My Formerly Hot Life (11 page)

And of course, there were the backless tankinis—you know, the ones that are like bikini tops with a flap of fabric hanging down in front like a doggie door, to cover the belly. To me, these say nothing so much as “My tummy is atrocious, but everything else is passable.” Think Groucho Marx glasses with the big shnoz and moustache attached, except not for your face but for your torso. No one is fooled by such a flimsy disguise; for me, anyway, a one-piece felt more dignified. At least some came in nice prints—mandatory “slimming” monochrome at my age? I’m pro-choice.

I wound up getting the single, solitary bathing suit in the entire store that worked: a ’50s-inspired one-piece seemingly custom-made for my ’50s-style body with its mom-hips and -boobs (Restraint says homage is okay—it’s not the same thing as irony). I am so
From Here to Eternity
.

The experience, insulting and depressing though it was,
helped me figure something out: I’m not ready for compensatory dressing.

I love that term—Nora Ephron coined it in her book
I Feel Bad About My Neck
—and we’ve all done it to an extent. She was referring to items such as turtleneck sweaters chosen not because she adores turtlenecks and thinks she looks terrific in them, but because she dislikes the loose skin on her neck and sees it as something of a public service to cover it up.

God knows I relate to the impulse. Like most women, there were chunks and jiggly bits that I would have just as soon shrouded in strategic mesh or lace even when I was younger and closer to the ideal. But now that the entire lower half of my body has been ravaged by childbirth and the flesh of my upper arms has declared independence from the rest of my body, compensatory dressing as a strategy has gained even more appeal.

But the molded-cup lady confirmed for me that I’m not going to go there, at least not now. There are several reasons for this. The first is something of a principled stance—not the loftiest ideal in which to stick my flag, but it’s the best I can do for now: This is my body, floppy though it is, and within reasonable limits and standards of obscenity, it is the world’s obligation to deal with it.

I don’t always carry this “my ass, love it or leave it” attitude in my heart, especially after discovering a new pucker or stretch mark. But after so many years of looking in the mirror and critiquing my reflection, I’ve decided to act as if, in
hopes that I come to believe it all the time. And it’s working. As a Formerly, I feel better about my body, even as it gets “objectively” worse. So I’m not buying clothes to hide all the imperfect parts. Not for nothing, I’d have to wear a burka.

The other big reason I’m not doing the compensatory dressing thing is that (Formerly Hot though I am) I have decided that I still look too damn good to choose a swimsuit or any item of clothing primarily for what it hides. If I did, I’d be hiding my light, my mojo, my personality, which would make me feel way older than my newly floppy arms make me feel. So no, the skirts I wear don’t have to be microminis, but I’m not going to go all Mormon fundamentalist because my legs have a few new spider veins. The vast majority of Formerlies likewise look much better than they imagine they do, given all the changes they’re noticing.

Case in point: I have a very close friend, a Formerly with a lovely, if imperfect, postpartum body, whose favorite bathing suit is a marvel of engineering. There are several overlapping panels of high-tech fibers designed to flatten and smooth her belly and hips. Which they do. Fine, but the rest of the suit looks like something an East German Olympian would have worn back when there was an East Germany (and yes, I’ve said this to her face—I’d be a rotten friend if I didn’t). So in love with the possibility of minimizing her smushy bits is she that she sacrifices too much to do so. If she’d simply put on a pretty maillot, even if it didn’t have Super Power tummy control or whatever they call it,
people would be looking at her world-class hooters or her long, lovely legs instead of that royal blue, black and red monstrosity with the strategic ruche and funny little skirt attached.

I suppose I
could
wear my old bikini, look blobby in it, feel blobby in it and try not to let it bother me. That would be more consistent with the “my ass, love it or leave it” stance. But I find that being a Formerly is all about moderation and adjusting your principles to work with the reality of your life. There’s no inherent upside to wearing a bikini rather than a one-piece if you find your own belly rolls distracting, as I do. Just because Valerie Bertinelli wearing a bikini on the cover of
People
makes it seem like the Holy Grail, it is so not. You don’t get some kind of special eulogy or dispensation for entry into heaven at the end of your life for having gone out in public with your midriff showing. You should wear whatever is going to allow you to have the most fun at the beach—and to not pass out from low blood sugar in the months before you go. If this is a Miraclesuit, by all means, buy one! I have no problem with making choices like this, between two equally viable options. But picking between two good options—cap sleeves versus short sleeves, for example—is as far as I go with the compensatory dressing. No long sleeves in summer! Hadassah arms be damned.

L
ately, getting to the gym has been a struggle. Used to be, I was pretty good about it—four, five times a week, even when I was feeling a little logy. Especially when I felt a little logy, because I chose to believe what all the women’s magazines I write for have said: that working out gives you energy, even as you expend energy climbing endlessly to nowhere on a machine made by someone who must have had a terrible childhood. The theory defies physics, of course, but then, I was applying eye shadow during physics in high school and I needed as many reasons as I could muster to get my fanny on the cardio machine.

I worked out as much as the
masochists
experts say you should, not because I’m so virtuous or an athlete or find the “scene” at the gym scintillating or enjoy watching middle-aged men do things with weights that are only going to make our health-care crisis worse.

No, I went to the gym for two simple reasons. 1) I was just
vain enough (I look better when I exercise) and 2) just grouchy enough (I’m in a better mood after I’ve worked out). I knew that if I didn’t, I would become someone I can’t be around. Which is a problem, considering I’m stuck with myself, and so are my kids and, arguably, my husband. I went to the gym in the same spirit in which I brush my teeth: There is little enjoyment but not doing it wasn’t an option, either. I felt gross when I didn’t go, and analogous to minty fresh when I did.

Hence my dilemma. I’m becoming a teeny bit less vain as I get older—overall, an excellent development, one that gives me a sense of peace and relief, but one that is nonetheless significantly reducing my desire to exercise. I no longer feel terribly gross when I skip the gym for a day, two or even three. In fact, it feels like the natural order of things—why would I go to the gym, really, when it’s not going to make as much of a difference in my appearance as it used to? My second reason for going to the gym is still there (I’m still prone to the grumpy blues) but now that I care a bit less about how I look, the ratio of vain to sad and anxious is off.

Does this mean I need to become
more
emotionally off-balance to compensate for caring
less
about my looks, to ensure I get a healthy amount of exercise?

I hope not, because then I’m just a hop and a skip and a deep global recession away from bag-lady city. For all I know, that woman who wears everything she’s ever owned and mutters to herself on the street was a Formerly and a mom
of two who simply lost her vanity, upped her mental instability, saw her 401(k) go down the crapper and now gets her exercise by wandering from homeless shelter to homeless shelter. Some days, the bag-lady image is enough to get me there. Other days, not so much.

L
est I have given you the impression that once I (ding!) finally grasped that the cause of my strange disquietude was that I was no longer hot, at least not in the same way I used to be, I settled smoothly into my new iteration as a Formerly, that’s not quite how it happened.

Okay, that’s not even remotely how it happened.

It certainly helped me feel less nuts to recognize that I was undergoing a subtle but nonetheless all-encompassing life change that ran much deeper than the crevasses between my eyebrows. But the realization alone hardly made me want to go skipping through a wheat field, arms open wide and ready to embrace my future as an aging woman and all the joy and wisdom and reverence from society to which my new status entitled me.

Nay, it was a herky-jerky, one-step-forward-two-steps-back trippy odyssey fraught with insecurity, hypocrisy (societal), hypocrisy (my own), contradictory messages and conflicting, shifting priorities. And guess what? I’m still not there, wherever
“there” turns out to be. One moment, I’m laughing with my children, enjoying my work, hugging my husband or walking down the street on a crisp, clear day just glad to be wise and aware enough to appreciate how lucky I am and the enormity of all that I’ve built and have been gifted. This understanding of my good fortune has come with age, and the fact that nothing lasts forever only enhances the experience for me. I am as wealthy as I could ever hope to be. And, not coincidentally, I feel beautiful.

Then, later that very same day, I’m examining my tired eyes in that stupid 15× magnification mirror I told you about. The skin underneath is newly adorned with tiny white bumps and dark patches, a blue vein that I’d barely noticed before appears to be throbbing cartoonishly and my skin is sallow and looking subtly more slack. A mild panic mixed with exhaustion sets in. I start to ponder “what can be done” about it all. I completely forget that that same face had only recently been smiling and laughing, and, as some cheesy Hallmark plaque over a receptionist’s desk I read once rightly said, “A smile is an instant face-lift.” I’m back to looking at my outsides, my brain churning with ways to keep them from revealing that too much has changed with time. Only hours before, I was splashing happily around in all that had changed internally for the better.

It’s a little schizo, I know, but it’s where I’m at. I am of two minds about the way I look (which, as I’ve said, is just fine), the way I no longer look and how important it is to me as I get older. I am of two minds, and both of them overthink
things. I see no solution save learning to roll with how I feel at any given time. So that’s what I’m doing, bumpy though the ride sometimes is.

And bumpy though my body sometimes is! Always is! Not that it was ever perfectly smooth, but with pregnancy and childbirth, creeping weight gain and the general southern migration of all the fleshy bits, it really isn’t hanging together quite the way it used to. I’ve been resisting incorporating “shapewear,” which is what they’re calling girdles these days, into my regular underwear routine, as many of my Formerly friends have, because I find it uncomfortable. But of course there’s that other definition of comfort, as in,
I’d like to feel comfortable wearing that slinky sheath dress, and I don’t because I’m too fat/rolly/whatever
, which can be just as powerful a consideration.

Superstrong body squishers like Spanx are the nexus of these two ideas: Can you smush your body into a physical shape that makes you feel
psychologically comfortable
wearing a sexy dress, and still feel
physically comfortable
enough to sit, stand and wriggle out of it when you have to go to the ladies’ room? There is shapewear for virtually every part of the body, including one’s pelican-beak-like upper arms.

And then there’s that third comfort, which is to say, ideologically comfortable with the idea that a woman should have to endure one second of physical discomfort for psychological comfort. Why can’t I feel sexy in a sexy dress the way I am, which is admittedly a bit on the loosey-goosey side?

My husband works for a congressman, so last year we were gearing up to go to President Obama’s inauguration. There are not many events or many men I’d compress my intestines for, but this President is one of them. I went and got me some Spanx, but my two minds had a good long argument about it.

On the one hand, shapewear (remember Scarlett O’Hara getting her corset stays tightened to bring her waist to 17 inches?) is a godsend to many Formerlies. Part of me thinks, whatever gets you through the day, date, red carpet paparazzi gauntlet or Civil War is fine.

But there’s another part of me that resents having to even
think
about wrapping my body in sausage casing in order to feel I look acceptable. I mean, really! I’m a Formerly. I am smarter, cooler, funnier and more comfortable with myself and the world than I’ve ever been, and yet I am considering tucking my belly rolls into a pair of Power Panties or something called a Slim Cognito, which goes from my knees to my sternum and hooks to my bra so it won’t roll down when I exhale? Weirdly, the grumpier I get about the idea of Spanx, the better I feel about being a Formerly. It wouldn’t have occurred to me to resent it when I was younger—I was too busy feeling fat.

Like most women who give it any thought, I am torn between wanting to feel like I am OK without binding and just plain wanting to look sleek in a sheath dress. Which is why I broke down and got the damn Spanx, as if anyone would be looking at me at Obama’s inauguration. (I didn’t
go—long, irrelevant story—and so I didn’t wear the Spanx. They sit in my drawer awaiting another occasion where I’ll think it’s more important to look good than to feel good—and one will no doubt soon arise.)

In the end, the “to shapewear or not to shapewear” question comes down to the comfort versus vanity balance—i.e., how much discomfort are you willing to endure in exchange for looking smooth and thinner (because they do work!) on any given day. For me, the deeper into Formerlydom I go, the more I tend toward comfort and away from dresses that require me to smooth my flab. So I wear a slightly looser dress and still look good and can digest my food.