You'll Grow Out of It Read Online Free PDF

unprettiness. My only real desire now is to create a plan as to what type of old woman I can successfully become. I’ve been staring at old ladies for quite some time now, and from what I’ve observed, there seem to be only three paths that allow you to retain some aspect of appeal that will keep people interested in you:
Path One—You Were a Supermodel and You Are Still a Supermodel
    This is clearly the best path. If you were born looking like Christy Turlington, you will continue to look like Christy Turlington into your nineties even if people have to squint a little to still see her in there. Sophia Loren still looks like a goddess because she was already a goddess. But what if you’re not already a goddess? See Path Two—
Path Two—You Are Rich
    This is a very common path if you live on the Upper East Side of New York, or on a yacht that never docks for tax purposes. There are legions of women whose old-lady style is based on wearing their money. I have to say, in certain respects, it works. Maybe you are no longer twenty-one with perky little boobs, but you are wearing an Hermès watch and an Alexander Wang tunic shirt and Chloé flats and a sapphire necklace still wet from the Titanic . The twenty-one-year-old with perky boobs can’t afford even one of these items. So in that respect, you have more power than her. Even if people don’t want to fuck you anymore, no one is fucking with you. Because you have so much money. But what if you don’t have this money? Please skip to Path Three—
Path Three—You’re an Eccentric
    This is the last option. And it will be my option. We see these women all the time. They’re not leaning on beauty, and they’re not leaning on money. They’re leaning on character. They wear hot-pink tights and high-top sneakers. They wear big glasses and pillbox hats. They look like they might have once worked at Interview even though they didn’t. Or they look like Betsey Johnson back in the 1980s, but now here in the present and much older. They’re memorable and fun. They’re kooky old ladies. When I see them, I feel a pulse of happiness that maybe I won’t be so sad losing the little dollop of prettiness I was allotted. That maybe the secret to getting old and feeling okay is just buying an enormous silly hat and making people smile when they look at you because they think you’re having a good time.
      
    But maybe that’s not what the hat is about. Maybe the real issue is not so much making other people think you’re having a super-fun time creeping toward death; it’s simply being seen. This is the lament of older women, and ultimately of all old people—that you become invisible. It is especially hard for women, though, whose entire lives have been spent spinning around the idea that if no one is staring at you, you’ve somehow failed. Maybe the silly hat is really a Hail Mary to get people to look at you, no matter the reason.
    And maybe when you’re at the age where Vogue can no longer fathom how you could possibly dress yourself, it will all seem so incredibly ridiculous that you’ll actually be in the mood for the hat. The most fuckit Kentucky Derby hat you can find.
    I’m going to make the silly hat my priority.

All the Cakes
    I have gone to therapy, texted all my best friends, and listened to a downloadable Buddhist lecture about forgiveness on my iPod, so I’m genuinely trying. But I still can’t figure out whether to take my ex-boyfriend up on his offer of lunch.
    “Let’s catch up,” the email says.
    I am engaged, but seeing his name still tweaks me in my gut, which in turn makes me feel embarrassed. Why am I so weak that he still gets to me, more than ten years after we’ve broken up? The Buddhists say that you shouldn’t let shame about pain cause you to feel a second, self-inflicted pain, which is good advice; but sometimes it’s hard to do what the Buddhists say, mainly because so many of the people who currently talk about Buddhism are in