40 Whatever

Nothing says OLD like a trip to the gynecologist

The nurse practitioner in charge of the health and well-being of my lady bits is someone with whom I went to high school--but she graduated, like, 10 years after I did.

As if that's not bad enough, at my recent annual exam, the one that coincides with my birthday (in this case, my 40th birthday), I had to endure her talking to me about how my new low dose birth control pills would, "help with the hot flashes that might accompany perimenopause." They would also help with "mood swings and irregular periods" that also might accompany the beginning of "the change."

I am apparently entering the period of a woman's life when her eggs die off and her ovaries shrivel and her body says, "More babies? That's a joke, right?" Apparently I have about 10 more years of birth control pill-taking years left in me before we need to "discuss other options." Please, dear god, let my period dry up by then.

Then she handed me my own "schedule your mammogram" paper. Pink, of course.

One more day until I'm 40, folks.  One. more. day.

Next year we're going as media. No, really, it's "research."

As de facto experts on all things cougar—not just because were 40-whatever but because we actually watched The Cougar—we were really sad to have missed the Miss Cougar America pageant at the National Cougar Convention held recently in our backyard jungle.

Forty Fifty-whatever women, twenty-whatever men. Plenty of white zin and "Brick House." Curmudgeons like hotel guest Mark Friedman, 45, of Boston who, after surveying the scene, scoffed, "I've never seen so many useless 20-year-olds in my life."

What the hell were we thinking?!?! How could we have missed that?!

We feel as though we've let you, our dear readers, down. We promise it won't happen again.

Next time, we'll be there to see the winner crowned and will toast her with our Cosmos. We're sure the pageant will have a media contact by then so we can request our badges.

Our PRESS badges.

—Stefania/CityMama

Vintage Doin' it well: My grandma

This is my grandmother who was by all accounts: fabulous. My mom and her friends often reminisce about her designer outfits, glittering jewels, how she was always well-put-together, and how she liked to have a cigarette with her cocktail. 

She wasn't the kind of grandma who baked pies and wore aprons. She was a carouser. She liked to throw parties and fly from Honolulu to San Francisco for semi-annual shopping trips. She got her hair and nails done every Wednesday, and was never without her lipstick.

This photo was taken as part of a 40th birthday photo session. I have always loved looking at old photos of my grandmother because she was such a style icon. My 4-year-old—whose middle name is Flora after her great-grandmother—is already showing signs of her fabulosity.

Thanks for showing all of us how it's done, Grandma.

—Stefania/CityMama

UR doin' it cougar: Brooke Shields

 Born: 5/31/65 Age: 43, almost 44

Look at the hotness that is the photo above.  Yes, that really is Brooke Shields with her hand in some 19-year-old's crack.

Brooke Shields has always been like an older sister to me. An older sister that I idolized.  I'm not going to lie, I have loved her since:

• My mom dropped me and my older cousin off at the movie theater to see Blue Lagoon. (It was 1980 and I was 11. What was she thinking?)
• Her iconic Calvin Klein ads.
• Her anti-smoking ad with the cigarettes sticking out of her ears. (I don't smoke, and that ad probably had a lot to do with it.)
• She graduated from Princeton (talk about an excellent role model).
• She came out from under her controlling mother's wings and acknowledged and forgave her for making some questionable career choices on her behalf.
• She refused to tame her wild brows even when everyone was plucking them into non-existence in the 90s.
• She took on that total douchebagasaurus Tom Cruise over the issue of post-partum depression.

Brooke Shields, your new photo shoot rulz.  And as a mother of two, who acts her age (even if she doesn't look it), you are still an excellent role model.  You do 40whatever well, but then again, I knew you would.

—Stefania/CityMama

Someone we know is turning 40 today!

Can you guess who? Who is it, do you think, who is celebrating the big 4-0?  Who is filling out her subscription to More magazine as we speak?  Who is rushing out to buy Metamucil and Depends for Women as soon as she puts in her dentures?

Why, yes! It's our very own, beloved Bad Kitty!

Doesn't she look wonderful? So ageless...So timeless...Not a day over 27...or at least she would if we could see her face.

Oh, Bad Kitty, no need to hide.  Not today.  It's time to take down the shroud and step proudly into 40. (upraisedarms Jai!)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BAD KITTY! 

Here's to the next 40 whatever years!  The last decade or so has been such an amazing adventure. I can't wait to see what happens next.  Lake Como, penthouse apartment on the Seine, beach house in Hawaii...here we come!

(Dammit!)

Love x one million,
Stefania

Doin' it well: Van Jones

Born: 1968, age 40.

Current Job: is the Special Advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation at the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ).

Previous Work: Environmental advocate, a civil rights activist and attorney, and a New York Times bestselling author. President and founder of Green For All, a national NGO dedicated to "building an inclusive green economy strong enough to lift people out of poverty."^[1] His first book, The Green Collar Economy, released on October 7, 2008, was a New York Times bestseller.^[2] Jones also founded the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, a California NGO working for alternatives to violence and incarceration.^[3]

Martital Status: Damn, that is a wedding ring in the photo.

What we'd say if we ever met him: Gee, Mr. Jones, it's kinda hot in here. Is it global warming or is it...you?

What he might be surprised to know about us: We've read his book and it's inspiring.

High school reunions: Can't wait or can't be bothered?

My 20th high school reunion was held last year and whoops! I forgot to attend.

Damn.

Months before hand, the emails and Facebooking started. "Are you going?" "No? Why not?" Some friends even called me the NIGHT OF asking me why I wasn't going. That was sweet, but does anyone really need a reason why they don't want to attend a high school reunion?

I don't want to sound bitter but I had no interest in catching up with people that I really didn't know 20 years ago. Plus, I'm just not into the "one-up-manship vibe" that seems to surround so many of these kinds of gatherings. It's not that I hated high school--it was fine--I just like leaving the past firmly in the past. Where it belongs. I treasure the friends from high school that I still have and make an effort to see them as often as I can.  That's good enough pour moi.

See? No matter what reason you give for not going you end up sounding bitter. Another reason NOT to go.

What about you.  Did you go to your 20th or did you totally blow it off? If you went, was it what you expected?  If you didn't, did you have any regrets about not going or did life carry on as normal?

I think I'm going to have to go into hiding before the next reunion rolls around. Maybe Facebook will be dead by then. But if I had considered going, I mean, if it had crossed my mind for more than a millisecond, I totally would have sent a stripper in my place like Andrea Wachner did.

Maybe I'll do that for my 50th.

—Stefania/CityMama

That's So Cougar: Walgreen's Beauty Purchases

 

Yesterday I went to Walgreen's for two items:

• Olay Definity Color Recapture anti-aging UV moisturizer + sheer illuminating coverage ($29.99 and they keep it under lock and key near the Baby Phat perfume)
• a Ped Egg ($12.99, the kind with the handle so I "don't have to bend over.")

When your almost 40, you can spend almost $50 at Walgreen's on two items without batting an eyelash. You tell yourself that at least you aren't spending $150 on face cream at a department store, and then $30 for swirly tinted moisturizer seems justified.

I had bottles of sparkly green and turquoise nail polish in my hand but decided to put them back.  I also gave my kids some Chips Ahoy cookies as we entered the store so they would let me browse in peace, but they were too fascinated by the press-on nails (and toe nails WTF?) to bother me.

—Stefania/CityMama

Age 40: What are the fashion rules?

Here we are about to turn 40 and I just have one question: what are we supposed to wear? 

I was talking to my friend Pamela yesterday (who, by the way, always looks smashing and is a fashion icon in her own right) and she posed the questions, "Can I still shop at Anthropologie? Or Target?" And I was all, "I covet the Tory Burch jelly ballet flats but are they too ridiculous for a 40-year-old?" (Never mind that I'd never pay $95 for them...)

In the end we decided that our feet are sweatier now than in the 80's when we last wore jellies, but we really didn't have an answer to the "what do we wear?" question.

So what does a 40-year-old wear?  I have to say, I pretty much thumb my nose at all of the fashion rules. I am the queen of seasonally inappropriate footwear and wear my flip-flops--even white ones--well into the winter. I was born in Hawaii and live in Northern California and it's not that cold here. Bad Kitty and I pretty much agree that white is a year-round color so fuck the Labor Day-Memorial Day rule.  We follow the P. Diddy rule.

And, as a plus-sized laydee, I can't shop at places like Anthropologie where a size 14 is really just a size they make for Japanese girls with boob jobs.  I do shop Target and Old Navy and Gap Tall and have a closet-full of INC and Calvin Klein and Michael Kors because they make stuff I can wear. I still wear my black jelly bracelets (the kind from high school), and I love accessories, especially mixing family heirloom jewelry with stuff from Claire's, and yeah, I probably skew a little young, but does 40 mean suddenly having to dress your age? And what does that mean anyway?

Does it mean this?  Seriously. Click on the video, you'll want to slash your wrists as soon as you hear the music.

I know ironic tees and probably braids and maybe even shorts are out for people my age, but will I have to start wearing pleated khakis?  Or colors like soft teal and lavender? It's bad enough that I already wear the bathing suit with the skirt. (Which, yeah, okay, I love.) Will I have to start shopping at Chico's or LL Bean or far back wall at Target? Please don't make me go there. I like the rounders by the aisle. I'd rather die than put on anything made of faille or wool or adorned with French cuffs or that dowdy Ferragamo bow. And I rather die than shop at a store that sells sunglasses and purses to match the clothes. That's not even fine when your 5 and it's Gymboree. Will I have to trade my metallic gladiator sandals for sensible pumps? Stop streaking my hair every color of the rainbow? All I know is: we're turning 40 and we're in a fashion black hole. Where's that hot bitch Tim Gunn when you need him?

So tell me. What are your thoughts on this? What too-young-for-you clothing item or accessories will they have to pry off your cold, dead body?  And, who are you wearing?

Hooray for eye creams [embracing the cliché]

I was raised by a mother who lovingly took me up to the Clinique counter on my twelfth birthday for my "computer analysis" (remember that plastic hunk of junk and those sliders?) to determine my 3-step skin care program (soap, toner, and moisturizer).  By the time I was in my teens, I had graduated to Erno Laszlo's Sea Mud soap (the stuff that turned your sink black) + 30 splashes therapy. Needless to say, the importance of taking care of one's skin was taught to me at an early age.

Over the years I haven't strayed much from my original cleanse-moisturize routine, in fact, as I approach 40 I have recently begun to use Sea Mud soap again mainly because it smells like the 80's and that makes me giddy.  I haven't used toner since practically searing the skin off my face with Sea Breeze toner in 1981 (who else remembers the acid burns?), but I still moisturize everyday and have a bathroom cupboard full of potions and creams to soften and smooth every part of my upperbody from forehead to shoulders. (My stomach and thighs remain butter-soft due to a nice padding of fat.) But nothing is more important to me than a good firming, anti-wrinkle eye cream.

I would forgo my favorite facial moisturizers (Guerlain Orchidée Impériale cream and Clinique Super-Defense) and everything else in my moisture arsenal to be able to keep my eye creams, of which I use three on a regular basis:

• Guerlain Super Aqua Eye Serum (apply first, night and day)
• Pond's Age DefEye Anti-Circle Anti-Puff Eye Therapy (over the Eye Serum during the day, a great eye cream if you have dark circles or puffiness, and who doesn't in the ay-em?)
• Guerlain Issima Success Eye Tech (over the Eye Serum at night)

As I've said before, I wear cheap shoes so I can buy expensive cookware, and I would lump eye creams into that category, although the Pond's is a steal. I'm not one to go running for Botox and am too much of a control freak to ever consider surgery, but I can stave off the crow's feet for as long as I can.  I don't mind getting older, just don't want to feel older. I'll win the fight... until I start to lose it.  Like the battle I'm losing with my ass.

—Stefania/CityMama