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Dearest Sisters,

Having read the timelines of a few male “relationship experts” I have laughed and sometimes just stared in disbelief. At first, I was livid with these men, these snake oil salesmen who jumped on the “Act Like A Lady, Think Like A Man” money train. I wanted to RUIN their little hustle. But when I stopped to consider the whole racket, when I looked at the amount of women following these men, retweeting their misogynistic drivel I realized my energies were focused in the wrong direction.

Ladies, I understand. You ignore your gut sometimes. You collect all the warnings & wisdom together into a neat pile and stack them at the back corner of your mind. You leave them there. You leave them there because if you dust them off and consider them, they will lead you further away from your goal. The goal that every Jared’s commercial throws at you. The goal your Auntie Janet reminds you of at every family reunion:

Securing a loving, long-lasting in relationship.

We all want to be loved, to feel worthy of someone’s affection, time, trust. A ring and a happily ever after. But then we get hurt in the pursuit of it all. Walls go up. Tears roll down. Anger makes a home. Trust runs away. Issues fester. And relationships become much more of an obscure maze than we ever thought possible.

Enter: The male self-professed “relationship expert” who, in all honesty, says some of the right things. He gives us the new age basics for relationships, doesn’t he? With tweets like “A relationship should be 100/100, not 50/50,” and “Communication is key.”

No untruths there, right? But we, as women, fail to realize that these are gems that are already buried in our feminine intuition. The gems we ignore because we’re tired of waiting for the right one. We want this one to be The One! We sidestep what was divinely placed in us and substitute it with the robotic, woman-hating and sometimes even rape culture reinforcing “advice” from men who show every sign of unresolved mommy issues. But because they’ve got 38,000 followers on Twitter, they MUST be preaching some kinda results-yielding truth, right? Not always.

We’ve succumb to a watered-down perception of what it means to be a woman. We take our place as sex objects and chefs for the men in our lives because that’s where we belong, right? That’s what it takes to get and keep a good man, right? Well yeah, to let some of these hireling male relationship “experts” tell it that’s exactly right.

We have been blinded to the height and depth of ourselves, the gifts and the inward “knowing” inherent to womanhood. We say that we believe we are intellectual equals to men yet we scurry to the bookshelves and Twitter to support men who believe it is their duty to teach women how to be women yet spend little to no time instructing MALES how to be MEN. We count their knowledge of us superior to our own intuition, our own lessons learned from our mothers, grandmothers, great-grandmothers. We deny our internal GPS when dealing with relationships because of our biological clocks wired by societal ideology to explode if we haven’t “locked him down” and started working on some babies before 30. I know. I’ve wrestled with it too.

We accept messages from men who are knowingly working with a pair of imbalanced scales – weighting women’s behavior within relationships more heavily than men’s. We willingly carry that weight if it’ll get us a man. We believe irresponsible generalizations about both sexes from men who in more than one way demonstrate that their main priority is to make a profit. We disregard what we have been conditioned to disregard. We devalue our higher selves that function as more than sexual excitement and visual aesthetic for men because well, society devalues us.

Am I discrediting male relationship advisers  Absolutely not. I have learned a great many lessons from men with regards to love and the pursuit of love. But their intentions were pure. Their messages were clean of any underlying agenda. Their messages were responsible. When they took on the mantle to help people with their love lives they took it seriously and understood that every word they wrote, every word they spoke would count. They understood that they have a responsibility to THINK OBJECTIVELY and to dispense advice as a result of that.

What I am offering is an invitation to women to turn the lights on. To not just run blindly in the direction of whatever book or tweet claims to help you get a man. Be self-aware. Be aware of the messages. Open your eyes to misogyny. Don’t internalize everything you read or hear. As Bishop T.D. Jakes one wrote, “Eat the meat and throw away the bones.”

Just because a man said it does not mean it is law. Just because a man discounts your mind, does not mean you are incapable of thought. We are more in tune with love and life than we even dare to consider. And if ever there were a time to gather up our womanhood and walk boldly in it, it is now.

Love,

A Sister Offering Something To Consider

La Truly’s writing is powered by a lifetime of anecdotal proof that awkward can transform to awesome and fear can cast its crown before courage. La seeks to encourage thought, discussion and change among young women through her writing. Follow her on Twitter: @AshleyLaTruly and AboutMe www.about.me/latruly

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Ever wonder how much time you have left on your biological clock? A new app will tell you just that.

Seriously, this is a real thing! For $1.99, you can find out when your baby makin days are over.

The Huffington Post reports:

It’s called “The Wonder Clock” and it uses your date of birth to calculate — down to the minute — when you’re going to become infertile.

The Wonder Clock is the brainchild of Oregon-native Mira Kaddoura, an advertising creative director who says that she created the app to confront her own fertility insecurities. She explained her motivations on The Wonder Clock’s website:

I created this clock to face my own fears. To beckon the elephant in the room so to speak. To release my own power, my own choices. To open a dialogue with other women about fertility, empowerment, and loving ourselves. We are women, and we are ticking. But we are so much more.

Although the app provides a ticking clock, Kaddoura has made clear that The Wonder Clock is more of a tool for dialogue than a medical diagnosis. “It is an interactive, conceptual piece that seeks to start a necessary and empowering conversation about childbearing,” reads the app’s description on iTunes. Kaddoura told the Daily Mail that she first came up with the idea when her doctor told her that if she wanted to have kids, she needed to start thinking about it. “That caught me off-guard ‘cause I was barely out of my 20s … I never felt that time was an issue ‘til then,” she said.

More and more women are postponing childbirth until later (me included!) but I’m not sure how many of us want to see our clocks ticking away every day – whether it’s scientific or not. The app was released a short time ago so there are only a few reviews so far. Some say it’s stupid, but one reviewer pointed out that it will make you feel something whether you like it or not. The creator says that the point is to get people talking about this “taboo” topic of childbirth and running out of time.

Even though it’s not scientific, I can’t imagine how they even begin to figure the date the clock will run out. Age is only one factor when determining fertility and there are a host of other things that can speed this clock up or slow it down to a stop. In addition, a male partner can be infertile, so it’s not always the woman’s “fault” when a couple can’t have kids. Still, if you’re itching to have a baby and wanting to stress yourself out by watching a clock, this app has you covered!

What do you think? Do you wonder how much time you have left to have kids? Will you download the fertility app?

Follow Alissa Henry on Twitter @AlissaInPink

Photo Courtesy of Shutterstock

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There are some women who’s biological clock is ticking so loudly in their ears that they think they may never have a chance of becoming a mother, and then there are others who have hit the snooze button in favor of waiting for that special someone to father their child or until their career settles down to start changing diapers. Regardless of the reasons these women aren’t mothers, both realize they don’t have forever to make that dream come true, but a new scientific breakthrough suggests that they actually might.

Dr. Jonathan Tilly, a researcher at Massachusetts General Hospital, has discovered a way to extract stem cells from women’s ovaries that are capable of generating new eggs. If the scientists are able to fertilize the eggs and turn them into embryos, Dr. Tilly believes “we might get to the point of actually having an unlimited source of human eggs,” meaning age and menopause will no longer prevent women from being able to bear a child.

Middle-aged women everywhere seem to be applauding this research, which is no doubt impressive. Kimberly Seals Allers, founder of MochaManual.com, told The Grio Dr. Tilly’s research is “good news for black women” who, for whatever circumstances, may not be able to have children until much later in life.

“Most studies have pointed to a priority on career, education and financial stability and the lack of suitable marriage partners, which has pushed childbearing to the back burner,” she said.

Seals also points out something we’ve all noticed in recent years, which is that women have become increasingly comfortable with being older mothers.

“I  like to throw in the ’40 is the new 30′ phenomenon,” she said. “Black women feel younger, [so] becoming a mother at 40 and beyond just doesn’t feel as old anymore.”

But just because you feel 30 doesn’t mean your body isn’t in fact 40. Ovarian failure and a decrease in the number of eggs women produce is just one aspect of being a mature mother. There are other health risks that have been well-documented in women as young as 35, although 40 is the typical age where physicians have real concern. At this age there is an increased risk of chromosome abnormalities leading to Down Syndrome, the possibility of miscarriage is increased, and the risk of chronic health problems such as diabetes and high blood pressure is elevated. Imagine how much those risks increase with just another 10 years of age. Sure, those statistics are general and the potential for developing any of these issues has a lot to do with your individual health at the time you conceive, but no matter how good you look or how fit you feel, your body is the age that it is and these risks are there.

The feminist in women has looked at this data with the attitude of, if men can have babies until they die why can’t women? Well, there is a huge difference between a man being able to impregnate someone and  a woman getting pregnant: Men don’t carry babies, women do, and nine months is no short amount of time. Plus, men aren’t without risk either. Studies have shown that babies born to men 40 and older have a higher risk for autism. So the bottom line is that no late-stage pregnancy is without risk, no matter how much science might be able to tweak what is biologically possible.

I can understand the strong urge to become a mother, and that life circumstances sometimes get in the way of making that a reality in your 20s and even your 30s but this issue goes far beyond gender equality. At some point we have to ask if the ability to do something means that you actually should. We also need to look at the fact that perhaps out innate biological clocks operate the way they do for a reason, and menopause is our body’s way of telling us you’ve passed your time.

The advances that modern science have made are truly astounding but sometimes the greater good needs to outweigh selfish desires when it comes to our health. Becoming a mother is not just about you, it’s about the baby and when you choose to become a mother you have an obligation to make sure that you will be around to raise that child. If that means your age won’t allow you to become a mother in the traditional sense, I think the ultimate form of self-sacrifice is to accept that truth and realize there are other ways to parent that won’t put you or someone else at risk. And for women who know they want to become mothers, they need to build that into their life plan like anything else. At some point, no matter how much science can do, it will be too late.

What do you think about the potential for women to have babies at any age? Do you think at some point women are too old to be mothers?

Brande Victorian is a blogger and culture writer in New York City. Follower her on Twitter at @be_vic.

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Have you ever been out walking around, maybe at the park, the grocery store, just minding your own business when you spot an adorable little bundle of joy? You can’t help but gaze at this miracle, so small, so precious!

Once you realize you’re being a bit of a creep you back off of the baby and the exceptionally patient parent.

But before you go about the rest of your day you can’t help but think I want one of those! Turns out you’re not weird. Researchers have found that feelings of “baby fever” have been scientifically provable.

Find out more about this phenomenon over at Your Tango.com