What Might a 52-Year Old Woman Wear?

But, even though I have to die some day, I still like to spend my life on highly trivial activities. For example. Looking at celebrities in dressup clothes. When I was little, my mother would give us all her old nightgowns and bathrobes, which were really I suppose pegnoirs, and we kept them in a hamper and would pull them out and play dressup. Three little tow heads wearing pink nylon robes with fake satin and roses. That’s what ladies wore in those days.

Anyway. Celebrities. In dressup clothes. In any clothes actually. And lately I’ve begun to wonder if I would ever see anything I, as a 52 year old woman, might wear…. This? I don’t think so. I wouldn’t even know what to call the area of my body between my clavicle and my navel that isn’t occupied by anatomy that used to feed babies.

But please don’t tell me I have to do this:

The thing about being middle-aged, technically if not spiritually, is that you want to look appropriate without looking like you tried to look appropriate.

And if I wear this I have a vague fear that I might be mistaken for a sofa by someone who wanted very badly to sit down:

Not to mention that fact that I think I would also have to buy a gun and attach it to the back of my middle-aged lady Toyota Rav4. I never did get country western music. Not since Hank Williams and “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry.”

Ah well. Who am I kidding? I look at celebrities not to find something to wear. I have something to wear. Several somethings. A perfectly good pair of sweatpants with bleach stains that my son left behind. Several perfectly good sweatshirts that said son deemed, for reasons unknown, too dorky. Myriads of black and gray pants and myriads of white tshirts and a small flock of cashmere sweaters to wear to jobs. When I have them. So no, I don’t look at celebrities to find something to wear. I look at them so that I can pretend for a brief glorious moment that I am this girl again:

Squint. Yeah, like that. See? I could be her. I could. I really could. Just gotta keep growing my hair. And fervently ignoring that death problem. That getting older issue.