Sue Katz: Consenting Adult

My Lungs and Millionaire Matchmaker

I don’t think I’ve ever wasted over two weeks before. And I see no end in sight. I am just sitting and staring and choking and not writing and not reading and not working and not dancing. I’m not hanging with my peeps – none of whom are enthusiastic about breathing the same cooty-fied air as me. When Judy or Barry brings me groceries, they more or less leave them outside the door.

I’ve had plenty of online support from friends across the world. Many have called, but it has been hard to talk at all without bringing on a coughing jag.

I remind you that I’m supposed to be off in New Hampshire having time alone to write and that I set up this break from teaching months ago. I remind you that I’m starting another term in less than a week and there will not be another chance to write until mid-August.

To add insult to injury, my chair - from which I read, watch TV, eat (on my tray on the chair’s matching foot stool), edit, chatter - the chair given to me by my friend Howard who had it upholstered perfectly, my chair is broken. Its innards are fucked up and something mechanical is awry. It is nearly impossible to find a 50s slider of dimensions to suit a person of my size and I am devoted to my chair. Now I’m stuck at home day after day without a proper perch.

I am unable to do anything productive, not even clean, although my environment is degrading all the time. All I can do is to try to keep up with my copious medications, a profusion assembled over three different Dr appointments. Big Pharma is the only beneficiary of my wretched situation.

I have constructed a kind of spread sheet to accommodate the two nasty inhalers (one requires two puffs twice a day; the other two puffs four times a day – both require that I rinse my mouth thoroughly to avoid Thrush, whatever gross evil that might be), the cough meds (three to four capsules and codeine syrup at night), the antibiotics, the salt-water gargles, the painkillers to help with the stomach muscle strained during violent coughing, and the expensive homeopathic cough remedies I’m hoping will help. There’s probiotic yogurt against the yeast infections antibiotics can cause in women, plus things to suck against the cough and sore throat – from cough drops to Canadian Wintergreens to M&Ms with peanut butter centers. Luckily, I already had a stock of soft tissues.

I can only read about fifty words at a time – so People magazine and The Enquirer suit my simple-mindedness. I can’t absorb the TV news or follow documentaries, so I was only saved from the insidious Millionaire Matchmaker by a sudden run of Portlandia the other day. I’m going to Portland this September, so I can count that as research.

I’m trying to pull together my Will – a document that I’ve been working on since the early 80s and which has gone through many incarnations as friends die or fade, as life and locations change, and as death sneaks closer. My Will is full of lectures and declarations and doling out this, that and the other to my nearests and dearests. There is money for parties in each of my three countries and flippings of the bird in print to those who have betrayed me. I’m halfway through an update and rather stuck. I don’t have sufficient lucid moments to get the job done.

Months ago I watched as many of my friends and students got this flu/cold. It would start like a cold, get intense and then turn into bronchitis and/or pneumonia. I knew many, many people who went through this, unable to shake the scary cough for many weeks. It was so widespread and so devastating that I kept wondering why there was nothing in the local news about it. One gets three cases around the country of the flesh-eating bug and the papers are full of it. The State prepares for a flu epidemic on a massive public scale even though it never arrives. So why no mention of this scourge? And of course, I also bragged about never getting sick in general and not picking this thing up in particular. But the joke’s on me. These bugs have been crouching off to the side, the meanies, awaiting the three weeks I fought so hard to set up for myself to write. They struck on, literally, the last day of work before my break and they are going to continue to drain me until, at least, next Monday when I am to return to my grueling work schedule. They must be right-wing germs.

Dylan and Me in Rome

Happy 71st birthday Bob Dylan. I remember seeing you and Joan at Club 47 in Harvard Sq in the mid-60s when we were all young and adorable. I was never much of a fan because you were weren’t political enough for my tastes, but I must say I got a lot of good use out of your tune “Lay Lady Lay.”

For old times’ sake we went to see your very expensive concert in the Boston area a couple of years ago. The sound sucked big-time, the music was muddy – we couldn’t distinguish one song from another, you mostly kept your back to the audience, and you never addressed a single word to us. Everyone says, “Well that’s Bob. He’s moody.” That’s not the word I would use (more like arrogant prick), but I won’t argue on your birthday.

It’s hard to understand your life choice to perpetually tour when you seem to resent performing so much. You yourself have explained it this way: “A lot of people can't stand touring but to me it's like breathing. I do it because I'm driven to do it.”

My best Dylan experience by far happened at the home in Rome of my friend Sergio. He lived in a modernized ancient building (the one on the left in the photo) overlooking the Trevi Fountain. He suggested that we dine on his balcony while watching the Americans throw their coins in the water. I have something to play you, he said, and put on Time Out of Mind. It was definitely my favorite album of yours since the old days, despite your voice going down the crapper. Happy birthday – you’ve been in my life a very long time, for better or for worse.

Here’s a recording of Till I Fell in Love with You (Time Out of Mind)
 

Dear Netroots Nation : Quit Lumping Us Together!

Dear Netroots Nation,

I am all excited to be going to Netroots Nation this June with my union, the National Writers Union. I’ve been wanting to attend your annual conference for a long time and have just now gone through the registration process.

I know this is a splendid gathering of progressives. I know I’m going to finally meet so many of my cool Facebook friends. I know I’m going to be energized, challenged – you know, all those good movement chills and fever.

But why must you slap me in the face with a dead fish during the registration process? Let me just excerpt one section of your very lengthy registration screen and you tell me if you notice something a bit askew:

What is your age?
•     24 and under
•     25 to 35
•     36 to 45
•     46 to 55
•     56 and above

Explain to me – and do you have any idea how often I’ve had to ask this? – why you break down humans in decade-long categories until you get to 55. Why is everyone over that age lumped into one category: geezers, hags, elders, seniors, old folks, aged, venerables, grey-hairs, fossils, geriatrics, boomers, ancients, old farts, gramps?

Twenty or thirty years is twenty or thirty years – whether you’re 25 looking towards 45, or you’re 80 starring back at 60. At 64, my own political perspective was formed by the civil rights movement, the anti-war (Vietnam) movement, our creation of this wave of feminism and of the queer movement, and our development of the Internetz. People 20 years older than me were shaped by the great Depression as kids and by WWII as young people.

If Netroots Nation thinks there is something to learn from age demographics and that the detail is in the nuance of one decade after another, what does it mean that you are lumping four decades of adults into one big dumpster?  If nuance is good for the goose, then it’s good for the older goose as well. I’m coming to Netroots Nation with a button that says: Give us our decades too!

Multi-National Multi-Media Birthday Greetings

Remember the days when you'd get a birthday card from a distant aunt in the mail and a call with your parents and siblings clustered around the phone having planned long in advance to make an actual long-distance call (or in my world, a collect call from Mrs. Nocall – wink wink – that I was to reject but which, I was to understand, was meant to stand for birthday wishes in a cheap manner that also served as economic warfare against Ma Bell)?  If you were lucky, you’d get a bunch more cards at the birthday party that the sisters in your feminist collective or the relatives in your cousins club would organize in your honor.

Well here we are in 2011 and for my 64th birthday I got good wishes from well over 100 people - many of whom I've never met in the flesh - on a dozen platforms. I got a handful of snail mail cards from several continents, including one sent early by a local friend who was in S. Korea before her greeting arrived at my door. I got phone calls from a score of friends from around the country, from Tel Aviv, from Bristol England, and from London.

I was Skyped by a friend who was in Maine after just returning from the Philippines and messaged by a Middle Easterner living in D.C. I was chatted by a Californian and had voicemails of “Happy Birthday” sung to me with various degrees of ability in various languages on both my landline and my cell phone. I was thoroughly texted.

Facebook was totally over the top. About 100 of my nearest and dearest were incredibly near and dear and some said the sweetest things about my over-rambunctious posting habits. I felt so appreciated and I replied to each and every individual good wish; assuming I didn’t miss any in the crush. (That heart is for the love my friends gave me, not any love for FB itself.)

I got a snail mail card from one bank and then a happy b-day email from another. I find that, frankly, creepy and it’s a shame these institutions don’t know my opinion of them or they’d save the byte and stamp.

There was the door bell and face-to-face hugs (and goodies) from both my partner and my old friend (as in, since the day I left home for Boston in 1965). In addition, two close girlfriends (from Italy and Switzerland) arrived to stay with me.

There were online birthday cards, some with innocent, jolly music – and some with naughty images. There was even a sort of poem, an annotated lyric to "When I'm 64", printed and hand-written with special love.

So to repeat in no order. The ways in which people can now communicate a birthday wish have multiplied -- and mine included:

1. Landline
2. Cellphone
3. Facebook
4. Email
5. Skype
6. Chat
7. Mailed cards
8. Online cards
9. Voicemail
10. Messages
11. Doorbell
12. Poem

The only one I can think of that I missed out on was a message written in icing on a cake – although I was given both a pie by my pal, a fluffy cake by my dance students and a chocolate torte by my overseas houseguests. And there was no slingshot delivery, no sign pulled by an aircraft nor any skywriting. Can you think of other media I haven’t mentioned?

Thanks so stupendously much, my friends. It was ever so much fun running from Facebook to Skype while the phone was ringing and the door was knocking and the mail was arriving and the chat box was beeping and the online cards were tinkling. Now that I’m actually 64, I’m going to lie down and try to recover.

Anne Kaplan’s 100th Birthday Party

One of the perks of teaching senior fitness is all the parties we have. Yesterday we got to celebrate a student’s 100th birthday. Truthfully, Anne stopped coming to class at around age 97 after having moved into a housing complex that offered fitness right at home. We’ve never lost touch with her, however, and in fact she came to my birthday party last November. (Photo: Anne flanked by Doreen and me)

One of my students, a master baker, is the de facto social secretary of the class. Doreen invites all 30 class members to annual tea parties (8 or 10 at a time) at her home. These elegant and intimate gatherings have helped to cement friendships among classmates and those connections have served all of us well – both when it’s time to boogie and when it’s time to console. (Photo: Doreen, late 80s, and just some of her baked goodies)

It was Doreen’s idea to have this party for Anne and the planning started months ago. Many of the forty invitees kicked in with food and drink and help to pull it all together. We had 30s and 40s music in the background, sandwiches and cheese platters and then about a dozen types of cookies from Doreen’s prolific and incomparable oven. One couple brought a giant inscribed birthday cake, photographers were engaged, speeches were made and there was really something to celebrate.

Anne uses a walker, her hearing on the left side isn’t what one would wish, and her eyesight is dimming.  That doesn’t stop her from remembering everyone’s name and where they have recently moved to or what wedding or funeral just happened in their family. She was a gracious guest of honor and after her daughter and I made tribute speeches, she added a few sentences of her own, not the least the value she felt she derived by working out. Her hair, as always, was impeccably done and her outfit was immaculate. (Photo: Anne gets her hand kissed by Sheldon, a young 94)

Most of my students are in their 80s – some older and some younger. Working with them gives me a unique perspective. I am generally the baby of the group, although we have had students sign up who were younger than me. This gives me many benefits, two of which are especially useful. If my knees have a new ache or I’m skeptical about a bone strengthener my doctor wants to give me, I have 60 students (there are actually two groups) to consult. “Who’s had rotator cuff problems?” I ask and I’ll have ten people raising their hands, a font of personal wisdom for all that ails me.

Being with my students also gives me a really special wide-lens view into the future. I see their capabilities, their activism, their continued and changing cultural interests, their spontaneous mutual support arrangements and I know that things can be okay twenty years hence, or thirty-seven years forward in Anne’s case. This was my first 100th birthday party and it has pushed the goal posts of my imagination. Maybe I will have time to write all those books clawing at my overcrowded datebook to get out.

Postscript: Doreen spoke to Anne this morning who said that Saturday was the greatest day of her life. When you’ve already got 100 years of days, of parties, of celebrations under your belt, that’s high praise indeed.

“Left on Pearl” – 1971 Feminist Takeover of a Harvard Building

So what’s funny about being in my 60s? It’s funny to be at an age where historical documentaries are being made about political actions I was involved in. Am I history?

Recently, on the exact fortieth anniversary of our takeover of a Harvard building, the fine cut of “Left on Pearl” was shown to a sold-out crowd at the Brattle Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It is a documentary about the 1971 feminist takeover of a Harvard University building – one of very few such incidents ever – leading to 10 days of occupation, political agitation, individual transformation and media hysteria. We activists were told to scurry back to our husbands’ kitchens. The press could not get enough of us, or rather of bashing us.

We occupied the building on March 6, 1971, by taking a “Left on Pearl” Street in Central Square in the aftermath of the downtown International Women’s Day rally when the police and the other marchers were both assuming we’d take the usual demonstration route, straight on Mass Ave, from Boston to Harvard Square.

Forty years ago?! Seems like only yesterday that a small group of Boston-based women began to pull together the take-over of this little-used warehouse-type Harvard building on 888 Memorial Drive in Cambridge. This University-to-the-bourgeoisie (some things never change) was then in the process of gobbling up and destroying the Riverside neighborhood of Cambridge, where a community movement resisted with wit and persistence.

No one had anticipated staying overnight, let alone for 10 days and nights, but as word got out (and it did so almost immediately despite this being a pre-cell phone, pre-Internet era), community folks brought us piles of blankets and casseroles. No one had anticipated bags of shorn hair as short haircuts once again became a symbol of defiance– as it had in the 1920s when women discarded corsets and long locks in favor of the bob. No one had planned on inspiring suburban women to rebelliously drop everything but the kids and come running for the first time in their lives. No one had anticipated how many ostensibly straight women would discover, in these close quarters, the irresistible charm of a woman comrade. (That's me on the left.)

Like women everywhere who find themselves in crowded temporary quarters, we immediately built community, organized committees, established security rounds and began sharing skills. I taught self-defense and cut hair. Others displayed really amazing expertise: what pride we felt when our own members went right out and reconnected the electricity whenever Harvard turned it off.

What was the action about? We wanted a women’s center and we decided to wrest it from Harvard – and that was just one of the most immediate of our demands. Low cost housing for local residents was another, not the least because Riverside activists were contesting the University’s plans to build student housing on that very land. In fact, we frequently produced lists of demands during the takeover (such as free state-provided child care, an end to police brutality, legal aid, etc) – and the sad thing is how many of those demands/dreams remain unfulfilled to this day.

Of course those lists were the product of endless meetings in which the feminist goal of consensus led us to talk half through the night. There were the big issues and there were the process issues. I’m not sure if we ever fully resolved the conflict over whether or not necking during meetings was appropriate. Perhaps the most passionate exchanges were when/if/how to leave the building in the face of repeated threats of arrest and violence.

And now back to the present. This remarkable documentary, like the takeover plan back in the day, is a labor of love by a small group of unrelenting, committed feminists. It is produced by the 888 Women's History Project, whose members are Libby Bouvier, Susan Jacoby and Rochelle Ruthchild. Susie Rivo is the director/filmmaker, and she and Iftach Shavit are doing the editing. The videographer is Lynn Weissman.

As for those demands, while we still don’t have sufficient low-cost housing, accessible state child-care or most of the other things we sought, there is no denying that times have changed. “Left on Pearl” employs shocking archival material to provide the social and political context of the early 70s. To better serve their goal of producing something educational for young people, they reveal a 1971 environment that openly, enthusiastically and explicitly marginalized women. For example, we see the job “want ads” of those days – divided between jobs for women and jobs for men. Queerness was still listed as a psychological disorder; rape was considered something done by a complete stranger jumping from behind a bush; dress codes mandating traditional femininity were common at work and school.

The Brattle Theatre was buzzing before, during and after the show. Those who couldn’t get tickets to the sold-out show lingered outside just to be in the zone. Inside, when Susan Jacoby, one of the team doing this work, asked from the stage for everyone who had spent time at 888 to stand up, it was an amazing moment. Dozens and dozens of grey-haired participants saw each other. We recognized old friends and lovers and we discovered that contemporary friends had actually been there with us too. During the Q&A young women thanked us, their voices choking, and everyone asked how we could help this funny, exciting film about a unique revolutionary action cross the finish line. (They need about $100,000.)

By the way, what’s the craziest thing about this unique takeover? We actually got a women’s center out of it – still active just blocks away – and apparently it’s the longest existing such center in the country! Now that’s history that I’m talking about.

Check out the website (and not just because my picture is featured on the right column - in fact all of these photos are from there) to learn more.  

The Daily Show Gets it Totally Wrong - Again

Why would a group of single people who like going clubbing while looking their best be an object of ridicule on a “progressive” comedy show? Why would a program about safer sex aimed at a group of sexually active adults be considered ludicrous? If you ask The Daily Show, it’s because they’re old.

I’ve often complained that Jon Stewart seems to surround himself with jerks on The Daily Show, perhaps as a way to make himself look better. His gaggle of guys is a tiresome crew with an adolescent humor based on humiliating – rather than exposing – people.

Tonight, one of those idjits, Jason Jones, “reported” from a community of Jewish elders in Florida. He “discovered” two facts: first, the older people are having a lot of sex and second, they’re suffering a spike in sexually transmitted diseases. The first fact he found nauseating – a point he made repeatedly – and the second he found laughable.

Jones is 42 and is married to the only woman who is part of this dumbed-down Stewart support cohort on The Daily Show, Samantha Bee. (Her bits are often as puerile as the others, although not always.) Jones won his reputation, such that it is, for an elevated level of rudeness others found hard to achieve, but only when Samantha Bee took leave to have their babies, was Jones “promoted to a full time correspondent.”

For part of his ugly routine last night, he dressed up in what he considered old-man couture: eye-exam-sized dark glasses and pleated slacks hiked up to his nipples. Next to the sharp crowd he was out with, he looked like a putz.

So what is the problem with “discovering” that many people want to be sexual throughout their lives? If he had ever been friends with folks in their 80s and 90s, he would’ve already known that. What would Jones recommend instead? That elders go sit on a cold mountain-top when they get to the age that reminds Jones of his own mortality?

Even more bewildering, why would anyone with even a sliver of a brain ridicule safer sex education in a community that is seeing a rise in sexually-transmitted infections? For a man who is in his 40s, Jones does protest too much. I wish him what he seems to wish for the rest of us: a strict celibacy for the rest of his life. And I would ask Mr. Boss Man, Jon Stewart, to hire a witty elder to bring some sex appeal to the show.

Elder Abuse on the Rise, big-time

There’s elder abuse and there’s elder abuse. Explicit and implicit. And we’ve got multitudes more of both, thanks to the economic crash.

Jenefer Duane, the founder of the Elder Financial Protection Network, defines a type of abuse that is on the rise: financial abuse. Older people are often ripped off by those on whom they are dependent – from relatives to care workers, from advisors to scam artists. Duane’s group puts the number of abused at 5 million. Of those, we are told by The Institute of Aging in San Francisco, about “50% of cases of elder abuse involve financial exploitation.”

So it’s not enough that your skin is looking like MapQuest and your eyesight is so faded that you can’t pluck your own chin hairs. Nope, now the Congress has spent the last eight years saying “Fine, do as you like,” to your abuser. He’s gone to a nice new mansion in Texas and you’re eating dogfood.

And it only gets worse. The Boston Globe recently reported on the astronomical rise in abuse of older people. “Confirmed cases of financial, physical, emotional, or sexual mistreatment of elders more than doubled in each of the first four months of this fiscal year [my emphasis], compared with monthly averages the previous year, according to a Globe analysis of state figures.” Organizations working in the field have received more reports of elder abandonment and abuse than in decades of record-keeping.

The financial vulnerability of older people is profound. As one New York Times article put it, “There’s a terrified older population out there,” said Alicia H. Munnell, director of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. “If you’re 45 and the market goes down, it bothers you, but it comes back. But if you’re retired or about to retire, you might have to sell your assets before they have a chance to recover. And people don’t have the luxury of being in bonds because they don’t yield enough for how long we live.”

Even homeowners lucky enough to have paid up their mortgages are finding it impossible to pay property taxes which may have doubled or tripled in the last decade. And as for pulling themselves up by their comfort-shoe-straps, older people can forget getting back into the workforce. Not only are there no jobs, they’ll face huge discrimination against over-50s in hiring.

There’s a lot to turn your hair grey here – if it isn’t already white, not the least these figures around personal ruin: “From 1991 to 2007, the rate of personal bankruptcy filings among those ages 65 or older jumped by 150%...The most startling rise occurred among those ages 75 to 84, whose rate soared 433%.” 

Here’s the thing: note those dates and then just imagine what has happened after 2007, since capitalism ate itself alive and began spitting us out. Many boomers and seniors have spent our lives fighting for social and economic justice. And this is the hand our free market democracy has dealt us.

I guess each of us has to focus our annoyance on something that is small enough to cope with. I choose Bernie Madoff, who is still living under “house arrest” in one of his gazillion-dollar domiciles. The rest of his generation and that of his parents can’t pay their rent, their mortgage or their taxes. I am reminded of one of our favorite phrases from the 60s: Eat the rich!

Dara Torres: Swimming Through The Boundaries

By now, anyone who is interested in swimming, in the American Olympic trials or in women athletes (or someone who is forced to overhear TV sports shows) knows that Dara Torres has qualified for an unprecedented fifth American Olympic team at age 41. On the way, she set another 50-meter freestyle record (she first set it 26 years ago at age 15) after having come in first the day before in the 100-meter, which isn’t even her specialty.

I was a professional martial arts athlete for nearly 20 years of my younger life and my limited experience of competition – nasty stuff – amplifies my awe of Torres’ achievements. In the early 80s, for rather superficial reasons, I masochistically took up weightlifting hoping to sculpt a body like, well, like Torres’. I was the only woman in the bodybuilding gym and the only woman in the first weights training certification course at Israel’s prestigious physical education institute, Wingate.

Despite low standards – all I wanted were some cut triceps and twitching forearms – I didn’t turn gorgeous (just stronger). I’ve simply been blessed with copious subcutaneous tissue – more each year, it seems. I gave up weights in frustration and abject boredom after a couple of years. Dara Torres, however, isn’t into fitness for the cosmetics. Despite retiring and returning twice to competition, she has obviously been willing to do what it takes to break national records and sculpt herself into an anatomical map of musculature.

The feminist blogosphere has paid attention to Torres. If you want to see an astounding photo of Dara Torres in all her hard-won glory (scroll down – you’ll know the shot when you see it – it makes me giddy) and to read more about Torres, check out Maggie Jochild’s terrific site Meta Watershed.

As an older woman who wins relentlessly, Torres has attracted unreasonable scrutiny and suspicions of illegal drug use. Journalist Christine Brennen wrote, “Torres said she has had both her urine and blood tested 12 to 15 times since March. That's a lot of drug testing, more than Bonds and Clemens likely had in their entire careers combined.” I should mention that Torres volunteered to be in an anti-doping program.

Some people have apparently found her incomparable sports accomplishments hard to swallow and so try to trivialize and diminish her identity as a sportswoman. Michael Phelps, boy wonder swimmer, heir to Mark Spitz, has the annoying habit of calling her his “mom” – not his colleague or mentor. (In my opinion, only her two-year-old daughter really has that right.) This tag has been gleefully picked up by numerous commentators.

Just today, Fox has a story listing the top 10 Olympic stories. Number 5 is entitled “Let’s hear it for mom.” Decades of success should qualify her to be noted, in the context of the Beijing Olympics, for what her appendages, lungs and devotion – not her uterus – produce. Torres explained the role in her career arc of her age and family to the Women’s Health Magazine, "They may be harder to achieve, but your dreams can't stop because you've hit a certain age or you've had a child."

She may be a mother – but the sports world should be concentrating on the fact that she is simply an incredible athlete who works her butt off. Of course having about $100,000 per year of support staff – trainers, masseuses, etc – is also helpful.

And that “intense and continuous exercise”, one Canadian publication pointed out, can be the key to continuing in sports past previous age barriers. The Canadian Olympic team has at least four athletes over 40 going to Beijing, including Susan Nattrass, a 57-year-old competitive trap shooter participating in her sixth Olympics.

The Canadian National Post interviews one Mayo Clinic expert, Dr. Michael Joyner, who convincingly argues that we’re seeing older women athletes now because they are from the first generation of girls who were encouraged and supported from childhood to get involved in sports. I would add that clearly Title IX, for which we feminists fought so hard, and which outlaws sex discrimination in educational institutions receiving federal funds, had its greatest impact on sports. For the first time, some women have had decent fields, decent coaching and a bit of social acceptance. Opportunity and support make all the difference.

Dara Torres is neither the first nor the only superb athlete to keep going long past expectations. Martina Navratilova, considered by many (including Billie Jean King) to be the greatest woman tennis player, won the mixed doubles at the 2006 U.S. Open just a month before her 50th birthday.

Now Navratilova is helping her fellow boomers. Having been named as AARP’s Health and Fitness Ambassador, I think it’s justified to show you the poster – evidence of Martina’s life-long work-outs. Navratilova’s retirement had been predicted for decades, but as she said, “I've been in the twilight of my career longer than most people have had their career.”

Older? Into fashion? Get some dark tights and botox.

Charla Krupp wants to strip me naked, journalist Sally Wadyka claims, and then re-clothe me in “age-appropriate” dark tights, modest knee-hiding garments and pink (not red) lipstick. Only then will I be properly dressed to go for my essential botox treatments, injectible fillers, facial peels and professional hair coloring.

I wouldn’t have known about Krupp’s interest in my make-over if Wadyka’s review “Want to Look Younger? Dress Your Age” of Krupp’s book wasn’t one of those irritating pop-up articles you have to wade through in order to access a free email account

“A woman's dress should be like a barbed- wire fence: serving its purpose without obstructing the view.”
Sophia Loren

Krupp’s book How Not to Look Old is apparently, incomprehensibly, a NY Times bestseller. To use Krupp’s own imagery, with the country teetering on the too-high platforms of an economic depression, with our national rights and reputation splotchy and peeled raw, and with our acceptance of difference coming up as short as hotpants throughout this election campaign, I can understand turning to escapist literature. But is this book really “age appropriate” reading for grown-ups?

“A fashion is merely a form of ugliness so unbearable that we are compelled to alter it every six months.”
Oscar Wilde

Wadyka’s article uses 13 photos sets of models and superstars to teach us the dos and don’ts of “dressing our age.” The assumptions underlying the advice – all of which emphasizes such qualities as sophistication, chic, simple and slim – are like one big designer label. They want older women to act our age and they’re confident they know what that would look like. The publisher is coy about what constitutes “older”: one reviewer says 40+, another over 35 and someone else past 30! From my perspective at 60, not only do I want to be and feel hot, I want to redefine and expand what hot is all about – for any gender and any age.

 

“When his wife asked him to change clothes to meet the German Ambassador: If they want to see me, here I am. If they want to see my clothes, open my closet and show them my suits.”
Albert Einstein

 

So what does the author prescribe? “Age-appropriate” fashion would not involve revealing much skin because according to Krupp we are far too worn-out for public view. Instead we should at all costs avoid being “too risqué” (showing some shoulder), “trashy” (an older woman’s bared midriff) and immodest (wearing layers of sheer material).

One of the benefits of maturity should be dressing ourselves without fear of loaded (with class and culture), moralistic judgments, but apparently Krupp feels entitled to loath older sassiness.

“I wear my sort of clothes to save me the trouble of deciding which clothes to wear.”
Katharine Hepburn

I think older women should be outrageous, if they like that kind of thing; slinky, if that’s what they want; and muted, if they are muted-minded. What oh what oh what does age have to do with this or that garb? An intense marble sculptor with irresistable forearms may play dress-up a bit differently than a chilled homeopath with slender limbs. One academic might go for the boa while another considers fresh jeans formalwear. The closet of a woman from Yemen is probably going to give her different options than that of another from Finland.

 

For myself, I may have mentioned that my favorite shop is a very cheap outlet aimed at inner city teenies. I’m often the only white woman and the only person older than 25 in the store. But they’ve got the bolero-length jackets I’ve always liked, the deep V-necks to highlight the cleavage Krupp thinks I should cover and the imitation crocs in hot pink that sooth my feet. They’ve got the huge hip-hop tee-shirts I like for nightgowns and their jeans for fat girls have a lot of stretchiness. So there you have my personal fashion dos and don’ts.

 

“I base my fashion sense on what doesn't itch.”
Gilda Radner

In a fawning Time magazine interview, Krupp displays her urbane class consciousness. The interviewer asks if her recommended regular Botox, filler, face peel and hair color treatments aren’t a mite expensive. She answers:

“Yes… It costs a fortune. A lot of women do have a lot of money, and they can spend money on these things.”

For those who can’t? Just “get botox once a year, and not every three months.”

And to add insult to injury? Even though tie-dye is turning up on all the runways, we read, Krupp declares that if you’re old enough to remember a trend first time around, you’re too old to wear it a second time. That’s so arbitrary that it would seem inane, if it weren’t for the fact that she’s on the NY Times best-seller list. Go figure.

“Fashion is something barbarous, for it produces innovation without reason and imitation without benefit.”
George Santayana