BAD GIRL HITS AN AGE MILESTONE (head on, and fully fueled by hootch)

 I celebrated a birthday recently.  I didn’t celebrate it very well, mind you.  In fact, I don’t celebrate anything well anymore.  I don’t know how to, primarily because the only time I stay up past midnight is with sick kids.

The thing is, nobody needs birthday parties in order to feel older.  Our Drivers License photos do it perfectly well on their own.  Besides, you know you’re getting older because the cops keep getting younger and younger.  Soon they’ll be putting little cub scouts in uniforms and sending them out with toy guns to man the speed traps.

 

Getting older is particularly discouraging when you realize what other people have accomplished by the age of 35.  Attila the Hun had conquered most of Europe before he was old enough to vote.  Cleopatra had vamped the entire Mediterranean coastline while tossing Caesar Salad on the side, and Beethoven managed to write all sorts of world class symphonies and go deaf before he was my age.  Actually, he was dead by the time he was my age.

The worst thing about growing older is not the weight you gain, but the dreams you lose.  For instance, I’m having trouble coming to terms with the fact that I may never become a major Vogue model.  For one thing, we older broads can’t walk in high heels anymore without toppling over sideways.  Something to do with the weight distribution further up.  For another, we can’t see five inches ahead without our glasses.  So unless Vogue wants a model crawling along the catwalk on her hands and knees, modeling is out.

On the bright side, one of the minor irritants of aging is you tend to forget things.  This has certain advantages.  I haven’t weighed myself in weeks.  I've already forgotten my age.  And any day now, I might forget I am married… 

 

Nefertiti, Noses, and the Definition of Pretty by Bad Girl

Many years ago at the Toronto Press Club, a man called me “Striking.”  (For the record, men have called me a lot of other things over the years.  “Bossy” immediately comes to mind.  But I digress.)

I was flattered, I think.  But I wasn’t exactly sure what ‘striking’ meant.  The language of men has always deluded me.  Let’s face it.  The way men think has always deluded me.

I asked around.

“Maybe it means you walk into a room and men feel struck by your beauty,” said friend Kathy, 

helpfully.

“Maybe it means you have a mean left hook,” said former friend John, who discovered that I did.

Recently, a man pointed me to this list of definitions, which apparently makes it all clear. 

Variations on the word ‘Pretty,’ when used to describe a female:

Beautiful: tall and pretty

Cute:  short and pretty

Striking:  pretty with a big nose

Sexy:  pretty with skimpy clothes

Charming: pretty and thinks you’re attractive

Attractive:  just pretty enough (it doesn’t say for what, but we can guess)

Okay, here’s the thing about noses.  My nose, of the good solid Roman variety, apparently made me a good photo model.  “You’re face has great planes,” said a former professional photographer.  “It doesn’t moosh into one flat surface on glossy paper.”

Damn straight, we wouldn’t want a nose that mooshes.  At the same time, I have to wonder about being defined by my nose.

So I asked my husband what ‘striking’ meant to him.

“It means you’re memorable,” he said wisely.  (Meaning, he was wise to say it.)  “Look at history.  That bust of Nefertiti – she had a big nose.  And everyone thinks she was the babe of her century.”

So that brings up another question:  What exactly do they mean by “babe”?