“I’m not drinking during the week anymore,” I admitted.
“Ugh,” she said. “I say all the time that I’m going to do that . . . but I never do.”
“Me, too!” I screamed. “I couldn’t even do it for a single night! I had to go the whole week. It sort of sucks.”
“How long have you been doing it?” she wanted to know.
“Less than a month,” I told her.
“Do you feel a lot better?” she asked.
“Nope,” I admitted. “Not at all.”
“Crap,” she said. “Okay, I’m going to do it, too.”
“Do you still want to get together and not drink on Wednesday?” I asked.
“I guess,” she said, defeated.
We wound up totally rearranging her living room furniture that night, including moving a three-hundred-pound rug that had landed in its current spot years ago and been deemed too heavy to move ever again. When we finished, panting and sweating, the room was transformed. We marveled at how much you could get done in an hour and a half when you weren’t doing one-arm biceps curls with a goblet. (Then we lamented how nice it would have been to toast ourselves and our kickass efforts with an oversized glass of something deliciously fermented. Sigh.)
I began mentioning my Wineless Weekday routine to other friends as the subject came up—generally when I was invited somewhere where it would be obvious I was going to be the lone teetotaler.
“Um, yeah, sure, I’d love to come,” I’d say, “but I’m not drinking during the week.”
“Why?” they always asked.
“I don’t know,” I’d say. “I was thinking maybe I drink too much.”
“Oh, that, right,” they all said.
“Do you feel better when you don’t drink?” they wanted to know.
“Not really,” I admitted.
“We’re going to do it, too!” they said, one after another. Some of them actually did.
As for me and Joe, we’ve been pretty good about staying dry during the week, breaking the pact only on either highly celebratory or super-stressful evenings, like the one where I had to explain to our sweet, innocent children how our unneutered male dog could possibly have knocked up the neighborhood bitch when they weren’t even married. If that doesn’t earn you a goddamned glass of wine on a designated nondrinking night, I don’t know what does.
CHAPTER 6
On Miniskirts and Mom Jeans
In my twenties, I worked in New York City at various magazines. Just like the things you see in magazines frequently aren’t anything you might encounter in real life, so it goes with what you see at magazines. Forty-year-old women would come to work wearing crotch-skimming silver pleather skirts that stuck straight out from the waist to reveal sequined hot pants beneath. Fifty-year-olds would sport leopard leggings and red stilettos (and not in an ironic Peg Bundy sort of way). Sixty-year-olds flounced down the halls in dresses made entirely of hot pink faux fur. For a while, when the sexy-schoolgirl look was all the rage, every one of my female colleagues, no matter her age, occasionally and unapologetically came to the office in over-the-knee socks paired with a plaid pleated mini. I’m just glad I got out of that industry before whale tails* and Crocs were things.
The irony here is that these were all fashion magazines—the very ones who dedicate reams of paper every year telling their readers precisely how to “Dress [Their] Age!”
The thing about age-appropriate dressing, the magazines explain, is that when you fail to do it, you’re announcing to the world that you are sad and insecure and trying desperately to cling to your too-distant youth.* (As if the Botox that might kill us and the cars we can’t afford and the fact that we’re all suddenly training for triathlons and mud runs weren’t dead giveaways.) According to folks who profess to be experts on this shit, donning a “classic sheath dress or tailored pair of slacks or fabulous statement necklace” (slacks and statement necklaces!) on the other hand apparently conveys sexy confidence. Silly me, I thought your attitude did that.
Every fashion magazine and website geared to anyone old enough to have seen Dallas in primetime frequently features articles detailing the so-called “rules for dressing your age.” Each article contradicts the last, of course, because they rely on different “experts” who all have very definitive and varying opinions on the subject. On any given day, the “rules” may or may not include: nothing from the juniors department after thirty, no shorty-shorts after forty, nothing above the knee after fifty, and no jeans after sixty. Oh, and comfort before couture (mostly), sweats are for the gym, less is more, size doesn’t matter, and don’t forget to accessorize!
One website I found dedicated entirely to what to wear after forty offered a handy list of items to avoid at all costs, which I will summarize for you here:
Daisy Dukes
brightly colored cowboy boots
crotch-skimming dresses
crotch-skimming skirts
pleated, peg-leg “mom jeans”
ripped jeans
ill-fitting blazers
anything that produces camel-toe
ratty sweats
too-long skirts
I don’t understand this list at all. First of all, does the author mean to imply that there’s another age group out there who can pull off ill-fitting blazers and mom jeans and pants that produce camel-toe? And what’s a “too-long” skirt, anyway? One that’s dragging on the ground collecting rocks and leaves and small, unattended children? Wouldn’t a “too anything” article of clothing (too tight, too loose, too ugly, too cheaply made, too out of style, too Ed Hardy) automatically make any Don’t list? And what on earth is wrong with brightly colored cowboy boots? I have a hot pink pair that kicks ass, lady, and I’d buy them in red and turquoise, too, if they made them and they wouldn’t break the bank. (The same site bans “animal prints and disco fabrics,” and I can only assume they mean wearing them together, because who doesn’t love zebra stripes and sequins?) This list reminds me of whenever I read things about my astrological sign. “Taureans are stubborn and love nice things,” the description always reads. Is there a sign notorious for being pushovers who love crap?
Another website offers this handy set of guidelines: “Be sure to always highlight the most beautiful part about yourself, and cover up parts you’re not so fond of. If you have beautiful legs, a smooth neckline or nice cleavage, be sure to show it off but always leave something to the imagination. In return, ‘hide’ unattractive body parts such as flabby upper arms, a double chin, a wrinkled décolleté or saggy knees. In these cases, stay away from sleeveless or caped sleeves, avoid wearing tight necklaces and exposing necklines (wear fashionable scarfs [sic] instead), and knee-length skirts with darker pantyhose.”
I am not positive, but I think that if I followed this advice, I’d be showing up to school pickup today wearing a turtleneck and tights under my burka.
“My Welcome-to-Midlife Moment Was . . .”
When I found something cute at Chico’s.
—CM
In the celebitchy magazines I like to devour at the hair salon, impossibly hot Carmen Electra has been bashed for going backless after forty (and if Carmen can’t pull it off, who on earth can?), stunning Heidi Klum’s gotten verbally spanked for dressing like an eighteen-year-old (I say if she still has the body of one, she’s allowed!), Melanie Griffith—at fifty-four—has been told she is a solid fourteen years past her prime legging-wearing days, and Lisa Rinna’s been scolded for busting out of a top “she may have bought when she was on Melrose Place.” Apparently, Madonna shouldn’t be allowed out of her house at all anymore, at least until she agrees to put away the cheerleading skirts and bubble dresses. Supposed style pros have held up lovely Kylie Minogue as proof that denim jumpsuits are okay for toddlers but not quadragenarians and admonished gorgeous Halle Berry, who was very busy rocking a
formfitting, almost demure silver dress at the time, saying “just because you can wear something doesn’t mean you should.”
It doesn’t?
In the incriminating photos accompanying all of the above alleged fashion don’ts, I would like to point out that every one of these women look amazing. Phenomenally, annoyingly, cloyingly, impossibly amazing. (Except maybe Rinna, but I’m going to give her the benefit of the doubt and assume she was mid-jog when the paparazzi’s shutter snapped, and that’s why her top boobs were busting out of her otherwise perfectly suitable workout cami.)
My tastes haven’t changed much in the past two decades, and subsequently, neither has my wardrobe. To an extent I mean that literally; I still own some of the better pieces I wore to my Seventeen magazine job in 1993. And yes, I occasionally wear the more timeless ones, including a black Nicole Miller cocktail dress, a Calvin Klein pencil skirt, and a Max Azria cape. Never mind that you might find all of these things on a “vintage” rack at the flea market. They’re cute, they’re classic, they’re great quality, they still fit, and I’m not getting rid of them.
I get the dressing-your-age bit in vague, generalized theory; nobody wants to (or should have to) see yards of flaccid flesh squished into the skimpy denim cutoffs and backless halter tops my daughters pine for (and look ridiculously fantastic in). But what about the things that are stylish and trendy at any given moment and don’t show an excess of skin, like skinny jeans and leather skirts and lace or neon or whatever they’re hawking in the fashion magazines at the time? Are those okay? Or am I supposed to stick with the mom uniform (where I live it’s designer yoga pants and a matching tech tank and jacket or jeans and a black or white tee) for the next twenty or so years and then segue straight into polyester pants and caftans?
Maybe it’s because I work at home, often in my PJs until I have to pick up my kids from school, or maybe it’s because I just don’t give a flying fuck, but I am pretty sure that I don’t dress my age. I feel confident about this because my fashion-obsessed ten-year-old tries to borrow my clothes all the time. (She hasn’t yet hit that notorious age where the mere fact that I own or wear something makes it permanently and irrevocably uncool. And in my defense, I never, ever try to borrow her clothes.) I still shop in the junior department sometimes, because usually the stuff there is cuter and cheaper.
I have to say, it’s not really my fault. My kids have Tilly’s and Justice, and my mom has Lands’ End and Coldwater Creek. I can find jeans at Nordstrom or the occasional top at Macy’s, but what’s out there that’s just for me?
Other than no longer feeling like a super-deep V-neck is my best friend or ally, the biggest change in the way I dress as I’ve gotten older* has happened below my ankles. When shopping for shoes as a younger woman, my only concerns were a) how insufferably adorable they were, and b) if I could afford them. Period. If a pair of shoes met these simple criteria, it made no difference if they pinched, pulled, caused torturous cramping, or even drew blood after a few painful steps. I strapped those suckers to my feet, stuffed my purse with a stash of Band-Aids, and went my painful way. These days, before venturing out for an evening, I have to have this conversation with my husband:
ME: [considering a pair of strappy stilettos] Can we valet park?
JOE: [looking at me like I’m batshit crazy] There’s a parking garage two blocks from the restaurant.
ME: [looking longingly at the stilettos] So no?
JOE: Why would you own a pair of shoes that you can’t even walk two blocks in?
ME: [holds up the amazing shoes in question in reply]
JOE: [shakes head sadly]
I used to laugh when my mom would carry bedroom slippers in her purse when she went out (this was before they made those foldable ballet flats that Oprah loves and that were created for just this purpose). Now I get it. I don’t stash slippers in my bag; that would be hitting way too close to home. But I do stow a cute pair of gold Havaianas flip-flops in my car for those occasions when I’d rather gnaw my own foot off at the ankle than take another miserable step in a pair of heels.
Although when I buy new shoes I now insist that they be comfortable from the get-go (no more of that “breaking them in” business—who has the time or energy for that?), until recently I still had dozens of pairs that were excruciating even to look at. “I might wear these when we go to our Japanese friends’ house for dinner because you have to take your shoes off at the door when you go there” is how I justified keeping them, an argument that would be relatively solid if we actually had Japanese friends who might invite us over for a shoeless meal.
Shoes are different than clothes, of course. They don’t generally look fabulous on you one month and appalling the next. You rarely catch a glimpse of your reflection in a store window and think, “Oh my GOD, I’m Sasquatch and nobody told me!” And we rarely if ever say to our friends, “Be honest. Do these shoes make my feet look fat?”
Still, I decided this past weekend to go through the embarrassment that is my shoe collection and get rid of anything that no longer served me or my needs. Among the items that didn’t make the final cut were at least six pairs of heels that hurt before I even tried standing up in them, three mateless flip-flops, and one pair that consisted of two left shoes. (I swear it. I’m almost positive that I owned two complete sets at one point, but the whereabouts of those two wayward righties are anyone’s guess.) I wound up with two huge garbage bags of castoffs and a whole lot of freed-up closet space. I walked around high on accomplishment all weekend.
“You should do the rest of your closet,” Joe suggested gently.
“Never should on anyone else, and don’t let anyone should on you,” I scolded him.
A lot of women I know do seem to think that midlife is a good time to take stock of your wardrobe. You know, now that you’re probably done having babies and your body has more or less settled into the size it wants to be (which may not be the size you want it to be, but that’s another book altogether), and hopefully, you’ve figured out what looks good on you and amassed enough money to buy a few decent staples. But I honestly wouldn’t even know where to start. If I went by the rule “if you wouldn’t keep it if you won the lottery, you shouldn’t keep it at all,” I’d have about four things left out of the four thousand I own.
My pal Chris said her purging started with a “come to Jesus” conversation she had with herself after trying on every last thing in her closet searching for something suitable to wear to work one day and finding that the majority of it didn’t fit, was woefully out of style, or was otherwise just wrong.
“I had jeans ranging from size zero to size fourteen in every color of the rainbow,” Chris confessed. “I was hanging on to the ones that were too small hoping I’d fit back into them someday and keeping the ones that were too big . . . just in case. But I realized that if I lose or gain any amount of weight, I know I’ll just go out and buy something new, so I took the whole lot to Goodwill.”
Another pal, a former corporate exec named Ellie who gave up her high-powered career to stay home and raise her kids and never went back, said she could no longer stand seeing the brigade of power suits idling in her closet. “It was like they were taunting me for my decision not to work,” Ellie explained. “Plus I paid a bloody fortune for them. So I loaded up my trunk and brought them to a consignment shop.” Unfortunately, the snotty shop owner informed Ellie that her twenty-year-old suits were—wait for it—about twenty years out of style.
“They are?” Ellie asked the consignment lady incredulously, fingering the designer fabric and feeling simultaneous pangs of nostalgia and regret.
“When did shoulder pads go out of style?” she asked me later.
“I think it was right about the time The Nanny went off the air,” I told her.
“And double-breasted suits are out, too?” she wanted to know.
“Pretty much,” I said gently.
With some gentle nudging, Ellie eventually decided that saving her outdated designer work wardrobe for an occasional costume party was a ridiculous notion and donated the mess to Dress for Success. They were almost as elated to have it as she was to finally get rid of it.
If there is a secret to dressing my age, I can sum it up in one word: Spanx. If you don’t know what Spanx are, please put this book down, cup your hands around your mouth, and bellow at the top of your lungs, “WOULD SOMEBODY PLEASE MOVE THE VERY LARGE ROCK THAT IS BLOCKING THE ENTRANCE TO MY CAVE SO I CAN CRAWL OUT FOR THE FIRST TIME THIS MILLENNIUM?” While you wait, I’ll enlighten you: Spanx are super-sleek, turbocharged scraps of magically engineered fabric that suck everything in and up without any ugly stitching or painful whale bones digging into your flesh. Fine, they’re girdles. But these are not your grandma’s girdles, okay? (They’re also not repackaged duct tape, I swear.) The Spanx tagline is “the secret to lightweight slimming,” but for me, it’s not even about slimming. Hate me if you will, but I’m not trying to look skinny. It’s more that I’d like to look less skin-y, because I seem to have far more epidermal casing than I need to hold all of my organs in place. But when I slip into my Spanx, it’s like somebody has sprayed me with a shrink-wrap coating that tucks everything in and holds it there. Without tape.
You want to know how good Spanx are? Founder Sara Blakely recently was named the planet’s youngest self-made female billionaire by Forbes magazine and tapped as one of Time’s 100 Most Influential People. IN THE WORLD. (Yes, a lady who cut the legs off her pantyhose to make an invisible girdle and then turned the idea into an empire is on a global who’s-who list that includes economists, activists, senators, Rihanna, Tim Tebow, and Mashable’s Pete Cashmore.) In addition to an exhaustive selection of tummy-taming, thigh-trimming, butt-boosting shapewear, Spanx now makes everything from yoga pants and workout skirts to dresses, swimsuits, and even socks. (In case your friend tells you that your tennis shoes do in fact make your feet look fat.) The only problem with any of it, as far as I can see, is that eventually you have to take that shit off and face what lies beneath. But if you have any plans to wear white pants or a fitted dress ever again, I highly recommend sucking it up. Literally and figuratively.
I've Still Got It...I Just Can't Remember Where I Put It: Awkwardly True Tales from the Far Side of Forty Page 7