First of all, vomit. Did Time really have to headline this piece “The Science of Cougar Sex: Why Older Women Lust”?

It’s a report on a study by evolutionary psychologist David Buss, the guy at UT Austin who explains much of current human behavior in terms of our being programmed over time to seek out characteristics that reflect reproductive fitness in our partners. In the past, Buss’s work was used to explain how men are basically hardwired to be horndogs for younger, easily impregnateable women.

Now he’s wondering, why would “older” women–which in the study is defined as 27 to 45, just in case you were deluded in thinking you only recently left the category of young–be so sexual? His theory is that as our fertility wanes, we increase the frequency of our sexual encounters (or at least want to) in a last ditch effort to propagate the species before our eggs expire entirely. (more…)

But I got nothing! That’s not true–I have an excellent one from my friend Freddi, but that will have to wait until next week because it’s also about work and career and ambition and parenthood, and thus too close to others that I’ve written.

So consider this an ask, as the marketing people say: Send me your Formerly and your Finally. If taking the picture holding the sign is too much–believe me, I get it–just send me your story.

Have a fantastic weekend. Not that I’m telling you what to do.

Much has been written about how the US is being outpaced by China and India when it comes to graduating engineers who will lead the world in important scientific and technological breakthroughs. Naturally, the President is concerned, as are legislators who predict that because we’re net importers of technology and not taking science and math education seriously enough, that our kiddies will have a lower standard of living than us and we’ll be forever dependent on foreign oil for energy.

Blah blah blah. All true.

But more to the point, who will make more and better makeup for the nation’s Formerlies, an increasingly pressing concern with each passing day? That’s what I want to know. Now that we (and by we, I mean I) need more and more makeup to look like we once did when we weren’t wearing any makeup, this issue is one that I feel I must take a stand on.

I am standing as I write this. It’s not so comfortable. I’m going to sit. But I still mean it.

Hopefully the above video for My Formerly Hot Life (40 days until it’s released!) will inspire action on the part of our nation’s leaders, who will better fund science education in our schools, and incentivize our children to seize the helm of nanoparticle technology research and uncover new and innovative ways in which to restore collagen elasticity to the faces of Formerlies everywhere, not to mention come up with cool new colors that bring out one’s eyes, drawing attention away from one’s nasal labial folds.

Are you with me? If so, please post and forward the video.

If this woman were holding a sign, it would say “FORMERLY AMBITIOUS.” And if she were not afraid of what her future employers might think, she’d show her face. Suffice to say she’s a friend of mine who has done spectacular things in her career, mostly in public service, and always helping others.

Now, at 40, she’s pregnant for a second time, has a toddler who likes to dive face first in her sleep out of her crib and has my friend up every few hours to make sure she’s safe and still pretty. Add to that a belly the size of a weather balloon which makes it impossible to find a comfortable position and the concept of sleep will not be a reality for at least a year to come. Still, my friend is a thinker, and so is contemplating her identity as a working woman, as well as a mom and all the rest of it. She just doesn’t have the brain for it right now, and described herself as Formerly Ambitious.

She was falling asleep in her soup last night when we had dinner, and other friends were there so we couldn’t really get into it, but she’s going through a variation of what many Formerlies do: Our work lives, for some of us, are just not feeling as important and as much of a driving force. (more…)

A month or so ago, my friend Rachel and I were in Union Square park here in NYC filming a scene for the book trailer. Because the scene took multiple takes, she and I had to walk repeatedly along a pathway that was lined with benches up to a certain mark, then go back to start and do it again.

The mark was just past a couple in their early 20s, maybe NYU students, sitting on one of the benches, angled towards each other. The guy was breaking up with the girl. Because we didn’t linger to eavesdrop, we caught snippets of their dialogue each time we walked by. It was usually the woman speaking, or, rather, wailing. I truly felt my heart twisted up like a sponge being wrung out.

“Please! Don’t do this!”

“I know I can be different!”

“This can’t be happening! NO, no this CANnot be happening”

“I can be a better person for you! I know I can!”

“You just have to give me another chance! Please!”

“No, you can’t do this. I love you! I can change!” (more…)

I’m not a starf**cker, generally speaking. As Us magazine takes pains to point out each week, they’re just like us: gas-pumping, coffee-buying, child-schlepping bipeds, wearing hats to hide bad hair days, wading their way through marital swampland, and probably freaking out about weird dermatological abnormalities that are hopefully not cancer.

On the occasions that I’ve met celebrities, usually to interview them for magazines or because I live in New York City and even stars need to wait endlessly on line at the DMV (that’s where I met the dude who plays Miranda’s Steve in Sex and the City, who was very perfectly nice and very short), I manage not to gush or fawn or praise their “oeuvre” because I find it a little weird and uncomfortable that I know way, way more about them as human beings than they do about me.  (more…)

How’d that happen so fast?

I had to (pay my very brilliant tech guy to) move Formerly Hot over to a new server, which is good news–the old server couldn’t support the gazillions of visitors the site has been getting. But in the process I think I lost a few user submissions. So if you sent your Formerly/Finally story within the last month and you don’t see it here, please resend, if it’s not too much trouble. My apologies.

This week’s is from my friend Kristin, who you may recognize from the yet-to-go-viral author video for the hopefully-soon-to-be-bestselling book (see? optimistically putting it out there in the universe and visualizing it snapping back at me!).

When Kristin and I first met five or so years ago, her older daughter and my girls were in preschool together. We’d race to drop off, peel clinging kiddies off our legs (praying that they didn’t leave sticky jam hand prints on our work clothes), console one another that they’d surely stop crying 30 seconds after we left, and hop on the train or a cab to get to work on time, applying makeup in transit so as not to look like shit once we got there. Kristin was a high-octane litigator. (more…)

The above ad on the New York City subway is part of a series of Lumix ads that are all too clearly aimed at snagging the young consumer. Others in the series say, “Fits perfectly in those skinny jeans pockets,” and “With GPS, it remembers where you were last night better than you do.” It’s like, “See?? We get you! You’re precisely the hip young demographic we’re targeting! We’ve noticed what you wear! Buy our camera!” It’s downright horny, it’s so unsubtle.

I don’t know why this ad series bugs me so much. I think it’s because it’s so cloying and desperate and pandering that it reminds me of a 60-year-old guy in a toupee and boxy leisure suit hitting on 19-year-old Russian model wannabe. If she deigns to let him buy her a drink or give her a lift home in his leather upholstered Lincoln Town Car, it’s not because he really “gets” her, but because he has something she wants. (more…)

Lauren is not even a Formerly yet–she’s a pre-Formerly, but the specter Formerlydom looms large. Here’s all she wrote:

“I recently had cocktails with a business associate. She’s very fun to work with and have a really great energy about her so I always look forward to our meetings. We were at a posh Chicago bar, throwing back Prosecco, half discussing business. I felt good that day: good hair day, fab shoes, a skirt I didn’t have to secretly unbutton when I sat still for more than five minutes. (more…)

My second post for Psychology Today–hope you enjoy!

Sometimes I think getting older gracefully simply means not bridling too much against the fact that most of us, at midlife, find ourselves drifting inexorably into cliché.

I mentioned this, my latest theory on this bizarro transition I and my agemates are undergoing, to a dad at my kids’ school, as he gave me a lift back home in his brand new…do I even have to say it? Minivan! He laughed his agreement, an then pointed out, “But you know, I have to say, as minivans go, this one is really sporty.” My cliché-o-meter was way over to the right on that one. Slap on a “Proud Parent of an Honor Student” bumper sticker, and he could pull into his reserved parking spot outside the Cliché Hall of Fame. READ THE ENTIRE THING HERE