You Know You're a Formerly When...
1. You've even once pulled the skin of your face back and slightly up to see what you’d look like with a facelift
2. High school kids are now wearing what you wore in high school.
3. You count calories in mixed drinks.
4. Your ass is starting to need a bra.
5. You suddenly prefer interior design magazines to fashion magazines.
6. A supermodel could give you one of her kidneys and you would still kind of hate her.
7. Whereas you used to be grossed out by obscene catcalls, you are now relieved first, grossed out second.
8. You have a doctor devoted to a single part or function of your body (your patella, your endocrine system) other than your vagina.
9. There’s a decent chance that the doctor is younger than you.
10. You need to pre-caffeinate before meeting someone for a morning coffee.
11. Your adolescent nieces and nephews are starting to regard you as a potential narc.
12. You let your mother friend you on Facebook because you have that little to hide.
13. Besides, moms is cooler than you ever gave her credit for
14. Conversations about mortgages and 401Ks, while not exactly interesting, are no longer stultifying.
15. You have heard of Death Cab for Cutie, but couldn’t ID their songs on threat of waterboarding.
16. You freeze bread. Like there won't be another loaf at the store when you need one
17. You still think “hook up” means “let's meet up for a drink”
18. You have been ma’amed outside the Deep South
19. You can't fathom why they would remake such classics as Fame and Melrose Place
20. Cosmetic surgery that you once considered deeply anti-woman is now “a woman's personal decision.”
WELCOME! I started Formerly Hot after my sudden realization that I was no longer who I'd always been-a pretty girl who navigated the world partially aided by the advantage of her looks. After 30 some odd years, Spanx had found their way into my lingerie drawer, and men who asked me if I "had the time” really just wanted to know the time. Imagine!
I had crossed a line into strange, uncharted life territory, one in which I no longer felt like me. I joked to friends that I was "formerly hot," and clearly I struck a nerve. There are many women like me, bitchslapped into a new category of person: adult "tweens," not quite middle-aged, but no longer our reckless, restless, gravity-defying selves.
Thankfully, I learned life is so much more satisfying on this side of young--and I wrote a book about it, coming in August 2010! Click here for more
I try. I really do. But when it comes to those ever-smaller and lighter devices that are meant to make my life easier, as game as I am, I always feel like I am in their service rather than the other way around. And it’s starting to piss me off.
My latest challenge is the touchscreen. Touchscreens are obviously the wave of the future (i.e., next week, at the rate these things become obsolete) and if I don’t get with the program, I will be limited to the one or two devices that still have a keypad. I was one of those people who had a hell of a time relinquishing my cassette tapes back when someone decided without asking me that CDs were better, and now I can’t bring myself to chuck my CDs even though everything is in MP3 and stuffed into my little iPod.
Because of the touchscreen, in just the last week, my ass called my friend with the young child in LA and woke her up at 4 in the morning (my phone was in the back pocket of slightly too tight jeans and what was I thinking sitting down?); I texted a list of stuff I needed from the drugstore–including prescriptions and other sundries that I’d prefer not be the talk of the PTA room–to one of my kids’ friends’ moms; my cheek hung up on my hard-to-reach doctor; and called my agent a “ho” when I meant to be saying “hi.” Luckily, she’s a Formerly. Read the rest of this entry »
September 1st, 2010
StephanieDolgoff
165 views, 3 Comments »
A woman named Noelle posted this in “Share Your Story” on the right there, but it summed up things so eloquently for Formerlies with teenagers that I had to give it a more prominent spot:
I have two precious things in my life, one that makes me feel “hot” - the perfect little black dress - and one that makes me feel “formerly hot” - a 15-year-old daughter. Her friend had a “club-themed” Sweet 16 party and the next thing I know my Little Black Dress walked out the door on my “little girl.” My clothes are going to parties I’m not invited to!
My girls are only seven and so they’re not borrowing my clothes yet, but I anticipate feeling that same feeling of, “Now wait just a minute!” as Noelle does. Right now, Sasha and Viv listen to “my” music (i.e., ’80s and ’90s songs that I feel they must appreciate or that I have failed in my musical education of them) and like it or hate the songs, they listen with open hearts. When they start listening to them ironically, that will irk me a bit.
They say the sandwich generation are those of us who are caring both for children and aging parents. I think this qualifies, too. Thanks, Noelle!
Hangovers, when I occasionally had them in my 20s, used to result from the perfect storm of too much drinking, too little eating, and too much fun, followed by too little sleep (sometimes because I opted for sex instead).
These days, I don’t even get the drunken privilege of debauching myself, and yet still manage to feel hungover, which doesn’t seem right or fair. Between exhausting child care, anxiety that wakes me up at 4, getting dehydrated in the summer heat, and these bizarre allergies I’ve only recently developed, I wind up looking and feeling exactly the same way I did when what I needed more than anything was a little hair of the dog that bit me. Complete with headache. Now if I tried to drink, that would about kill me.
A new friend asked me that question a few months ago, and I started tearing up, because I realized that in the lunancy of life–working, tending to family, being a Gigantic Book Whore and the surprisingly difficult and time consuming task of making sure I had the right color lanyards for two very crafty 7-year-old girls–I hadn’t asked myself what makes me happy in way, way too long.
That question led to another question (AM I happy?) which led to a life inventory, which led to some renewed appreciation of what I have and have built and some adjustments, which I expect to be happymaking. If they are not, I hope to remember to ask myself that question again, and see what the answer yields.
It’s not rocket science (or even as hard as being a Gigantic Book Whore), and it invariably pays off big, but for whatever reason, I often forget to do it. In fact, putting it in my Google Calendar right this minute. Hopefully I won’t just blow off the beeping reminders, like I do the ones to go to the freakin’ gym already.
That’s why I’m glad my new friend Gretchen Rubin asked me that question (and what’s more, posted my answers on her fantastic blog that goes with her fantastic book, The Happiness Project). I admired her wildly successful book promotion from afar (Gigantic Book Whore, like Formerly Hot, is a designation only you can give yourself, but but both clubs are wholly nonexclusive) finally got to meet the lovely her.
Anyway, here is the the interview, and if I were you, I’d take the time to ask yourself that question. As for my answers, like everything else you do as a Formerly, take what works for you and donate the rest to Goodwill along with those jeans that don’t fit anymore, for all the good they’ll do you. There are plenty of other ideas on her site, and no doubt some of those will put a smile on your face.
August 26th, 2010
StephanieDolgoff
140 views, 5 Comments »
It’s really hard to leave me speechless, but for once in my 43 years, I’ve got nothing to say but THANKS to all of you wonderful readers who went out and bought MY FORMERLY HOT LIFE and helped it make the list.
My incredible editor Marnie–that’s her holding the Formerly Wild sign in the book trailer–told me it’s #32, and although she’s never lied to me before, naturally I had to tell her to SHUT UP and STOP LYING because how could she not be lying? But she wasn’t.
So thanks, and please continue to spread the word, so that it inches up the list. In fact, if you tweet, please tweet this post or put it up on Facebook or tell two friends and ask them to tell two friends, and so on and so on and so on…it’s the Faberge Organics Shampoo technique of selling books, and I’m thinking it works.
Much love.
August 25th, 2010
StephanieDolgoff
104 views, 1 Comment »
When we last left our heroine (almost wrote heroin…gives you a sense of my stress level–OMG, Mom, JOKE!) she was slutting herself out in every imaginable way to get the word out about her book. Except the most obvious way, not least of all because no one has asked her to. (Mom, really, another joke–where’s your sense of humor?)
Stephanie, a.k.a., Gigantic Book Whore, has written dozens of guest blog posts, cross promoted her blog, tweeted, Facebooked, and even made up tank tops to hand out to nice people who show enthusiasm for her book.
In the last week, she has done the Today Show, People magazine, local TV, The Gayle King and Martha Stewart radio shows, Joy Behar (although sadly she was on vacation), a dozen radio spots, been in the New York Times and has been reviewed up the wazoo by bloggers and Newsweek.com. (For links to these, click HERE and poke around a bit.) Read the rest of this entry »
August 24th, 2010
StephanieDolgoff
257 views, 3 Comments »
NOTE: These guys harassed no one, but they represent the kind of gauntlet I would have avoided back in the day.
One of the examples of how life changes when you dip your toe into Formerly territory that really resonates with people is how when you’re in your 20s, bonehead guys fall all over themselves to drool obscene things about your body and make vile sucking noises as you walk by. Now, by contrast, all you hear is that sitcom sound of crickets chirping to indicate abject nothingness.
The joke, of course, is that while you found catcalls annoying (when you were in a rush) or hatefully objectifying and anti-woman (when you were hungry or hormonal), now when they occasionally happen, you feel vaguely relieved…before you feel annoyed or like giving them a crash course in feminist theory right there on the construction site. Read the rest of this entry »
August 24th, 2010
StephanieDolgoff
408 views, 8 Comments »
(This was written for Powell’s, the Oregon-based bookseller.)
“There was a gay fiction among us that we were constantly enjoying ourselves, and a skeleton truth that we never did. To the best of my belief, our case was in the last aspect a rather common one.”
I first read Great Expectations back in ninth grade or so, and while I don’t remember exactly, it’s safe to say that the above lines went over my head — whoosh! — along with pretty much anything else that didn’t have to do with boys, Rick Springfield, boys, and ways to make my hair bigger. It was 1981, more than a century after the book was published.
Now it’s 2010 and I’m sitting here having a first-time author fantasy: Charles Dickens and I are chilling in some divey Victorian pub, throwing back a few, and bonding over this very topic. (I’ve worked out the whole time/space continuum thing and have paid him a visit. It’s my fantasy. Go with me on this.)
Funny in that yeah-not-so-funny-at-all-actually way that the ultimate insult to a guy is to call him the crude term for female genitalia.
Not the one that rhymes with a delightful spongecake your grandmother maybe baked in a ringed pan, or the one named after the industrious flat-tailed critter that builds dams out of twigs and branches, but the one that, whenever innocent toddlers use it to refer to the family cat, their adolescent siblings snort OJ out their noses and then feel, like, really mature for catching the double entendre.
So it makes a certain effed up sense that most any time a woman writes something about the day-to-day experience of being female it’s labeled “chick lit” and is deemed trivial. Even by another woman! That’s what this gal did on Politics Daily. Read the rest of this entry »
August 19th, 2010
StephanieDolgoff
396 views, 6 Comments »
One more time, please excuse the repost from February, but I hope this will make new readers smile.
I KILLED CHIVALRY
This morning, this guy got up and offered me his seat on the subway.
That never happens. Truly, never. When I was pregnant with my twins, I remember having to foist my Bosu-ball sized belly into the face of the seated (who were pretending not to see my obscenely protrusive abdomen) and threaten to vomit on them in order to take a load off. As you might imagine, I was not at all shy about asking– just shocked at how often I had to.
SHARE YOUR STORY
You're formerly something, but you're no doubt finally something you've aspired to, too. To share your FORMERLY/FINALLY story CLICK HERE.
She’s not a fan DENISE IN SF WROTE: I would say your little gimmick is pretty stupid. Anyone, anywhere who feels the need to pigeonhole women into tidy little categories is adding to the problem.
Happy birthday, Sweet Adult Tween NOELLE WROTE: I have two precious things in my life, one that makes me feel "hot" - the perfect little black dress - and one that makes me feel "formerly hot" - a 15 year old daughter. Her friend had a "club-themed" Sweet 16 party and the next thing I know my Little Black Dress walked out the door on my Little Girl. My clothes are going to parties I'm not invited to!
Fashion forward, people! KIMBERLY WROTE: I teach fashion students and when they show up to class dressed like they're on their way to a OMD concert I shutter and resist the urge to tell them they have stolen that outfit from my high school closet. Also, jealous that I'm NOT on my way to an OMD concert. SO I continue to wear my Ray-bans with love, nostalgia, baggage and all.
Suddenly the oldest K WROTE: While my other friends are now on their second children, thinking about whether they can still wear short(ish) skirts, and getting divorced or remarried -- my younger friends are still spending their summers going to 1st weddings and amazed that their other friends are old enough to purposely get pregnant.
Finally just right I'm a mom & now I can't remember why I thought life was so great before. My all nighters & the bottles in the pantry are completely different now, but I wouldn't change a thing. I have so much more confidence & peace & satisfaction & love. I wouldn't trade a mountain of dirty diapers for my old life ever! I love every stinking one!
Formerly cool FORMERLY HIGH CQ WROTE: I went to parties, museums, restaurants, bars, sporting events, the theatre, the ballet, . . out with friends, out making friends. Now I am 'Uncool'. A 'fun ruiner, party pooper' say my children.
Formerly not “a mother figure” MAY POPPS WROTE: When a cute 22 yr old guy @ work asked me a questioned about payroll tax withholding "since I was a mother-figure around here" I was crushed! ...But driven to work harder to look even better, lost more weight, & actually wore a 2 piece to the beach in Florida, without embarrassing my kids.
Formerly quarter-aged ROBUNDLE WROTE: Wow, that is the first time someone has ever called me "Middle-aged". Not sure that I liked it, but I guess it means in a way that I have arrived and can now demand a certain amount of respect. Out of my way...you youngsters!
Formerly an Overachiever NICOLE WROTE: My scary next step...I am seeking a lower paying executive level position with a large non-profit that works with kids. Something that I have always wanted to do, but could never give up the income. I still can't afford to, but I have to have a happy next 20 years!
I try. I really do. But when it comes to those ever-smaller and lighter devices that are meant to make my life easier, as game as I am, I always feel like I am in their service rather than the other way around. And it’s starting to piss me off.
A woman named Noelle posted this in “Share Your Story” on the right there, but it summed up things so eloquently for Formerlies with teenagers that I had to give it a more prominent spot:
Hangovers, when I occasionally had them in my 20s, used to result from the perfect storm of too much drinking, too little eating, and too much fun, followed by too little sleep (sometimes because I opted for sex instead).
A new friend asked me that question a few months ago, and I started tearing up, because I realized that in the lunancy of life–working, tending to family, being a 
When we last left our heroine (almost wrote heroin…gives you a sense of my stress level–OMG, Mom, JOKE!) she was slutting herself out in every imaginable way to get the word out about her book. Except the most obvious way, not least of all because no one has asked her to. (Mom, really, another joke–where’s your sense of humor?)
Funny in that yeah-not-so-funny-at-all-actually way that the ultimate insult to a guy is to call him the crude term for female genitalia.
