While I’ve been pondering the mutton-dressed-as-lamb issue (evoked by the sight of a 63 year old film director wearing silver lamé jeans,) fate led me to a blog where men were busy explaining why dewy young women are infinitely superior to women over thirty.
Ladies, prepare to give up any illusions of a post-sexist world. There are men among us who truly believe in their tiny hearts that women are ruined for all intents and purposes once they’ve been soiled by education and experience. Not only ruined, but downright disgusting.
Ah well. Being Sister Wolf, I barged into their conversation and toyed with them. This brought about wounded cries of “Feminist! Angry Woman!” and all the usual charges meant to send women cringing back into their sewing circles.
Let me just say, I FUCKING LOVE MEN! I love them when they’re stupid insecure babies, and I love them when they’re nice grown-up men. I love them when they’re gay and I love them when they don’t even know they’re gay. I love them the most when they love women.
Back to the mutton/lamb thing: In preparing for my Golden Years, I’ve been asking friends for advice about the Cut-Off Date, as in when is it time to give up jeans and a t-shirt and settle into a more age-appropriate dress-code. Everyone seems to think that one should keep on dressing the way one always dressed. I can’t agree, though. The silver jeans were just wrong for the nice woman who wore them, even though she was as cool as you could ask for, without being Patti Smith.
Patti is the supreme role model for maintaining your coolness and your dignity. But I plan to swap my jeans for long Victorian mourning dresses. I will wear my hair in a bun, and no one will dare bother me. Plus, I will learn to cackle.
Check out this beautiful dress below. This will be the foundation of my Look. Then, check out this whole online shop if you are still drawn to Goth finery. The bustle skirts and petticoats made me moan out loud…as only a woman over thirty can moan.
Maybe it wasn’t her age. Maybe she just would have never looked good in silver jeans. There’s certainly things I don’t look good in now…I don’t expect that will differ in 20 years!
That dress is impeccable. You’d pull it off flawlessly.
As far as men — D told me once that his weakness is smart, strong women. He says the fastest way to limp dick is a hot woman that sounds like a dumbass when she opens her mouth.
Awesome post – moan away, I say!
The fact that you are even raising this question says that you’re fine & using appropriate judgement, not to mention the fact that you have shown pictures of yourself & are really far from having to give up jeans & T shirt’s. (I have been asking myself the same thing lately, it just seems like the right thing to do!)
In other words, a fucking dolt would never ask, “Hey, am I a fucking dolt?” It just wouldn’t happen.
Oh yeah, that petticoat website is divine!
I wore gold leather pants at my wedding, but no one wants to see me wear them when I’m 63.
I’m going to get a parisol that matches the dress, so I can use it to scare little children and threaten people who arouse my menopausal ire.
I must say, I did wear white leather pants at my wedding, but that was a special occasion.
Well, we can wear our leather pants together on Talent Nite at the nursing home!
I want to see photos of all of you in your leather pants. I had black ones. I don’t know where they are now.
I say, wear what you like at any age. I think at some point, I’ll have to give up minis, but not until my legs look ridiculous. I plan to milk it for as long as possible.
I did not check out the blog, but I must say I concur from my own side of the fence. I would MUCH rather date a nice 25-year-old cutie than some crusty divorced fat hairy dude my age. Who wouldn’t? It is one of the reasons I am on a complete dating hiatus. Old fuckers (by which I mean guys my age) just don’t do it for me.
Yes Suebob, but the problem is that those very guys you want have their sights fixed on girls under twenty. And they are looking for inocense and friskiness and perfect little bodies.
In other words, they’re looking for brand new puppies!
You must read some of the blog comments to grasp the contempt for women our age. But yeah, no old geezers for me either.
No old geezers for you, Sister W.? That’s exactly what I was saying on the Blowhards blog. For the record, the reason I’m careful about what I say there is that I have a (faint) hope that if I try to reason with them from an unexpected angle, they might just begin to see the error of their ways. Probably not – but you never know.
In general, I am not hot for older men. I am still in love with the one I’m married to, however. A brainy older man is certainly far more attractive than a young Ken doll.
Alias Clio, the men you put up with there are too deluded and tragic to be educated. They are probably the ones who read the Hite Report and sobbed to each other that it was a pack of lies.
I am there as a provocateur only! But let us unite against all douchebags.
i’m going to send you your first long mourning dress. and it is going to be HOT!
I love women who love gay men, it’s my Achilles’ heel! Ipso facto, I love SW! I’ll meet you by the spindling wheel, how’s 8pm? You bring the wool and I’ll bring the Depends!
I first got involved with that website, and Roissy’s, because Michael Blowhard linked to my blog (a post on Walter de la Mare’s poetry, of all things), bringing me a flood of his readers, including Roissy. Made my hair stand on end at first – I was running a nice little Catholic blog – but I grew to enjoy sparring with them. And, er, getting them to kiss my ass from time to time. I think I may even have learned something from the experience.
Sonja, I’m ready to look HOT!
Imelda, gay men make the world go ’round. We need to have lunch.
Clio, you are a better men than I, if you know what I mean.
I think roissy is scared of women. Does anyone else see this? If anybody’s “whipped”, I’d say he is. It’s more the planet and the era that’s done this to him than any individual woman. But he’s damaged, to be sure.
It’s the combination of “abominable jerk” and “faux-intellectual” that makes his blog almost compulsively readable. The shock-value that seems his one real trick, is amped up to the point where it is something indeed, to behold. I just read a post from roissy where he suggests that “no fault divorce” might not be as good of an idea as we thought it was, and how fathers should go beating men like him over the head when he comes to seduce their daughters. Isn’t that a riot. If the institution of marriage, and the Loyal Order of Fathers with Shotguns, need help or advice from roissy, we’re in big frickin’ trouble, boys.
W
Perhaps Roissy was beaten up by his own father? Who knows. The ways to damage children are too many to count.
So far, I have never seen his blog. I’ve made a sort of pact with my self not to go there. I do like the combination you describe, though. Very tempting!
I often watch women “of a certain age” on public transport in central London with wonder as I decide whether they have got it right. Yep, they always have EXCELLENT hair. You do not get to that age without finding a hairdresser who is not out to punish you. (still lookin)
They often have really good accessories, good eyewear, good shoes; maybe a tell tale Hermes carrier bag (catch the C3 or No 27 from the Kings road and you will see this)
But they always succumb to the MOM JEANS!
Seriously, I was sitting on the tube to Heathrow tonight and admiring all the above, including an immaculate blonde bob which was some achievement on a humid london day. But the pants were just Awful.
And yet, here I am at the ripe old age of 39 1/2 having just the same jeans crisis. I have tried and tried to get on with skinny jeans as they really work with boots over jeans, but boy oh boy, once summer came it was a choice of candida or step away from the skinnies.
Now they want me to wear those high waisted things that look like romper pants from a german kindergarten?
And that is where my almost 40 year old self kicks in.
Women wear the jeans they are most comfortable with from the most flattering period of their lives. We like to hide our pubic bone (thankyou Britney and Cristina of the 1 inch zip- Yerch!) but we don’t need a 24 hour denim girdle that gives us kidney ache by dinner time.
Fashion runs on a 20 year cycle but there is a rule to the cutting edge; if you were old enough to wear it last time, don’t wear it again this time.
But to that I would add, if it suited you so well you just kept wearing it, constantly, for the next 20+ years, then just keep on keeping on.
And I LOVE that you are planning to be an old lady in black with a cackle!
Me, I am going to start saying what I think about everybody and everything, in front of them. And smoke french ciggarettes blowing the smoke indiscriminately while wearing a silk hermes with boot cut hipster jeans that let my stomach breathe. (and my other parts)
xx
Just yesterday, I saw a young woman in a denim mini skirt at a cosmetics counter. Then she turned and I saw it was actually an old crone with a wrinkled up face a la Robert Redford.
I just don’t want that to be me.
I like your plan, Hammie. It sounds like you’re going for a Little Edie thing, which is always great.
My step mom has a 3 carat solitaire and its giant. That thing looks at least twice the size of hers. A 5 or 6 carat ring would be over a million bucks. Especially at tiffany’s. Maybe she’s messing with you.