Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Formerlies, aka Cougars or MILFs

I had totally warmed up to Cougar, it carries a fun connotation that elicits my whatever. I never could put my arms around MILF, though, and seriously, could anybody of the female gender?

Now comes Formerly, as in "formerly hot", from the book by Stephanie Dolgoff, "My Formerly Hot Life: Dispatches from Just the Other Side of Young."

I haven't read the book -- it's not always necessary to go to the printed word in search of my everyday life -- but I gather from the reviews that it is about coming to terms with aging, and that a big thing about aging is how it springs on you, like that moment when you realize that men don't look at you as a hot, desirable item anymore.  Well, here's what I want to say: Speak for yourself, Stephanie!

Okay, that's what I want to say, but I can't really say that.  What she describes is something we all experience as we get older, except maybe Madonna, I guess. Plus, she is speaking for herself, as the book is a memoir.

But indeed, most of us in middle-age land used to elicit the look, a look, some kind of look, to some degree or another, and the dial on that degree has definitely moved counterclockwise. Something was that now isn't. Something formerly was: eye-candy us, head-turning me. So the newest entry in modern women-descriptive lingo is self-explanatory.

So how do I take to Formerly?

I kind of like that it is related to something so eternal, universal and indelible as the passage of time, one of the hardest concepts for any person to grasp, objectively or subjectively. If I'm going to get a label, might as well be from the realm of the ethereal. I'm also warm to the search itself for a term or phrase that can encapsulate a complex and common experience.

The problem is that even standing on just the other side of young, I am still me: formerly me, currently me.

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