Are you a woman between the ages of 25 and 55, with or without children, with or without a job outside the home, suffering from some unpleasant combination of fatigue, depression, crankiness, weight gain, or low sex drive? If so, you may be suffering from the hottest new medical disorder to come screaming down the pike: Hurried Woman Syndrome (HWS).

This Tuesday, "Good Morning America"'s Charles Gibson announced the arrival of this troubling new epidemic. First to be interviewed was Dr. Brent Bost, the Texas OB/GYN who coined the term Hurried Woman Syndrome and subsequently wrote a book titled--cleverly--The Hurried Woman. As Dr. Bost explains it, the relentless stress of today's busy lifestyles--with women trying to juggle housekeeping, child-rearing, and often outside jobs--is taking its toll on us both physically and emotionally. Even more ominously, the hassles of our frenetic lives may prompt many of the same brain-chemistry changes associated with depression, meaning that some of us may need to be medicated in order to return to our normal, jolly selves. This should come as welcome news to the folks at Pfizer, since Dr. Bost's estimates that some 60 million American women may suffer from this tragic disorder.

All I can say to Dr. Bost (and the folks at "Good Morning America") is "bollocks." What we're looking at here isn't some sinister new syndrome. It's called modernity--the fact that there's now more to life than making and raising babies (something that is becoming increasingly difficult in its own right)--and you'd be hard-pressed to find a woman not burdened by it on some level. Yes, this creates stress, which makes us crabby and tired and overwrought and less interested in shagging. But let's not pretend it's some specialized disorder that strikes only women of a certain age. Excess stress can take a bite out of anyone--just ask any man with high blood pressure and a psychotic boss.

But this society isn't content to diagnose itself with something as boring and unsexy as garden-variety stress. Nooooo. We like to come up with clever, niche disorders that make us feel special--even when they wind up applying to half the population. Our ability to generate trendy new epidemics is awe-inspiring, especially with problems that skirt the line between the physical and the psychological. In some cases, we'll take a narrow, fringe disorder and redefine it to the point that it affects enough people to be worthy of a massive public-education campaign (and government-funded drug research). This is what the medical establishment did with Social Anxiety Disorder, whose definition has gradually expanded to include nearly all forms of shyness (see my piece in the August 2, 1999 issue of TNR). And increasingly it looks like what we did with ADD. (To our children no less!)

In the case of HWS, the impulse seems to be to the opposite: Take a near-universal problem of modern life and carve out a narrow enough swath of sufferers for it to qualify as a syndrome. All the better if it's one that will suit the prevailing zeitgeist. That's why frazzled women are such an obvious choice. How many books, magazine pieces, and Oprah episodes each year are dedicated to the increasingly complex, dizzying blend of work-life stresses women face today? Of course we deserve our own syndrome. We just didn't know what was wrong with us until some guy down in Texas put a name to it.

Indeed, one point of HWS seems to be to help women legitimate their stress-related symptoms. After interviewing Dr. Bost, Charles Gibson chatted with the co-directors of UCLA's Female Sexual Medical Clinic, Drs. Jennifer and Laura Berman. (They're sisters. How adorable is that?) Perky Dr. Jennifer's response to the identification of HWS was one of relief one behalf of all women: "Well, they've been hurried for years and years and years and were thought to be irritable, you know, anxious, obnoxious. And now, finally, you know, there is, I won't say an excuse, but sort of a medical condition that explains a lot of what we feel and what we go through."

Gag. Must we medicalize everything in order for it to be real? I'll tell you what's wrong with women: We have stupidly agreed to do it all. We bought into that "you can do anything a man can do" line, without pushing the reciprocal expectation that men will do much of what we were originally doing. This is why many dads still expect a ticker-tape parade when they change a diaper or wash a dish. It's also why, when women come home from ten hours at the office, their brains immediately shift into life maintenance mode, spinning through a mental checklist of thousands of chores yet to be done. It's not that men won't help when asked--repeatedly; it's that most never look around for what needs to be done without being asked--repeatedly. (When's the last time a man spontaneously checked to see if the house was low on toilet paper or Saran Wrap?)

That said, women do not need some trendy medical diagnosis to legitimize their fatigue and low libidos. (Speaking of which, maybe if you guys would get up off your asses and empty the dishwasher occasionally without being asked, your honeys would have more energy for a quick snog.) We need to manage our time better. We need to learn to say "no"--or even "help." And we need to learn to do it without going around babbling about how we have Hurried Woman Syndrome. Otherwise, it's just a matter of time before we start hearing about the real threat to our nation: Overworked Man Syndrome--which is, of course, an outgrowth of Hyper-achieving Teen Syndrome, itself a by-product of Over-scheduled Toddler Syndrome. All of which ultimately lead to Totally Bonkers Seniors Syndrome--which, naturally, will need to be covered by Medicare. How's that for something to stress about, ladies?