With Sandra Tsing Loh back to lead the way, change is very good

Sandra Tsing Loh is photographed in her Pasadena home in 2014. (Gary Friedman / Los Angeles Times)
by Charles McNulty, Los Angeles Times Writer-performer Sandra Tsing Loh wants the world to know that she didn't set out to become the spokesperson for menopause. What woman would sign up to be the poster child for "old" and "dry"? she asks in her signature frisky manner, composed of equal parts exasperation and exhilaration. The occasion for this clarification is her new solo show, "The B**** Is Back," which borrows the title of her 2011 essay in the Atlantic magazine that made her the new voice of what our grandmothers called "the change." Sandra Tsing Loh's prose has the hyperactive energy of a performance while her performances can have the quality of an amped-up literary reading. - L.A. Times Rather than fighting fate — professional or biological — she has decided to embrace what her editor and her body have thrust upon her. Naturally, she's talking back to the doctors, who caution her about "weight creep"; the self-help dispensers, who advise her to give up alcohol, sugar and caffeine (and everything else that makes life bearable for her); and the army of kale evangelists, who believe they have the dietary answer to all her middle-aged woes. Read more....