BY KRISTA RAMSEY
The Cincinnati Enquirer

If you're a woman aged 40 to 55, feel free to prop up your arm as you read this. A newspaper can get heavy.

We mustn't strain ourselves.

A University of Michigan researcher who has been studying us for 2 1/2 years says we midlife women are weaker than we think, and wearing out early.

The news is bad, girls. According to investigator MaryFran Sowers, 28 percent of us have trouble climbing a flight of stairs, carrying a bag of groceries or making one loop around the block.

Call for help when you're ready to turn the page.

Somewhere, someone will find this news reassuring. There's always been a school of thought that women over 40 have passed their expiration date. To these people, it will come as no surprise that we have trouble schlepping groceries and heaving our sizeable behinds up the stairs.

And as for the block thing - some people say a woman over 40 has been around it too many times already.

On the other hand, some of us still have the strength to disagree.

The best time in life

''If it weren't so damned funny, it would be frightening,'' says Sheila Guckenberger-Horstman. ''I mean, where are these disabled women?''

Sheila, who is past 40, does not see them on her daily six-mile round-trip runs between Mount Lookout square and Withrow High School. She does not stumble into their space at dance aerobics or yoga class. She does not jostle elbows with them while pumping iron.

But she would like to meet MaryFran Sowers. She has a few thoughts to share about being called weak.

''I've never been stronger in my life,'' she says, flexing a flab-free arm as proof. ''This is the best time in life - the crescendo, the time you can really shine. You almost feel that you're 9 years old again, that all things are possible again.''

So an over-40 woman could, for example, be carrying those bags of groceries along with a newborn baby.

She could be taking those stairs at City Hall (where four of nine city council members are women over 40) or the University of Cincinnati (where Sheila Guckenberger-Horstman is finishing up her doctoral dissertation).

Or her office could be in the P&G or Central Trust towers, where she might prefer to take the elevator instead.

Or maybe she's in real estate. Maybe she owns the block.

Feeding into stereotypes

It's not that Ms. Sowers' research is entirely unwelcome. It comes as part of a federally funded Study of Women Across America, which finally focuses attention on the health issues of midlife women, not just those in early child-bearing years or the elderly.

Women welcome health research aimed at them. It's been a long time coming.

But calculate those statistics carefully before you call us weak.

Granted, strength has to do with a lot more than our bodies. But when you start painting a picture of us as physically helpless and passive, you make it easier to believe all those other stereotypes about midlife women as well.

That we're bores at dinner parties, and no fun to look at either. That we divide our time between weeping over college-bound children and worrying over crows' feet. That menopause makes us forgetful, hysterical or dumb. That we're lucky to have jobs. That we're lucky to have husbands. That we prefer flannel nightgowns.

OK, so the last one might be true.

But this is also true - that the years after 40 are rich, ripe years for most women as well as most men. They are times of professional peaking, of personal satisfaction and, for many, of physical strength and beauty.

''Robust,'' Sheila Guckenberger-Horstman says, when asked to describe herself physically.

And, beyond climbing stairs and carrying groceries, what would it take to wear her out?

''An Iron Man competition,'' she says. ''No, make that an Iron Woman.''

Krista Ramsey's column appears on Saturdays. Write her at 312 Elm Street, Cincinnati 45202 or fax at 768-8340.

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