an open letter …
on ageing
Carine, darling, I told myself. Channel Carine. It’s a bit freakin’ hard though, innit? A bit freakin’ hard to pull off the ex- Vogue Paris editor-in-chief’s rock-chic thing when you’re wearing high-vis and your face is as terrible, in all its meatiness and all its goriness, as a cheek of beef, leaking silently on to a polystyrene tray. But forgive me, I’m getting away on myself. First a little context. This was late one afternoon last week, the sky weighted down by rain clouds, the netball courts awash with little girls in skorts, and shouty, umbrella-wielding parents. I was on duty (ergo the highlighter orange vest), having just undergone a procedure in which tiny needles had punctured my skin in order to combat its hyperpigmentation, fine lines and porousness (ergo the prickly, puffy, puce face). And, as I patrolled those courts, as alone as the loneliest wolf, making enemies left, right and centre with my request that spectators kindly refrain from poking their umbrella ends into the special rubber surfaces, I was forced to ask myself if this could really be what it had come to?
My friends and I had made a plan, see. Long ago we swore to each other, on our grandmothers’ graves, on our future children’s lives, that we would age not gracefully (too predictable, sweetie), but, like sexy, spikey Carine Roitfeld, that we would age fiercely. We didn’t reckon, though, on how tricky this would be to accomplish. How middle age is defined more often by stolidity than ferocity. How unwittingly you begin to prioritise comfort above almost anything else, how this journey into elastication will start innocently enough but before you know it, will become your very raison d’etre. How all that time and effort you had in your 20s to devote to assembling a killer outfit, to grooming and preening, all that time and effort your appearance could really benefit from now, will instead be eaten up by trying to book parentteacher interviews online, by waiting on hold for your telecommunications provider to explain why you can’t get Wi-Fi while your adolescent child suffers loudly in the background from Fortnite withdrawal.
I didn’t think sartorially I could slide much further, but lately, given recent life upheavals, my wardrobe has been reduced to three tracksuits. Three tracksuits I wear on steadfast rotation.
It was a lesson sharply learned that just because your legs are still okay doesn’t mean you will still look fetching in a skirt that sits high above your knee.
And as my outerwear has declined, so, too, my underwear. Getting dressed in the morning, I push aside anything remotely wispy; spurn all kinds of lace and silk in favour of sturdy knickers and stretchy bras devoid of uplift. Can I get away with it, I asked myself initially, staring critically at my reflection in profile. Then I donned my ubiquitous puffer vest, and realised that not only is it soft and warm around my neck, but it hides the saggiest of sins, too.
It once seemed to me there were two ways to be middle-aged: those who had given up and those who were fighting it. I worried I would fall into the latter camp. That like the liver-spotted, grey-haired, jowly man crossing the road in front of me the other day in full gangsta rapper get-up, I would clutch on to my youthful fancies. To my surprise, though, I have readily ditched my beloved miniskirts (it was a lesson sharply learned that just because your legs are still okay doesn’t mean you will still look fetching in a skirt that sits high above your knee). I mourn them not too much, although I will admit that the alacrity with which the pool of options available to me continues to diminish does alarm me somewhat. A few summers ago I thrashed a floaty, peachy playsuit, convinced I was practically Sienna Miller, only to put it on the next summer and promptly take it off again. In my wash-and-wear fabrics, my three tracksuits, I am finding I might actually have more in common with the surrenderers. So my question for you, dearest reader, is where, oh where, is the happy medium?