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Fashion “don’ts” for the aging woman.

Your HOT outfit is probably not your HOT outfit 30 years later.

Okay, I do live in the state of Florida where skin is revealed more often than not—particularly in the intense heat of summer. But, come on, let’s get real. At the age of twenty, the unblemished skin and tight upper arms may have lent themselves to sleeveless blouses and shorts or perhaps above-the-knee dresses. More skin was more and it was okay.

Fast forward to age fifty, sixty and beyond—and it’s a hot afternoon and you’re attending an outdoor cocktail party. It’s daylight, so the green eye shadow and heavy make-up just make us look way older than we actually are. But the clothes—come on, look in the mirror before you go out, ladies. I just returned from one such Saturday afternoon event. I have never seen so many overweight women stuffed into sleeveless, low-cut, too-short and way-too-tight bare dresses with visible panty lines, or sporting teeny-tiny shorts. It was way too much skin to take in. What was hot 20 or 30 years ago doesn’t make it now.

Sometimes I wonder if these women are experiencing a form of body dysmorphia—are they looking in the mirror and seeing something entirely different than everyone else? Or are they just not looking?

As for me, I’ll stick with my black pants and shirt with sleeves. 

Handcuffs: Not for me, thanks.

Few literary successes shock me at this point in my life, but the trilogy Fifty Shades of Grey selling 20 million copies in the first year is mindboggling.  A friend “loaned” me the first Fifty Shades, telling me she couldn’t get through it. She wanted my opinion.  The first thing I noticed was how badly it was written, and how repetitious.  By the time I got to the handcuffs and spanking, I was too caught up in the sophomoric phrases like, “my inner goddess tells me, no,” and the constant repetition of “oh crap,” among other things to get into the porn side of it.  Maybe it’s a function of having lived a full and satisfying life that makes me perplexed as to why anyone would want to read this—well—“crap.”

I spoke to my friend, also in her sixties who raised 4 children in a small Ohio town.  She told me that while she was stuck in the house on snowy grey days in winter, she “escaped” into romance novels.  Where is the romance in S&M and bondage?

It’s disturbing to imagine how many young women are reading these books. Women have come so far, but fantasize about being dominated?

I’m happy for the author, E.L. James.  I’d be happier if it were my personal success—but with a different subject matter.  I guess at my age, I want simple, uncomplicated and happy good reading and not kinky. Life is too short for bad books.

The multitalented Nora Ephron.

Today we have lost an icon and a mentor. A woman who made us laugh and made us cry. She shared her wisdom and wit and was not afraid to laugh at herself.

“Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim.” ― Nora Ephron