by Edwige Charlot, Guest Blogger This post is a response to “Why Do Mothers-in-Law Get A Bad Rap?” published on WOW on June 20th . From my time as the girlfriend, I knew that if my then boyfriend and I ever got married I’d be marrying into his family. By the time we were engaged, I was already well versed in the mother- in-law [...]
Pat Taub
Maybe you’re on vacation facing an all-day rain, or you’re laid up with a summer cold, or you simply want to escape the maddening crowd to binge video, but you face too many choices. How to settle on a video that won’t have you restless ten minutes in? To help you I’ve compiled a list of some of my favorite videos featuring strong [...]
Pat Taub
In her bestseller, Bad Feminist, 40-year-old Roxane Gay calls herself a “bad feminist” because she likes Hip-hop music with sexist lyrics, “Law and Order” (which abounds in rape plots), anything pink, and Vogue. I assume Gay, a third wave feminist, consulted the second wave feminist playbook when drawing the conclusion that she’s [...]
Pat Taub
Marching (briefly) with Pride Supporters Last Friday night, the day before the big Saturday Pride March, I was walking to dinner with my friend Lisa when we encountered a group of unofficial Pride marchers, undaunted by the rain, marching in a take-back-the-streets spirit. We briefly joined in, staying with the group for a few blocks [...]
Pat Taub
“A mother-in-law should be blind in one eye and deaf in one ear.” —Armenian proverb Without going to this extreme, many contemporary mothers-in-law make conscious efforts to monitor their behavior, but often to no avail. Once a woman becomes a mother-in-law she’s typically the butt of mother-in-law jokes and pejorative labels. [...]
Pat Taub
For me, summer reading is all about picking up an actual book, which I do throughout the year, but not with the same frequency. Summer reading is the time to indulge myself with the physical world of print: to turn paper pages, admire beautiful covers and recapture those summers before books were downloaded. First on my list is Arundhati Roy’s The [...]
Pat Taub
“I’m not done with my transformation.” Alexandra Merrill, on the cusp of 80, quoting Stanley Kunitz in his poem, The Layers, which he wrote upon turning 90. Zanda, as she is called, embodies aging meaningfully. I’m proposing substituting “aging meaningfully” with the commonly used phrase “aging successfully,” [...]
Pat Taub
by Ed Mooney, guest blogger In my 20’s and 30’s, feminism seemed to open the door to reflections about being a male. It was the early seventies. Wanting to be close to the action, my wife and young son and I moved to Berkeley. It was a period of social upheaval and political violence marked by the Civil Rights struggle and the Free Speech, [...]
Pat Taub
Today marks my 100th posting since launching WOW in August 2015. WOW came about when, looking for resources for my course “Women and Aging,” I goggled “blogs for older women.” To my dismay the vast majority consisted of advice on how to dress younger, lure a man, up your sex drive, cosmetic surgery and the like. In other words, how [...]
Pat Taub
I propose that we expand Mother’s Day so that we honor not just our biological mothers but also our spiritual mothers. Our spiritual mothers are the teachers, neighbors, aunts, family friends and others whose influence made an indelible impression on us. Frequently these women didn’t have their own children but lovingly nurtured and guided [...]
Pat Taub