Hipster, anyone?

It is said that women become invisible after they reach a certain age. I usually feel invisible when shopping for regular jeans and all I could find in stores are those low-rise jeans and hip-huggers that should be banned to be worn in public. These low-slung jeans have certainly redefined our collective understanding of cleavage. I’m sorry but I don’t have the courage to walk around with multiple folds of skin, G-string and crevice on display.

While the little feminist in me applauds some women’s cool indifference in flaunting their body imperfections, the admirer in me finds the style objectionable. I’m not a fashion guru but hipster jeans suits only 13-year old girls, anorexics, and supermodels that have the luxury of devoting time and money to having a perfect physique.

Sipping mojitos at Café Havana one Friday night, I couldn’t keep a smirk off my face seeing a girl wearing a pair of low-riding jeans try to sit with dignity. Her fraternal twin at the next table had the common sense to tie a jacket around her waist. Don’t let her drop anything, I prayed, or she would be forced to perfect the art of squatting to keep her poise. Low-rise jeans also tend to slide down that the girl kept on hitching it up. How can you feel sexy in that?

I don’t consider low-rise jeans to be appropriate to a woman of certain age, unless you're a Belo patient or Zsa Zsa Padilla. And yes, being invisible is preferable than call attention to myself by putting my hips, derriere, and love handles in some humiliating reality show.

To all women (and men who value women)

In All Ways A Woman

by Maya Angelou

In my young years I took pride in the fact that luck was called a lady. In fact, there were so few public acknowledgments of the female presence that I felt personally honored whenever nature and large ships were referred to as feminine. But as I matured, I began to resent being considered a sister to a changeling as fickle as luck, as aloof as an ocean, and as frivolous as nature. The phrase "A woman always has the right to change her mind" played so aptly into the negative image of the female that I made myself a victim to an unwavering decision. Even if I made an inane and stupid choice, I stuck by it rather than "be like a woman and change my mind."

Being a woman is hard work. Not without joy and even ecstasy, but still relentless, unending work. Becoming an old female may require only being born with certain genitalia, inheriting long-living genes and the fortune not to be run over by an out-of-control truck, but to become and remain a woman command the existence and employment of genius.

The woman who survives intact and happy must be at once tender and tough. She must have convinced herself, or be in the unending process of convincing herself, that she, her values, and her choices are important. In a time a nd world where males hold sway and control, the pressure upon women to yield their rights-of-way is tremendous. And it is under those very circumstances that the woman's toughness must be in evidence.

She must resist considering herself a lesser version of her male counterpart. She is not a sculptress, poetess, authoress, Jewess, Negress, or even (now rare) in university parlance a rectoress. If she is the thing, then for her own sense of self and for the education of the ill-informed she must insist with rectitude in being the thing and in being called the thing.

A rose by any other name may smell as sweet, but a woman called by a devaluing name will only be weakened by the misnomer. She will need to prize her tenderness and be able to display it at appropriate times in order to prevent toughness from gaining total authority and to avoid becoming a mirror image of those men who value power above life, and control over love.

It is imperative that a woman keep her sense of humor intact and at the ready. She must see, even if only in secret, that she is the funniest, looniest woman in her world, which she should also see as being the most absurd world of all times. It has been said that laughter is therapeutic and amiability lengthens the life span. Women should be tough, tender, laugh as much as possible, and live long lives. The struggle for equality continues unabated, and the woman warrior who is armed with wit and courage will be among the first to celebrate victory.