cosmetic surgery doesn't cure invisibility

Farah is a beautiful woman of 54 who never married or had kids, preferring instead a life of serial relationships. She had enjoyed admiring glances all of her life until she reached the age of 49 and realized that very few people -- especially men -- were looking at her.

"I'd walk down the street or enter a crowded room and heads no longer turned," confides Farah. "And this wasn't just the men. Even women stopped looking at me with their usual envious glances."

Farah took a long look at herself in a full-length mirror and saw nothing significantly different. What had happened? Why had she become invisible?

"Becoming ‘invisible’ is a phenomenon that a lot of menopausal women talk about," says Farah. "They think that they don’t look any different, but they do. People don’t look at old women."

"Apparently, we are all hardwired to look at youthful beauty," says Farah. "A woman can still be beautiful in her 90s, but it is youth that nature favors and it is youth that attracts the eyes of passers by and the attention of male suitors."

"At 50, a woman really needs to say goodbye to youth and dating and say hello to maturity and a solid relationship," says Farah, "but I wasn’t ready to give up the ghost yet. It was time to consult with a cosmetic surgeon."

"The only part of my body that I felt needed enhancement was my breasts," says Farah. "Okay, I know it seems odd that I thought a breast enhancement would cause heads to turn once again, but that was the way my menopausal brain worked and I went ahead and had the operation."

Farah is now a 54 year old woman with the breasts of an 18 year old girl.

She couldn’t wait to proudly flaunt her new bosom to the world. She bought some low cut tops and entered as many rooms and walked down as many streets as she could. The result?

"Well, yes," admits Farah, "I am definitely getting looks, but they are not the type of looks I previously received. The looks are a mixture of pity and disbelief rather than admiration."

After realizing that she had made a fool of herself, Farah gave away the low cut tops and resumed her normal life.

She still admires her new breasts and never regrets having the operation done, but she doesn’t flaunt them any more. They make her feel good about herself, and that, according to her cosmetic surgeon, is the best reason for any woman to go under the knife.

"If it’s going to make you feel good," Farah advises, "just do it!"

Like a lot of fifties women, Farah has now adapted to being invisible. She doesn’t have to worry so much about being impeccably made up, coiffed and dressed to the nines every time she goes out. She’s learning to relax and just be herself and maybe in time a nice old gentleman will take her fancy.

Unfortunately, though, Farah recently discovered to her horror that her before and after pictures had been posted on the Internet by the cosmetic surgeon -- without her permission.

"From invisibility, I've gone to global visibility," laughs Farah. "My face isn't shown, thank God - just my breasts - and while I don't mind my new breasts being displayed to the world, I'd rather my old ones weren't!"

Farah's story first appeared as the invisible woman

creepy crawly itching

Everyone’s heard about the seven-year itch, but the fifty-year itch is something new for Sylvie, a married empty nester.

Sylvie says that the only real problem with being 50 is the itch that somehow came with the age. It is most noticeable at night - when her whole body crawls with itchy sensations and begs to be scratched - but she also has an itch during the day, too.

"It happens in no particular part of my body," explains Sylvie, "and it doesn’t seem to be related to changes in temperature either. It's very weird."

At first Sylvie thought it was an allergic reaction to something she had eaten or touched, and she went through a laborious process of monitoring her diet and how she washed her clothing before concluding that the itch was not related to these things.

She then imagined that the creatures that lived in symbiosis with us – in or on our bodies – had increased in population for some reason, and needed to be drastically culled.

Sylvie achieved this strange task by scrubbing her body twice a day, and drinking twice as much water to flush out the creatures.

The itch continued.

Sylvie is not the sort of woman who visits a doctor at the slightest change to her health, and she had sailed through menopause without much trouble, so she really did not want the embarrassment of asking a doctor about what this itch was and how to get rid of it.

"What if the doctor didn’t know of such things and thought me a silly old woman?" asks Sylvie.

She finally accepted that the itch must be a symptom of menopause that she just has to live with. And she does, with as much grace as she can.

In her book 'You Can Heal Your Life', Louise Hay describes the real cause of itching (pruritis) as being desires that go against the grain. Unsatisfied. Remorse. Itching to get out or get away.

Sylvie was surprised to read what Louise Hay had to say about itching – it made sense.

"I have been a housewife for most of my adult life," says Sylvie, "and since my children left home a few years ago I have been 'itching' to do something exciting with my life but my husband is a stick in the mud type. He doesn’t want to move, he doesn’t even want to change the children’s bedrooms. He wants everything to go on as before."

It is likely that Sylvie will continue to have a fifty-year itch until she makes a decision to do something exciting with her life, with or without her husband’s permission.

"If the itch is related to unsatisfied desires as Louise Hay indicates," muses Sylvie, "then it's worth buying the book and showing it to my husband."

"This itch of mine is driving him mad as well," laughs Sylvie, "so he may be willing to let me do something exciting in order to see whether it gets rid of the itch."

"I know I shouldn't have to ask his permission," adds Sylvie, "but that's how our marriage works. He's the boss and I'm the little woman. I like things that way."

(Sylvie's story first appeared as the fifty-year itch and is reprinted with permission.)