Eight weeks later and counting, I am still dressing up, still posting a daily selfie. Some of the outfits are, in fact, what I have chosen to wear during this unseasonably cool and surreal Baltimore spring. Others are donned only for the photo; given how much I cook, I can’t swan around in a gown. But I put on makeup every day, style my hair with my trusty Revlon heated brush, choose an outfit that I would be happy to wear at a convention or bookstore event. Although I have almost no manual dexterity, I have learned to paint my own toenails (who gets close enough to judge one’s toe nails, after all?). I touch up my roots, having promised my brilliant colorist to avoid DIY color kits. I even do my own waxes.
This upkeep and self-care maven is so not me. Or is it? After all, the clothes were already there, as were the cosmetics and the Revlon brush. I had worked with a stylist last fall, worried that I had fallen into a matronly rut. And I have long shopped for secondhand jewelry, handbags, and shoes at various online stores. I love clothes. I just always felt sheepish and vain about it. I was a closet closet case.
Why was I shy to admit my love for clothes, for dressing up, for fashion? I think it was because I never thought I was worthy of pretty clothes. I came of age in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when the standards for a woman’s body were extremely, literally, narrow. I am broad-shouldered, big-boned, thick-waisted, and muscular. I spent much of my life at war with my body, trying to diet and exercise it into something it was never meant to be. But around the time I turned 60, I decided to make peace with my body.
In fact, it was writing about that truce with my body that had led, in part, to my book of personal essays that was to have been published May 5. As the lead essay attests, I have honestly never felt more beautiful than I do now, at the age of 61. My hair has grown to a length that older women are encouraged to shun, but I rather like the look. My face and neck carry the marks of six decades, but hey, lots of people like midcentury modern. I look in the mirror and I love what I see. I don’t even use filters on my selfies.
Unless stories count as filters. (They do in a sense, don’t they? Changing the way we see an image.) Not even two weeks into my new daily practice, I realized every outfit told a story. I put on a silk Donna Karan dress from 2002 and was amazed by the tidal wave of memories that came with it. I shared the anecdote—how my husband had insisted on buying it for me when he felt that the clothing I had packed to attend a premiere was much too plain. Frankly, I was overdressed, but it was a lovely evening, even if I did end up walking back to the hotel in my bare feet, high-heel shoes in hand.
