Baby Boomers: Women in Bloom

Getting Over Getting Older, Letty Cottin Pogrebin, Berkley Books, 1996

Don't you just hate when a friend keeps insisting there's a book you MUST read? Whether it sounds interesting or not? I have just become that friend. I've been handing out copies of Getting Over Getting Older to all my women friends. Pogrebin's credentials are impeccable; as a co-founder of Ms magazine, she's certainly proved her feminisim. So don't expect coy tips on making yourself seem younger than you are.

Instead, the book forced me to re-examine some of my perceptions of myself as an older woman. It also addresses head-on some of our fears about aging and dying. It's not a new book, but it is a timeless one. Don't take my word for it:

From Booklist , March 15, 1996
Like Sheehy, Greer, and Steinem, Pogrebin has been a pathfinder for female war babies and baby boomers. As a magazine writer, a founding editor of Ms., and author of seven other books (most recently Deborah, Golda, and Me [1991]), she's shared so much with readers that her examination of aging from the "inside out" delivers sometimes uncomfortable truths in a very familiar voice. "Since I turned fifty," Pogrebin declares, "two things have become crystal clear to me: first, the American obsession with age deflects people, especially women, from the truth of the human condition, which is the diminishment of time and the inevitability of our own death. Second, it is the time/mortality epiphany that lies at the very heart of our fear of aging." It is our mix of obsession and denial Pogrebin aims to dispel, urging readers to age mindfully, rejoice in challenges and surprises, and notice life's precious details. Blending anecdotes and analysis, she describes how it feels to age; takes on concerns about appearance, health, sex, and menopause; and examines relationships--and life and death--from the vantage point of middle age. Based in feminism but often disagreeing with other feminist works, Pogrebin's lively meditation on later life's realities will both enlighten and encourage readers. Mary Carroll

From Kirkus Reviews , February 15, 1996
Yet another feminist offers an up-close and personal examination of trekking into middle age. Pogrebin's (Deborah, Golda, and Me, 1991, etc.) friends groaned when they heard she was writing about aging; how depressing, they thought. Readers may groan as well at the prospect of another paean to growing older. But Pogrebin, now 56, brings some fresh insights to the process, particularly in a discussion of what time means once you're over the hill. Pogrebin places herself in that small cohort born between 1932, when FDR was elected president, and 1945, the end of WW II. She labels this group ``the Roosevelt babies,'' calling them (and herself) ``unself-conscious trailblazers,'' mapping the territory of longevity for the Boomers. ``Time is all there is,'' she says, so don't hoard it or waste it trying to recapture youth. ``Use it or lose it'' is but one piece of T-shirt advice that she passes along, in company with poetry and observations from May Sarton, Simone de Beauvoir, and feminist peers from her early years at Ms. magazine.

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