Yesterday, Rush Limbaugh asked, “Does our looks-obsessed culture want to stare at an aging woman?” The woman in question was Hillary Clinton, of course.

“It's like almost an addiction that some people have to what I call the perfection that Hollywood presents of successful, beautiful, fun-loving people. So the question is this: Will this country want to actually watch a woman get older before their eyes on a daily basis?”

He illustrated his point with an exceptionally unflattering photo of the Democratic party presidential candidate next to an exceptionally presidential photo of Mitt Romney and concluded that the Republican is much prettier and therefore more electable. In other words, a better presidential candidate.

The same day, 24-year-old Amanda Hinsperger asked: “What is it about anti-aging?. . .Women in particular carry the anti-aging burden, since most anti-aging ads are marketed to women. Are we afraid of aging? Does the natural course of life disturb us? Nobody likes to admit their body is failing. With all the stress this worrying brings on, and with the aging impacts of stress, maybe we'd be doing ourselves a favour by embracing age.”

Offensive as Limbaugh’s screed is, his observations about our culture’s fear, even hatred, of aging, are sound.

I don’t know how to change that, but Gene D. Cohen, MD, PhD, Director of the Center on Aging, Health & Humanities at The George Washington University, believes the negative attitudes about aging get their start in childhood. Think of the fairy tales we read to our impressionable toddlers: they’re full of wicked witches, stepmothers who are ugly inside and out, old women who live in shoes and abuse their too-large broods.

The Center has compiled a list of stories for children of all ages that show older adults as kind, active, humorous, wise, creative, brave—all the rest of the admirable qualities we aspire to at any age.

That is, if we aren't aspiring only to looking good.

Seems we need to start at the beginning. Give a child you know a good book—and some real-life experiences with women (and men) who are older, but not worse for it.

This entry also is posted at Aging Maven.

3:30 pm: A reader wanted me to make clear that the photos came first (the Drudge Report) and Limbaugh's comments came in response to them. He also objected to my use of the word "screed," claiming Limbaugh's point was about society and not Clinton. I think everything that man says is screed, and I'm sticking to it. That doesn't mean that the observation of American attitudes about aging (especially aging women) isn't accurate: it is. At the same time, it's a Hillary slam.

President Bush is mumbling about World War III. 3,000 Wisconsin National Guard Soldiers have been alerted for service in Iraq. Republicans are leaning toward jovial Mike Huckabee, whose middle eastern solution is "just win it." And everyone's starting to get a glimmer of how deep the financial crisis goes into the banking industry.

So what's the big news story of the day? Some 291 articles' worth?

Jennifer Love Hewitt's butt.

I'm not going to show you the image. Apparently it's too horrifying for the American public. But I'll show you how she looked from the front the same day the butt picture was taken. 

For those who need a guide to the female body, let me elucidate. Those gentle protuberances  below her waist are called "curves." Hips. A tummy. (I can't figure out what to call that part that doesn't involve a childish euphemism, so I'm stuck.)

At 28, the actress has a body that displays a classic small waist to larger hip ratio that shows she has sufficient body fat to conceive and carry a child. That includes some cellulite, which most healthy 15 year old girls have as well. She's come forward to say "enough!" to the negative comments about women's body "imperfections."

Especially when the imperfections in question aren't imperfect. Whether she's a size 0, apparently the ideal; a size 2, as she says she is; or a size 6, she's normal. And like many of us, she's tired of being held to abnormal standards.

My guess is that most men reading this blog are not repulsed by Hewitt's body. Some may even thank me for using her image here, for purely educational purposes of course. After all, she's beautiful.

Some research suggests that social body-type preferences change as times change. In good times, the Marilyn Monroe/Jennifer Love Hewitt type that promises reproductive abundance is popular. But "when times are difficult, reproductive fitness may be less important and the ability to acquire resources and be productive may become more important," according to Pettijohn and Jungeberg's quite respectable Playboy Playmate Curves study.

And that means favoring women who look more like, well, men. Hollywood ups the ante by adding impossibly buoyant large breasts.

Nearly everyone "frames" what they report, putting it in a particular context of belief that favors their own viewpoint.

For example, a tax that only affects the very rich sounds like a good idea for the rest of us when it's called "the estate tax." Call it the "death tax," however, and we're all against it because, well, it sounds like those taxes are going to hit the rest of us just like death will.

The big buzz around a new health science report published Nov. 7 in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition that suggests that Vitamin D may slow aging and prevent aging related diseases is a case study in framing.

“These results are exciting because they demonstrate for the first time that people who have higher levels of vitamin D may age more slowly than people with lower levels of vitamin D,” says team leader Brent Richards, an endocrinologist. “This could help explain how vitamin D has a protective effect on many age-related diseases, such as heart disease and cancer. What's interesting is that there's a huge body of evidence that shows sunshine ages your skin—but it also increases your vitamin D levels. So, like many times in medicine, we find there's a trade-off.”

Dozens of sources reported the study this weekend, and nearly all reports clearly come from the same original source, probably a wire service, and included the paragraph above. But however similar the words may be, the headlines make us see different meanings and implications.

The most neutral headline from a Google search came from France, where Food Navigator.com (Europe)  proclaimed:
Live longer with vitamin D, study says

Most reports from the US and England jumped on a weird take best exemplified by Fox News:
Women Who Spend Time in the Sun May Age More Slowly, Study Says. (No mention that the researchers are talking about 10-15 minutes only of direct sun exposure.)

The American FoodConsumer.org missed a bet when they delivered this pitch:
Wanna live longer? Take vitamin D pills

Fortunately, the Times of India got the Wisconsin frame right:
Milk may provide aging benefits

Now you know why so many scientists hate the news media: they just can't avoid the sexy frame that distorts the facts.

However, I'm sure the Times of India, my new source for all information, is the absolutely objective and just plain. . .right. Here's another health story they report, this time from the Universities of Pittsburgh and California:

Curvy women are cleverer, too: study

Curvy women have been admired for their sensual figures. But, a new study has found that ladies with large hips and small waists are cleverer too, than those with apple-shaped bodies. In fact, according to international researchers, women with an hourglass figure are not only intelligent, they also give birth to brighter children, The Sunday Times reported in London on Sunday.

"The fat around fuller hips and thighs holds higher levels of omega3 fatty acids which are essential for the growth of the brain during pregnancy," the researchers were quoted as saying.

Sometimes, they just get it right!

Yesterday was such a bad day.

The highlight was when the Triple A guy who came to fix my flat tire said "Dang, M'am, but you sure do look like Diane Keaton!" Actually, I look like about two Diane Keatons, but I took it as a compliment.

"Um, wow! Oh. . . well. . .God! Thanks!"

Apparently he didn't notice that I also talk like Diane Keaton. Something to do with coming of age in the Annie Hall era, I suspect.

When I told my kids, they said "Who's Diane Keaton?" Sigh.

But today is another kind of day entirely. For one thing, I'm home, recuperating from some vague unpleasant thing that probably explains yesterday's badness: I was off my game.

I got to sleep in and then indulge in my spiritual practice, walking the dog.

Someone was practicing slow scales on the clarinet across Underwood Creek from the Oak Leaf trail, and on my side, children shouted on the playground. The New England asters have popped, purple and pale blue next to the goldenrod. The air smells clean, like walnuts, even so close to the concrete creek bed where sometimes, stench is too polite a term.

Idgy and I walked down to the water. I emptied the lint from my pockets and asked whoever it is I ask to be forgiven for my forgetting.

We climbed the bank. It's a huge year for wild grapes, and I ate a handful that grew along the bank.

On the paved bike path where we emerged, someone had scrawled in large chalk letters one word: "Sweetness."

Indeed.

Maybe your vacations at the lake are full of water sports. I'm more the languid type--lazy, if you prefer. Some of the best parts of mine this weekend were spent flat on my back on a picnic table watching the Bayfield County sky.

Cable, Wisconsin is just three degrees latitude north and four degrees longitude west of Wauwatosa, but the sky there is like a black mirror lit by a thousand points of light, all different sizes and colors, and you can still see the Milky Way smeared behind them.

I had forgotten. Here we have a dryer lint sky, dull and fuzzy. There’s a handful of stars sometimes, but it’s easy to forget to look up to see them.

Saturday friend Linda and I got home to Bill's Lake Lodge late, or what amounts to late for middle aged women. We’d spent the evening in a half exposed basement that was the local watering hole, one of those smoky places with fish mounted on the wall and communal bowls of jalapeno peppers on the bar. Some of the “native wildlife” there were people she’d known back when all of us were shinier and newer. We talked about birthdays and Birkebeiners, God and road grading. Old times. Bar talk.

I was tired but went out to the dock to say good night to the lake. Suddenly, light started rolling across the sky. There was a cloud bank, but it was narrow and the light flashed and danced above and below, moving along a third of the facing horizon.

Northern lights.

The show went on for most of an hour. Talk about a nightcap!

We got home Sunday, stopping only to sample the pieman’s wares at the Norske Nook in Osseo. Traffic was bumper to bumper between Portage and Madison, and it was dark (or what passes for dark in the city) by the time I reached Wauwatosa.

I’d heard it was the peak night for the Perseid meteor showers, but you wouldn’t have known it. The show was hidden by the clouds -- and too much light from everywhere.

It takes imagination to see what’s really there, behind the way things seem to be.