By most women's standards, last Wednesday was a regular day.
I got up early and went for a run. When I got home, I ate a bowl of muesli. On the way to work, I had a meandering cellphone conversation with a girlfriend who entertained me with stories of her nutty family. I sat down at my desk feeling relaxed and engaged, but by the end of the day that feeling had dissipated.
I went home irritable. Why was the place always such a mess? Why did I eat that pizza at lunch? My head was suddenly filled with lists of unbought presents and thoughts of how my life would be, should be, could be . . .
I had a glass of wine and felt much better. But over dinner my companion and I had a minor disagreement based on a previous miscommunication. Fortunately, we patched things up and joked about whose turn it was to control the remote. Then I turned in early while he stayed up and looked at golf clubs on the Internet.
What I didn't know was that my day -- which seemed banal in every discernible way -- was, in fact, being controlled, nuanced and buffered by a cocktail of chemicals flowing through my hopelessly, wonderfully, irreversibly female brain.
This is not a bad thing. It is just the way it is.
Since reading Louann Brizendine's fascinating book The Female Brain, I have become acutely conscious of my own brain chemistry. What once felt like the rhythm of daily life is now a never-ending natural acid trip.
Take my Wednesday. According to Brizendine, I got up early because an estrogen fluctuation in puberty forever shifted my sleep clock to a couple of hours earlier than my male counterpart's. I went for a run, which boosted my testosterone, making me sharp and ready for the challenge of work. Talking to my girlfriend gave me a warm and fuzzy oxytocin rush, which was then flattened by a wave of stress-induced cortisol. I went home feeling edgy from allopregnenolone withdrawal (it was day 26 in my cycle) and avoided a serious conflict because of estrogen. Every moment of my day was dictated by chemicals.
Brizendine's bold assertion that hormones are the controlling force driving the female brain might seem controversial to those old-school feminists still clinging to the belief that gender is socialized. But to those of us living in the real world, hormones explain a lot, if not everything, about what it's like to perceive the world as a woman.
As Brizendine writes: "A woman's neurological reality is not as constant as a man's. His is like a mountain that is worn away imperceptibly over the millennia by glaciers, weather and the deep tectonic movements of the Earth. Hers is more like the weather itself -- constantly changing and hard to predict."
If we accept this theory of the female brain (and after reading the book, it's difficult not to), what's a girl to do? Simply submit to a life of mood swings, libido fluctuations and messy metabolic shifts? Hell, no. We're women, after all. We'll find a way to control and fix it. They may not have isolated the female self-improvement gene yet, but, trust me, it's in there.
Hormone control is set to be the biggest self-improvement craze since Atkins. Google the word "cortisol" (a.k.a. the stress hormone) and you will find dozens of special diets and supplements aimed at staving off its dreaded effects, which include weight gain, irritability and extreme physical and emotional sensitivity. Plug in "oxytocin" and you will read about the euphoric effects of a woman's own natural ecstasy high, brought on by simple activities such as cuddling, sex and bonding with girlfriends.
At a recent wedding reception, I was impressed to notice that hormonal awareness is on the rise among women. When I complimented a pregnant girlfriend on her air of serenity (all that extra allopregnenolone was clearly working for her), she brushed it off. "Pah," she said, "I'm as stressed out as usual. I just hope the cortisol won't make me gain weight."
Another girlfriend confided she had recently gone on the pill in an effort to boost possibly dwindling estrogen levels. Personally, I was worried my intensified summer exercise regimen was upping my vasopressin levels, turning me into an overgrown tomboy.
We discussed our secret hormonal anxieties until a calmer mood overcame us (probably the oxytocin, or the wine, or both), and not long after that I shuffled home to bed. It was late, past my natural bedtime. No matter, I told myself.
Tomorrow was another dopamine.
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