I decided to write about those awful Instagram ladies with silver hair, who expect a medal for going gray. They all have tons of followers who idolize them and eat up every positive, self-congratulating post about Loving Life, or practicing yoga. To me, these women seem interchangeable; they all have a silver mane that they constantly refer to, and they are all very thin if not emaciated.

So I googled “gray-haired women” to look for some images to copy. None of them excited me until I saw one who called herself a “Pro-aging Ambassador.” I never heard of this title and have no idea if there’s a million or if she’s the only one. And I don’t know what duties the ambassadorship entails. Does she travel the world giving speeches about the Wonders of Aging?  Does she chair committees?

I would like to adopt my own title: Anti-aging Ambassador. I will go around complaining about getting old (which I already do constantly, in an unofficial capacity.) I will persuade those silver foxes to wipe the smiles off their wrinkly faces.

Instead of “embracing the gray”, I will extol the glory of dyed hair. I will heartily mock the actresses who have suddenly embraced their gray. Jane Fonda, Andi McDowell, even Jennifer Aniston, apparently. They all look better with their hair dyed. Maybe they’re just too lazy to keep up the color, but let’s not act as though they cured cancer. Plus, you need to spend plenty of time to keep that silver looking soft and shiny instead of dull and coarse.

My sister has a friend who went gray a million years ago, before she was forty, and we always wondered what her problem was. Why did she just let her turn grey and straggly? Was she making a Statement? Was she saying, “I’ll show you, society, I don’t have to adhere to your beauty standards”? Her hair is still gray and we’ve decided she’s being passive-aggressive.

Being old truly sucks. There is nothing good about it. Nothing. All those platitudes that begin with, “The good thing about getting old is” are lies. “…you stop  caring about what people think of you!” “You are so much wiser!” “You know what really matters in life!”

Please. I am nearly seventy and still totally crushed if someone doesn’t like me. I don’t know anything about anything, and keep making the same mistakes. I’ve obviously learned that life is fraught with catastrophes, but I already assumed this as a teenager from reading Thomas Hardy novels. I have acquired no wisdom to pass on except “wear more shorts while you’re young!” I have opinions and policies but not wisdom. And I’m just as confused and mystified as I’ve always been. I have no idea what matters. I’d like to keep my eyesight and be able to wipe my own butt but otherwise I don’t know what ‘s important at this point when the key milestones of life have already passed.

Late adulthood is a time of deep reflection and introspection. If you are proud of the life that you have led, then you should feel a sense of peace. If, however, you are haunted by regrets and failures, you will likely experience despair and resentment.

According to Erikson, either ego-integrity or ego-despair characterizes the end of life for older adults. The virtue of this stage is wisdom.

Well, yes but no. Maybe it’s just my ego-despair talking, but the old people I know are all worried about diabetes and Alzheimer’s and health insurance. We can’t remember words and don’t like to crouch down to tie our shoes. Personally, I salt everything and eat lots of processed food but most of the old people I know are serious about their diet. We want either Botox or fillers and wish we could lose that roll of flab. When we watch TV and see someone for the first time in years, we scream “OH GOD, WHAT HAPPENED TO HIM/HER??” Maybe that last part is just me, but I doubt it.

For as long as you can ward off old age,  you should enjoy the use of your body and brain before they become a burden to you or someone else. Prepare for loneliness and a lack of purpose. Make sure you have all the cable channels and a good TV.

And for fucksake, commit to the upkeep of your hair and don’t believe it when your partner or children say you look great with gray hair. They’re just threatened by your lingering attractiveness, such as it is. I may be senile but my hair is glorious! I pay a fortune to color and tame it but it’s worth every penny. To paraphrase Yeats,

only God, my dear,
Could love you for yourself alone
And not your yellow hair.

You can let yourself go, I mean embrace your gray, if you must, but bury me blonde. Or cremate me blonde. Whatever.

Not long ago, I saw my own thigh in the sunlight though my bathroom window and I screamed. EW! Whose leg is that? I thought. I’m not kidding; that was my actual thought. I guess I expected to see my thigh as it exists in my memory. Not the world’s best thigh, but not a dry crepe-y one with no muscle tone. Today as I walked my dog, wearing cut off jeans because of the awful, muggy heat, I looked down and saw it again. Truly an old thigh, commensurate with my age but no less disappointing and even shocking.

You think this is stupid and shallow but just wait. You too will experience this cognitive dissonance unless you go blind, in which case you’ll have a while different set of problems. Since I rarely look at my own body in bright sunlight, I had no idea this was happening. A person I know who inspects every inch of her body and face every single day and exfoliates with a stiff vegetable brush will never be taken by surprise.

But keeping shit from falling apart is just too time consuming. It already takes me forever to get ready for bed, and my beauty routine is practically non-existent. Have  you guys seem Kim Kardashian’s new skincare line with nine (or 12?) products that she says are essential to use together in a certain order? Forget the cost. The time spent at your sink would move bedtime to around 4:am. No, Kim, don’t make me!

So being an old bag leaves you very few choices of how to visualize and project your image to yourself and the world. On one end of the spectrum is Paulina Porizkova, who at 57 never stops bitching about how the male gaze won’t acknowledge her aging appeal while shoving her remarkably well-preserved body in our face nonstop on Instagram.

Paulina rose to fame at just 18 years old as the first Central European woman to be on the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. Almost 40 years later, Paulina said she still feels sexy and hated society’s obsession with looking youthful. Despite still feeling confident though, the mother-of-two said younger men haven’t been interested in her.

daring to look her age!

Haha Paulina, you hate the obsession with looking youthful? I guess all the bikini shots are just something you do for fun.

She said: “I am now completely invisible.“I walk into a party, I try to flirt with guys and they will just walk away from me mid-sentence to pursue someone 20 years younger.”

God, just shut up Paulina and fuck off. Eat some sandwiches. If you want to hear more of this faux insecurity, check out her Instagram.

At the other end is Bridget Fonda, who has evidently rejected all efforts at looking young and attractive. When I first saw a recent picture of her, I didn’t believe it. It could not be her. Even though regular non-celebrities look old and fat when they’re old and fat, Bridget Fonda’s transformation is just startling. She is unrecognizable.

then and now

I felt sort of betrayed by Bridget. I should have admired her courage to stop pursuing a narrowly defined ideal of female beauty. Maybe she’s trying to live the opposite existence of her aunt Jane, whose face is now a clownish travesty

Somewhere in between these two extremes is a healthy outlook on aging. I just can’t find it.

It’s not the male gaze that bothers me. It’s my own gaze in the cruel morning light of my bathroom. I’m going to get some under eye filler and then go around pretending that I’d never get any filler, just like J. Lo and everyone else.

And I’ll stop wearing cut offs or just remember to not look down. Aging is so horrible! I just googled the insulting term “aging gracefully” and found a list of tips. I’m not going to follow any of them, because of my PDA, but you can if you want to.

Thoughts, ladies and gays?

It has taken several days to emerge from the spell cast by Top of the Lake. I miss the weird atmosphere and the intensity of the relationships.

Now that I’m back in my own world, I’m preoccupied by the creepiness of women who look like old ladies.

I know how wrong this is, believe me. My husband always encourages me to embrace growing old. I know it happens to everyone, you can’t stop time, blah blah blah. And yet it’s so creepy.

Look at Jane Campion and Holly Hunter, 59 and 55 years old, respectively. They are dynamic, vibrant woman and Holly’s hair isn’t really silver in real life. But still. The old ladiness bothers me.

On the other hand, I’d be mad at them if they tried to be sexpots with bursting faces like Madonna. I can’t find a way to be an old lady that doesn’t feel tragic or enraging.

What do you think of Jane and Holly? Is it the androgyny that’s bothering me? They project a ‘Fuck You if You Don’t Like it’ attitude, which I normally admire. Are they saying that they don’t care about being attractive, or are they attractive in a way I don’t get? Would they look better with dyed hair, or is it the length that brings to mind wrinkly old wizards?

I have a week left before I turn sixty. I am disgusted by how shallow I am, but still. I can’t handle it.

I forgot to say that Sunday was my birthday. Now I am 58 and none the wiser. My husband took me to a huge botanica where I squealed with pleasure at the racks and racks of magical oils and candles. We thought it would be nice to get a picture of me with the big Santa  Muerta, but look! You can barely tell us apart.

In my imagination, I look more like this:

or even this:

Oh never mind.   I guess I can start cultivating an eccentric old lady look, although it seems like a lot of trouble. Furthermore, now that it’s been packaged and approved by Topshop, its appeal is kind of dubious.

What  brought  this on, do you think? Is it Tavi-related? Is it Daphne Guinness? Is it Little Edie Beale? Is it that blog about Advanced Style with all the wacky looking old ladies?

Whatever the reason for officially dictating a trend called Eccentric Lady, it is by definition less original and appealing. Fuck it.

I’m sticking with Geriatric Tomboy ,    but easing into Slob. Maybe it’s more like   Crypto-Hipster Slob  now that I have a big tattoo.

Let’s brace ourselves for an army of young girls wearing turbans, big sunglasses, ratty furs, granny dresses and hideous brooches. If they can loose the scary Jeffrey Campbell shoes, maybe it will be a blessing in disguise.

A reader brought up the subject of Cher, and while I’d rather ignore her, the issue of how to age gracefully is never far from my mind.

Regarding Cher and her reprise of the see-through bodysuit, it was horrible and inappropriate the first time around (in 1992?) and it still is today. Who gives a shit if she wears it at 40, 60, or 80 years old? The woman wants to look stupid and embarrassing; She’s Cher! It’s her shtick.

The problem is, we don’t want her influencing other older women who might see this as a green light to Dress As Young as They Feel.   Let us not encourage the tragic notion that age doesn’t matter. When we see a woman who seems blind to her own folly, and I’m talking to you Madge, it’s just sad.

Vivienne Westwood has managed to carry her look into old age, in part because she’s simply a great-looking woman, and because she knows what suits her. Maybe having the hot younger husband helps as well.

But Betsey Johnson makes me feel depressed. She looks like she doesn’t get it. Is she being ironic by looking like she’s nuts, or is she sincere? Patricia Fields is scary looking, but I’m guessing she works hard at being that scary. Pam Hogg looks nuts too, and I’d still like to know how old she is. Her look seems to say, I’m a Rule Breaker, Go to Hell if You Can’t Dig Me.

Most of us, though, have to be willing to accommodate old age into our look. It’s not nice to look 18 from behind and and then give someone a heart attack when you turn around. Half the woman in L.A. are unaware of this simple rule of etiquette. I personally have asked several friends to let me know when I start committing this gaffe but I think they pity me too much to let me have it.

To tell you the truth, now that Patti Smith has dyed her graying hair, I am feeling a bit disoriented.

What is Patti’s message to me? If she’s just saying, Fuck it, Who Wants Gray Hair, then I’m on board. Women who let their hair go gray are so misguided. It’s just bad, and that’s that. They might as well go around screaming I NEED ESTROGEN! (Fine, I have screamed that at my family on a couple of occasions, but that’s because I could feel my estrogen plummeting. They didn’t even need me to tell them, apparently.)

Women whose style is always evolving will probably have the best chance of carrying off old age without evoking pity or shock. Me, I’m in for trouble. My style hasn’t changed, but old women in tight jeans tend to offend me. I’m thinking, oh god, Woodstock is over, lady.

And they’re probably thinking the same thing about me!

Today I read a boring article by Gen X poster boy Douglas Coupland about growing old. He notes that we all have two ages: the age we really are and the age we are in our heads.

Later this month, Sister Wolf will be 55. If you are taken aback, think how I feel.   No one wants to be this age but, ahem, consider the alternative.

Being 55 means nothing much except that it isn’t considered a good thing by men who blabber on and on about women losing their appeal after 30. As if.   I am completely awesome, so I am happy to refute that line of thinking.

I have come to love my cute hospital bed and my beautiful red sheets, but all things must pass and the hospital equipment is being picked up on Friday.   I love cranking up my bed to read and I love knowing I can’t fall out. Oh well. Maybe I will end up buying a hospital bed for two….do they exist?!   I’m excited just thinking about it!

During my recovery, I bought this Mischen silk dress online, because it was drastically reduced and because it has zippers down the entire length of each side. The fact that I won’t ever wear it is hardly worth mentioning.   Bring on the Rapture! And the fucked-up looking hem in the photo isn’t like that in the real dress.

The age I am in my head is around 14.   My oldest son is 32, and people generally think I’m his sister or girlfriend when we hang out together, but they don’t realize that in my head, I’m still a defiant hippie girl, angry and insecure but much cooler than those awful straight people.

How old are the rest of you in your heads?