From ‘hot and flashy’ to hot flashes

“If I can save one woman from these thighs, I will not have lived in vain,” humorist Jill Conner Browne writes in “American Thighs,” her handbook and memoir for the “hot and flashy.” Whether young enough to look “hot” or of the age to only feel that way (in flashes with buckets of sweat), every woman has given, or will give, ample thought to preserving her best “assets” (thighs included), so that the dread transition from “cute girl” to “ma'am” won't be quite so unsettling. An excerpt.

Introduction
Although this book falls into the "NONFICTION" category, on account of I didn't make any of it up, I hope you are not looking to, like, LEARN a bunch of FACTS from it. If that was your expectation, then I hope that you have at least already paid for this book and that it is nonreturnable on account of my Plastic Surgery Fund needs all the help it can get. I am not a doctor nor do I play one on TV. There will be no medical advice herein — with the exception of repeated exhortations for you to "GO TO THE DOCTOR, YOU IDIOT." I hope you find that helpful.

This is sort of a Handbook and a Memoir for the Hot and Flashy — from the time we first felt the urge to put mascara on an eyelash and then bat it at somebody to the most recent time we looked in the mirror and tugged back on our neck and face skin to see what it would look like if we had a little "work" done. From the too-brief time in our youth that we actually looked "hot" and could pull off "flashy" without seeming pathetic — to the seemingly endless time in our later years when we only FEEL hot and that comes in flashes with buckets of sweat.

I will not be offering much in the way of "remedies" for anything that ails you — other than, hopefully, laughter, which I do believe is good for that, whatever it is.

I'm writing, of course, from the only perspective available to me — that of a woman completely stunned, stupefied, and not a little discombobulated and discomfited by the fact that she has personally passed into the latter range of that spectrum, and I'm writing with several goals in mind: to provide some much-needed laughs for my companions on the twilight path and some even-more-needed WARNINGS for our daughters, who are careening, willy-nilly and faster-than-they-will-ever-believe, in our direction. I hope to help some folks misspend their middle ages as blissfully as we misspent our youth and I hope to help keep some of the youngsters from spending their middle ages in bad relationships, jobs they hate, and/or prison (which is actually almost redundant).

To say that youth is wasted on the young has got to be THE understatement of all time. But a few too many of us are also not exactly taking advantage of all the wisdom we have supposedly been racking up in our inexorable trudge into Geezerdom. Appearances might suggest that some of us may not have learned ANYTHING of pith or import since we survived puberty.

If one is at all influenced by the cover stories on magazines available in the checkout lane at the grocery store, one could be convinced of one thing: life pretty much peaks in the seventh grade.

While waiting to pay for my weekly mountain of groceries, I gave a cursory glance to three different magazines — one for hip teens, one for hot twenties to forties, and one for perky geezers — and I was agog.

The teens were offered detailed instructions on achieving a HAIRSTYLE that would "get them what they wanted" — an arrangement of the hairs on their heads that would bring them all manner of success.

Hairstyle A would get them a job — not just "a" job, but THE job, the best one EVER. My husband, The Cutest Boy in the World, used to be a human resource manager — he has never mentioned having studied cosmetology as a part of his education for this job. How did he know which candidate to hire without this info on Hot Hairstyles? And it couldn't be just a one-shot class either — hairstyles change — it would have to be a continuing education series for everyone in HR, would it not? Otherwise, the people with the best hair might not actually be selected for all the plum positions in corporate America. And THEN what would happen? This could explain a lot about our current economy if you think about it.

Select B and you would instantly become irresistible to that certain guy. Okay, this could work. If all the guys who will date someone simply because of their great hairdos could be matched up with all the girls who will date somebody because they drive a hot car — well, it would take a whole big wad of truly shallow people out of the Dating Pool and that would have to be a boon to humankind.

Hairdo C promised you fame. I can't right off think of anybody who got famous only because of their hair — except for Rapunzel, there was her, but hey, happened once, could happen again, I guess. (Godiva does NOT count — nobody woulda cared about her hair if she hadn't been naked underneath it.)

But D, now, D was probably the one most often selected by teen girls across the USA. And I have to admit, it's the one that tempted me.

If you styled your hair like D, you would become known far and wide as The "IT" Girl. Oh. My. God. The IT Girl. I could be The IT Girl? And all it will take is this hairdo? I am so ready to be this, I am tempted to buy the magazine on the spot. Won't my friends and family be amazed when suddenly everybody in the world wants to look just like me — because I am THE IT GIRL? I grabbed the magazine off the rack and flipped it open to see for myself these amazingly powerful hairstyles, and of course there was a catch. FIRST you have to have about 850 times more hair on your head than I have on my whole body combined and it has to be thick and lustrous and very shiny. It also has to be about three feet long and platinum-blond. I am so not going to be The IT Girl by morning — or by the end of time as we know it. I imagine I am not the only one with dashed hopes in this regard.

My brief exam of the world domination through hairdos article did not give any info on which particular segments of the population (in this country or abroad) are especially susceptible to being held in total thrall by the powerfully coiffed, so if you do happen to be one of those individuals bountifully blessed by the hair gods/goddesses and therefore capable of achieving and maintaining a dominating do, there was no hint as to where you might need go to sign up for The Job, to meet That Guy, or to catch the eye of any of the media, let alone commence being The IT Girl.

I'm sorry to be the one to tell you this — if you bought that magazine and have been disappointed by the overwhelming lack of worldwide response to your new hairdo — but I think you've been had.

Also in the publication for Hot Teens, there was one section devoted to teen boys who were invited to write in with questions about their own bodies. Who is surprised that there was a "size" question? Who is surprised that, once again, the response was "it doesn't matter"? Who agrees with that? Same answer for all of the above: nobody.

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