Technically. Well, some of the folks I graduated high school with have grandbabies. Plural. So, I suppose I'm that old.

People think I'm in my mid to late twenties.

I have 5 secrets and not a one costs me very much:

1. Wear your hair long and stylishly. I get my hair cut by some very nice young girls at the local high-end cosmetology school. They know precisely what's youthful but doesn't try to imitate Miley Cyrus. Women with short, short hair look older and very, very middle aged.

2. Check the trends, watch the trends, know what's fashionable, then wear what's fashionable. This is pretty easy. You just go to Banana Republic's website maybe 6 times a year, flip through a Vanity Fair or two on an airplane every couple of months, etc. Then you shop at the GAP outlet and Target. See? No fortunes are lost, and you don't look like you stopped buying clothes before Friends aired.

3. Stop acting old! Be willing to do silly things sometimes. Talk about going back to college to pick up a graduate degree. Think seriously about switching careers. Be willing to spin on a dime with the world's turning. Listen to the top 40 every once in a while. Be willing to enjoy Rihanna and Kanye West. I like U2 too, but they're not the end of my musical experience!

4. Lose the middle aged spread. Those 10 (or 20 or 30) pounds you picked up since college? Yeah, they LOOK like the weight you've picked up in the decades since college. Don't give anyone any clues about your age when they look at your rump.

5. Exercise. No leisurely walks around the block either. Those are fine to start, but get yourself worked into a real exercise regime, one that builds muscle. Youth has muscles. Those muscles atrophy unless we re-build them, or maintain them.

It's sad really, because it's no secret that people are going to age. But maybe you want to be like Walt Disney and pay mega-bucks to freeze your decrepit body just before dying.

Remember the "Dancing Grannies" during the 1980's? 80 year old grandmothers dressing up as Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders and toodling down the street to the applause of many people. It's cool to think and act in a youthful way, but what's wrong with just taking it easy?

I'm so sick of publishers forcing this "how to look young" crap down our forty-something throats. I'm even more disappointed that we're buying it!

At every soccer game, school play and piano recital that I schlep my children to (when I'm not administering a surgical anesthetic at my "day job") I can pick out two or three women who subscribe to this ridiculous standard. They're the ones with the teenage hair extensions, the low-cut jeans (sans muffin top, damn them), and the cosmetic filler placed strategically above each cheekbone. It takes a lot of work to look this ordinary.

Don't reward this ageist mentality by purchasing a book which will only serve to reinforce some ridiculous societal prejudice.

And in response to a previous online comment regarding hair length: short hair does not make a woman look old - it makes her look bold!

Ann

So I had to look at their website apropos of this article, and found this: minimalist, elegant, slightly arty components in drapey, flowing, quality fabrics that combine and layer and show off skin or don't. The models are mostly typical modelly 20-somethings, and one woman with lush, long, enviable white hair who is probably younger than the hair color would lead one to believe, but definitely someone I wouldn't mind looking like. They all look like they just came from a dance studio, a yoga class, a gallery.

American Apparel, it's not. It looks suitable for any woman with a certain kind of taste who is any age from late-20s to however high the charts go, and a full range of body types. Maybe I appreciate the look because I'm over forty, and my 20-year-old self would shudder at the stodginess of it all and think it's for rich arty crones, who knows? They certainly know their target customer, and not many companies are designing for that woman. They really don't deserve the snark.

I appreciated this article, especially this line: "How do we gauge how to feel about ourselves when nobody else seems to have figured out what to do with us either?"

I never thought I'd care about aging, but to my surprise I've found it more difficult than I'd anticipated, largely because of the youth-obsessed media/consumer culture we Americans swim in every day. It's hard to hold on to ones perspective (and self esteem) in this kind of culture.

Frankly, I'm considering returning to France, where the culture allows women to age with style, grace, dignity, pizzazz and even sex appeal.

This is the name of a book by a scientist (name I can't remember but the title will come up on Amazon) who has proven that maintaining muscle mass and bone density will not only maintain your metabolic rate (thereby avoiding middle age spread) but will maintain the key elements of youthfulness - strength, flexibility and vitality. As another letter writer has written, these qualities, far more than the number of lines on your face, are what communicate 'old and weak' or 'youthful and full of life'. I am 39 and I have dry skin that is already starting to wrinkle. But people routinely assume I'm in my early 30s. Being strong is a great feeling as well as knowing it looks good.

Sandra, on many levels I agree with you, and would have wholeheartedly when I was in my 20-30s. Age is something to be happpy about, be proud of those lines, etc. But, as a recent convert to Williams strategy, my opinion has changed now that I am in my mid-40s. What I have learned is that in my career, the older a woman looks the less well she is treated. I began to notice it was much, much harder to get my ideas across, even to other women! Now that I am doing the exercise, well-cut and styled hair, lighter makeup, and occasional restalyine to make me look fresher, it's easier. Maybe it's my confidence level is better, but I don't think so. It seems to me that women become sort of invisible as they age, if they aren't careful to appear youthful. Not youthful as in tying to look 21, but youthful in, I dunno, fresh? Nope, not fair, but, it appears to me to be the way business works.