No Longer Part of American Culture

This is actually a major thing for me. While I was growing up, I missed large portions of our culture because I was living overseas, in a time and places where American movies and hit songs arrived a year or two after they'd died in the U.S., where letters took up to a month to arrive, and where fads might as well have been created on another planet. Then I would come back on home leave and be confused and amazed by what everyone seemed to take for granted. One summer it was Davy Crockett, and people wore fake coonskin hats; the next, it was hula hoops. I would madly try to catch up (I have just given myself an earworm of Davy, Davy Crockett, king of the wild frontier), but by the next home leave the U.S. would be on to something else, and again I'd be left behind.
I feel that way right now about women's magazines. While I ride the bike at the gym I revel in the kind of magazines that I never buy, but these days I might as well be a child again, not quite touching the culture that part of me, at least, would like to be part of.
Start with the covers. Lose Ten Pounds by Bikini Season. Lose Fifteen Pounds in Fifteen Days. Lose Half Your Weight in Half the Time. In the chemo room, we share strategies for maintaining weight or complain, "I lost six pounds last week. Don't know where it goes." (One of the reasons the docs are so proud of me is that I've kept my weight pretty stable through this. It hasn't been easy.)
On the cover is also a big, gooey picture of a big, gooey cake. I look at it with disgust. While my appetite is fair, my tolerance for rich foods is gone. And the portion sizes! How can anyone actually eat that much? Less than a year ago, I could, but now? No way.
Then, inside the magazine there are the features that I never quite related to before: "My husband has a shopping habit," or "Glamorous clothes that take you from the office to a night on the town", but there are also the ones I sigh over: "Curls, curls, curls!" or "Great styles for long hair." How about great styles for no hair?
I look wistfully at the articles that promise that I can have time enough to do everything I want to. I have the time; all I need is some energy. And there are the ones that tell me how to re-energize through power naps. I don't think they mean being out cold on the couch for an hour and a half a day.
On the other hand, there are still articles that speak to me, the ones about gratitude, about the joys of family, about affectionate pets. Show me a picture of a woman surrounded by family and pets, and I tear up happily. There's still something there I can relate to.