formerlyhot.com

This movie requires Flash Player 8

Ms. Hatcher, 45, posted these images (along with a couple more illustrating her transformation (with the help of a pit crew of magician makeup artists) into the sleek and smiling character we see on Desperate Housewives.

Here’s what she told Oprah: “I don’t want to stop taking glamorous pictures — they’re fun — but I just want people to know the truth. I think if we can accept the truth and reveal the mystery, we can enjoy both things.”

Love.

Makes me feel sorry for guys, actually, who unless they want to make an entirely different kind of statement don’t really have the recourse of makeup on a bad face day.

Photos from the video diary she showed on Oprah. Click on the link for the whole thing, including the “after” shots.

Val and Carla after my reading at Barnes & Noble Wednesday

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my 20 or so years of writing for women’s magazines is that if you’re going through something, odds are terrific that millions of other women are having that same experience, which means you’re not insane. Or it means we’re all insane, in which case it doesn’t really matter, does it? We can all just sit around having a coffee and getting mani-pedis and validate one another’s insanity so that it essentially becomes normative and we feel a bit better about being nuts. What are friends for?

Anyway, I started this blog because felt like I was losing my marbles just a little bit a couple of years ago. Everything was fine, I was happy, and yet I didn’t feel like myself and couldn’t put my finger on why. (You can read more about that here.) Once I figured out what was going on–that I was a Formerly–my self definition could catch up with what the world saw when it looked at me: a no-longer-young woman with a hugely satisfying life that she’d built for herself, but who was also noticing (and sometimes not exactly loving) the way certain things had changed.

My preferred methods of dealing with the fact that we’re all getting older? To laugh about it and to write about it, because what the hell else are you going to do? It’s so classically masochistic of us (more…)

And y’all better listen up, because he’s PISSED!  I posted his comment in its entirety here, but I couldn’t resist giving BB a bit more prominent a spot. One or two of you must have gone on a date with him back in the early ’90s and totally broken his heart, because he’s still smarting. He reserves special vitriol for Oprah–perhaps she’s the one who didn’t call him back or suggested they “just be friends.”

Seriously, though, I think it’s not a bad idea to listen to people like BB, if only to affirm your own truth. I’d refrain from calling him a “sexist pig,” (I have a feeling having women scream that at him is his Viagra) but I’d love to hear what YOU have to say about women and power and beauty. Here’s BB:

“Ladies, listen up because I’m about to drop some truth on your Oprah-obsessed minds. Please pay attention because you will rarely hear anyone tell you something so real and honest. Ahem.”

Totally listening, BB. Lay it on us. Oprah? You paying attention? Stop helping people and being a role model and making millions of dollars, because BB is speaking. (more…)

Pretty cool and pretty nice of my friend Karen to mention FH! Go nuts with the tweeting!

Me at the age my daughters are now

It’s my birthday today, and here’s a secret: I’m 43.

OK, it’s not much of a secret, because I am lucky enough to have tons of friends from childhood who know my  age, my birth date is up on my Facebook profile, and what’s more, I have written here and elsewhere that I was 42 (when I was) and 41 (when I was that, until just over a year ago.) I am not above gilding the lily about many, many things, but to lie about something as irrefutable as the date you came busting out, covered with mucus and screaming bloody murder has always seemed to me rather pointless, not to mention futile.

Until now.  (more…)