Man on Board!

A MAN on the Well Past 50 Advisory Board?

At our last Well Past 50 Advisory Board meeting one Board member suggested that possibly I was a little one-sided in my concerns for 50+ women. Aging isn’t only about dealing with eyebrow loss, sagging breasts and makeup mistakes. MEN have problems with aging, too.

Wow. Can that be true? Don’t men just get more and more comfortable with themselves as their bellies expand, their hair stops growing in the right places and starts growing in the wrong places, and their sex drive dwindles.?

Possibly I’ve been overlooking a whole new audience that needs me. After the Board meeting I talked to a few men friends to find out how they feel about aging. Indeed, it seems that I was wrong.  Apparently men don’t accept it any better than women do. They are using more “grooming products” (we would call them beauty products), more and more of them are considering cosmetic surgery, and, studies show that significant Viagra use is associated with advancing age, even though ED is not a natural side effect of aging.

So maybe men are panicked, too. They just don’t talk about it as much as we do. But then, men have never talked about anything as much as we do. Maybe Well Past 50 is a perfect opportunity to get men talking about the things that bother them. They can tell me, the Board and, yes the entire world what they are concerned about, and remain anonymous if they want. Then we, their female counterparts, can tell them how we feel about their concerns, and find experts to address their questions, worries and insecurities.

Sounds like a win-win situation. Women find out more about how the men in our lives feel and men find out how we feel about how they feel. You get the point. 

Now we just have to get them talking to us. Yes, we’ve been trying this for years, but this time they can talk to women without feeling like they’re being judged or fearing that they just said something that will get them the cold shoulder for the days, or weeks to come. 

Help us get them talking, Ladies! Tell your men friends, husbands, lovers that we need their input at Well Past 50.  Ask them to join in a dialogue with us about aging – tell us their greatest fears and insecurities, as well as dreams, goals and accomplishments.  What do they want from us?  What do they want us to want from them? 

And then – who knows – maybe we’ll even get a man, or men, on the Well Past 50 Advisory Board!

Comments

[C.B.]

I guess men have the same concerns as us but my husband doesn't care that he has a big belly nor does he care that he's out of shape. How do you get aging men to care?