Do this thing while you’re doing another thing and you won’t even notice you’re doing the one thing.

Or, get stitches in your face when you plant it into a vacuum cleaner.

Is it just me, or are there an inordinate number of articles in mainstream mags/news letters/podcasts/smoke signals - what ever platform you employ to absorb information - with tips and suggestions about things women over 50 should or should not be doing?

“Women Over 50 Should Never Wear These Things,” Tips for being old and miserable-looking because your womb is no longer functional.

1. Don’t wear anything that is remotely cute, ever, and stop wearing cowboy boots with mini skirts, for fuck’s sake. Gross.

2. OMG, is that a bucket hat? Are you shitting me with this? Take it OFF.

3. Why don’t you just move to a bog with a raccoon and feral cats?

4. Is that really a Nirvana tee shirt?

My suggestion to anyone who writes this drivel is this: if you think I made it to 58 to be told what I should and should not wear by a 26 year-old fashion editor fetus or an AI program, you got me entirely fucked up.

Baby, I will wear whatever the heckin’ heck I want to.

Where are the articles that celebrate the fact that I’m old enough to absolutely not GAF about what anyone thinks about what I wear, how I fix my hair and whether or not I wear make-up, and the cancer hasn’t gotten me yet? Sheesh. What’s a gal got to do to get an ‘atta girl’ around here?

This is my favorite tee shirt. I will absolutely wear it.

“Women Over 50 Should Automatically Be Doing These Things,” Easy exercises you can train yourself to do without even realizing it, which means you’re likely doing it incorrectly, but we don’t care - you’re fifty, FFS. Practically dead. The only reason we keep writing this tripe is because women over 50 are our base customer and the only one who haven’t figured out how to access all of our content for free.

1. Your pelvic floor is in grave danger of falling out of your body at the Walmart. We can save you from the despair of having a bulging uterus by insisting that clenching your butthole improves the odds that you will not birth an internal organ in the produce section. Just squeeze your cheeks any time you are standing in front of the stove or driving the grand-kids to school. You’ll have a spastic colon in no time. It probably won’t help when your uterus falls out, but the odds of soiling yourself are reduced exponentially. Or not. We have no idea. Shouldn’t you be in a nursing home? Gah.

2. Are you even breathing enough? That ‘autonomous breathing’ is for peasants - we can teach you to breathe fully and you’ll do it without even thinking about it - if you don’t get a skull fracture from passing out. If you do, it’s your fault, not ours. You should have exhaled better.

I may or may not be personally salty about this one because I planted my face in a vacuum cleaner while deep breathing and vacuuming simultaneously. I think that may be against the law in Ohio, so don’t tell anyone. (Maybe I’m thinking about huffing gas…IDK) Just stop trying to do two things at once. Especially if it involves overriding your autonomous breathing circuit.

It’s true that we don’t utilize the entirety of our diaphragm most of the time. Shallow breathing is normal because we don’t necessarily have to breathe fully to sit and scroll on our phones. Deep breathing is definitely helpful however, you shouldn’t try to do it while doing something else and whoever writes those articles have clearly have never breathed through anything but their mouths.

Until next time, hang on to your uterus and congratulations to those of us who made it through the gauntlet of menopause and absolutely could not care less about whether or not anyone else likes what we’re wearing today.

We like it. That’s what matters.

Stay strong, bog witches of the world. Turn it up and be safe out there.