firstwivesworld - Women Are Wonderful - Comments

Yep -- taking assessment of our Friendships -- Good!

Wanda Woodard — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 09:38:46 -0400

Stereotyping females, bad. Thank you, CM. Women are so wonderful, and they have always been more important to me than my relationships with men.

Fricking Change!

Wanda Woodard — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 09:36:58 -0400

Luckily, Cathy, I had my hot flashes while living in Anchorage -- the cold really helped. Hee Hee And, by the way, you have been a tremendous influence on my life, but I didn't feel that I could sum you up in a short graph -- it would take chapters I tell you!

Too funny!

Wanda Woodard — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 09:35:43 -0400

Alice, that is priceless! Thank you for sharing this. Seems like we all have funny women stories and that play did at least remind me of that. Thank you!

HA!!

Cathy Meyer — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 14:35:41 -0400

I wish someone had sent a note home about "the change" before I went through it. Nice post Wanda. It made me stop and think about all the wonderful women who have influenced my life over the years. There have been quite a few.

Menopause the Musical

Alice Brooks — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 23:21:25 -0400

I'm in the middle of writing my own women tributes - funny. But funnier is my friend Scott's Menopause the Musical story: he takes his students to a series of plays every year, and, last year, the last play in the series was canceled and replaced by Menopause. He drafted a letter to parents letting them know about the switch, and gave it to the Office Manager to send home. She called him into the office later that day, asking if he was sure he wanted to phrase things that way. At the bottom of the letter he had written, "Just wanted to let you know about the change!"

I am going to take a cue

Guest — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 17:49:38 -0400

I am going to take a cue from you and write a little bit about each of the women in my life that have affected me- and celebrate the facets of each of those people. We are NOT stereotypes nor should we "fit" into a mold of a type of person. As an actress I have been doing that for most of my life. Thank you for reminding me of the wonderful and complex people in my life! You are amazing! CM

Women Are Wonderful

Wanda Woodard — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 14:00:00 -0400

We went to see "Menopause, The Musical" in Nashville last week. The four women in the play were talented, good singers, good actresses. It worked.

But I wasn't overly fond of it. I'm not sure I'd recommend it. Even though it had a few good lines and one very good Tina Turner impression, it was slightly annoying — four women singing new lyrics to old songs playing off the fun and the misery of going through menopause.

Had this musical come out in the 1970s, it would have been much more effective. The topic of menopause wasn't polite table talk then. Today, you can't even turn on the TV (day or night) without hearing about our periods and birth control and erectile dysfunction — please!

So, four women singing and dancing and making fun of menopause just didn't do it for me.

Another problem with the play was that it offered up four female stereotypes that are very, very tired. The corporate executive (sure, she was African American), the Susan Lucci aging-actress type, the Iowa housewife visiting the Big Apple, and the hippie Earth mother.

The audience was filled with what we used to call "gray hairs." It was mostly women and only a few brave men laughed and seemed to find the play hilarious. So I wondered what was wrong with me.

Jaded, I suppose. That and the fact that women are so wonderfully complicated, yet simple and unique. Every woman I have ever truly loved had her own special offering for this Earth. No woman I ever loved remotely behaved as any one of the four women on stage.