Quick Formerly moment: I danced exactly like the female avatars on Just Dance 3, at least the ones doing Bananarama songs. Even eight-year-olds know that people don’t dance that way anymore. Except I still kind of do.
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, which is a NY Times national bestseller! Click here for more
Moved like Jagger, c. 1981
January 26th, 2012
New Year’s evolution
January 24th, 2012Hi, all,
A little something I wrote for Best Life. Let me know what you think! Steph
Aspire Gently
When I was home sick as a kid, I watched a show in which the puppeteers used to wave goodbye to the children watching: “Bye-bye, Billy!” “Adios, Alison!” They never once said, “See ya, Stephanie.” I guess at the time, in the ‘70s, my name wasn’t very popular. Thousands of dollars and years of therapy later, I am over it.
That said, I have that same feeling whenever I hear some talk show host speaking passionately about the importance of having goals and milestones that you can check off after having achieved them. The camera always pans to the audience, heads bobbing with understanding and recognition of this essential truth. Once again, I feel like the speaker is not addressing me, or people like me, who need to resolve to aspire to something else: dialing it down a little.
You can read the rest here at BEST LIFE.
A little pixie dust from the UK blog fairies
December 21st, 2011How flattering to randomly out of nowhere to be named one of UK Channel 4’s 4 Beauty Best Health Blogs! Below is the little blurby they wrote about Formerly Hot, but please click here to see the other sites that were mentioned–some really good ones. Oy. There goes another afternoon I coulda shoulda woulda been working. But hey!
For age defiers
Formerly Hot (opens in a new window)
American writer and pundit Stephanie Dolgoff’s blog is a hilarious commentary on how society sees you as old – just because you’re not 21. It’s also a poignant reflection on ageing, and she sensitively observes everything from her body, her looks, the way she acts and the way people act towards her. Fascinating and insightful.
Out of the primordial ooze
December 21st, 2011
Much has been written here and here and here about the comfort/style balance, particularly as it pertains to footwear, and how as as I surge forward deeper into Formerlydom, it is ever more precarious.
Even since I began this blog three or four years ago, I’ve become more strident on the importance of perambulating pain-free, something young women do not appear to value. It’s certainly an age thing and at 44, I’m a few years late to the party on this one. Thank you to the many wiser women than I who have long since traded in their stupid shoes for clogs and flats for welcoming me into your community of comfort footwear with understanding and acceptance. My name is Stephanie, and I’m a recovering fashion masochist.
Well, I fear I may be overcorrecting here, and I could use an opinion or two. Perhaps someone from the fashion departments of one of the women’s magazines I write for needs to come over here, wedge my size 11s into pointy, ridiculous, sky-high stripper shoes to remind me what’s really important for a woman: To be propped up like a Barbie in the corner of the party, unable to move for fear of my disproportionately gigantic breasts toppling me forward. Oh, wait. I’d need implants for that. Never mind.
Anyway, neither comfortable nor stylish, the above Vibram Five Finger foot coverings are my latest addition to my footwear collection. Tell me they don’t look like dinosaur paws, or like several million years from now they may evolve into actual human-looking feet! Read the rest of this entry »
When “bad” words are good
December 5th, 2011
This morning, I was emailing a woman with whom I’m working on a project, and remarked that I was so “effing excited” about our venture.
After I hit send, I could almost hear that deflated-sounding sitcom music (”Wah wah waaaaaah!”) indicating disappointment or something falling pathetically flat. “Effing excited” struck me as utterly and completely Formerly.
I didn’t even have the passion to type the actual curse word, or even the comic book version with all the symbols and then correct myself like I used to, working hard to restrain the expression of my irrepressible emotions to within the bounds of appropriateness. Read the rest of this entry »
See you in the funny papers!
October 13th, 2011
Thanks to Amy who clipped this for me from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Not sure if Terri Libenson is a reader or if she inadvertently had the same thought.
Not for nothing, S.A.D., or Still A Doll, per this strip, are my initials. My mom swears she didn’t do it on purpose, but knowing how strongly anti-monogramming she is, I’m pretty sure she’s lying.
In the feast phase
October 12th, 2011Hi, all,
I have been nuts with work, for which I am beyond grateful, considering the state of the economy and how many capable people are scratching the dusty ground for whatever they can get. Like many things in life in these middle years, it’s not the way it should be, but it’s the way it is. I’m loathe to turn any stories down, even though I’m cranking into the nights and weekends, because I don’t know if I’ll be cycling into famine any time soon.
Still, I didn’t want anyone to start Googling me to make sure they hadn’t missed my obit. Below, a piece I did for Redbook that got a lot of love.
Please Don’t Call This a Revenge Body
By
Photo Credit: Dori Klotzman
Special Offer
I can see the tabloid magazine story now: Jennifer Lopez or some other recently divorced celeb is pictured going to work or herding her kids into the car. The headline reads, “Looking good is the best revenge!” and a “source close to the star” is quoted as saying that the ex is eating his heart out with chopsticks over her new, slimmer-than-ever body but that she’s too busy shopping for expensive clothes in absurdly tiny sizes to notice.
Yes, well. I’m here to tell you that that’s not how it is. Like me, these women are on the divorce diet, and I do not recommend it.
READ THE WHOLE THING ON REDBOOK’S SITE.
So not special
September 7th, 2011
Early readers of this blog (and my book) might remember a post I did on jeans shopping and how traumatic (in that not-traumatic-compared-to-a-breast-biopsy-but-still-no-fun way) it can be. In case you don’t or have time to click the above link, I joked about how rather than wearing jeans that say “Young, Fabulous and Broke” on the label, we Formerlies should wear jeans that expressed our true life experience. Things like:
Nothing to Prove Jeans
I Forgot More than You’ll Ever Know Jeans
Talk to Me When You’re 30 Jeans
and May Need Some Help Getting Pregnant These Days Jeans.
There were more. They cracked me up to write, mainly because they were about where we’re at now, how it’s actually kind of cool that we’re here in this ridiculous but more peaceful place, and you know what? We still look A-OK in jeans, as long as they’ve got a little Lycra in ‘em. No self-improvement required.
Anyway, so I’m at the gym today kidding myself that I’m exercising and on comes this totally irritating Special K commercial in which this attractive Formerly is jeans shopping.
Lo and behold, the jeans have labels that say “Confident!” and “Sassy!” and a few other things we would ideally like to feel when we pull our denim up over our somewhat less perky than before asses. She picks up a pair, hugs it, smiles and feels more “Confident!” and “Sassy!” already.
The inane voice-over says something about how it would be really great if women could focus on how great jeans make them feel when they fit and not on the number on the label.
Right. Even though the whole point of the ad was to reinforce the idea that to feel “Confident!” and “Sassy!” you need lose weight, which, of course, you need Special K in order to do. Two thirds of a cup with skim milk and not a flake more. Special K will make your ass smaller, and from that comes the confidence and sass that will make your whole life better, your husband not cheat on you and your boss pick someone else to lay off in the next round of downsizing. From Special K, everything flows.
Yes, well. Read the rest of this entry »
Well, shut my mouth!
August 17th, 2011
I can admit when I’m wrong, and I’ve been doing a little happy dance all day because being wrong in this case is net positive for the many Formerlies who reside north of the Mason-Dixon.
You might recall that I wrote about the first time I was ma’amed a few years back, and how that was one of the first indications I had that my self-definition (as the young, relevant, in-the-know hot chick I’d been for the previous several decades) was just a wee bit out of sync with what people saw when they looked at 40something-year-old no-longer-groovy me. At that time, the good people of the South very kindly rose up to reassure me that the term ma’am, I was told is simply what nice boys are raised to call women who are not obviously teenagers, particularly ones who wear wedding rings.
Here’s how I handled it back in 2009 when a nice young man (yes, yes, that sounds old, but that’s what he was!) working at IKEA in Brooklyn ma’amed me.
I said, “Look, I’m going to give you a tip: I can tell you’re from the South, but up here, women who may still think they’re maybe young–even if they’re kind of not–don’t like to be called ma’am. If I were you, I’d err on the side of “miss,” even if you’re pretty sure they’re married and have kids.”
“Oh, no, I have to call them ma’am. It’s what my mama taught me and my brothers. That’s the way you show respect,” he said. “I couldn’t not say ‘ma’am.’”
“I hear you, but in New York, part of showing respect is respecting people’s vanity, and pretending that they’re not old, you know?” I said.
“I guess I do, yes, ma’am.”
It wasn’t as if I didn’t believe him, exactly, but it still smarted. Ma’am meant nothing more or less to me than “I do not want to have sex with you but if you recommended a brand of butter substitute to me in the supermarket I’d trust your opinion.” Not so much where I wanted to live my life and still don’t.
Fast forward two years later, and I’m spending a week working in Birmingham, Alabama, where I have been ma’amed up, down and sideways several times a day. At this point, I’m more used to it, and, like a boxer who has been pummeled for several rounds, I don’t even really feel it anymore. Please, sir, may I have another? Read the rest of this entry »
