Privilege Blog

Celebrity Dressing For 52-Year Old Women?

Even though I have to die some day, I like to spend my life on highly trivial activities. For example. Looking at celebrities in dress up clothes. When I was little, my mother would give us all her old nightgowns and bathrobes, which were really I suppose peignoirs, and we kept them in a hamper and would pull them out and play dress up. Three little tow heads wearing pink nylon robes with fake satin and roses. That’s what ladies wore in those days.

Anyway. Celebrities. In dress up clothes. In any clothes actually. And lately I’ve begun to wonder if I would ever see anything I, as a 52 year old woman, might wear. This? I don’t think so. I wouldn’t even know what to call the area of my body between my clavicle and my navel that isn’t occupied by that which used to feed babies.

But please don’t tell me I have to do this:

The thing about being middle-aged, technically if not spiritually, is that you want to look appropriate – without looking like you tried to look appropriate. And if I wear this I have a vague fear that I might be mistaken for a sofa by someone who wanted very badly to sit down:

Not to mention the fact that I think I would also have to buy a gun and attach it to the back of my middle-aged lady Toyota Rav4. I never have understood country western music. Not since Hank Williams and “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry.”
Ah well. Who am I kidding? I look at celebrities not to find something to wear. I have something to wear. Several somethings. A perfectly good pair of sweatpants with bleach stains that my son left behind. Several perfectly good sweatshirts that said son deemed, for reasons unknown, too dorky. Myriads of black and gray pants and myriads of white t-shirts and a small flock of cashmere sweaters to wear to jobs. When I have them.

So no, I don’t look at celebrities to find something to wear. I look at them so that I can pretend for a brief glorious moment that I am this girl again:

Squint. Yeah, like that. See? I could be her. I could. I really could. Just gotta keep growing my hair. And fervently ignoring that whole getting older bit.

5 Responses

  1. I love you! And just last night I took my scissors to my hair–almost waist-length on a slim, fit 60-year-old.
    “I like to wear it up… It feels so nice and thick…no one will notice the grey if there’s enough of it”!
    But! Would Sofia Loren ever be caught with longer-than-clavicle-length hair? Ick!
    So as soon as I cut it, I felt more like a member of LA society, and modern and grown-up.
    Thanks for the inspiration and witty repartee!

    1. Well thank you so much for the comment! I admire you so for going gray in LA. You must really make a statement.

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