Dinner last night with good friends Sam and Carrie, and over dessert (split four ways) the boys of our generation performed their “first date” ritual, pulling out old driver’s licenses showing us, to great amusement, photos of themselves from decades long past, sporting long hair and full beards. I’d say that a good percentage of the time, if we meet another couple our age with whom we feel instant rapport, they were in some university back in the sixties or seventies, either championing the “revolution”, or dodging tear gas on the way to buy the latest Beatle’s album.

The phone rang. It was Jody, my twenty-year-old daughter, wanting to come home for the weekend. She’s finishing college a year early, having torn through her coursework in three years, fueled by passion and curiosity. In the rush to the finish line, however, she’s beginning to get a handle on the fact that the pre-ordained track she’s been on since Rainbow Preschool is about to come to a screeching halt in a few months and facing forward, there are big decisions to be made. So of course, when she said she needed her mommy and her daddy, we sprung for the airline ticket.

Closing in on my 57th birthday Sunday. The difference between 56 and 57 is not much. In fact, about the only emotional attachment I have to the number “57” has to do with the ketchup. Interesting, because a year ago, dealing with the second of my parents’ deaths in two years, I felt so old, so “done.” With mortality so in my face, I somehow skipped ahead three decades and thought that given that it was my turn next, it was time to start closing up shop. As the shadows have passed, however, I’m having something of a rebirth. This website, the book, and my ethics practice all feel like they’re the beginnings of things, not the endings. And I love it every time the media talks about the possibility of Hillary running for President in a few years. Reminds me of a Native American tour guide, a charming man somewhere in midlife, Dan and I met on a reservation some years back. He was giving us a tour of Canyon de Chelle, stopping periodically to pick various herbs. “What are you doing?” we inquired. “Picking medicinal remedies for my teacher to use with his clients.” “Oh, you’re his assistant?” “No,” he responded. “I’m in training to be our tribe’s medicine man when I’m ready.” “When you’re ready?” “In our tradition, you’re not ready until you’re in your sixties, so you see, I’ve got a lot more to learn.”
Carol Orsborn

A quick business trip to Chicago. My client offers me a choice of hotels. There’s the Fairmont, of course. But the Hard Rock Hotel is nearby. Humm. Sounds like fun. Dan, after all, has hooked up with a garage rock band called “Still Crazy” (all the players in their forties and fifties), and I enjoy boutique hotels with attitude. So I make the reservation. Of course, I think the lizard chaise lounge in the room is over-the-top, but I appreciate the proximity of the hotel to Starbucks and basically I’m moving and grooving to the hotel’s new, hip tune.

Planning my wardrobe for a big speech tomorrow and tempted to purchase something new. Then I remembered Thoreau’s advice: never trust any enterprise that requires new clothes. Reminds me of the time I purchased a fabulous St. John black knit dress for a speech in Cincinnati. It came with a matching Nehru-style long jacket, and I must say, I looked fabulous. But the room was set at about 90 degrees and so halfway through, I shed the jacket. The speech went well and I received enthusiastic applause. Afterwards, a woman came running up to me. “I wish I had your courage,” she said. Of course, I was assuming she was referencing the élan with which I went through the death of my parents or something along those lines. But no, here’s what she said next. “To wear a dress that clings so tightly to your rear-end: you are the bravest woman I’ve ever met.”
Carol Orsborn

Gentlemen: if you think that it would be a great idea to give your wife or girlfriend a certificate for a day at a spa, here’s some advice. Ask her which spa she’d prefer, first. Didn’t happen in my case, which is how it was that I ended up in a spa that caters to up and coming starlets who openly enjoy parading in the nude.

Christiane Northrup revealed a key piece of intelligence on her PBS special last night. The mother, it turns out (in this case, that would be me) carries left-over fetal cells from her children in her own body for 27 years! (Not sure what left-over fetal cells means, my what would have been my daughter's third eye?) Never mind. This notion works here best as biological metaphor. That our kids are really, truly in our very bones much longer than you'd think. They've left the house, graduated from school, found significant others--and they're 21, 24, 26 and you (the mom) feel every breath as if they were still in your, ahem, tummy. They rant and rail, not understanding why you're clinging so tight, overly involved, living every drama as if it were your own. And now, Christiane enlightens us: that it's their own cells crying out in empathy. You see, Grant and Jody, I'm innocent, innocent I tell you! And Grant, turning 27 in January, the light is at the end of the tunnel. What I could once never imagine, that I could live a day of my life thinking about myself and others--and not about my first-born flesh of my flesh--is upon us. I felt it anyway, with all your accomplishments and independence, your maturing love for others, the separation that you and I both thought was supposed to take place at 13 or 21, at the latest, is finally upon us. And the last remaining cell or two of you that have not yet quite been sloughed off, have just enough oomph left in them to shed, yes, a tear. The only question remains: is it a tear of sadness or of joy? My guess is: both.
Carol Orsborn

Julia Roberts told one of the Entertainment TV shows that she insisted on being awake for the long, lugubrious process of having forty pounds added onto her for one of her roles (she plays her star sister's assistant in that John Cusack film, the name escapes me.) She said something along the lines that she would have been mortified/petrified to wake up and suddenly find herself fat. That's one of the advantages, says I, of having been chubby as a youngster, having put on a few extra with each child and gradually becoming more fully myself--or perhaps more accurately, more fully of myself--over time. I look in the mirror and there's no desperation. No loathing. Just myself as I've come to know and love me.

Since I last blogged, the following has occurred in my immediate circle of family/friends: one misdiagnosis of a serious illness followed by an all-clear (mine), one real diagnosis of an even more serious illness (not mine but close enough to warrant on-going concerned caring and attention to a loved one), one stable and long-term source of funding ended necessitating the search for new source of income (several of us), one family wedding best left un-attended for reasons anyone who is part of an extended and dysfunctional family would understand (all of us) and finally, on a happier but still stressful note: first and/or early encounters with both the grown children’s’ significant others…But you know what I have to say to all this? What midlife crisis? “Time Magazine” started it and it’s been picked up by all the media. But my response is simple and to the point. When hasn’t our generation been in crisis? The real news here is how well I/we/all of us are doing, despite the many challenges life brings our way.

It was balmy in Orlando…all tropical and business casual at MPlanet last week—and not a single aloha shirt in sight.

Yet again, the universe has tilted on its axis, and we barely noticed.

I remember my husband, Dan’s, first aloha shirt. It was in the early 90’s and yes, predictably, it was in Hawaii. It had a green background and oversized fuchsia and yellow flowers. Having come up through the serious make-it-happen 80’s wearing regulation business greys, blacks and whites, Dan found this—the first of many aloha shirts—to be liberating. What wasn’t predictable back then was his daring, yay, virtually revolutionary integration of the aloha shirt into his wardrobe. That shirt went to dinner parties, business casual events, concerts and meetings. It was fresh, youthful: a statement that one had cast away convention and was now a force with which others must contend.

A confluence of interesting and frankly out there observations lately from the mouths of bad ladies turned boomers … or maybe good ladies turned bad boomers. Thankfully it doesn’t really matter because nobody is judging us now.

First up was a colleague who asked if I noticed something new on her face … new makeup? Botox? Facelift? What? Much simpler and making a remarkable difference, she’s wearing new non prescription brown contact lenses so her eyes will look less faded, more brilliant. She needs to be marketing that idea to Lenscrafters.

Vanity Fair magazine’s slick February 2007 cover features actress Demi Moore sprawled out in a fluffy, white bathrobe, sporting gold slippers and holding a hat reminiscent of Audrey Hepburn. The headline? “Demi Moore—Her Husband, Her Body and Why She Never Ages.”…Never ages?

This is the season for bridal magazines. At last count, rushing to the biggest magazine stand at the airport to make my much-anticipated purchase, there were five or six top choose from. Big, glossy, glamorous, eye-catching—and missing out on a huge market of potential purchasers.

I’ve opted out of commenting on the Dove Pro-Age campaign until now, because of mixed feelings that I could not quite identify. It took More magazine’s 2006 MORE/Wilhelmina 40+ Model Search to put my thoughts into focus.

For rest of today's blog, continue at The Boomer Blog

As a participatory anthropologist, I traveled to a warehouse in the wilds of West Oakland to observe the female boomer in situ. The occasion was the annual sale of an as-yet whispered woman-to-woman fashion designer’s who’s got our number samples sale.

For the rest of today's blog, continue at The Boomer Blog

While we’re dishing fashion (see my recent blog “Observing the Female Boomer”), let’s take this opportunity to lay one urban myth to rest. Forth and Towne, Gap’s high-profile ill-fated effort to start up a retail store dedicated to selling fashion to boomer women, did not pass away because boomer women don’t want to be catered to as a special segment of the retail marketplace. There is the persistent rumor afoot that the last thing a women of a certain age wants to be is “ghettoized.”

For the rest of today's blog, continue at The Boomer Blog

Last week, I began taking the opportunity to lay one urban myth to rest. Forth and Towne did not pass away because boomer women don’t want to be catered to as a special segment of the retail marketplace.

For the rest of today's blog, continue at The Boomer Blog

Where's my grey hair? Everybody knows that grey is the new blond, if you're over 40. Sporting grey hair gives you an aura of defiant independence, touched with wisdom-what a cool combo! Grey is Taylor Hicks and whoever those hip older models are who have the athletic builds of a 20-year-old, wrinkleless faces and bushy grey spikes on their heads. I want that!

For rest of today's blog, continue at The Boomer Blog

A sunny day in DC—a walking town. Having just scanned the fashion tome “W”, decided to take an informal shoe survey. On the fashion pages, high heels are definitively in. On the foot that hits the pavement, high heels are definitively off.

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Last year, chairing a panel on “Marketing to Boomer Women” at Book Expo America (BEA) I asked the audience by a show of hands, how many of you depend on women 40 and up as your primary customer? It was unanimous. I then asked: How many of you would be in jeopardy if this demographic stopped buying books? Again, all hands shot up.

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Today’s blog does not need to be long because it will, rather, go deep…about as deep as the lines on a 30-year-old’s face.

Which is why I stand in awe of a recent article in the May ’08 issue of “Marie Claire” Magazine—which, like most of the mainstream magazines geared to the female consumer, is a favorite of the 20 and 30-something crowd but not (with a few exceptions) particularly focused to the needs and concerns of “the older woman.”.

For the rest of today's blog, continue at The Boomer Blog

Nevermind that the Women of America continue to permit clothing makers to size trousers in goofy ways that have nada to do with the variety of actual body shapes we come in.

For the rest of today's blog, continue at The Boomer Blog