Incontinence, Sports Bras, Arthritis

By Marilyn L. Pinsky

OK, so in two previous articles I  discussed incontinence, and now everyone assumes I am peeing all over town.

I’m not. 

Well…not so much anymore.

But given the supply chain issue that is affecting fertilizer availability, peeing has become a very “in” topic, as urine is very rich in nutrients. Some avid gardeners are saving their pee for the garden. Or even, I guess, doing a direct application. So, before you call the police that your neighbors are exposing themselves, check out their gardens. And if they share the crop with you, you might want to even lend a hand. And, ladies, remember: squats are very good for leg strength as you age. So there’s a double bonus right there.

But I digress. To help my image out, today our first discussion is sports bras.

I feel this topic has a much more youthful sound to it. Of course the one that follows, arthritis, probably doesn’t help with the image thing.

In the category of “words which my daughters would have killed me for even mentioning in public” when they were teens, the word “bra” is right up there.

Recently there were headlines in the Albany paper about allowing girls to wear sports bras without shirts when practicing in hot weather, given that boys work out shirtless. The girls were supposedly told by a school official that “it was distracting to their male coaches.”

I texted my granddaughters living in that area to get their takes on the controversy. Madelyn, who is in high school, said, “I think they should be allowed to work out in sports bras without consequences considering it was really hot and sports bras are designed for working out.” Sophie, in law school, said, “That’s ridiculous! We had girls in middle school wearing sports bras and then in college you can do whatever you want  What happened to being body positive?”

Then I checked my girlfriends for reactions. A number mentioned the bikini-clad female volleyball players in the Olympics and how they have successfully fought to wear more appropriate uniforms but no one had a problem with girls wearing sports bras without shirts while exercising. My friend MA (Mary Anne) who always has the best responses, said, “Next they should wear long pants, because some of them might have Betty Grable legs.”

Maybe our attitude is related to the fact that we are the generation that wore mini-skirts to school and work. Our parents’ generation was shocked. They wore girdles (OK, so some of us did too) and to go from wearing a longline panty girdle that required a modest hemline to a mini-skirt was a huge cultural change. And it seemed to literally happen in one day. Our parents were in shock. 

Now we look at our grandchildren and not just the young ones, who wear shorts so short, and tops so skimpy…. But given that each generation has to best the last one, what is left to be the next clothing frontier?

On to arthritis.

In high school, when I would get bored in class, I’d crack my knuckles. I was told not to do that because it would cause arthritis when I was older.  So now I’m older and have some arthritis in my fingers, I’ve been wondering if it’s because I cracked my knuckles when younger.

Recently, when I was sitting around a sports field (one of those sports where there are long delays between events) I started speaking to the other grandparents around me, some of whom I could tell had arthritis. I asked what they thought about the causal relationship between knuckle cracking and arthritis. They had all heard that expression themselves and to a person, agreed it was a myth. The gentleman on my right said he was a big knuckle cracker when younger and he didn’t have arthritis. His wife, who was never a cracker, did! The thing I most got a kick out of, was that the group was between their 70s to their mid-90s and the first thing each one did when I asked the question, was to reach for their phones and Google the answer. I loved it!

We’re still in the game, people.