Contrary to all the horror stories I’d heard about perimenopausal brain fog, bloating and general misery, when it hit me in my late 40s, I felt dipped in some sort of hormonal nectar. My skin glowed, my hair got thick and luscious and overnight, my boobs grew an entire cup size.
At the time, were I not fresh out of a long, sexless marriage, I would have thought I was pregnant. With this hormonal surge came a long-forgotten horniness — driven by being newly single in beautiful Paris — and a seemingly unlimited supply of “just-unmarried” flings with every variety of French man.
“Magnifique!” they whispered over glasses of rosé, staring into my eyes as their fingers grazed mine.
Apparently, I was still beautiful, even though I was officially middle-aged — two conditions I had been led to believe could not coexist. And this was of primary importance to me, because in spite of a successful professional life, happy motherhood to two lovely children and a community of good friends, deep down I believed that the thing that really mattered about me was men finding me desirable.
This was the toxic consequence of childhood sexual abuse that started when I was 10. Prior to that, I had little awareness of my appearance, other than being constantly mistaken for a boy due to the extremely short hair cuts imposed on me by my mother. To cope with the cruelty of classmates, I dogmatically played up a tomboy persona. Then my best friend’s father began regularly putting his hand down my pants. This coincided with more childhood cruelty: an anonymous list circulating in my sixth-grade class that divided the girls into ”pretty” or ”smart.” You could only be in one category. I got “pretty.”
