At 94, I’m Still Worth Looking At

Many years ago, preparing for a visit to LA, I called a friend who had grown up there and asked her what kind of clothes I ought to pack. “I’ll answer you in a minute,” she assured me. “But before I do, I just want to say, Nobody is going to be looking at you.”

And how right she was! The early middle-aged woman I’d been those many years ago was essentially invisible among the impeccable, willowy, golden, toned beauties strolling the environs of Rodeo Drive.

I have never been one of those willowy, golden, toned beauties. On the other hand, even now—in my mid-90s—I don’t especially want to be invisible. So how then does an old lady like me put herself together in a way that is not merely suitable, but interesting—maybe even worth looking at? I’ve answered that question just for myself, not for anyone else. But below are two possibly helpful generalizations:

1. I think if you want to be looked at you need a “look.”
2. It’s best to pick a look that you enjoy.

When I was 21, I moved from my parents’ home in the suburbs of New Jersey to the seemingly boundless options of Greenwich Village. It was there I first consciously chose to acquire a “look,” an intense, free-spirited Greenwich Village Girl look, a look that suggested coffee houses, poetry readings, and existential angst. This involved a great deal of head-to-toe black clothing, plus hair hanging freely and frizzily down to my waist, plus—my special fashion statement—green eyeliner so extensive that it kept on lining almost back to my ears. In addition (though this is embarrassing to admit) I usually wore my Phi Beta Kappa key, hoping to convey—without dropping names like Hegel, Picasso, or Dostoevsky—that I was not only interesting-looking, but deep. I got looked at a lot, especially when I went to visit my parents back in New Jersey.

In my 30s, I was a married mommy living down in Washington, DC, where my Village Girl look was looking a little tired (as was I, with three kids under six) and most of my clothes had spit up on the shoulder. Washington, in my early years there, was a rather staid and protocol-proper town, but I kept my hair long and my eyeliner ever-green.

And then—oh, wow! oh, wow!—the 1960s explode—and was I ever ready and eager to dress for them. In a coat made out of a fake Oriental rug. In a tent dress made of a white lace tablecloth. In a gown, which I wore to something called the NOW ball, composed of bright plastic squares in neon orange, flamingo pink, and poison green the color of my eyeliner. I accessorized my wardrobe with feathers and beads and headbands and sweeping bright fringed shawls, as well as an adorable Mickey Mouse shoulder bag. And because I was mini skirting through my 30s, often with children dangling from my arms, the look I was aiming for was “With-It Mommy.”

I liked my new look, and I liked being looked at, too. But then I hit my 40s. And then my 40s started hitting me. And in the 50-plus years that have ensued, I’ve had to strategize and negotiate with the assaults of age on my no longer youthful, then no longer even what you’d call middle-aged, self—that slowly shrinking body and wrinkling face relentlessly reflected in the mirror. “Whose breasts these are I think I know. But have they always hung so low?” I once wrote about that reflection in the mirror.

Now some of my body’s decline can be attributed to nature’s inevitabilities. But some must be attributed to a seriously poor attitude toward exercise. For instance, I lived for decades in a three-story house with a treadmill on the top floor, and three times a week I ran upstairs and dusted it. (I’ve been told by many this does not count as exercise.) My daughters-in-law, by contrast, seem to exercise every damn day, and their bodies are as firm and fit as my grandchildrens’. None of them is ashamed to be seen in public in a bathing suit, while I long ago adopted what I tactfully call a “bathing-suit alternative”—a beautiful floor-length floaty flowery caftan.

The caftan is one of many adjustments I’ve made to my body’s changes, changes which have also included the vanishing of what I once called stomach muscles; the ever-expanding circumference of my waist; the contracting of my body from five foot six to a barely five foot four and three quarters; and the corrugation of my upper arms. For temporary remedies I suck in my breath and tighten my “stomach muscles”; add height by taking another deep breath and trying to put some space between belly and chest; and firmly plant my hands on my hips, which immediately smooths out those upper-arm wrinkles, but makes it hard to hold a glass of wine. I deal with my widened waist and with my pervasive softness of body by only wearing clothes that never touch, just slip tactfully past, the doughy sections.

I have not worn a belt since I was 52.

As for my look, from my 40s on, and for any occasion including trips to the cleaners, I’ve been unofficially known as the Hat Lady, for I’m frequently wearing a hat from my vast collection. My favorites tend to possess a large brim that falls in gentle folds around my face, covering my now shorter and remorselessly thinning hair and quite sensitively shadowing the varied assaults of time on my complexion. Within its kindly frame, I’ve finally switched from my heavy green liner to a soft gray. And sometimes one of the women or men who live here in my retirement community will say, as I’m heading out, “I love the hat!”

My Hat Lady look flattered my face, drew attention away from my body, and, on bad hair days, always hid my hair, which I have continued to color a plain dark brown. Don’t ask me why—surely I’m not convincing anyone that I am the world’s oldest-living natural brunette. But somehow this simple unhighlighted brown, rather than white or gray, feels like the real me, so I’m sticking with it.

My Hat Lady look has worked for me for decades. But it seems I’m not finished finding new looks quite yet. For I’ve recently taken to wearing tattoos, specifically the tattoo of a single rose. It’s the right time to be doing this, since I’m spending more hours hatless and at home, having given up driving and taken up cooking again. Though temporary—the rose tattoo lasts just about a week, it’s easy to apply and to replace, and comes in red or pink, in bud or bloom, and with or without a bit of greenery. I wear my rose on the side of my neck, slightly below my right ear, my hair pulled back to quietly display it. I have several reasons for liking it a lot.

1. I like that I’ve got a new look at 94.
2. I like that my new look is a tattoo.
3. I like that my tattoo is a rose, because—guess what!—my middle name is Rose.

And in keeping with my earlier looks—with Village Girl and With-It Mommy and Hat Lady—I’m thinking of naming my new look Tattooed Grandma.

–not quite the end–

My new book of essays and poems, about life’s Final Fifth, has nothing at all to say about hats or tattoos or Village Girl or With-It Mommy. In talks with many women and men in the course of writing my book, I heard about loneliness, loss, second chances, community, and new definitions of happiness and home. And when they spoke of their body’s decline, or feeling unseen and invisible, they could be rueful, bemused, and even quite funny. But humor is only one among many serious ingredients crucial to making the best of what’s left of our life. So why, in this little follow up to my book, did I choose to write a light-hearted piece about “looks”? Why should we care so much about how we look? Why does it feel so important to be seen? Aren’t there more meaningful things to think about, to read about, to do? Or, as one unsentimental friend of mine recently put it to me, “Give it up already! You’re wasting your time. In six more years, you’ll be either 100 or dead.”

I get it. I really do get it. I totally get it. These people are concerned that the superficial—attention to looks—will obscure and distract us from what is truly significant, turning us into unserious and unreflective people incapable of making the best of what’s left. But the people I love the most embrace what’s playful and fun as well as what’s profound. Celebrate as well as cogitate. And are willing to discuss, without apology, both eyeliner and the meaning of the universe. The people I love the most have always looked beyond my look to what’s inside. But I can’t wait to introduce them to Tattooed Grandma.

–the actual end–

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