Are You Formerly Hot?

I ran to the medicine cabinet. Just glancing at the first few paragraphs of the New York Times article, "Currently Struggling as a 'Formerly'", and I knew I was going to need Band-Aids. This might hurt. Maybe some salve too. Yes, definitely some salve.

The profile of Stephanie Dolgoff, blogger and author of My Formerly Hot Life: Dispatches From Just the Other Side of Young explores the limboland for what she calls adult 'tweens (between young and old). But she places that age in the 30s and 40s!

Ouch! Bandage number one.

I contacted Barbara Hannah Grufferman, author of The Best of Everything Over 50.

Did you see this? I ask her. She had.

As an active and fit woman in her 50s who is very interested in style, the latest restaurants, still gets the wolf whistle on occasion, and does not in any way, shape or form consider herself a 'formerly' . . . I was shocked that the author would view a woman between the 30s and 40s as a 'formerly.' How in the world will she feel when she's in her 50s?  I would have to assume "way way over the hill and beyond the horizon."  …from where I'm sitting, the years between 30s and 40s are not ones to which I would attach the world 'aging,' she said.

Yeah. I set the salve aside, and felt safe enough to read on.

The closet was ground zero for Ms. Dolgoff's "crisis of fashion," the moment several years ago when she realized her clothes weren't working: She had put on a leather skirt from Diesel purchased five years earlier, and, she recounted: "I couldn't tell if I looked like downtown rocker girl or like I was upholstered in Jennifer leather. … "Trends are for little kids," she said dismissively. "You can easily go from expressing certain aspects of yourself to looking like you're in a Halloween costume."

Waaah. Salve, bandaids, wound licking. I have a leather skirt. I like it.

But I was brave enough to go look at her blog, formerlyhot.com. I have to say, of the top 20 how-to-tell ifs… I agreed with three-quarters of them.

Uh-oh.

I called my friend Matt.

"The thing is," he said, "and I know it doesn't make you any less depressed — while most women have that period in their 20s/30s where they can turn heads and get a certain amount of extra license from that, most men never get that. Physically, we are plain and less interesting."

His "salve" was basically, 'hey, at least you were once.' And he sent me Seinfeld dialogue! (Random tangent, but useful information: Men quote Seinfeld as often as Nora Ephron, in You've Got Mail, says they quote The Godfather.)

Matt: "As Elaine Bennis said on Seinfeld (I think I may have quoted this before)….": (Me: See?)

 Jerry: Well, I was walking around naked in front of Melissa the other day—
  Elaine: Whoa! Walking around naked? Ahh... that is not a good look for a man.
  George: Why not? It's a good look for a woman.
  Elaine: Well, the female body is a... work of art. The male body is utilitarian, it's for gettin' around, like a jeep.  

He was right — cold comfort.

Then I got a call from Pam Sherman, blogger and author of The Suburban Outlaw. In her late 40s, I asked if she considered her self a "formerly"?

"Formerly hot?" she shot back. "I'm finally hot! I tell my husband he married his second wife first. I look so much better now than I did when I married him at 22!" I laughed. "I'm so hot I don't even have to wear high heels anymore," she added.

This brought me back to the article, and some fashion advice I liked:

Nor should a 40-year-old go too far into Day-Glo. "What makes retro look cute is the discrepancy between the person's age and the era it came from," she said. "If you were alive during the time the look was first in vogue, it can look as if you've saved your outfit for all these years."

I was happy to hear her say that. I have a good friend who wears all her '80s clothes just because she can still fit into them. It's not a good look.

I was starting to warm to this not-hot idea — a little.

On her blog, Dolgoff'shares a link: The 5 Very Best Things About Getting Older. I agree with Dolgoff on most of these too (as does Grufferman in her book, on point 4 about the sex).

But I would add a little more. Worrying, or wondering, or whatever, if you're hot all the time is exhausting. And time consuming. And maybe beside the point. As Tina Brown with her Women in the World summits and Jean Houston's sage classes, Marie Wilson's putting women in the White House, Geena Davis's media training, and so on and so on, and…

We've gotta whole new kind of hot going on. And this flame goes much deep and glows much brighter. Like a candle morphing into a laser. You have no idea how hot things are gonna get.

Related stories: After-50 Operating Instructions; Now Women Are EPIC; Geena Davis Takes Aim.