Shari Graydon

I Feel Great About My Hands: and Other Unexpected Joys of Aging Shari Graydon

In our youth-obsessed world of Botox, plastic surgery and anti-wrinkle creams, Nora Ephron struck a chord with I Feel Bad about My Neck, a collection of essays that included several lamentations on the deterioration of her aging body. Women's advocate and acclaimed writer Shari Graydon set out to counter the supposed downhill slide-inspired grief by inviting notable women-all over fifty-to provide an alternative perspective. The result is a colorful anthology that pays homage to Nora Ephron but challenges the melancholy with a lively, often thoughtful, sometimes irreverent and ultimately uplifting celebration of the wonderful aspects of maturity.

I Feel Great about My Hands is a collection of stories, essays and poems that showcases a diversity of voices?middle-aged, senior, straight, gay, Native, maternal, analytical, sentimental, political. But all of these women are embracing?some warmly, some perhaps grudgingly?the changes, discoveries and wisdom that come with age. From Gemini award-winning funny woman Mary Walsh's tongue-in-cheek romp about the preparation provided by years of playing a "big, loud, opinionated old bag," to celebrated poet Lorna Crozier's hilariously graphic contribution of "My Last Erotic Poem" ("Who wants to hear / about 26 years of screwing, / our once-not-unattractive flesh / now loose as unbaked pizza dough / hanging between two hands before it's tossed?"), this bold anthology captures a spectrum of viewpoints that nonetheless evoke a universal understanding of the triumphs that come only with years of accumulated experience.

Royalties of the book will benefit Media Action, an organization dedicated to challenging the underrepresentation, stereotyping and sexual objectification of women in the media.