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! (more…)

Today they tried to deliver my new couch and we found that the made-in-California plum softsuede behemoth didn’t fit into my rinky-dink New York City elevator. The driver had to shlep it back to the warehouse. After thwacking myself repeatedly on the head for not measuring the elevator before ordering the couch (who measures elevators?) I spent the afternoon working on solutions.

Having it carried up 19 flights would have cost about half of what the sofa itself cost. Sending it back to the company for them to modify it would have cost hundreds in shipping and labor and I’d have no couch for another six weeks. The only thing that made sense is to have the couch’s arm taken off and then reattached in my apartment. (more…)

I’m just trying to get through the day with something to cover my sun-deprived mom bod like most other Formerlies. But I love love love this piece. Feel free to rebut any of the snarky comments (I stopped reading after the first three.)

Currently Struggling as a ‘Formerly’

Joshua Bright for The New York Times

The author Stephanie Dolgoff may indeed have a pair of shoes perfect for her “formerly hot” life.

By PAMELA PAUL

Published: August 6, 2010

But Stephanie Dolgoff, the author of a new book, “My Formerly Hot Life: Dispatches From Just the Other Side of Young” (Ballantine Books), is undaunted. According to Ms. Dolgoff, women in their late 30s and early 40s fall into a “new category of person: adult ’tweens, not quite middle-aged, but no longer our reckless, restless, gravity-defying selves.” Their new moniker: Formerlies, as in formerly hot.

“It’s obviously self-mocking,” Ms. Dolgoff said. “I was no supermodel to begin with.” Instead, she was a born-and-bred New York cool girl: raised on the Upper West Side, high school at Bronx Science, college at Wesleyan, followed by glittery jobs at women’s magazines, including Self, Glamour and YM. She resembles an earthbound cross between two Julias — Roberts and Louis-Dreyfus — not a terrible combination, with one floral tattoo on an ankle and another atop her shoulder. READ THE WHOLE THING HERE

I was looking at shoes today, and while I was browsing, the store phone rang.

“Don’t call here or the other location anymore,” the young woman working there said with an authority I never had at her age (somewhere in her mid 20s) and she quickly hung up. She then explained that the caller was the ex-boyfriend of her coworker, “an upper east side loser who still lives with his parents and doesn’t have to work to pay his rent,” who was practically stalking her, showing up and calling, pleading to get her back.   (more…)

I’m thinking what I’ve lost in objective hotness I’ve gained in common sense and the ability to reason.  (I’m using the term “objective hotness” so my husband doesn’t try to reassure me that I’m still hot to him or at least lovable by bringing me home a box of chocolates that I will no scarf down, gain pounds I don’t need and thus become in my opinion actually less hot, although not in any way less lovable.)

My girlfriend Ronni and I popped into Steve Madden–end of summer sale, how can you not, blah de blah. Among the flats I eventually bought were these high-concept, architectural marvels, some four inches high, with fringes and patent leather patchees and cut-outs in the upper (think open-toe-and-heel boots, like a monokini for your feet) that I think I might have tried on some 15 years ago, in my 20s.

Photo by: THOR, CC Licensed 

Ronni was having none of it. She thought most of them were laughable, and if you think of them as shoes, she was correct. But if you think of them as little statuettes for your feet–kind of like wearing an Emmy or an Oscar–they were kind of awesome. (more…)