A blog post from The Ladders about “What 50 year-olds Know That 20-year-olds Don’t.” I object only to the photo of a woman who’s, like, 80, which makes me suspect that someone who’s, like, 20, chose it. Also, these two are just not helpful.
This from the heart-breaking poem called “Washing the Elephant.”
And here’s the heart-breaking part:
Playbill reports that actress Carol Channing turned 96 this week and, by the looks of her, she’s sticking with her winning style: tousled silver bob, foot-long lashes, big red lips, a dress like a disco ball. I was about to write that I best remember her in “Thoroughly Modern Millie” but in skimming the libretto, I recall none of this: devil-may-care paperclip salesman? ‘several white girls tied up to be sent off to Peking?’ And somehow all of this adding up to ‘the happiest motion picture hit of the year?’ Funny, too, how Millie is thought of as “modern” when she takes a job of a stenographer, then marries a millionaire.
Regardless, many happy returns Miss Channing! 
Catherine gets real about “no makeup,” better called “some makeup” and also “lots of makeup.”
Source: Makeup Free Movement? Nope. I’m of the Make Me Up Movement!!!
Proud Mary
Here’s are some of the things Mary, my mother-in-law, said to me while I sat beside her in the rehab center:
I think I’m going to have a feel a big feel
Would it be wrong if I just walked out
OK but don’t get in the garbage
No he’s not at all ..
Every time I see one dressed as a Bar… I can’t believe it
Do you want me to tell you about Capelina?
Would you like to take this one?
She is churching, Marjean, churching
Her bossy, Proud Mary (as I’ve always thought of her) manner of speaking is the same: full-throated, declarative, emphatic. And the sentences start off as something you want to listen to. But then they quickly lose their meaning. Is she searching for words she can’t find? Does she finish the thoughts in her head? Does she imagine she is speaking to someone else, someone who is actually conversing back, which would explain the pauses, the redirection, the listening-look she has on her face.
He has the cobell
He has the coball
What are you saying
That won’t work
He’s always last
O.K., don’t worry about it
I rarely ever see him
Do you have everything, anything
It’s the hideon. He’s the hideon
What else to say about Proud Mary? Never remarried after a mid-life divorce, Mary sold used cars, holding her own against an all-male sales crew. She had that deep, loud voice; a full-bodied figure, at once mannish and womanly; fiery red hair. She was an at-home mom who could have been a professional actress but settled for grabbing all the good roles in Milwaukee’s community theater productions. She could be sharply critical; was quick to anger. She mixed margaritas, disco-danced at parties. “Susie Homemaker, she was not,” my husband, who had a complicated relationship with her, says.
The thing is, Mary’s still alive. Somewhere within her wasted body mind and dementia-fogged brain, Proud Mary’s still in there. But, oh the indignities she suffers! Oh the (to me) horrors of her memory care unit at the assisted-living facility! I say “to me” because it’s unclear whether she feels anything (frustration? embarrassment?) when the nurse’s aid changes her adult diaper or spoons pudding into her mouth. And now I’m back to thoughts on end-of-life and good death, more of which is here.
Linda Rodin: Girl-Crush-Worthy
I don’t know Linda Rodin, except for what I’ve read on Goop. The profile is as breathless and overstated as you’d expect from a pro-woman web site. To clarify, the sites and their intentions are good, but the boss-lady profiles tend to bog down in superlatives. Here’s the first sentence, awkward in its girl crush: “There’s lit-from-within in the “glow” sense, and there’s lit-from-within from the standpoint of visibly, joyfully vibrating with energy …”
Etcetera.
The thing is, Linda Rodin just seems cool and natural and a little chary in her responses to questions about her slim build and good skin. “Everybody sees these pictures of me retouched. I don’t look like that! People say, you look so great, but I mean, we’re not having lunch together, that’s not how I really look,” she says.
Here’s how she looks:
Linda Rodin, age 68
Linda Rodin: Sleeping Beauty
Rodin has a skincare line called Olio Lusso, from which I have a tiny bottle of skin oil. If it would help me look like her at 68 and, most especially, be that cool, I’d buy it by the barrel, along with a tube of lipstick called Billie on Her Bike, because the name’s so, so good.
BILLIE ON THE BIKE Inspired by Linda’s mother Beatrice, aka “Billie,” this violet berry is the shade she wore to ride her bicycle, work in the garden or to do just about everything.
Carmen Dell Orefice is billed by this Fortune article as the world’s oldest working model (Baddie Winkle might have something to say about that). Her looks are confectionary: flossy platinum hair, doll-like features, painted-on lips and a complexion like wedding cake icing. Nearly 100% artifice, at least in her modeling photos, which is all we ever see.
Carmen Dell Orefice, age 85
She’s looked exactly like this for decades — same gravity-defying white hair, same placidly arrogant expression. But as a young model she was an extremely interesting-looking beauty, an Italian girl, which is to say ethnic for that time.
Carmen Dell Orefice
Almost disqualified because she is French (which is cheating), Isabelle Huppert was among the most self-possessed of women at the Golden Globes last Sunday. She doesn’t look “young” or even “young for her age.” Rather, she looks just right: slender, chic, the product of diligent self-care and groomed without looking calcified, which is sometimes the case with older American beauties.
Isabelle Huppert, age 63: Suits up like a boss
Isabelle Huppert, age 63: Ice queen
Why A Nude Photo Session in Your 50s Is Not Such a Bad Idea After All
If you get those Living Social emails, you surely have received offers of discounted “boudoir photography” sessions. While I like a deal as much as the next underpaid editor, I’ve always viewed them as a spectacularly bad idea.
Take off your clothes for some stranger in a second-floor studio on Canal Street? Not sure I want to live that social.
Delete. (Come to think of it, this pretty much describes my Living Social bikini wax experience, but I’m almost positive there were no cameras involved.)
Another reason boudoir photography has held no appeal: Mine is not a body built for the boudoir. Not that I’ve ever, knowingly, visited a boudoir, but I’m pretty sure the ladies you’d find there would be womanly, curvy, Rubenesque. By contrast, I possess super-sturdy legs, broad shoulders, narrow hips and a not-narrow waist. I have what I call a Man Back which makes for a bra size that starts, alluringly, with the number 36, only to be followed by a demure “A.” Practically a Man Front, in other words, at least above the waist.
I know in describing my body I’m revealing my body image as well, but the truth is …
