I finally did it! Last week I threw out all my thong underwear!

I'm forty-seven years old, so it was a bit overdue. You see, like  many Trauma Queens, I  came to believe at an early age that my value as a human being was planted firmly between my legs. I was my abuser's precious little princess until I started my period at the age of twelve. That's when he stopped sexually abusing me. That's also when he stopped calling me his little peaches n cream, and started calling me a cunt, a whore, and a worthless piece of shit. Clearly this becoming a woman thing was not going to be easy.

So anyway, here I am, thirty-five years later, with menopause on the horizon, and I am finally beginning to get it that being precious and beautiful has nothing to do with being sexually attractive. Think about it. Some of the most precious and beautiful people in your life are people  you  have never, would never, and could never have sex with. You don't even want to think about them having sex- with anyone- period. 

I  resisted embracing this truth for years. Hey, I thought, what's wrong with wanting to be sexy? If I can still wear a thong and look good in tight jeans at my age, why shouldn't I? If it's acceptable for teenage girls to run around  with their bellies exposed and their thong undies showing, why shouldn't it be acceptable for a sexually confident  middle-aged woman?

Unfortunately, the wise woman who lives in my brain had an answer.  The smart ass quietly replied, "Teenage girls do not yet have fully developed frontal lobes. They are vulnerable and clueless and incapable of reason. They depend upon sexually confident middle-aged women to model a self-defined and empowered sexuality for them, so they  can learn that they are sexual beings rather than sexual objects." Damn. that hit a bullseye and it hurt.  

What's good for the gosling is just plain irresponsible for the goose. Not to mention a bit pathetic.

But why should I age gracefully? Why should I surrender to sagging and wrinkling and  bulging? As stated in the opening sequence from The Bionic Man, "We can rebuild ourselves. We have the technology. We have the capability to build the world's first ageless woman. We can be made better than we were before. Firmer, smoother, and built like a brick shithouse."

Why should I  "go gently into that good night"? Why shouldn't I "rage, rage, against the dying of the light"?

Because I would like to live another forty years, and I don't want to spend the last precious decades of my life raging. Or in an operating recovery room.

Those nasty thongs were causing something called "urethral syndrome," which is a lovely condition that causes a woman to feel like she has to pee all the time. It's bad enough that at my age I actually do have to pee all the time. The last thing I need is  my urethra  taunting my poor over-worked bladder with endless crank calls.

So - the thongs are history. And so is a too-long phase of my life during which I only felt visible  when being ogled by a man.  Good riddance.

Cut, chop, suck, and inject as much as you like, sisters (and brothers, too). Young people have a sexual beauty that is forever lost to us. And you know what? It's okay. We're still beautiful, just not in that lush young hormonal way. We can survive this. We can be beautiful in a million other ways.

Now that age fifty is looming (two years, eight months and counting) I am actually beginning to believe that I will one day be as beautiful as my grandmother. (She died two years ago at the age of eighty-eight).

I can't describe her beauty in words. Words do not suffice. So I have included a photo of her taken when she was eighty-one years old.

My hope for the world is that we will never be deprived of  uncut, uninjected,  eighty year old beauty  like hers.

Joan Rivers, eat your heart out!