so difficult to make generalizations about this, but I think we women feel so much more pressured to remain beautiful forever than you men. Yes?  No?

And me with my grey hair. And he with his silver though so much younger than I. The secret is in looking into the heart. Giselle Minoli but you know that. (I edited my comment above when it let me.)

Of course yes that had something to do with it but know that in my case at least, at no point in my life was I ever conscious of any ‘beauty’ in myself, choosing instead to believe the cruel and thoughtless sniggerings of school boys passing me and commenting to each other that I was the ugliest person they had ever seen. Truly. So I guess after that I always assumed that I would only be loved for who I was. Maybe not so bad after all? Now I look back on photos of myself (taken by someone I love) and think perhaps I wasn’t so bad. Interestingly, the other day I said to Steven that no one sees themselves as they look to those they love, because only a rare person looking in the mirror looks at what they see with the eyes of love. And it is that look of love that makes the person so beautiful. (I do wish I could go back and read this comment, but it can’t be done in this mobile app.) what do you think Giselle Minoli ?

Giselle Minoli to go back to your comment above and your question of do women feel more pressure to remain beautiful (or merely attractive enough,) I think the answer is a definite “yes” especially for women who are single and approaching middle age or beyond. I’d suggest that this has always been the case–youth is almost by definition beautiful (heck I find the older I get, anyone 23 years old looks beautiful!)–but I suspect the pressure is even more so in our world of social media. So many folks nowadays are on online dating sites. The first impression made to a potential love interest is one’s photo and that can determine a click or not on a profile and basically only then does one read a person’s words that actually indicate a bit of what someone is potentially like in terms of inner beauty, values, interests–the sort of stuff that is the glue that holds two people together in love over the long haul.

Let’s be real about the culture we live in: a 40 or 50 year old man with grey hair, it seems to me, isn’t seen as necessarily unattractive in our society. A woman daring enough at the same age to show her grey hair isn’t perceived the same way. At least I don’t think so. Sure one could argue that a woman brave enough to show her “true colours” might more likely find a guy who will appreciate her for her inner qualities, but frankly by letting something of her true age show, she decreases her chances for a potential partner to press “click” on her profile to find out who she truly is on the inside.  

Far be it from me to go against you experts (Kena Herod and tery t ) since (obviously) I am a man…but let me tell you that women are beautiful. Different life stages, different beauties. All lovely. But I do find that women are very difficult/critical/negative of other women. I have a very good (female) friend of mine who a long time ago decided/discovered that she dresses well for other women because, she says, men are not quite capable of the same level of criticism…just a thought. I love all you ladies, and fall in love with you all every time you share your hearts. No need to worry about that. Now go and be lovely, and try to be lovely to each other.

Denis Wallez exactly what I wanted to say, in your first paragraph. 🙂

Also, this brings to mind a study made in Britain, where several sized women in photos were shown to men and women, and each was asked to choose the one they thought most attractive (in the case of the women, which they though men would like). The women chose two or three sizes smaller than the men. So as Leo Campos says, it’s actually the women who are being more critical than needs be.

You men have no idea how heartening it is to hear that men are actually less critical than women.  Heartening in one sense, disheartening in another.  Heartening because it means that men are not as affected by the imagery is it is possibly believed.  Disheartening because it suggests that women internalize much of it.  I have none of these magazines or this imagery in my house and strive, as suggested by the ever wise Leo Campos for the holistic and spiritual version of beauty.  Alas, I confess it does not seem to be what I/we are surrounded with, most often these days in business, where looks matter tremendously.

Denis Wallez I have actually had this experience, as an actress for many years.  When I was just beginning I had asked for a photographer who would shoot me “as myself,” which I was counseled against by my agent.  I was then made up to within an inch of my life.  I didn’t recognize myself and hated, absolutely hated the shots.  I would have had to have looked like that every day and it would have been impossible aside from it all.  Then, years later, I actually left my agent when they told me that I had to START dying my hair grey because in this country no one would believe that a woman over 45 didn’t have any grey hair.  I refused and that was the end of it for me.  The imagery is all through Madison Avenue culture.  That is fine.  But when it sinks into our private lives…I personally draw the line.

People who are healthy, happy and have confidence in themselves seem to have this glow. Which, I think, is what Leo Campos was saying in another post. It’s corny to say, but true beauty really does come from within.

Kena Herod I think that women are “taught” beauty, confidence, self-esteem from a very early age.  Who our mothers are, what they believe about themselves, how they are loved/treated by their mates, their families, gets transferred to us in the subtlest of ways.  I know women whose mothers calls them fat who are anorexic.  I know women who want to change everything about themselves at the earliest of ages.  As a ballerina, you know how damaging this can be.  As an actor, I knew it too.  Denis Wallez These lessons are not taught us in school.  I remember conversations about what is art, what is beauty in art, what is a beautiful line of poetry, of prose, of fiction.  But there were never any discussions about wide ranging definitions of beauty.  Can you imagine what the collective history of painting and sculpture would be if the world’s greatest artists had the same narrow definition of beauty shoved at us by PhotoShop and Hollywood.  Would the Mona Lisa have been painted?  

Oh for sure Giselle Minoli. I’ll never forget the mom of one of my Joffrey Ballet School classmates who was utterly obese and yet literally (to my and other classmates’ horror), gave her daughter (dancing all day long like us) only a bag of lettuce for lunch. Me? While my mother is no saint, she was very sensible about the rigours physically I was going thru. Breakfast for me was often whole-wheat toast with a lot of peanut butter so I had enough carbs, protein and fat to get me thru the day. (And healthful lunches, dinners, snacks too.)

I also know something else that was weird and strange for a woman my size and age. 2 years ago when in the heat of a stressful years-long divorce, I got very physically ill (me who never gets sick). For 2 weeks, high fever, a rash from head to toe and all else. The doctors tested me for everything only coming up with a deplorably low white cell count. Meanwhile, though I am naturally “slim,” I lost a solid 10 pounds, weight that I only finally regained recently. It was weird. Some of my nearest and dearest of family and friends were highly concerned but a few just said, “Wow, you look great!”–and by society’s standards I did look great, I guess. But I knew I was very unhealthy. 

The trouble is, that dying hair to look young and not show a true age has never worked very well in my opinion. The women who I have most admired have aged gracefully and naturally, showing an inner strength that does not come from their outward appearance. Mind you, they were not depending on looking young and not revealing their true age so someone would ‘click’ on their profile. The true age is there and can’t be hidden for long once any depth is in the relationship. Is it fair to mislead someone into thinking they are considering dating a younger woman? What hope does this person have of an honest relationship in the future? In the end the person does not look young but looks like an old woman who dyes her hair. Not a popular thought, I know.

Of course, Kena Herod – but here we were discussing those who dye their hair to look younger, I think. A different thing. Steven started going grey when he was 16. But of course he is a man. A distinguished looking 16 year old?

Kena Herod Unless, of course, you are the divine Emmylou Harris.  Or the divine Carmen dell’Orifice, or Christian Lacroix’s silver-haired Muse Marie Seznec, who had gray hair when she was a teenager…

Mara Rose, what a brave post of yours. I’ve been thinking about it since I read it an hour ago. Thank you for sharing.

Thanks, Kena Herod I almost deleted it after I posted it. I am the ambivalent commenter, lol. But it’s true, and needs to be said, and not swept under the rug.

In our ego/power based culture, money = power, and beauty = power. It’s interesting to observe that dynamic play out in ego based relationships, as opposed to relationships of the heart and spirit, where Identity is one’s Inner Being.

Brian, you are right, I have run across some really rude men. Thank you for your kind comments. I chalk some of them up to dating the wrong type of guys, and having spent some time hanging out with the chic uptown singles scene. It can be brutal. I do not belong there. Not my right people. Too many Master of the Universe types: lawyers, brokers, surgeons, business tycoons, the common denominator: Massive ego under surface charm. So part of my dating sabbatical is recognizing that I have been hooked by powerful men, and changing a pattern. For me, it wasn’t the power per se, as I support myself financially, but the intelligence and being seduced by charm, which I now recognize as something to stay away from. There are unfortunately, many rich, powerful men looking for “trophy” GF’s and I met a few…..

So, in no way, do I see all men in that way. As I said, I adore men. I think I likely belong with an artist or a writer, perhaps a musician, someone sensitive, spiritual, with Buddhist leanings, and I have been totally traveling down the wrong path.

However, our mainstream popular culture, including our own women’s magazines, does indeed promote the culture in which the experiences I describe arise, I am very sorry to tell you, with the focus on false appearances, and air brushed models. Kate Moss IRL does not resemble Kate Moss in Vogue. At the same time, I know there are many, many men, maybe even most men, who are not like that. I am not angry with men, and I do not hate men.

I do have an issue with mainstream medicine and the pharmaceutical industry for promoting Viagra, while discouraging women from using bio-identical hormone replacement therapy, which supports women’s sexuality as women age, creating a huge disparity in need and expectation in regards to sexuality between the genders, as we grow older. I have an issue with all the plastic surgery, fake tans, silicone breasts, and pressure to look artificially young. I don’t mind a little botox, anti-aging skin treatments–and I’ve colored my hair for 28 years, because I love the way it looks, but that’s it. Real beauty comes from within.

I hope I haven’t high jacked the thread. For me, there is a meeting point, with men and women, where beauty and sexuality are intertwined in relationship, in real life. Brian Titus and Michael O’Reilly both of you seem like truly wonderful men, and I hope I haven’t given offense. We sadly do live in a misogynistic society, but it contains many wonderful guys, like you:), Kena Herod thanks for your supportive comments. Working off a mobile device, it’s hard to get my comments right, I apologize.

Mara Rose I was actually thinking of writing something to say “I hope you didn’t think that I think you’re a ‘man-hater’ (or some equally ridiculous term).” 

What you initially posted — and your followup — was full of insight and feeling, and has sparked some good discussion. So, just to be perfectly clear, no you haven’t given offense, at all. And, it’s great to meet you!

Michael O’Reilly i read your post. Fabulous work taking a much needed stand. Many thanks on behalf on women.

Mara Rose you haven’t threadjacked this hike.  I’m impressed by how open and honest you all are with one another.  I think that because I’ve worked in the cross cultural worlds of entertainment (as an actor) and business (in the music and art worlds) for so long I have come away with a slightly different perception of the issue.

Gentlemen, forgive me, but it is my experience that men are so much more afraid of aging, dying, being replaced and not being vital than women are. To whomever it was that said that men are afraid of “older” women because of the fear of a lack of sexuality (or sexualness in the women), it is the men in our culture who suffer from that fear.  Viagra and Cialis were invented for them, after all.  And, honestly, I don’t think it was for love or appreciation or beauty or relationships or anything else.  I think it is purely to avoid the reality of getting older.

I have met many, many men who are with younger women and almost without exception they are not happier and do not feel more loved.  They just feel like they’ve cheated aging for another year or two.

The women that I know, however, are by and large much more comfortable with it.  Personally, were I single, I would never seek out the company of a much younger man because chances are I’d be bored out of my mind!

I don’t think it’s about power.  Rather, I think it’s about the opposite – total insecurity.  Begley’s article was about a man who thought about these things because the questions are important.  But, clearly, he was/is not insecure.  He may appreciate beauty.  But not so much that he’d ditch his “older” wife for it when the time comes.  That would be a boy, not a man.

So, Mara Rose and Kena Herod take heart.  There are scores of Brian Titus es out there.  They are just harder to find because the insecure men take up all the space.

Michael O’Reilly I write all of this not having had the time (yet) to read your post…but I will.  Thank you all.  You are all fabulous.

Speaking of “an ‘older’ wife,” I just read this piece on Salon.com by Mary Elizabeth Williams about Hillary Clinton and the way people comment on her appearance (as in looking old or whatever else). I haven’t agreed with Clinton on some issues, but the woman is an inspiration. Here’s a link to the piece and a long quote from the article: http://www.salon.com/2012/08/16/hillary_clinton_does_not_have_time_for_your_games/

“Now, at age 64, Clinton continues to get heat for being, gasp, a 64-year-old political leader instead of Megan Fox. In May, after she’d dared to allegedly appear without makeup (and by the way, she was obviously wearing lipstick and she was only busy promoting democracy in Bangladesh, but whatever), Fox News couldn’t wait to call her ‘tired and withdrawn’ looking. And in June, author Ed Klein took to the airwaves to dismiss Clinton’s chances of running for the White House in 2016 by saying, ‘She’ll be 69 years old. And as you know — and I don’t want to sound anti-feminist here — but she’s not looking good these days. She’s looking overweight, and she’s looking very tired.’ Because you can’t run a country if you’re not under 35 and skinny. Also, if you have a vagina.

What’s righteous about Clinton is how thoroughly emancipated from all the BS she seems to be lately. Hillary is too busy laughing it up with Angela Merkel about their shared love of pantsuits to care what Matt Drudge has to say about her face….”

So after reading the essay, I believe this is what happened:

Or did he simply discover that she was as beautiful inside as out, or perhaps even more so, and was it that with which he ultimately fell in love?

I thought it was very sweet; a man who 40 years ago worried that he was shallow and cool comes to understand — after a lifetime with The Lady in Question — that he is quite the opposite.

Well, Giselle Minoli I will read anything you care to write, scandalous or not! 🙂 And now, good night!

Always interesting,always riveting Giselle. Great story of the couple on the train…and great question about beauty and love. Do women who are “beautiful” feel more vulnerable I wonder…hmmm?

A very enlightening post and thread…but of course, Giselle Minoli :).  I appreciate your comments about male insecurity, and on reflection, you are so right.  But, hard to be that objective when one is so close to it, and feeling the sting.  Very helpful to hear your perspective.  I read Love in the Time of Cholera many years ago, loved it, nice to be reminded.

We are in agreement about Hilary, and I hope she runs in 2016.

Kena Herod If you haven’t seen it, by all means, Google “Texts from Hilary”, it’s hilarious and shows a powerful woman in action.  One of my favorite internet memes.  Especially where she texts Mittens that he needs a drink, lol.

Kim Crawford and Michael O’Reilly   Provocative question about beauty.  I’ve taken “pretty” for granted, and derived my self worth from smarts, independance, and adventurousness, ‘thinking different’…and I know I will struggle when those abilities are threatened as I grow older.  But am I being honest with myself about the “pretty”?  Perhaps not.  Time for self reflection.  Thanks!

These are the very personal gifts I received from this thread, in addition to the  very lovely cameraderie and making of new G+ friends and connections.   Giselle Minoli Everything you write goes straight into the heart of the matter and enlightens…..deep and real and true.

You are truly gifted :).

Apologies ladies and gentlemen for how it long took to get back to this…crunching on a speech most of the week, which is now done!  Michael O’Reilly I also tend to think that people “fear the loss of whatever characteristics they feel make them worthwhile.”  Retrospectively, and objectively speaking, I tend to think that fathers do a better job of that than mothers do with girls.  I will never know if my mother would have coached me to focus more on the “externals” than the “internals” had my father not died and life been more financially secure.  But I had to work and so there was very much a roll your sleeves up attitude with my mother – although she promote the importance of a good haircut good grooming and a slick of lipstick.  

Maybe we need earlier coaching, all of us, on how things transform over a lifetime and how beauty changes.

Re: fathers doing a better job than mothers on the “internals” than the “externals.” I can only speak from my experience as a daughter of a very involved father and stepfather and as a mother to a daughter. In my case, it just seems by default dads concentrate perhaps more on the “internals” because for one thing (not to sound flippant), most guys don’t know the difference between an eyeshadow brush and a blush brush. Why should they since culturally guys basically wear no cosmetics?

As for my mother, I thought she modelled, so to speak, a sensible attitude about looking both attractive and still appropriate. She liked wearing makeup and stylish clothes but never seemed excessively concerned or prissy about such despite selling for some time Avon. She also had a canny ability to guide me thru as I grew up the transitions of what was acceptable for me at my age in how I dressed and just how much cosmetics I was allowed to wear. She seemed to walk well a line that allowed me to feel not totally out of place with my girl friends but still feel myself comfortable looking like a child my age.

At 11 or so, I was permitted the kind of lightly tinted, barely there pink, lip gloss, the kind that most of my friends wore. When I was 14–a time when a lot of my female peers were wearing more than just gloss to school–she took me to Macy’s when we were in NYC, examined all the cosmetics counters, chose (the now defunct) Halston line, and instructed the makeup artist (a man btw) to give me a “natural look” (I know, an oxymoron) and teach me to apply so I didn’t look like a “clown” or older than my years.

I loved that session! And, for some time I wasn’t allowed to wear my little line of makeup anywhere else except for special occasions like school dances. As time wore on, what I was allowed to wear to school was relaxed. And maybe because I danced and performed frequently enough onstage, I got to enjoy theatre makeup from time to time so I was never obsessed offstage.

Mom and I only finally came to logger heads when I was a senior in high school and fell in with artsy/theatre cliques made up of punk rockers, goths, new wavers, etc. Hey, it was the 80s and artists like David Bowie and those who modelled themselves after him liked theatricality. I personally thought it was a fun time to be a teenager because the guys in our groups were just as outrageous in their outfits as us girls and they wore some makeup too! Anyway, it was just a phase and my mother, despite her dislike of the aesthetic, gave her opinion but left me alone on that score. After all, I was soon to be on my own at university.

Lastly, as I mentioned above, my mother was incredibly awesome when it came to me and weight–a “weighty” issue when one is an aspiring dancer. She never, ever made comments about my weight even while she understood its importance in the dance world. She just did her best to make sure I ate healthfully.

The example she set I think was healthy and realistic about this culture and has served me well as I have aged thru the decades. Yes, I do care about my appearance and I love the delights of cosmetics (hey, all those colours and smells and such are fun!), but I don’t think I’m overly obsessed about my looks (my current profile photo here on G+ is me with nothing more than leftover blush on but I have a full face of makeup in other photos here). Hopefully, I am passing down to my child realistic and accepting ways to feel about herself too. (Fingers crossed–the proof will be in the pudding years hence!)   

What a wonderful comment of yours above Giselle Minoli. To pick up only your last point, I saw a Flamenco performance this past spring in Toronto and it featured two older dancers (male and female in their 50s I’d think) who were more a hit than their younger counterparts too (I wish I could remember the name of the company; I see too many performances!). Of other older dancers, I think of the following I’ve seen in the last few years who are (still!) amazing dancers in Canada and who have performed world-wide to acclaim through the decades: Paul-André Fortier (60s), Gioconda Barbuto (50s I’m guessing), Peggy Baker (about 60), and then I think of the late German choreographer/dancer Pina Bausch and some of the older dancers in her company. There are many others of course. Anyway, what makes them so powerful onstage despite not being able to “leap tall buildings in a single bound” is their artistry and knowledge developed over a lifetime–something that comes from the inside of their being as much as from a body highly trained. In way, it’s a kind of an “Old Love” too I suppose–a love between an artist and an audience.

Giselle Minoli I wonder the same thing about whether such differences exist or in fact are pretty much the same too! I’m still searching in my life for those answers.

Of Pina Bausch–how lucky you were to have seen her dance live! I never got to (or perhaps I could have when I was in NYC for those summers dancing at Joffrey but my mind was so filled with ballet then). I’ve had to content myself with video. Anyway, this past March, Wim Wenders’ film Pina was still playing in Toronto. I took Vivie to it and she was entranced from start to finish. Now that was a good day indeed!

You must, must get Pina! Yes, it was 3D in the theatre but I am sure it will still be just as powerful on DVD (heck, I need to buy it, come to think of it!). And your point about the women’s bodies? That is precisely one of the reasons I took Vivie to see it.

I’m laughing Daniela Huguet Taylor. I love that. I can see you.  Defiantly walking around with your one eyelid closed as if to say “See? I can have a purple eyelid if I want to!”  What a charming and vivid story and one so many girls can relate to.  I think I did something similar in sixth grade.  Do you remember that goopy creamy eyeshadow?  My fetish was blue (which I now hate) and it was a veritable schmear of color across my eyelid (not quite up to the brow mind you) with nothing to balance it out, not lips, not cheeks, not eyebrows (what did anyone know from eyebrow shaping then…actually I fear I am much older than you and you might well have!), zip with which to balance the blue.  

Funny that our “unbalanced” selves are often the ones we remember.  Hopefully with tenderness, Yes?

My make-up costume now consists of eyebrow pencil, a bit of liner and red lipstick and that is it!

I cannot believe I have just admitted this on G+.  What is happening to my boundaries?  😉

Hehehehe… not so much older, I’m sure. 😉 I never quite got the hang of eyebrows, blush is a scary business on my face, well, on my cheekbones, and I have read and seen about highlights, contours, primers,.. I even stopped using eyeliner (gosh we loved eyeliners back in the day!), when I do bother, it’s eyeshadow, mascara and lipstick… and foundation if I really need it.

I’m not sure I remember the unbalanced me, I remember all the testing of the boundaries though, all the finding of the outlines that defined my character and my values, that’s true. 🙂

They do, their spirit starts to shine through, they definitely become more interesting, more alive… or more lived, and deeper. A good thing.

I was just peeking at your profile, and your comment about being a stepmother brought to mind an experience: my eldest son is from a previous relationship, but I’ve been with my husband since he was a babykins of 3. Anyway, at around fiveish, he said to him “You’re my bis-papa” (in Spanish). Bis I’m sure you know from showbiz, but in Spanish it’s used also for great-grandparents (bisabuelos), so it’s like a mixture between my second dad and my great-dad… it was very sweet, my husband appreciated it.

I imagine, my boss has very recently got married, and her husband has a twenty-something year old son, and she has another… complex.

Denis Wallez I think that often enough, women are more complex in how they act out their relationships. Of course, I also think we educate them to act this way, but that doesn’t make it go away.

Daniela Huguet Taylor My mother used to describe it to me and I didn’t believe her because it seemed unfathomable.  When I moved to NY and started working I met many women who were married to men who had children by a prior marriage and I would heart stories about how challenging it can be and, again, I didn’t want to believe it because I thought, for instance, “She’s such a good person, how can this be?”  When I got married I can’t even count the number of women who gave me the “list” of books to read.  It seemed unfathomable, outrageous, incomprehensible.  But then that is exactly why the books are written.  Because there is deep cultural programming about what “mother” and “father” mean and how we are to behave toward those people.  There is deep cultural programming about the definition of “family” and “love” (the subject of this post?).  The introduction of a stepparent changes the dynamic significantly and in ways that defy words.  It rarely has anything to do with whether someone is a good person or not.  It has to do with relationships that are very primal, often fragile, and where there can be a tremendous amount of unresolved issues as a result of divorce.  Let’s just say I respect family therapists a great, great deal and wish there were more of them in this  world and accessible to everyone who needed them!

Denis Wallez I think that is exactly right.  What is interesting is that evolutionary factors point to this behavior.  It’s not simply a matter of Let’s be like this, or Let’s allow ourselves to be like this, or We want to be like this.  For instance, I have heard fathers lament that the “bonding” time a mother has with a breast feeding baby gives Mom a leg up while he’s off slaying a saber tooth tiger.  Those bonding factors then get reinforced culturally.  You may or may not have read the big study that came out last year that says that men are evolutionarily as “primed” to care for young children as women and that, in fact, their testosterone levels drop when they are home caring for their families.  This flies in the face of those who would say that caring for young children is “women’s work.”  I posted about this when it first came out.  But this is another, interesting, thread and leads to another discussion about why, perhaps all this is still considered “women’s work,” inspite of what evolutionary biologists now believe to be true.  My own theory is that the “cultural belief” is deeply tied into economics.

As for stepmothering, it is a vastly complex and interesting subject matter.  I vote for a cultural shift where people’s notions about parenting and love and raising children evolves to allow for more outside influences.

SO agree! My husband was so involved in rearing his first child that our son kept confusing our names, sometimes I was papa, sometimes he was mama, then he transitioned (at 2/3) to ma-pa for him, pa-ma for me, because he corrected himself halfway, before finally “getting it right”. Obviously we were just two parents to him. 🙂

There is the possibility Denis Wallez that the way you “see” it is a bias of its own kind.  If our environments, parents, education, diets, economic circumstances didn’t have a huge effect on how we “see,” then all people would experience everything in life the same way.  But this isn’t true.  I am always interested every time I go to a movie with someone and we “watch” the same frames on the screen but it is as though we saw two completely different movies.  Which of us was/is the biased one?  Or perhaps both?

In the way you expressed that you make it sound like the only thing at play in your brother’s choice(s) (which are/were different than your own?) was the fact that your parents gave you “freedom.”  Again, we each move through the world in different and unique ways.  We each could have the same “experience” or life events, but come away affected by it in entirely different ways. You write that your brother “clings” to traditional roles.  Are you not also “clinging” in some way to whatever role is yours?  And do we not all do that to one degree or another?  I had a conversation with an Evolutionary Psychologist this weekend who said, essentially, that although people believe they have free will, the brain is “doing it’s own thing,” not at all under the “control” of the person’s free will.  Positive constructs vs. Negative constructs?

For the record, I completely believe in free will and almost always, if you look closely, write about freedom.  It is the thing that interests me more than anything else.  And so the Evolutionary Psychology groove I find particularly fascinating.  Just because I might not agree with something doesn’t mean I won’t come at it from every conceivable side and turn it over and over and over.

Where it really gets interesting, where pretty much everything gets interesting to me, is not only our behavior on a daily basis, what we believe about ourselves and others and what we put out into the world, but what we create, and here I’m speaking artistic creation.  

But this is an entirely different thread and topic to the one I began here.  But…that said, were I to make a feeble attempt to tie it all together, I would say that our friends Larry and Sergei know not fully and consciously that what they hath created!

Denis Wallez you might have guessed I am buried in a family sea of scientist/doctor types: one spine surgeon, one radiologist, two orthopods, one neurologist, one evolutionary psychologist, one child psychologist (with a focus on autism).  All brilliant.  And then there’s me, the writer, actor/director, designer, pilot, cook.  You can just imagine our conversations, I’m sure… 😉