Age Versus Stage

versus

This seems like a topical topic for this blog, one that I’ve been thinking on since writing about shopping with my (much) younger sister and being (inappropriately) drawn to clothing more aimed at her. I got to wondering a bit more about why that was. My sister and I are 8 years apart in age, but about a million miles apart in stage. She lives in a funky apartment in a big city with her very cool boyfriend. They meet after work to drink at happy hour with friends, they sleep late on the weekends (well, her boyfriend doesn’t, but that’s his choice). She goes to work every day and frets and fantasizes about her career. I live with my husband and 2 kids in a house outside a big city with a yard and never-ending weeds and grass that I pull and mow. We don’t sleep late, ever. We go out for drinks only if our babysitter is available and we are pretty sure we won’t fall asleep. I don’t go to work, but spend the day playing with kids or driving them around.

I’m generalizing, of course, but like I said in the post - there are a whole bunch of really good non age-related reasons why she can wear certain clothes that I can’t wear, and why I feel like Dansko clogs are totally acceptable and she thinks they are for nurses only. Perhaps she is - gasp - simply more stylish than I am.

But I wasn’t ready to bow to that explanation, so I started to wonder - what if I was 8 years older than her but had no kids? How would that change the picture? Or if she was 8 years younger than me but did have kids? Or if we were exactly the same age, one with kids and one without? Is it about your age, or is it about your stage?

At first blush it seems fairly obvious. Part of why we wear what we wear is functional - chasing after kids every day is sort of like going to the gym (but WAY less good for your butt) in that there’s no need to ruin good pants by sweating all over them. And it’s hard to do squats in jeans. Or run on the treadmill in heels. So fine, your clothes identify how you spend your days, to an extent, and if you spend your days (years...help me....) home with kids, you’re just more likely to build up an armada of cotton T-shirts and loose jeans. And in that way, it is about stage. But still. Even if my sister and I had the same jobs and the same number of children and spent our days the same way, we could not wear the same length skirt. Which means it is about age, too.

And you know it is, because we’ve all done a double take on those women who look sartorially 25ish, but facially 45ish. What’s up with that? Do we want to look young, or not as old as our age? My mother never wore the same clothes my babysitters were wearing, but I often do, which is confusing and sometimes awkward. I'm going to try to wiggle out of that one by hypothesizing that today's teens are more sophisticated and that the proliferation of trendy clothes at cheap prices in every mall in America has helped shove us all toward a middle ground, but we know that's not the only answer. Young celebrities look way older than they are, and old celebrities look WAY younger than they are. We do not go gently into that dark night, not anymore. Still, I feel very...aware of making sure my clothing follows my face in the age-appropriate department - I don’t want to dress too much younger, or certainly any older, than my face. I don't want to look like a teenager, and luckily there's not chance of that even if I tried. So I wear miniskirts, but with oversized t-shirts and flat shoes, or thick tights and boots. That somehow seems to make it OK, even if my sitter is wearing the same skirt, because she won't be wearing it the same way. And when I see my sister in short shorts with high heels, I note that she looks fabulous and that I would look like I was an overreaching ass. Plus, my kids could out-run me.

But for example: Jennifer Aniston and Julia Roberts, a mere 16 months apart in age and three kids apart in stage, are pretty interesting. Jennifer has the body of a 20 year old. Hell, she has a body a 20 year old would be thrilled to have. But she's 41, and I bet she has to spend more and more hours in the gym with every passing year to keep things tight. And Julia has a body that looks like a 42 year old with fabulous genes. A 42 year old - a 30 year old - would love her body. But probably not a 20 year old. Julia doesn’t look like she spends her days at the gym, and she is starting to wear dorky hats while at the pool with her children. She looks her age, and her stage - a beautiful, tall, occasionally glamorous version of her age, but still her age, and happy about it to boot. Jennifer Aniston doesn't look her age (or happy, for that matter). And it's a bit weird. She's almost freakishly hot, though I do give her props for her clothes - they may be age-inappropriate for the general 40 year old, but they are not, shall we say, a la Cher, Madonna, or Sharon Stone. Give the girl some credit. She may be totally isolated from her demographic, and hitting the Botox like it's cheap crack, but at least she hasn’t forgotten which direction she’s headed.

There is one last piece to all of this, which is that maybe fashion and style and high heels are a young woman's - and Anna Wintour's - game. It's tiring to dress well every day, and maybe once you're out of your twenties or thirties, or into a life with marriage and children, you just don't care. You could even feel you've earned the right not to care. High heels hurt - personally, my back aches for days after one night in them. Sweatpants and loose jeans feel good, oh so good, and they're usually sitting right on the floor in solid colors, easily matchable and ready to be worn again. So maybe the celebs and the women who continue to slog through adult life wed to the maintenance of their selves through their trendy clothes are really the losers. But I don't think so (well, celebs do seem like they lose, big picture - but that's a talk for another day). I was never a fashionista, but after having kids the slow sloughing off of everything I understood about and planned for myself was perfectly showcased in my descent to yoga pants and t-shirts. My ground was shaky, no longer solid, the path flickering rather than clearly lit. Getting back to dressing like I care means...I do. About way more than clothes. It means I'm still here, and I'm notice-able.

So...recap, conclusions: it’s your age. And it’s your stage. You can run, but you can’t hide.

Unless, perhaps, you are Jennifer Aniston.