And finally, surely we should also ensure that those known for attributes other than good genes are included in any pantheon of childhood heroes. I didn’t ban Barbie dolls in my house, for example, but I did get a bit nervous when my little girl accumulated a decent-sized clique of them. One day I decided to buy her an Eleanor Roosevelt doll from a museum shop: the splendid former First Lady’s strong, striking features are framed by a red velvet cloak and a feather boa. I was a little reticent about giving it to her, fearing that clever Eleanor might be rejected in favour of the pretty girls. But before long my daughter slept with her every night. I’m hoping that somehow, quietly, she might have absorbed some of Eleanor’s wisdom in her sleep — and reject the idea that ‘old ladies’ should just fade away and behave.
Chapter 10
Let Yourself Go
ONCE, WHILE I WAS looking at an apricot-coloured vintage dress at a stall on the Upper West Side in New York, imagining myself in it drinking gin cocktails on the Riviera, my then partner whispered in my ear: ‘You know, there comes a day when wearing old-lady dresses is no longer ironic.’
Ouch. I was thirty-six. And apparently not even mutton dressed as lamb, but fast approaching mutton dressing as jerky — if we accept the dubious notion that the way women dress can be likened to the life stages of a sheep.
Deflated, I left that pretty dress hanging on the wire fence surrounding those markets on the corner of Columbus and West 76th. But I still wear vintage.
So what does it actually mean to dress like an ‘old lady’? Or even just ‘dress your age’? Women are more often criticised for dressing like younger, not older, versions of themselves. When you reach forty, you’re suddenly inundated with advice about ‘age-appropriate’ wear. It doesn’t happen to blokes in the same way, though they are stupidly often shamed for expressing any kind of creativity in dress, or for appearing to transgress any archaic gender rules, which is also limiting. Women have been wearing pants for far more than a century; when will we see men wear skirts in any significant numbers? Women are expected to be vain – men are jeered at for even showing a passing interest in fashion, which is why terms describing fashionable blokes – fop (‘a man who is concerned with his clothes and appearance in an affected and excessive way’), coxcomb (a man too proud of his appearance) and dandy (a man greatly concerned with smartness of dress) – so quickly become pejorative.
It is worth pointing out that one of the first recorded uses of ‘mutton dressed as lamb’ was to praise, not ridicule, hot older women. In a lady’s journal of 1811 the phrase was attributed to the future King George IV of England, who, when still a prince, was asked at a ball if he found a particular girl pretty. He snorted with derision: ‘Girl! Girls are not to my taste. I don’t like lamb; but mutton dressed like lamb!’
The original intent of this phrase has been lost: women are not praised for dressing like fabulous young things now. As we ascend the ladder of wisdom and maturity, we are cautioned to adopt restraint, to be ‘classic,’ ‘sophisticated,’ to eschew skin in favour of prim. And with every passing year, we are instructed to occupy less space and be more demure — and dull.
We are also told to monitor our appearance in a way men very rarely are. Find me a man leafing through a magazine that tells him to upturn his collar to hide his neck wrinkles, and I will upturn it for him.
One fashion guru advised women, ‘The worst thing you can do is to dress younger than you are.’ The worst thing! So bad, apparently, that a survey by isme.com suggested that 80 per cent of Britons thought women should ‘start dressing down’ when they turned fifty, and that a quarter of women over fifty were ‘scared of wearing high heels’. Scared. Frightened.
After forty, we should, says a British fashion writer in The Telegraph, use plenty of conditioner on our hair and not risk a radical trim because ‘a bob at this stage could put a decade on you’. Yikes! The author goes on to say a maxi skirt can also add ‘ten years’. Get a haircut and the wrong dress, and bang — you’re sixty.
One website also recently chided women over forty who wore tank tops, low-rise jeans, platform heels, bangles and big earrings by asking, ‘Are you a middle-aged fashionista who just doesn’t know when to quit?’ Quit what, exactly? Are men in sharp suits ever called fashionistas?
Finally, we are told to smile more. ‘The sulky, not bothered expression which you may think cool (see Victoria Beckham) will in your 40s start to look sour,’ writes The Telegraph’s adviser. The answer? ‘Perk it up.’
This mutton shaming has to stop.
Very occasionally, we are given permission to reveal glimpses of our fleshly selves. A fashion journalist advised in Harper’s Bazaar that mutton-ladies may still reveal morsels of skin — collarbones, wrists and the back of the neck are safe ‘candidates for display . . . All the places you’d wear perfume and would like to be kissed. It’s about being adored, not ravaged.’
All this nonsense is why I adore the funky octogenarians you can find on Instagram who proudly sport white hair, wild colours, sharp suits, massive sunglasses and turbans. They refuse to fade, to hide or to match their attire to the wallpaper.
My greatest mutton-fantasy is just to wear and do what I want, and to not have such preoccupations even cross my mind. Isn’t there a point when one can simply be a dowager, a grand old dame, a merry old boiler? When we can refuse to kowtow to prescriptions and permissions, but just march on in the shoes we fancy wearing?
Queen Victoria ditched suffocating corsets without blinking, much to the horror of her doctor. But who would elect to wear those things voluntarily? Instead, she wore exactly what she liked for half a century: mourning black, with diamonds.
I have long savoured the prospect of letting myself go. It’s just the most delicious concept: a balloon wafting into the ether, a raft flowing smoothly with the current. One day, I have imagined, I will find myself wandering along the street, either cheerfully unkempt with hair askew, or impossibly fabulous, wearing a curious assortment of clothes — perhaps a vintage frock with dapper heels — that meet just my liking. I might bump into an old acquaintance who will regard me with confusion. ‘Oh,’ I’ll exclaim, with an easy laugh, and, touching her arm lightly, I’ll say, ‘I thought you might have known. I’ve let myself go!’ Then I’ll saunter off, dangerously liberated, feeling envious eyes on my back — having reached, finally, the age when you can reject rejection.
YOU HAVE TO WONDER, too, if women are most free to let themselves go when they leave child-bearing behind them. I have only just discovered, while writing this, that the bones of women become aerated, filled with bubbles of air, and thinner, as they grow older, just like the hollow bones of birds.
This lightness of limbs enables flight. It allows us to let go.
BY LETTING GO, BY THE WAY, I don’t mean relinquishing all attempts to be creative or colourful or fabulous with your clothes or your face, but quite the opposite: do what you want with the way you look. When I’m writing, I barely wash my hair, ignore mirrors and leave my face bare. But when I’m working on TV, I am daily transformed by the ABC’s proficient makeup artists in what is usually an hour of calm in days marked by whirring news stories and political whiplash. It’s like having a suit to perform in, then shed before returning to ordinariness — my local grocery store owner (not known for his tact) told me once as I stood in front of him, dripping in my wetsuit, holding a carton of milk, ‘Ha-ha, you look much more beautiful on TV!’