“Male menopause is a lot more fun than female menopause. With female menopause you gain weight and get hot flashes. Male menopause - you get to date young girls and drive motorcycles.”
Rita Rudner
Now being a woman in her early forties, I am beginning to notice certain signs of where gravity seems to be playing a rather severe hand.
When I hit 41 last year – I noticed that my 6 pack had suddenly “gone with the wind”. Excuse the pun. I looked down at my once iron board flat stomach and almost had a hernia. There in front of me, puffed out was a “mini me.” Another little Esther had surfaced and was trying to squeeze its naughty self out further into full view of the public.
Instantly, I remember calling two good friends, whimpering down the phone that “I’ve got a mini me. What should I do?” they responded by laughing in hysterics. Any thoughts of receiving the sympathy vote, went out through the window. I wanted to slam the phone down on them, damaging their eardrums. I wanted to holler and scream like a spoilt child that “how dare they jest at such a life changing event!”
I then scampered into my children’s room where I went into the dramatics of showing them, just how “mummy’s little belly had gone belly side up and that I now looked 1 day pregnant.” Both boys just looked at me with that “why are you in our room bothering us with trivial claptrap” and continued to play whatever game they were playing. I was horrified at the lack of sympathy. Why! This had never happened to me before and I did not know how I would cope.
I then decided to go through all the dilemmas to ascertain, just how, indeed, did “mini me” just appear like that and to ponder on the strategy I would have to use to reduce this inflation. My list, therefore went something like this:
Had I eaten a huge amount of bread that day?
Had I eaten too many vegetables – (Because you know they cause wind)
Had I been negligent in doing my sit-ups on a regular basis?
Had I eaten something that did not agree with me?
Or had gravity just chosen to play a rather horrid game with me deciding that the 6-pack had to go?
Distressed I called up another friend and put number two above to her. Yes, she giggled down the phone, it could be wind. I certainly felt much better for those words of assurance and I finally managed to get myself some shut eye for once in a rather long time.
The next day, I bounced out of bed to find that indeed, “mini me” had gone down. So it was flatulence after all I mused, as I got read. Two hours later after breakfast I noticed that mini me had surfaced once again. Now I could’ve done one of two things. Shoved my fingers down my throat bringing up my bowl of yoghurt and fruit OR taken another dose of Ex-lax. Either way, and 6 months down the line, neither have worked and mini me now seems to be a permanent fixture.
If I tried to suck in my gut anymore, I felt that my eyes would surely remain in a bulbous position and my mouth form into a rather bitter snout, just from the exertion of holding in my gut for more than 24 hours. Also, I do not think I could do anymore sit ups without incurring a snapped spinal chord and being admitted to hospital for over-exertion.
So I have had to come to terms with the inevitable. Go with the flow and learn to love myself at every stage of this every growing stomach. When I run now, I can feel mini me bouncing up and down, as if it’s got a life. When I put on my swimsuit, there goes mini me, showing off in front of everyone, jumping into the pool first before I do, and being the last part of my body to drag out of the pool. But hey, what’s a gal to do other than pray that the backside does not decide to move in a horizontal position and that my top half does not decide to take a dive, whilst moving up another cup size. Or I guess the opposite could happen where they just shrivel and the only ting distinguishing my front from my back would be the way I do up my buttons
“I have no boobs whatsoever. On my wedding night my husband said, 'Let me help you with those buttons' and I told him, 'I'm completely naked'. Joan Rivers
