Letters to the Editor
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I'm old enough to have grandbabies
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.
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Just imagine this article written by a man bemoaning that Esquire 'condescends' to him because of his age
I could not care less what More magazine says about a woman's looks post-40, any more than I care what Cosmopolitan says about a woman's looks at age 20. Those magazines are selling one thing - insecurity. They have one goal - to get you to buy into the notion that you aren't good enough as you are, and that the solution to your problems lies within the advertisements in their pages. It's not truth, it's commerce.
Williams says "It's humbling to try to thrive in a culture that's all too eager to remind us that we've still got it, that we're just fine for our age. We used to just be women. Now we're a subcategory."
That is quite possibly the stupidest thing I have ever heard a woman who claims to be strong and smart say - and at least pretend to believea. What subcategory is that? The subcategory that is running for president? The subcategory that led the nations of England, India and Pakistan?
I suppose if you are going to measure your entire life by the relevancy of Victoria Secret Underwear models, then yes, getting older represents a horrible failure to stay relevant. The funny thing is, I know very few men who obsess over women (or themselves) aging. Maybe because they don't tend to read so many glossy "you look great...FOR YOUR AGE" magazine articles. Ms. Williams should try it.
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Denial isn't just a river in Egypt anymore
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?
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How Not to Look Frumpy
What if they had just called the book 'how not to look frumpy' or 'how to dress nicely out-of-college. Because the clothes you wear and the hair you sport at 30 is probably about the same as what you should be doing at 40.
Sure you'll probably be marginally wrinklier, and perhaps carry a bit more weight (baby pounds don't just disapear afterall). Who knows your hair might even be gray (sorry, but I can't feel bad for anyone with gray hair. Mine turned gray at age 18, no lies, and I've been dying it since, so as not to appear about 20 years older than I am...)
Wear what you want, but yeah, if you look like a frump who wears shapeless unflattering styles, you're going to look like a frump in those clothes no matter what your age.
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Oh look!
Why, it's Mary Williams, writing about herself and her own fabulousness! What a rare and wonderful thing!
You know, adopting a sarcastic tone about your own self-absorption, shallowness, and neuroses doesn't make you hip and ironic.
It makes you Cathy of the comics page.
"The second thing I did was add it to my cart."
That makes you a shallow, gullible idiot.
"friends confided that they, too, had picked it up"
That makes your friends shallow, gullible idiots, but I suppose that stands to reason.
"The author's main mantra is a call to simple, unfussy elegance: loose hair, lighter makeup, restraint of embellishment"
Which is advice you could get from anyone, or even yourself, if you weren't a shallow, gullible idiot, but you have to spend money to get it. You'll notice how the book doesn't tell you that part of that simplicity is not obsessing over your age to such distraction that you feel the need to spend money to achieve it?
The author knows which side her bread is buttered on, and it's the side that has your wimpering self-esteem spread creamily all over it.
And somehow the fact that you admit your self-esteem is battered and pathetic is, to you, proof that you should inflict it on everyone else?
Why wouldn't people prefer to hear advice from people with strong self-esteems, who actually know how to work through these issues? Is that such a radical concept in this narcissistic age?
I really wish Salon wouldn't let Broadsheet spill over onto the main page so often. Keeping Broadsheet in his own little mauve universe is best, and makes it easier to stay away.