Susan Boyle & The F-Bomb Heard 'Round The World

Dear Susan,
Thank you, thank you, thank you. I think you proved the point of my Susan Boyle blog perfectly when you sat in a hotel bar and swore at the telly during Britain's Got Talent because the judges were raving up the little girl singer--and then swore at the press when they got in your face for swearing at the telly. Now, who dares to call my gal Susan "frumpy"? Ain't nothin' frumpy about the f-bomb.

Susan's thinking about dropping out of the show. I say, don't do it, honey. Hang in there and show the world that not only does talent have nothing to do with looks, it doesn't have much to do with being "proper" either. Are we all such prigs these days that we can't stand anyone who displays honest human emotion? Yes, as far as I can tell, we are. How else to explain the sweet, former missionary boy winning the American version of BGT instead of the slightly--and I do mean, only slightly--edgy, eyelinered vocal whiz. Oh, my, he suggested he might be gay? Well, we can't have that, can we, at least not in all but five of these here United States, by golly.

Miss California can bare all, not show up for contracted appearances and rip the pageant officials off for her boob job and still keep her 1st runner up position as long as she denounces "opposite marriage"--what a charming phrase really; which one of us really marries our genetic clone? And let's not forget, much as we might try, Tammy Faye Bakker. If we're going to get in a snit about a little eyeliner, we would have started with her. We are the world--as long as none of that world steps out of the "moral" line of the moment.

I loved the way Susan Boyle looked in her jeans and tweezed brows after her makeover and I love her even more now that she not only looks a bit like a barmaid but sounds a bit like one too. Where can I vote for her? And how often?

How I Spent My Summer

I'll spend my summer as I always do: looking for summer clothes that don't make me look like a 12-year-old or an 80-year-old.
(And my apologies to chic 80-year-olds out there but you know what I mean.)

This year, in fact, I have to add a third category to the "clothing I don't want on my body this summer" list: early 70's knockoffs. Been there, done that--braless, in fact--don't want to do it again, with or without my Bali minimizer. I walked past a Michael Kors white gauze peasant blouse the other day in Macy's, turned to my husband and said, "I owned that." Really. Kors should be ashamed that he stole it from me. It's not like I want to relive that memory, either. I was wearing it the day my Shakespeare professor kissed me--not in a fatherly way. If I want to relive any era with my clothing then I should be wearing what I wore when I was 3--talk about the good years!

As much as I'm relieved after a long, no, make that endless, Wisconsin winter to see leaves and listen to twittering (in the old-fashioned sense) sparrows, I hate trying to dress. Winter is easy: Jeans, boots, and a sweater and you're good to go, regardless of age, weight, or gender, for that matter. Come Summer and I'm stumped as well as stumpy. Do I wear gauzy, empire waist tees and white denim low-rise shorts because that's 90% of what I see hanging in stores? Oh, please. I'm 55, gaining so rapidly on 56 I'm afraid I'll overtake it and go right for 57. As pale as my skin is, no one really wants me blinding them with my ivory gams. And the adorable--and I don't mean that kindly--sleeveless empires out there manage to address in one tiny piece of fabric most of my upper body faults. Empire waists--fine if you have no boobs. If you do, you'll look pregnant and I don't want to end being mistaken for a late-life reproducer. Sleeveless? Well, if you're a woman my age, I probably don't have to tell you that triceps are one of the first things to go. In fact, it happens overnight. One day, you hold your arm up to shave and look fine; the next day you have to tie the loose skin out of the way first.

And other options? Can we still refer to certain styles as caftans and muu-muus? Because I'm seeing them out there. The thinking (do the people who design those think?) behind them seems to be that you'll feel like a Saudi Prince--they will hide all your bulges while letting cool breezes flow around you all the while protecting you from those nasty UV rays. Well, remember, the last person who looked really good in a caftan was Peter O'Toole in Lawrence of Arabia. And, honey, you and I aren't Peter O'Toole (in fact, one danger is we might look too much like him dressed like that). There are other loose, drapey, more discreet styles out there, of course, but--and I'm about to get myself in real trouble with fans of Eileen Fisher--most of those aren't that much more attractive unless you are 5'9" or above and thin and willowy. Let's see, I'm 5'2 3/4" and shrinking. And willowy? No, more Baobab-y.

Do I have an answer? No, which is why I'll spend the whole summer looking. But I've made a few decisions. I'll try to work out so that at least the flab is a bit tauter here and there. And I'll care less about how cool I look and more about how cool I feel. That means, I will wear shorts--but not low-rise white denim (OK, confession, I actually do have a pair; I just don't wear them in public)--and tank tops, simple cotton ones with no unnecessary seams, no cute sayings on them, and no ruffly necklines. Is this a sign of maturity, that I'm finally coming to terms with myself and my image? . . .Nah. It's hot flashes.

Can We Leave Susan Boyle Alone Now?

First task of the day: get people to stop using the word "dowdy" to refer to anyone less polished than Beyonce.
When I see someone refer to Oprah as "dowdy," I know things have gotten way outta hand. And the term really doesn't apply to Susan Boyle either, the uni-browed singing phenom on "Britain's Got Talent." The word connotes not just unpolished or a bad dresser but someone who is a bit of a shy bird, lacking in confidence as well as tweezers. And there is no way to call a woman willing to stand in front of Simon Cowell in a grocery-bag-shaped dress and belt out a song from Les Miserables a "shy bird."

Second task of the day: stop thinking that anyone who is talented and gets rewarded for that talent should look like Beyonce. Have you ever seen Fanny Brice? I mean, the real Fanny Brice, not the one played by the supposedly "homely" Barbara Streisand. (If not, that's her in the photo. On the right, honey, on the right.) Fanny Brice was truly not a pretty woman, with her big features and angular body. Yet she was a powerhouse as a singer and a comedienne, as evidenced by her getting Ziegfeld to look at or listen to her twice, given his "I only have eyes for boobs" predilections. And getting back to Oprah--excuse me, what would you call dowdy about her, exactly, except that she goes up and down in weight. I've seen Michelle Obama look "dowdier" than O.

And, yes, there is a third task of the day: Quit ripping on Susan Boyle because she had a "makeover." Rather than assuming that she was forced into changing her look by the media, maybe she saw her celebrity as an opportunity to make changes in her style that she had been wanting to make. No one was going to give her advice, help and financial assistance to get trimmed, plucked and put in a new outfit before she wowed the audience with her voice. I saw the before and after photos. And she looked pretty damn comfortable in her own skin in the "after." Like she was saying, "Screw you. Now who's dowdy." If we want to be ticked about a "makeover," let's direct our ire toward the pageant officials for Miss USA, who paid for Miss California's "figure enhancements"--i.e. breast implants--because they wanted her to feel "confident" on stage. If she wasn't confident enough in her body to be on that stage, why did she run for Miss California to begin with. And, oh, pageant dudes? I really don't think I can feel my most confident unless I'm wearing an 8-carat diamond ring and matching diamond chandelier earrings from Harry Winston. Pony up.

Talent isn't beauty; beauty isn't talent. I think that's inscribed on an urn somewhere. Or should be. I'm never going to look like Beyonce, but I'm not giving up my tweezers. You?

On A Motherless, Childless Mother's Day

The day is filled with signs of Mother's Day discounts--buy Mom a dozen flowers and get 50% off, FTD promises (doesn't this seem to miss some of the spirit?)--gigantic, overfattening, oversalted Mother's Day Buffets, and reminders that it's never too late to buy a silver-lined, grande-sized, sentiment-logged Hallmark card.

The day feels different for women who fall outside the "mother circle." I never had children although I became a stepmother to one (and a "step-stepmother" to my husband's stepson) in mid-life. Both were adults by then, however, so I never was called on to play "mommy." My stepson used to introduce me as "my Dad's chick." I took that as a compliment.

I am not truly motherless either, of course, not having sprung fully formed from Hera's head. Nor was I an adoptee, who rather than being motherless has two--a "birth" mother and an "adoptive" mother. But like many women my age, I have no living mother to celebrate with. My mother died last August--and before. After being the child closest to my mother--probably because I was the baby--the one who still went on trips with my parents into adulthood, the daughter she moved 500 miles to be with to help recover from anorexia, the one who always told her the truth about her petty envies and sometimes unkind treatment of my father, who would have worn chains for her, my mother slid into full dementia some years ago. My sister became the caretaker child and my heroine then because my parents had moved back to my hometown where my sister still lived. I saw my mother only sporadically.

The few times I did see her--with the exception of the last--were sad frustrations. Once she lay in a hospital bed after breaking her hip and never woke enough for me to know whether she would recognize me. A year later, she was awake and seemed to respond the first day I visited, laughing and holding out her hand to me, but by the next, she looked through me as though I was just another nurse coming into the room. The last time I saw her, though, was quite lovely. I was resigned to her not recognizing me, so that was no shock. And she had grown back to amazing physical health. She and my father, still adoring as ever, shared the same nursing home room and I was back for a family "party" for my father's birthday. Mother was sitting up in a chair, hair pulled back into a ponytail, fingernails painted a rosy pink by the staff, unaware of who most of us were but truly, giddily happy, laughing at any comment, watching the action closely, ooh-ing over the cake she wasn't able to eat. She didn't talk much and even less made sense but at one point she pointed to my brother and declared quite firmly, "I have just one thing to say to you. . ." Since that was as long a train of thought as she could hold, we had a grand, silly, just-like-old-family-times go-round of filling in the sentence for her: ". . .get a haircut."; ". . .finish your vegetables"(he's been a vegetarian for 40 years).

A few months later, her heart gave out. I didn't see her again.

And yet, that's not true. I have an amazingly beautiful photo of my mother and father on their wedding day: he was a pilot in WWII on leave in Virginia; she was a customer service rep in Pennsylvania. They met in college and had been in love for years, much to the dismay of both their mothers. An urban Jewish kid from Atlantic City, NJ and a country club debutante Episcopalian from Mt. Penn, PA were not supposed to fall in love in 1939. He wrote to her when he knew he was getting leave, asking her to get together $50 to match the $50 he had, and to elope with him in Roanoke. In the photo, Father in his officer's uniform, Mother in a lace-lapel suit, they were Hollywood stunning, a Paul Newman-Joanne Woodward combo.

And beyond that photo, my mother is with me in two more ways: one minor; one deeply inescapable. The one tangible item I inherited from her--the only one I wanted--is the minor one: her wedding band. The other I inherited from her as well: I look, not exactly like her, but so close that no one ever doubted whose daughter I was. I certainly never did and never will as long as there is a mirror to look into--and as long as I can recognize my own face.

"The Mirror...The Mirror"

I imagine Joseph Conrad standing in his tighty-whities in the dressing room of Marks & Spencer when inspired to write in Heart of Darkness: "the horror. . .the horror. . ."

If there is one place where interior design should flatter, you would think it would be store dressing rooms. There the shopper stands, in the most revealing, vulnerable position one can be--no, not sex, hormones take over there--stripped to their skivvies surrounded by mirrors. Nowhere to run; truly in a room that tiny, nowhere to hide. A size 8 dress in hand, looking at what appears now to be a size 12 body, back rolls and muffin tops inescapable under the least flattering lighting ever made--fluorescents. Is Edison responsible for those? If so, rip his pages right out of the history book, mama. Other than saving energy--pshh tshh, what a bore--they have nothing to redeem them. Harsh, casting an Elphaba spinach wash no matter your skin tone, flickering enough to set off a seizure, at least a migraine, who wouldn't look like a misshapen horny toad under them?

Then we're given no place to sit other than a hard piece of plastic, either fat-splaying if we have padding or painful if our butts lack the SpongeBob look of current Burger King ads. And in many dressing rooms, the doors look like they belong in a Western saloon, open at top and bottom so the salesperson can check out our varicose shins. It's a wonder the cash register ever rings. Particularly amusing, in a sick, John Waters way, are those stores that cater to a young unisex crowd whose dressing rooms open out directly onto the sales floor. Oh wait, that crowd might look ok naked in front of their peers but Chico's does this. Here's a store completely geared toward making older women think they can still wear rhinestone-emblazoned denim as long as the large size is deceptively called "a European 3," yet they make you strip where the ever-so-helpful saleswoman can whip the door open to expose your all to all and ask "Can I get you another size, honey? Now, don't buy too big or you'll just look shapeless!" If by shapeless she means like The Invisible Man, I'll take it.

I tried on bathing suits last year. There--I confess--I bravely took clothing that is meant only to show the worst parts of a body into a room that ensures those parts will be their least flattering and got naked. And...didn't buy a bathing suit. How could I convince myself I would be able to walk around a hotel swimming pool when I wouldn't have left that room if I was about to be dragged to Kansas by Dorothy's tornado? You and your little. . .oh, never mind. Nothing was little.

Here are my suggestions. Make dressing rooms half again as big, so we don't feel like Alice after nipping from the "drink me" bottle. Add something padded in a dark neutral color to sit on, something that wraps around and like a little black dress hides a bit of the pudge. Put in enough hanging space so we don't have to dump our own clothes into a wad on the floor (trying to make me feel bad about my current wardrobe will not induce me to buy). And use lighting that makes our skin slightly pinkish and filtered (even guys look better this way). Better to have us return one or two things because in daylight we realize golden daffodil and seafoam are not our colors than have us walk out without your cute signature bag to lure other shoppers in.

Sigh. And don't even get me started on how hair salon mirrors make me look.