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Between A Rock And A Hot Place
Tracey Jackson
Why Fifty Is Not the New Thirty
Harper
February 2011
On Sale: February 15, 2011
304 pages ISBN: 006166927X EAN: 9780061669279 Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
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.
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