Between a Rock and a Hot Place : Why Fifty Is Not the New Thirty (Hardcover) 9780061669279

ISBN: 9780061669279 ISBN10: 006166927X Contributors: Jackson, Tracey,

A funny, fearless, no-holds-barred look at aging--hormone replacement therapy, online dating, eye lifts, and all As she approached her fiftieth birthday, Tracey Jackson found herself bombarded--at the gym, at parties, in conversations with friends--by a catchphrase on everyone's lips. "Fifty is the new thirty" and the endless magazine articles, photos, and T-shirts proclaiming the new aphorism had apparently bloomed out of a collective sense of denial, masking the true fears of a generation unwilling to relinquish their youth. With a comedy writer's training and a screenwriter's eye for detail, Jackson skewers the myth in "Between a Rock and a Hot Place," a hilarious, bare-knuckled, and ultimately practical appraisal of what middle age "really" means today. Willing not only to face the elephant in the room, but to put him under a (large) microscope, Jackson confronts the truth about death, work, and sex in what the French call the "third age," using poignant, laugh-out-loud stories from her life. Jackson examines the changing roles of motherhood and wifehood; the necessity of planning a "career after your career"; the unvarnished reality of our aging bodies; and the generational shift in our perception of age (""Tight abs" was not a phrase my grandmother had ever heard. And even if she had, her response would likely have been, "Who needs that when you have a girdle?""). Turning fifty is a wake-up call--but one that can be greeted with a plan. Recounting the changes she went through, the things she learned (and things she didn't) en route to fifty, "Between a Rock and a Hot Place" navigates, with unsparing honesty and unerring wit, the confusion and uncertainty of the most significant uncharted transition in our lives.