Jen Laird White

I just finished reading this months Bazaar.  It’s March, my birthday month, and, as painful as birthdays are becoming, I still like it when my horoscope is at the top of the page.  So, I’m flipping through, while sitting in my reading chair in my nice cashmere bathrobe that has been eaten to expensive grey swiss cheese by moths, slightly flu-ey from something the kids had and blew through like it was a good bag of potato chips and has kept me on the couch for two days,  when I come to the monthly section titled “Fabulous at Every Age”.  I suddenly felt a bit pissy.  I will admit, before I go on, that I am at the height of PMS.  Ask the spouse.  The fight we had this morning was ABOUT the tone he took while discussing ice cream last night.  The proportions it took on were as if he had slept with my sister.  And her best friend.  In my bed.  While they were both wearing my clothes.  My good clothes.  Although I still maintain you can not be cavalier when discussing ice cream.

Anyway, post fight, I took a look at my Bazaar and came to page 280 and thought, “Well, Fuck You”.  This would be the “Fabulous at Every Age” section.  ”Fabulous at Every Age”.  Well, don’t we all know what that means.  That means, that while young, smooth, boney girls with long face hugged by uncolored hair and butts that float as if sitting on a shelf and boobs that point like the finest of silos tilted in the wind, wearing the latest in animal prints and plexiglass footware are truly FABULOUS and that’s why they are the focus of almost every fashion magazine known to man.  But what they are also saying, these arbiters of “Fabulous at Every Age” is that you, you know who you are, you of a certain age that features gentle softening of flesh, drooping of boob and butt, hair that can’t begin to remember the color nature wanted it to be,  well, yes, you can try to be fabulous.  At any age.  It’s worth a try.  Smug look.  Slight grimace.  Gay sashay.  Tight grin.  It might work. Chuckle with slight sadness behind the eyes.

Lets’ just peruse this months issue.  In your 20′s, they say, you should “enrich your ensemble with rouge hues”.  There’s some hot blonde I’ve never heard of wearing something sequined the size of my underpants and heels that would cause instant back spasms grinning saucily and flashing kohl rimmed eyes.  For the 30 somethings, the proposal is the “shimmer in muted metalics”.  The oh so shimmerry Cate Blanchett is shimmering in the photo, every inch the movie star  shimmerer. The 40′s.  Marisa Tomei.  She’s gorg, no doubt.  She’s wearing a pantsuit with a nautical feel.  The 40′s proposal is “geometric accents in monochrome colors add a rich feel.”  The outfits resemble something one might wear on a high end cruise that involved nothing sporty but only dressing for elegant meals.  50′s are subbosed to do LBDS (please, someone tell me what an LBD is, I suspect it is Little Black Dress but doesn’t it sound like an STD?) LBD”S and mosaics.   Don’t know if that means you have to be covered in small tiles and grout but it sounds like it could be a project for the whole family.  Kids have fun and mom end’s up fashionably dressed although with an STD.   60′s should lean toward Black and White, and my god, the poor 70′s have to do the “Chic Separate”.  At least they are willing to acknowledge that 70′s are still alive.

 Now I don’t have an issue with the choices they’ve made for each age.  In fact, the women look lovely and the outfits are pretty great.  The issue I have is the idea that there are clothes that are acceptable at some age that are unacceptable at another.  And that some magazine can tell you what those rules are.  My friend Vicki’s mother, well into her eighties, insisted on wearing one piece sherbet colored jump suits, three inch heels, a modified beehive and eye liner she could only have learned at the school of Cleopatra.  There was nothing “Chic or Separate” about her, particularly given the jumpsuit.  And granted, she was in her eighties, an age group Bazaar must assume are all dead.  But there was something so memorable about the way she sashayed through life, even when her hips and knees gave out and literal sashaying was out of the question.  She died some years back but I still think of her on occasion and grin.  She didn’t listen to any rules (ironically her daughter is arguably the chicest woman I know, a fashion arbiter if there ever was one but she loved her mom’s wacked out style and would NEVER have tried to change her), it never occured to her that something might not be officially deemed age appropriate.  She just knew what she liked and, baby, she owned it.

Or how about Bjork, the oh so groovy Icelandic singer.  I ran into Bjork at the mall last Saturday night.  Sorry.  I just had to say that.  In fact I’ve been dying to say that.  Bjork.  Mall.  Here goes.  I was at the mall with the spouse trying to see “He’s Just Not That Into You.” despite massive crowds of unruly teenagers and plump people waiting in long lines for a fat laden dinner at Fridays.  I was starting to feel a bit blue about my life, sort of small and suburban, my Saturday night at the mall without even the vaguest desire to see a real film like “Slumdog”.  As I elbowed my way past the masses filling the mall multiplex, there, suddenly, rising out of the crowds was a face I knew.  It was Bjork and her oh so groovy filmaker husband Matthew Barney.  And they were, I believe, going to see “Madea”. Raises it’s own questions but we won’t go there.  In that moment  I felt like a new, cooler, hipper amazing mall going suburban woman. And I had to text every one.  Now here’s where this all starts to connect to what came before.  The texts that came back from my friends were all the same.  Here’s what they said.  ”Is she wearing a swan?”.  I know the fashion critics KILLED her for wearing the swan to the Oscars.  I have to admit I hated it.  Partly because it took quite some time for me to figure out if it was real or not.  But none of us will ever forget that damned bird.  It’s Bjorks bird and even today real swans make me think of her with gratitude that their neck is not wrapped around hers. The point is, she didn’t seem to care what anyone thought and she made her mark.   

 We should all do the same.  I think we’d be happier.  And more memorable.  We’d be our own person instead of “Fabulous at Any Age”.  We’d just plain be fabulous.  Whether wearing sherbet jumpsuits, swans around our necks or swiss cheese textured bathrobes.  And we’d all be much more secure.  See. Don’t you feel empowered.  I know I feel better already.    Now if only the spouse could stop talking about ice cream in such an annoying way.  I’d almost rather he slept with my sister.