Laura Collins Lyster-Mensh's Blog, page 8

Put your Geritol in a sippy cup and listen: Episode 5 up today!

Please picture me this week on my fainting couch  Pondering the word "STILL"
Thinking differently about linen closets after my conversation with Pepper Schwartz
Trying to imagine what Geritol really tastes like... in a sippy cup
Considering my AARP cardThinking about cancer and sex.And contemplating fat and sex.
And fantasizing about having Amy Schumer as a guest on the podcast as soon as she turns 50...
Join me for Episode 5 of OUR BETTER HALF PODCAST, available NOW.

Chastity belts: still a thing? Or were they ever?

Among the delights of being a podcaster on the topic of sex: talking to fascinating people.

Interviewed the standup comic, Steve Ochs recently, and got his take on how sex is like improv. 

Breathed and squeezed through my Kegel exercises with a vulva ventriloquist, Laura-Doe. 

Found the key to chastity belts.



 And Grandma Lisa called out unicorns with Carrie.



And that's all just in Episode 4, published today. Listen now!

Episode 3, fresh and online now!

Rhymes with Bagel?

Leave your #kegel sounds for the next podcast and tell us how YOU say it: https://t.co/VCkUETHYrz— Our Better Half (@LauraOver50) January 20, 2016

What my first social security statement taught me about Hollywood

I spoke on today's podcast episode of OUR BETTER HALF about my first paid gig. Me and my family were extras in a movie starring Lloyd Bridges and Shirley Jones. I realized then, at the age of eight, that I'd rather write than act!

Listen to the episode to hear what movies friends nominated on social media for my list of stories featuring lovers over 50 years old.

Also, find out about a real ants in the pants issue, hear interviews with a website magazine founder and a sex toy creator -- entrepreneurs with observations on sex in that "second half" of life.

Enjoy!

EPISODE 2: Boy toys, Viva Fifty, whaler's wives, and ants!

Why you shouldn't listen to me about sex, but probably will anyway

If you needed a reason to wonder what on earth I am doing hosting a podcast about sex, this infographic should be a clue. 
I misspelled "benis."The girl is shooting sperm back at the dude.The sperm are the size of hamburgers.It's sexist: why is "Boy" capitalized and not "girl?You couldn't even catch the flu from this distance.The girl has six limbs. Or two tails. I was probably seven years old at the time, but still. Some people have midlife crises: others start podcasts. Against all odds and good sense the first episode of Our Better Half is now available.


You can subscribe on iTunes
You can listen on the SoundCloud site
You can use the Stitcher app

Mistletoe, mischief, and coming OUT

This hasn't been a secret nor have I tried to keep quiet on it but for some reason saying it here on my blog makes it real: I'm working on an "easily amused" podcast series about SEX.

SEX after 50, which seems to shock people far more than just SEX. Why is it that the topic of sex over 50 makes people giggle and then confess?

Are we more shy about sex than younger people or are we more shy about seeming older?

Well, I'm over it. I feel like I closed my Our Bodies Our Selves in 1977 and then forgot to update myself since then. As an old married broad with children I've spent way more years making my kids roll their eyes than my parents.

But no, I'm not planning to start oversharing my own (quite happy*) sex life, except in passing. I'm interested in learning what I missed while I've been busy travelling the world and having kids and, as of this week, launching those kids into legal adulthood. There are vocabulary words I don't recognize, places on the Internet I didn't know about, even technologies that expand our sense of what sexuality is. There's a growing problem with sexually transmitted illnesses (they even changed the name!) among older folk, and ageism in healthcare is a problem. Many boomers are caring for even older parents and dealing with issues like sexual rights in nursing home care!

I have always considered myself positive, if prudish, about sex. I expected to remain a sexual being until I was dead. No one told me I was supposed to stop in the second half of life, so it came as a shock and annoyance when the giggles turned to snickering. Nope: not having it. There are sexual health and happiness issues attendant to getting older but the right to the pursuit of sexual happiness is not reserved for the young: what a waste!

So, tally ho. (sorry. everything sounds like a double entendre now...) Go see the site, go subscribe to the podcast which will be available on iTunes and Stitcher and all the usual podcast sites, as well as available to listen online or download from SoundCloud. Learn with me; laugh with me!

OUR BETTER HALF, the podcast: first episode early January 2016!

** Deliriously, gloriously, delightfully happy, for the record, and to make sure my husband reads my blog.

vote now for YOUR favorite film featuring lovers who are over 50 years old

Yes, Dorothy, there are films featuring lovers over 50. Not having 50 lovers, though that MAY be true.

Rankings will be announced in January on Our Better Half podcast.

Vote or add your own!

Transcript for AED F.E.A.S.T. Twitterchat last night now available!

If you missed it, and regrettably I did, you can read the transcript for last night's Twitterchat with the Academy For Eating Disorders on the topic of
The Road to Recovery: Caregivers as Partners in Treatment #AEDchatwith guests from F.E.A.S.T.

What a fantastic chat: inspiring and including some of the most important things parents and clinicians need to know when it comes to caregivers!

Getting naked for a good cause

No, I'm not stripping down! But I see a lot of it going on: supposedly empowering commercials featuring non-standard sizes of women in their underwear, for example. Activists stripping down in public and trusting strangers to hug or write on them. Daring to go bare.

I get the symbolism: stripping down to one's common, um, denominator is being metaphorically naked and real to the public.

But, really? Why is the standard for body confidence half-naked? Why is it appearance-based at all? Why, indeed, is it about others? For many, just standing in one's skin of a normal day is an act of boldness, alone in their room., fully dressed. It doesn't need to be in public, or shivering in the gaze of strangers.

This brings to mind an era when we were told we were "uptight" if we didn't want to embrace "free love."

I don't know that stripping down to one's skin is necessarily casting off one's self-consciousness. For some it is, and that is be applauded, but it shouldn't be the new standard of being real. I'm real in my clothes. I can be confident in my underwear without displaying my underthings. Confidence in one's body image need not be proved through how many layers we are ready to strip off. In fact, body confidence isn't about how we LOOK, anyway. It is not necessarily lack of self-confidence that keeps our drawers on, it is also social propriety and comfort and privacy.