It made me think about a book I’m been reading: “What Happened to the Girl I Married” by Michael Miller.  Which is good, because I’m reading it as part of the Silicon Valley Moms Group book club. (I write for NYC Moms blog, which is part of the SV Group.  Confused yet?)

Anyway, the book is about a guy (Miller) who spends a year “in his wife’s shoes at home.” (wonder if she wears Blahniks!), as a way to discover what happened to the girl…well, you get the drift.

I know what happened to her.  She lost herself on the way to the dry cleaners and the pediatricians, and the exterminator, and the optometrist, and and and and and.

How does that happen?  How does the day get away from you so fast?  Miller thought his wife was just inefficient. Ha! He learned the hard way what a hard way of living being a full time stay at home Mom can be.

Miller really does give it his all — He tackles the laundry, the cooking, the cleaning. But for all of his realizations — some of which, I admit, are validating and worthwhile to read (I especially liked his idea of SAHMs living life in fragments)– the book is really about him.  His journey.  His conquering it all.  His realization and transformation from corporate egomaniac or domesticated, sympathetic uber-husband and father.

All I could think of while I was reading it was — where is the girl he marred in all of this?  What was she doing while he took over her life to learn how to respect what she does?  Why don’t we hear from her?

I know why.  It’s a man’s world.  Even in a book written to help men understand what their wives go through each day.Even in a book that advises men to acknowledge and praise their wives.(And Michael, I do acknowledge and praise you for doing this.)  Because, what he doesn’t say is: encourage your wife to be herself.  Encourage your wife to follow her own dreams while you hold down the fort.

In the end – he’s just making life more palatable for women (not to mention himself — there’s a lot about getting enough sex)…as long as they’re still at home waiting for him when he gets back from wherever he’s been all day. I don’t mean to say that he hasn’t genuinely changed the way he perceives, appreciates, and communicates with his wife.  He has.  But it’s still a book about men.  About husbands appeasing wives, understanding wives — as if “wife” were some state of being universal to women.

On days like today, I’d love for my husband to read this book – lacking though I found it. Because at least this guy made the attempt.  I’d rather he universalized, instead of personalized the whole thing. I wish he didn’t repeat himself quite so much. (yes, I know.  Your father was a produce man)  but still — he tried.  Which is more than I can say for a lot of husbands I know. (not mine.  of course.  never mine.)

But honsetly, what I really need is a book about how to clean the house, make the beds, do the shopping, wipe the tears, arrange the flowers, prepare the meal, do the dishes, fold the laundry, “do” the husband, and still have time to hang out and be myself.  That book, I’d love. I But until it comes out, I’ll still be searching.

But this particular season of ABC’s The Bachelor has offended me more than any of the others. I’ll assume that since you’re reading a blog you do not live in a media vacuum and so know the premise of the show, but in case you don’t, here it is: gorgeous, six-pack ab flaunting bachelor meets dozens of bachelorettes who don’t know him, but want to be his bride. Then,each week, he humiliates eliminates bachelorettes by offering roses to those who may stay, and none to those who must pack up and haul out, until only two are left. In the end, one of the two gets a proposal, (and the final rose) and the other gets to be emotionally eviscerated on national television.

This season, however, The Bachelor had a twist: bachelor Jason Mesnick (rejected in the final round of the last “Bachelorette”) had a son. A son he wanted to “complete” with a family. Never, in the (admittedly few) episodes I watched, or in any of the somewhat extensive internet research I did on the internet before I wrote this post, did I hear anything much about the child’s mother. I assume he has one. I mean, I know Jason is this, like, totally amazing guy and everything, (did I mention those fabu abs?) but even a publicity-loving, armchair psychology spouting hottie needs a uterus to have a baby.

Did the mother leave Jason alone to raise his son? Unclear. Is she a monster? The show went on and on about how Jason was there so that Ty could get a step-mom. Evidently, three year old Ty only likes big-busted overly made up women with bikini ready bodies.Since that’s who was on the show. So right from the start, the premise bugged me: dad alone (is he really?), raising his son (they never explain the custody arrangement), pimping out involving his little boy in the notoriously high level, full of integrity, reality TV world.

Jason’s two final women were Melissa and Molly. Perky and toothsome, they both proclaimed their “real” love for Jason, all the while knowing that he was being just as intimate with the other woman as he was with her. Then, in Monday’s finale, Jason chose bubbly finalist Melissa, and tossed a shocked Molly out on her limo. This after he spent an entire day and night telling Molly how special she was, how he couldn’t get enough of her. Lovely. ‘

But the ” The Bachelor: After the Final Rose” post-finale show really took the cake. In that show, a teary-eyed Jason tells the host that though he gave it his all with Melissa, he realizes now that they’re just not right for each other. “I don’t want to do this. She doesn’t deserve it. But I have to.” Is what Jason says. Oh really? You had to bring her out in front of a television crew and humiliate her on national television? Breaking up is hard to do, it’s true, but I guess it’s a heck of a lot easier with a camera crew and the prospect of millions of people watching to protect you from her turning you into a eunuch and a bachelor.

Almost worse, was the poor girl’s reaction. Though she held it together on the set, telling him never to call her again and to leave her alone, and pointing out that “giving it his all” had amounted to about six weeks of trying to work it out, she confessed in the omni-present limo, to the omni present camera, that she has decided, at the ripe old age of 25, that there must be something wrong with her.

Well, yes. What’s wrong with you is that you were naive enough to believe that someone who has now TWICE (twice!) tried to “find love” on national television was sincere. What’s wrong with yout is that THERE”S SOMETHING WRONG WITH HIM, with the show, with whole premise of falling in love on TV, but you can’t see it. You, Melissa, are fine. Gullible, but fine. Jason Mesnick may even be fine, for all I know. It’s the producers of this sadistic show that should be whipped with thorny roses by the women they humiliate season after season.

Because the humiliation didn’t end there. Moments after such a “difficult” break-up, Jason asked the publicly rejected Molly for another chance. I hoped she’d say “Are you kidding me? Why should I think you won’t dump me out there in the real world just like you did the other woman? Why would I take back the man who canoodled with me one day, and dropped me like a thorny rose the next.” But Molly didn’t say that. She took him back. Jason and Molly even, like trained animals, performed their PDA routine for the cameras. YUCK! The message to women is: let yourself be humiliated. Let men treat you like their playthings, and manipulate you. Let them pulbicly humiliate you AND THEN MAKE OUT WITH THEM ON NATIONAL TELEVISION. I am so offended on so many levels that I cannot believe it. But mostly, I’m upset for all those young girls out there who watched, and swooned and were moved by Jason’s crocodile tears. I’m worried that a generation of TV watchers will grow up thinking that this is courtship. That it’s OK for the man they’re involved with to expect their fidelity while he gropes the girl in the next room.

Here’s a message for you, girls: IT”S NOT OK.

I’d love to see a show where women stand up for themselves. Where women are valued for brains and wit and charm, and not just for how well they fill out a bikini. (Honestly, the producers of this show find ANY excuse to put the women in bikinis. Lunch time? Bikini Time! Mowing the lawnWatching TV? Bikini Time? Sledding?  Damn the cold – bikini! Flossing your teeth? Bikini again!)

I’m sure the producers of the show are thrilled with my reaction: they’ll think it shows I’m emotionally involved. But the thing is, I’m not. I barely watched the show. This has nothing to do with the people on the show – it’s the entire premise. I’m physically nauseated, morally offended, and hopeful that no one will ever, ever, give me a single red rose.

For a few years now, I’ve felt that I lost that “certain something” that men find attractive. Not that I was ever such a looker, but youth (and, ok 36DD’s) did have their privileges. I used to be able to smile and bat my eyes and have a chance at getting faster service from the plumber, a better cut of meat from the butcher, you know the drill. Now, I’m getting the Patagonia guy comparing me to his mother.

But today, in the Hamptons Bays King Kullen supermarket, I found my audience: men over seventy. Seriously. To these guys, I am a babe. Even today, in my totally formless smock-style Zachary’s Smile sundress (on sale at Barney’s Coop last year, so cute!), Lands End flip flops, and with my twins and husband in tow, these guys couldn’t take their eyes off me. (And in this particular smock dress, trust me “the girls” were NOT on display.)

Now, there was a time when the adulation of septuagenarians might have repulsed me. There was a time when it might have just made me laugh. There was also a time, however, when I didn’t have to search for errant chin hairs in the bathroom mirror. Times change.

Today, the looks those guys were giving me — completely non-threatening, just-looking looks, by the way — made me feel attractive. Hey, the older I get, the younger they seem. I’m not saying that, were the unthinkable to happen, and I were to find myself alone for some reason like aliens abducting my husband, (I can’t even joke about anything more realistic than that) that I would necessarily date men in their seventies. But it’s nice to know I could.

You know, like I don’t really go to the Metropolitan Opera. But it’s only a short walk from my apartment, and it’s nice to know I could go if I wanted to. Or, I don’t plan on getting liposuction, or the totally awesome sounding but I don’t really know enough about it, and yet boy would I love to try it velashape treatment (Velashape people, are you listening?), but it’s nice to know that should my flab get completely out of control, should exercise fail to save my falling buttocks, or should those aliens really appear and abduct the hubby and I need to date again — well it’s nice to know it’s an option.

And these older guys. Well, there are some definite benefits.

1. I’d always be young to them. I mean, hey, no matter how you slice it, thirty years is a big age difference.
2. If it doesn’t work out I won’t have to hang in there for too long. I mean, we’re talking guys who are already in the their 70′s — how much time do you think they’ve got?
3. If I’m not in the mood, I could always hide their Viagra.

Anyway, all of this is moot. I’m not going to be with anyone in his seventies — until my husband hits the big seven-oh. And guess what — for the first four years of his seventies…I’ll still be in my sixties. Check back then, and I’ll tell you how it is to date an older man.

Until then, I’m heading back to King Kullen. I hear they’re having a special on prune juice. My audience should be there in full force.

We have the same hair (ish), the same color eyes, the same large-ish nose with a bump, even the same little mole on our chins. Hey, knock six inches and forty pounds off me, and you’d swear we were twins!

The difference is, even though we’re the same age, we’re both moms, and we both live in NYC, she’s still considered a sexy woman and I’m considered…well, not. The only men who think I’m sexy are over sixty. Ouch.

Back when the Sex in the City series was in it’s heyday, people used to literally stop me in the streets. “Are you Carrie?” they’d ask. I was young and single and dating in the city. I really was Carrie (minus the inches, the pounds, the fame, the shoes, and the wardrobe). But it was also that I was — dare I say it — sexy. Not so pretty maybe, but I had… something.

Sarah Jessica Parker still has it. Me? Seems like somewhere between changing diapers and helping with homework, I’ve lost it. I’m not really complaining, mind you. I think that a big part of being sexy is putting yourself out there, and back in the day, well, let’s just say that I was out there quite a bit. Now, I’m in here. I’m with my kids. I’m at my computer. I’m not looking for love, I’ve found it. I’m not trying to prove myself by attracting strangers. My husband still finds me attractive (God bless him) and that’s good enough for me.

Still, if Carrie can come back bigger than life on the big screen after four years, would it be so terrible if just once, someone could think that was me? Chic, and sexy and fabulous?

Maybe I should get a huge flower and pin it to my dress. Maybe I should get a tutu and stand in front of a bus. Or maybe I should just thank the powers that be that after fourteen years with me, my husband is still glad to be having sex in the city with me.