Royal Hormones

Kate is a Perfect Hormonal Specimen.

Overly reductionistic? Perhaps.

While I don’t have royal fever, I relished watching a video of Kate Middleton have her day in the limelight. OK, we know she had a team of makeup artists and other handlers getting her camera-ready for 3 billion viewers, but even so, she looked fan-tas-tico. She felt relaxed and joyous. Glistening hair, glistening eyes. Thin. She seemed like a perfect hormonal specimen. Same story with her sister, Philippa, shown in the above photo as her maid of honor. There are some good genes happening’ in that family of Middletons. Mom too.

Hot. Right. Perhaps I am guilty of reducing the beautiful Kate Middleton, now Duchess of Cambridge, to her looks alone. But Kate illustrates an important point of serving as a touchstone for an ideal hormonal specimen. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not suggesting that you or I need to become Kate. I rather love the ease and internal reprogramming that comes with age and wisdom. But still….

What’s an ideal hormonal specimen? Stable mood. Strong nails: not brittle or soft. No PMS-driven homicidal tendencies. Deliciously restorative sleep. Strong libidinal energy. You wake up and want to greet the world. You want to kiss your partner, even though he’s bald and brandishes a ridiculous sword. You don’t feel like the grumpy bridesmaid, below, to the left of Kate.

Let’s take it one step further: you’re wildly in love and want to run off with your partner. Not in a saccharinny, fairy tale way – but in a living life fully, deeply, drunkenly-good way. Drunk, that is, on oxytocin, the hormone of love and bonding. In fact, I think the entire pageant of the Royal Wedding got out collective oxytocin flowing. Something so ancient and comforting about it.

xoxox Dr. Sara