The Empress Book Club: Is midlife women's pleasure a luxury? 🍆🛀💆♀️
Author Amanda Montei nails the key question! Plus, more questions!
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Fellow Empresses, Happy Weekend… How the hell are you?
Reflecting on Glynnis MacNicol’s I'm Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself, I admire her sense of empowerment, confidence, and self-assurance. However, due to my seizure disorder (which only started during perimenopause), I’m not someone who can take the risks that come with using platforms like Tinder or Fruitz. If I were to have an episode, it could become unsafe.
Even without my condition, I’ve never been comfortable with casual hookups. They often feel too transactional. If I’m going to be vulnerable with someone, I want there to be more depth—a sense of story, romance, and commitment.
But setting my personal reservations aside…
posed a thought-provoking question to MacNicol during her recent book club discussion: “Is midlife women’s pleasure a luxury?”With the daily demands of work, family, childcare, eldercare, and just keeping up with our own self-care, pleasure can start to feel like an indulgence—a “nice-to-have.” When you’re running on fumes and craving nothing more than a good night’s sleep, it’s easy to question whether there’s room for anything more.
Of course, we deserve it—but on our own terms.
The Next Read!
Or drop another suggestion in the comments! Just a sidebar, I’ve resisted including Dr. Mary Clare Haver’s new book because she so aggressively pushes unproven supplements, along with her pricey meal plan, that it feels like the menopause industrial complex is poised to exploit women at their most vulnerable. But I’m always open to different views, so let me know!
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Yours in Grandeur & Deep Sh*t,
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Among my cohort of GenX perimenopausal women there is a general consensus that we gotta take a stand about pleasure, because it's one of the most powerful weapons against midlife grimness (that's the occasional shitty mood that can make you think you'll never be joyful, sensual, or alive again). But I think it has to be intentional pleasure, and it has to be skewed in a good-for-you direction. For example, I'm all about food pleasure, but I'm not about like, 4 CHOCOLATE BARS ARE 4X THE PLEASURE because that just turns into pain real fast. I'm glad that Glynis and her friends are out here with their pain au chocolat and endless charcuterie boards, but I just learned that high cholesterol is French women's dirty little secret, so maybe it's about moderation, at least more than her book makes it seem! https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7738064/#:~:text=Prevalence%20of%20hypercholesterolemia%20in%20France,%2C%2013.2%25%20of%20women).
Any chance you’d consider a woman/women centered novel like last time? I find that the medical information can change on a dime, or a nickel since women are paid less. Hehe. Obviously, if your subscribers are wanting the med memoirs ignore me. I went ahead and found a few titles if interested.