What About This Nonsense?

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The children of ‘60s and ‘70s radicals are in their 40s now, and they’re writing books based upon their insane childhoods.

This week, Zayd Ayers Dohrn, the son of Weather Underground founders Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers, released Dangerous, Dirty, Violent, and Young: A Fugitive Family in the Revolutionary Underground. It’s part memoir, part history of an early life on the lam. To help piece it together, he interviewed his parents; other Weatherman members and their kids; Black Panthers, Black Liberation Army members, and their kids (including Kakuya Shakur, the daughter of Assata Shakur); and probed his mom’s FBI files from her time on the F.B.I.’s Ten Most Wanted list.

Part of what Dohrn was trying to figure out is how his parents, who started as anti-war student activists, were radicalized to violence — first by the ongoing war in Vietnam, then by the deaths of Black leaders Martin Luther King Jr. and Fred Hampton.

Dorhn was lucky; his parents mostly escaped prison. Harriet Clark’s life unfolded much differently. Her mother, Judith Clark, spent 37 years behind bars for driving a getaway car as part of a Brink’s truck robbery in which three people were killed. Her experiences visiting her mother in jail inspired her new novel, The Hill.

The polarization and radicalization of the time captured in Dohrn’s book, including a nation embroiled in wars abroad and a population of disillusioned young people, is at once distant and sickeningly familiar. Political violence has returned, though not to the levels of the ‘70s; that was a wild time. Dohrn, for his part, is critical of its power as a way to build and sustain progress. (A review of the book for lit mag The Point by ‘60s activist and now-professor Michael Kazin echoes this criticism.) “The question for activists,” he says in a conversation with Fresh Air’s Terry Gross, “is what is going to help create change?”

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Perhaps you’ve also seen the posts. “Nervous system resets,” belly-fat myth busting, face-depuffing, and guides to reversing gray hair — because of something-something cortisol! For spring, beauty site Byrdie recommends a “cortisol closet”: comfy clothes in the colors of oatmeal and moss. On a recent episode of Las Culturistas, Californian comedian Blair Socci says she’ll pass on Barry’s Bootcamp: “I’m doing low-cortisol shit, bitch!” It’s not just her; the Instagram mamas, the Substack hormone enthusiasts, and the manosphere looksmaxxers are all posting about a low-cortisol life. 

It’s weird that these online subcultures are converging around the same scammy concept. But for women in midlife, there’s reason to take a closer look — with one eyebrow raised.

What is cortisol, first of all

While cortisol can spike with stress, triggering that fight-or-flight feeling, it is — contrary to now-popular belief — a normal part of our lives. Cortisol follows a daily rhythm: high in the morning, declining steeply through the day. 

This rhythm connects to the brain’s central circadian system, explains Dr. Seleipiri Iboroma Akobo, MD, MPH, board-certified in obesity, family, and addiction medicine. Cortisol peaks about 30 minutes after you wake, signaling readiness for the day. It should be lowest at night, helping you go to sleep. Cortisol does not equal stress or its physical manifestations. If your body’s job is cellular repair, immune function, metabolic processing and cognition, cortisol is the alarm that says it’s time to clock in and get to work. 

The story changes in midlife 

“Cellular repair” is scientific jargon for things like skin health and soothing inflammation. Immune function is feeling well and fighting illness. Metabolism means what our body does with nutrients. Cognition is thinking. So, yes, this also sounds like a list of things that go haywire in perimenopause. “I want women to understand they’re not imagining things,” Dr. Akobo says. Aging is associated with a flattening of the cortisol slope that is compounded by estrogen fleeing the scene.

“Think of estrogen as a brake on the stress system. When that brake starts failing, the whole car is at risk,” she says. To continue her metaphor, symptoms like hot flashes and night sweats are a check-engine light: not always bad news, but something could be amiss under the hood. “The practical implication is the cortisol that should be low at 10 pm is still elevated, which disrupts sleep onset, disrupts sleep architecture, and then flattens the morning peak the next day, which starts the whole cycle again.” 

A crap night of sleep once in a while is just life. But living under intense, unrelenting stress can cause this kind of chronically misfiring cortisol, which may contribute to increased risks of high blood pressure, high blood sugar, accumulating fat around the midsection, high cholesterol, cognitive decline, and cardiovascular disorders. 

The day-to-day expression of unhealthy stress buildup also rhymes with perimenopause: feeling wired-but-tired, trouble sleeping even when you’re exhausted, weight shifting to the abdomen without diet or exercise changes, anxiety that feels new or disproportionate, brain fog, and a stressor recovery time that’s more like days than hours, Dr. Akobo explains. She has studied cortisol in high-performing executives suffering burnout and finds a direct connection, corroborated by larger research, between a disrupted “cortisol clock” and lower mental wellbeing.

In a sense, the influencers are right. Chronic stress is correlated to many maladies, from the unpleasant to the downright dangerous. “Middle-aged women are not imagining it. Their biology has genuinely shifted and they are paying for it with blood and sweat, literally.” 

Why is “cortisol” trending? 

For as long as there has been online discourse on women’s health and wellness, it has relied upon euphemistic language to skirt around talking about our body issues. Now, Kate Lindsay, author of Embedded and host of ICYMI, Slate’s Internet culture podcast, says “cortisol” is being used online as “a stand-in word for something much broader.” It doesn’t surprise her to see influencers from pre-aging twentysomethings to looksmaxxing young men using it. The internet tends to collectively kingmake some word or phrase — nepo babies, parasocial, dopamine — using it until it’s stripped of its actual meaning. 

At the same time, Lindsay says she’s seen the language of self-care trend toward more technical and clinical: “Self care in general has been expressed recently through terms of optimization.” Cortisol works because “it sounds scientific, so it feels trustworthy,” she says. “But I don't think the average person could tell you what it actually is or how one measures it.” (Good news: You don’t have to.)

I’m reminded of the way migraines and TMJ gave cover for getting Botox. Hacking your life to solve a self-diagnosed hormonal imbalance may just be the latest socially acceptable way to say you feel weird about your jowls. Cortisol, as a term, “is this new bogeyman in the women's beauty space,” Lindsay says, used to gesture at a fear of the physical signs of aging that are accelerated by stress. But there’s no magic pill for that, and if there were, you wouldn’t hear about it on TikTok or by buying a PDF someone DMs you when you comment “bloat” under their Instagram post. “I think how you're supposed to deal with [it] is very similar to the self-care behaviors that have been around for at least 15 years online,” she adds.

But seriously what do we do?

We’re planning to watch An Evening with Nicole Scherzinger on Great Performances on PBS as part of The WNET Group’s Broadway and Beyond collection. Recorded live at London’s Royal Albert Hall, the special features Nicole performing Broadway favorites and pop hits alongside a full orchestra.

Nicole has such a great voice, and this feels like an easy thing to put on at home if you’re in the mood for music, Broadway standards, and a little bit of concert-night energy without leaving the couch. The Royal Albert Hall setting also looks beautiful.

Stream free beginning May 22 at 9 pm EDT. Watch it here. #partner

TO WATCH Ask E. Jean, a new documentary on the life of journalist and advice columnist E. Jean Carroll, is being screened this week in NYC before taking a little trip ‘round the country. There’s also the new Duffer brothers Netflix series, The Boroughs, which is being described as “Stranger Things, but with old people” and this, which looks ridiculous … right?

TO TRY We found this new nail polish brand at our local salon this winter and love it. It dries fast (so we never mess up our nails), and lasts seven to 10 days without chipping. We’d like the mini starter set, or you can just get the base and top coats, then add a few fun colors for summer. #partner

TO HELP For everyone who struggles with their sweatpant or sweatshirt drawstring not staying put, we present this simple tip to keep it in place. Genius.

TO LISTEN If you are a Band of Horses fan, they ran through a bunch of their greatest hits live on KEXP this week. It’s been 20 years since their debut album, but the music doesn’t sound dated at all.

Yes, you are hotter than you used to be: “Women’s body temperature rises from age 18 to 42, but we don’t know why.” • An argument against purchasing trendy French hemp clogs. • The story of a cold case from the ‘90s, and the college kids who may have solved it. • Young people are obsessed with old workout DVDs. • New bone-health workout for middle-aged women: digging their own graves.

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