A Woman’s Nation v. A Woman’s World

Surgery day today. Worked at an ambulatory surgery center where I take my older, healthier children who are unlikely to have trouble during and after surgery. It is usually a nice, relaxed atmosphere.

That is it was until my last tonsillectomy of the day. After the surgery completion, I call the mother into the consultation room. Magazine in hand, she entered clearly distressed. I launched into my shtick about what we found at surgery (we always talk in the royal “we” when discussing surgery, even though it is “I” who did the cutting, but “we” are the essential people who make it all possible.) I told her what to expect and how to take the medications and what to do if there was any post-operative bleeding. She nodded and seemed to take it all in.

Then she thrust a copy of the magazine Woman’s World towards my side of the small, round conference table. Its bright yellow and orange cover screamed:

TIRED? CAN’T LOSE WEIGHT? Energize Your Metabolism with 7-day Energy Surge Diet and Lose 10 lbs this week!

LOOK 8 YEARS YOUNGER and live 5 years longer. Find the hidden cause of wrinkles, arthritis, heart disease and Alzheimers!

Attract friends like a magnet! Charisma secrets that really work!

She said to me, “All the magazines for girls and women talk about how to lose weight. How come they don’t say ‘Be happy, relax, enjoy…..?’”

At first I didn’t know what to think. Then I remembered that her daughter’s surgery was done for sleep apnea which was discovered after her very smart psychiatrist ordered a sleep study for this teen with recent onset mood disorder, excess anxiety and disordered, restless sleep patterns. Obstructive sleep apnea is being recognized increasing each day and is almost as epidemic as obesity in children. It wears many faces depending on the age of the child/adolescent. Academic and behavioral problems are prominent features of this disorder for many.

Intrigued and more than empathetic, I listened as she told me how her daughter (and every other teenage girl) was constantly being assaulted and insulted by the messages that these magazines and other media transmit. And, I thought, the message has not changed in 40 years.

The message: If you want to be a successful, seductive, sought after woman, you need to lose weight, look younger, and learn to be charismatic.

Where is Shriver’s Woman’s Nation where women are wonderful when they wear a business suit and woo their way to the top (or at least into a job more often than men) with their where-with-all? Is this woman’s nation really part of the woman’s world that many women live in, especially young, not yet fully-formed women?

Mom tells me that her daughter is in honors classes but spends more (less productive) time stressing over boys and friends. The girl is so anxious that she doesn’t sleep and is often distraught. This is no idyllic teenage hood, if one such does exist. And is this mother hoping, as am I, that her problems all derive from the fact that she is (or should I say “was” if she falls into the 85% who should get relief after T&A surgery) so affected by altered sleep patterns that she could not face the stress of growing up in today’s woman’s world?

This story emerges as important as I begin to realize that girls and women too often have to deal with constant, uninterrupted levels of stress in their everyday lives. Some cope, some thrive, but many too many do not.

What are the messages we are giving to our children? Where are they coming from? What is really a medical illness and what is a social illness? And where do they intersect?

Answering these questions has become part of my quest. A corollary question: Are women more often ill because they are battered from birth with impossible choices, competing messages and complexities that are beyond psycho-physiological integration? Stay tuned as I try to dissect out these thorny issues, and maybe on the way help a family or two.