Moody Bitches: The Truth about
the Drugs You’re Taking, the Sleep You’re Missing, the Sex You’re Not Having,
and What’s Really Making You Crazy. By Julie Holland, M.D. Penguin. $27.95.
From its deliberately
provocative main title through its over-extended and over-involved subtitle,
and thence through more than 400 pages of advice that lurches (sometimes
uneasily) from the witty to the with-it and back, Moody Bitches seeks to communicate, in essence, one single thought
(ellipsis in the original): “Loving your body, trusting its signals, and
inhabiting it fully… This is the way back to health.”
The rest of Moody Bitches is just exegesis, some of
it fervent, some of it entertaining, most of it plain-spoken, and all of it
drawing on New York City psychiatrist Julie Holland’s experience as a therapist
– delivered with the kind of slam-bang intensity on which New Yorkers pride
themselves. Beware of full immersion if you are someone for whom a little of
this style goes a long way.
Holland argues that women’s
moodiness, often considered a defect or problem, is in fact entirely natural
and a good thing, being a sign of women’s sensitivity and adaptability. Moods,
she says, are the body’s feedback system and can be managed in such a way as to
let women lead healthier lives. Therefore, the use of mood-altering
medications, which by design reduce mood swings even if they do not eliminate
them, is in general a bad thing, damping not only extremes of emotional
instability but also empathy, passion and sensitivity. Even in a bad situation,
says Holland, medicine can make matters worse – by making matters seem more
tolerable than a woman ought to deem them to be, and deflecting or undermining her
natural understanding of the need to change the circumstances.
To say that Holland is no
fan of medication is to understate her antipathy toward it. As a medical
doctor, she acknowledges, rather half-heartedly, its importance, but when it
comes to specific medicines that women take, she has little positive to say.
Birth-control pills, for example, are “destabilizing” for many women and “can
really cut into your sexual desire. I tell my patients this is the ‘dirty
little secret’ of the Pill. For some women, being liberated from the fear of
unwanted pregnancy may allow them to relax and experience sexual pleasure more,
but a slew of other women are unhappy to discover that their desire for sex and
their ability to achieve orgasm are muted by being on the Pill.” This is stylistically typical of Holland, as
she minimizes positive matters (“some” women “may” benefit) while emphasizing
negatives (a “slew” are “unhappy”).
To be sure, Holland’s
plain-spokenness is welcome, and there are flashes of humor in what is
essentially a humorless narrative here, such as a parenthetical remark in the
midst of her discussion of the Pill: “(FYI, when you’re perimenopausal, your
belly starts to store fat because your estrogen levels are waning. Beware the
menopot.)” Holland uses personal
experience as a teaching tool when she feels it will help: “I can’t get rid of
my menopot and it’s driving me crazy. …After two kids and waning hormones, I am
now the not-so-proud owner of a ‘muffin top.’”
By and large, though, she attacks topics – and “attacks” is the right
word – with ravenous enthusiasm, either devouring them or (to mix metaphors) beating
them into submission. She calls food “a drug we can’t resist” and explains the
mismatch between our modern world, in which “high-calorie foods are abundant,”
and our genetic makeup: “our bodies were designed to hoard calories now for
hard times later” and “the dopamine circuitry would light up like a pinball
machine” at the sight of an available food source. In a chapter called “Your
Body: Love It or Leave It,” which is neither more nor less than a pro-exercise
argument, Holland includes subheads called “Brain Fertilizer,” “This Is Your
Brain on Obesity,” “Pretty Ugly” and “Love That Body: Hips, Boobs, and Pubes.”
All this is there just to urge women to move
more and understand that “the hips and thighs of swimsuit models and
celebrities are unattainable for the average woman on the average American
diet, without a personal trainer, personal chef, plastic surgeon, and, most crucial,
Photoshop.” Holland writes about “Inflammation, the Key to Everything” (yes,
that is the chapter title) in discussing stress, depression and emotional
resilience. But, as in many of her chapters, stripping away the cleverness and
flood of verbiage leads readers to some very familiar and not-always-helpful
places: “Don’t Stress about Stress and It Will All Be Okay,” says a subhead,
within which Holland urges, “Reappraise a stressor as a challenge, not a
threat, and see how you feel. …[F]ollow your joy to enhance resilience and
reduce stress.” Nothing new there – and no suggestions on how to “reappraise a stressor as a challenge.”
This is where Moody Bitches ultimately disappoints.
Pretty much everything Holland says, bar some fairly extreme positions
regarding modern life and medicine, is sensible, intelligent and often very
well put – reading her book is like listening to an especially well-educated
friend hold forth on a variety of topics germane to modern everyday living in
the developed world. But getting from what Holland correctly identifies as
women’s (and men’s!) stressed, overworked, exhausted, anxiety-ridden everyday
existence to a better, calmer, happier, drug-free, reduced-stress and far more
idyllic life is extremely difficult, and the way to do so is by no means clear.
Eat better, exercise more, sleep better, enjoy the delights of the everyday,
have good sex, feel less stress, and your life will be better. Yes, it will.
But how do you get to such a utopian
state from where you are now? There is little guidance on that to be found in
Holland’s book, which turns simplistic far too often in addressing the
difficult realities of getting from where you are to where you want to be:
“Accepting yourself, your natural
self, in all its splendor, is key to being happy and healthy.” Why, yes. And to
gain that acceptance, you – what? Become one of Holland’s psychiatric patients?
Hmmm…that’s a thought…
No comments:
Post a Comment