Linky-Dinks
Allow me to point you toward some Oldster-ish articles and essays I've been enjoying lately...
Led by my fascination with what it means to pass through time in a human body, I tend to read, watch, and listen to an awful lot of Oldster-ish content (or which at least has Oldster-ish elements to it). Now and then I’ll pass some of it along to you.
What makes something qualify as Oldster-ish, you ask? It either highlights or calls into question what it means to be a particular age. Or, it’s nostalgic for any age group’s heyday.
Here are links to articles and essays I’ve recently enjoyed:
“You have to learn to ride the waves, and you always have to have a backup plan.” — John Waters on adaptability, one secret behind his staying power in the arts over decades. I’ll read anything Mike Albo writes, and this Town & Country profile of Waters is no exception.
“…it was the year of COVID. Everybody was miserable and bored, and I was miserable and bored and posting pictures of what I looked like when I was miserable and bored. So I guess that was relatable.” — 56-year-old model/actor/writer Paulina Porizkova on giving ageism the finger and reclaiming the spotlight on her Instagram account, in Benjamin Svetkey’s L.A. Magazine feature, “In With the Olds,” on Boomers and Gen X-ers refusing to go gentle into that good night.
Speaking of super-models, according to Danielle Cohen at The Cut, our culture’s unhealthy demand for eternal “perfection” among beauty icons led Linda Evagnelista to try Zeltiq’s CoolSculpting procedure, which she says has left her disfigured.
Did you know your AirPod Pro ear buds can also function as hearing aids? Lady Parts author and newsletterer Deborah Copaken, who’s been wrestling with hearing loss, was pleasantly surprised to discover this.
“The first time a stranger mistook me for the grandmother of my own child, I was in an airport, hauling my 2-year-old to a connecting flight.” — In this New York Times piece—excerpted from a new anthology called Tick Tock: Essays on Becoming a Parent After 40—educator/writer/musician Sarah Dougher writes about becoming a mother later in life. (It reminded me a bit of “Game of Crones,” a Laura Lippman essay I had the pleasure of editing at Longreads a couple of years ago, for the Fine Lines series.)
Also on the late-blooming mother (and author) beat is first-time novelist E.J. Levy. In a moving LitHub essay entitled “The Unexpected Pleasures of Being a Late Bloomer, in Motherhood and Writing,” she describes herself as a “debut novelist past the age of 50 with a child in first grade and hands that suddenly look like my aged mother’s—protuberant veins and crepe-y skin, freckles unnervingly like age spots, which they likely are…”
The pandemic led many women to stop dying their gray, and Jessica Shaw at The New York Times is on it.
“A woman’s place was certainly not in the kitchen, I figured, because it was the place I, like my mom, was most uncomfortable—and alone.” — in Bon Appetit, the always wonderful Chloe Caldwell writes about embracing cooking in her mid-30s, after marrying and becoming a step-mom.
Re the quoted link, “A woman’s place was certainly not in the kitchen, I figured, because it was the place I, like my mom, was most uncomfortable—and alone.” — in Bon Appetit, the always wonderful Chloe Caldwell": after reading Federici's Caliban and the Witch, I've come to the conclusion that the individual kitchen in which a woman is supposed to stay all alone with everything she needs is part of an overall isolation strategy, designed to break down collective action power between women. Women used to use common facilities to bake, wash clothes, plan revolts against feudal lords, etc. Of course, I don't deny the convenience now that we are all isolated from each other -- who are you gonna share an oven with now that you don't even know who your neighbors are in your building, right? And now that you have a job, you don't have time, anyway. But it's all part of the deal. Why else did Lucy and Ethel have to talk to each other through their kitchen windows, to break their solitude? It looked cute, but it was desperation!
I suspected as much about the airpods being used as hearing aids. I guess that applies to almost all earbuds, or many? I had already been googling hearing aid/earbuds hoping there was a twofer out there! :)