There is no need for me to call Cathy Alter a potty-mouth. She calls herself that. She is also a potty-pen (or -keyboard). She has written Up for Renewal: What Magazines Taught Me about Love, Sex, and Starting Over. She may have hit bottom when she began a one-year makeover, for which she decided to use the advice from about a dozen women's magazines such as Glamour, Jane, Cosmopolitan and O.
For a conservative man, the book is certainly uncomfortable reading. She is the proverbial "scarlet woman" against which people like me warn our sons. But it seems she primarily consumed the attention of several scarlet men (until she turns things around), so she'd have had little energy left to corrupt any innocents.
For her, the value of the articles she attempted to follow lay in getting her out of her own comfort zone. That is the main requirement for growth of any kind. And she did grow. In the bargain, she rounded up an apparently quite suitable husband. The book culminates in their wedding.
I found it interesting to follow (when I wasn't skipping smut) the evolving thought processes of a person about 20 years my junior, raised by a lusty, perhaps promiscuous mother (her father is present and honored but firmly in the background), in a Jewish but rather irreligious home. And you know, she did grow. There's a lot less potty-mouth in the Cathy who closes the book.
As an aside, I am no saint, and have my own past, which I prefer to conceal. A poem I follow reads in part, "Living in Christ, no more shall be named/things of which now I am truly ashamed."
I grew, with help from Christ and His people. Ms Alter grew, with help from an amazingly banal collection of pop culture publications, plus a number of stalwart friends. Growth is good.
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