I’m off to Las Vegas on Sunday to spend two luxurious days with Kimi at the Bellaggio Hotel, where she’s got us very good mid-week rates. We try to get together on our birthdays which are close together in August except that she is one year younger—something she reminds me of now and then. She drives up from Los Angeles and I’ll be flying Frontier—I like their tail animals and they still let me check one bag free.
Given the fact that I am not only one year older than Kimi but that I will also be celebrating(?) my 65th, I decided that my usual slacks and t-shirts needed some updating so I trekked on down to Saks Off Fifth at Castle Rock Outlets (I never said I wasn’t going to be cheap chic) and happily found myself in the middle of a sale. There was even the magic word clearance.
On the way home. It suddenly occurred to me that I might have gone about the whole business backwards. I hadn’t done any research. I didn’t know whether the things I had bought were last year’s rejects. I know designers say to make things your own, but what if I was going to be what my mother called “mutton done up as a lamb”? I wasn’t about to take anything back, but the niggle of doubt led me to pick up the latest copy of Vogue at the supermarket to see what was “hot.”
I haven’t looked at Vogue for years—make that many years—not since I figured that anything the models wore was going to look awful on me. A particular model, in fact, was probably one of only about ten women in the nation who could wear the outfit and not look like something I would flee if I met her in the street. Actually, there were a good number of models that I would run away from—the dark circles around their eyes made them look like depraved raccoons. But I digress.
This edition of Vogue attracted me because it was supposedly about looking good at any age, a topic dear to my heart. The sections were devoted to the decades. Women in their nineties were represented by John McCain’s mother who is 96. Somehow this lady occupies a different universe from mine: when she was told she was too old to rent a car in Europe, she bought a Mercedes Benz and left it there for future travels. She looks aggressively good and she has opinions to match. I’m afraid that I found her more intimidating than inspiring. Diahann Carroll represented the 70s, looking impossibly gorgeous with smooth, unwrinkled skin. Mia Farrow was the 60s and Chrissie Evert, looking like a mermaid in sleek evening gown, was the 50s.
Each of them was a reproach to those among us (like me) with wrinkles and bulges we have not addressed. Clearly, Vogue is suggesting that to look our age is our own negligence. Of course, each of these ladies has one thing in common—they all have uncommon resources. That makes all the difference, and lest anyone not understand how such unreality and fantasy of eternal beauty and youth come about, Vogue includes an article on the latest miracle surgery, including knee and elbow lifts, all of which is pricey. But then Vogue always was about money just as Vanity Fair was always about edgy eccentricity.
If I were willing to part with the money, I might consider a neck lift if only to feel socially responsible. After all, what I have done lately for the cause of remaining perpetually forty and for helping the surgeon buy his wife a new Mercedes? But I’m not willing to either shell out or put up with the recovery. I suppose I might consider it if I was worried that my husband was eying younger, dishy girls who had no scruples about the latest “tweak” (as Vogue calls it). Otherwise, I look at the costs and imagine what else I could be doing with the money. For me, it's like playing golf--around about the 9th hole, I start thinking of all the other things I could be doing with the time. That's why I don't play any more. To slightly misquote Groucho Marx, I wouldn't want to be part of any foursome that would have me.
I guess I'll just have to make do with visiting to Las Vegas with Kimi--that's probably as close to fantasy and unreality as I am going to get.
Given the fact that I am not only one year older than Kimi but that I will also be celebrating(?) my 65th, I decided that my usual slacks and t-shirts needed some updating so I trekked on down to Saks Off Fifth at Castle Rock Outlets (I never said I wasn’t going to be cheap chic) and happily found myself in the middle of a sale. There was even the magic word clearance.
On the way home. It suddenly occurred to me that I might have gone about the whole business backwards. I hadn’t done any research. I didn’t know whether the things I had bought were last year’s rejects. I know designers say to make things your own, but what if I was going to be what my mother called “mutton done up as a lamb”? I wasn’t about to take anything back, but the niggle of doubt led me to pick up the latest copy of Vogue at the supermarket to see what was “hot.”
I haven’t looked at Vogue for years—make that many years—not since I figured that anything the models wore was going to look awful on me. A particular model, in fact, was probably one of only about ten women in the nation who could wear the outfit and not look like something I would flee if I met her in the street. Actually, there were a good number of models that I would run away from—the dark circles around their eyes made them look like depraved raccoons. But I digress.
This edition of Vogue attracted me because it was supposedly about looking good at any age, a topic dear to my heart. The sections were devoted to the decades. Women in their nineties were represented by John McCain’s mother who is 96. Somehow this lady occupies a different universe from mine: when she was told she was too old to rent a car in Europe, she bought a Mercedes Benz and left it there for future travels. She looks aggressively good and she has opinions to match. I’m afraid that I found her more intimidating than inspiring. Diahann Carroll represented the 70s, looking impossibly gorgeous with smooth, unwrinkled skin. Mia Farrow was the 60s and Chrissie Evert, looking like a mermaid in sleek evening gown, was the 50s.
Each of them was a reproach to those among us (like me) with wrinkles and bulges we have not addressed. Clearly, Vogue is suggesting that to look our age is our own negligence. Of course, each of these ladies has one thing in common—they all have uncommon resources. That makes all the difference, and lest anyone not understand how such unreality and fantasy of eternal beauty and youth come about, Vogue includes an article on the latest miracle surgery, including knee and elbow lifts, all of which is pricey. But then Vogue always was about money just as Vanity Fair was always about edgy eccentricity.
If I were willing to part with the money, I might consider a neck lift if only to feel socially responsible. After all, what I have done lately for the cause of remaining perpetually forty and for helping the surgeon buy his wife a new Mercedes? But I’m not willing to either shell out or put up with the recovery. I suppose I might consider it if I was worried that my husband was eying younger, dishy girls who had no scruples about the latest “tweak” (as Vogue calls it). Otherwise, I look at the costs and imagine what else I could be doing with the money. For me, it's like playing golf--around about the 9th hole, I start thinking of all the other things I could be doing with the time. That's why I don't play any more. To slightly misquote Groucho Marx, I wouldn't want to be part of any foursome that would have me.
I guess I'll just have to make do with visiting to Las Vegas with Kimi--that's probably as close to fantasy and unreality as I am going to get.
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