This is 99: Social Media Star Dorothy Wiggins Responds to The Oldster Magazine Questionnaire
"My granddaughter’s husband is a psychologist and he says that my whole life I have been practicing mindfulness. I come by it naturally. I take life as it comes."
From the time I was 10, I’ve been obsessed with what it means to grow older. I’m curious about what it means to others, of all ages, and so I invite them to take “The Oldster Magazine Questionnaire.”
Here, nonagenarian Instagram star and upcoming documentary subject Dorothy Wiggins responds (with help from ). -Sari Botton
Dorothy Wiggins née Palmer was born on August 14, 1925 at New York Hospital in Manhattan. She lived in the Bronx, Queens and Manhattan as well as Washington D.C., Mexico City; Biot, France; Panama City, Panama; and Geneva, Switzerland throughout her lifetime. She attended Hempstead High School on Long Island and Queens College in New York City. Her first marriage to Bill Gittinger ended when he died in a fiery plane crash. Her second husband Guy A. Wiggins was a diplomat and third-generation painter. Guy adopted Dorothy’s son from her first marriage and together they had two sons. Guy lived to be 100. Dorothy continues to live in a townhouse in New York’s West Village and summers in East Hampton. She also has a vacation home in Anguilla, where she spends a few weeks every winter. Her life and adventures are documented on the Instagram account @dorothylovesnewyork. She is the subject of an upcoming documentary film, “Who is Dorothy.”
Dorothy answered these questions in conversation with , who writes a newsletter called The Other Side. Rebecca also previously wrote an essay for Oldster.
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How old are you?
99 today.
Is there another age you associate with yourself in your mind? If so, what is it? And why, do you think?
Somewhere in my 50s. By the time I was in my 50s, I thought I had met life’s challenges. I’d gotten to do all the things I wanted to: I was married to the love of my life, I had a townhouse I’d always wanted to live in. My children were grown. I didn’t have to worry anymore. I’ve always been a very athletic person and in my 50s I was tapping again. For six years, I studied tap with Jerry Ames, a top teacher in the 1950s.
When you’re young and you see an old person, you think that somehow old people are different, that their head is different, but they really are not. They’re just physically different. In your head you’re still the same. Your personality doesn’t change.
Do you feel old for your age? Young for your age? Just right? Are you in step with your peers?
I certainly feel young for my age, but not for my body. My mind and my desires haven’t changed that much, so I’m young in that area, but I’m not able to do much anymore. My body is giving out. As for peers, I have one friend my age, he’s 93, but I don’t see him much anymore. My closest girlfriend is 88 and she’s still swimming three times a week. All of my other friends are in their 60s. I think it’s important to have friends who are younger than you are. Lately I’ve been spending time with Steve Ross (85) the last cabaret performer from the Algonquin, and his friends. The other night I was sitting around in a joint on Third Avenue having a drink at 12 o’ clock, which is something my husband Guy never would have done because he didn’t relate to musicians. I’m enjoying being around music again.
What do you like about being your age?
Nothing! Why would anyone want to be 99? Well, there is just one thing: everybody makes a big fuss over me, which they would not have made if I were younger.
What is difficult about being your age?
Balance.
What is surprising about being your age, or different from what you expected, based on what you were told?
That I still have a good appetite. I eat a little less than I used to, but I have three meals a day and aside from peeing at night, a lot, I don’t have anything wrong with my body, which is amazing to me.
When you’re young and you see an old person, you think that somehow old people are different, that their head is different, but they really are not. They’re just physically different. In your head you’re still the same. Your personality doesn’t change. Of course there are a lot of people who have a bad attitude and maybe they make themselves different by thinking, Oh, I’m finished, I’m going to die soon. But if you don’t have a negative attitude, which I do not, you’re the same person inside that you’ve always been.
In terms of growing up, we had a very small family. I didn’t have any grandparents and my parents both died in their 50s, from cancer, so I didn’t have a lot of experience of being around old people, but I was always very worried about cancer. If I had any ache or pain I always rushed to the doctor, but I’m long past worrying about that. Well, that’s not entirely true. Yesterday, I noticed this black spot on my arm and thought, Oh my god, maybe that’s melanoma. So I woke up this morning at 8:30 and called my dermatologist to see if there was any way they could see me before I went out of town. They asked if I could come in an hour. So I jumped into my clothes and rushed to the doctor to have them tell me it was nothing.
I met my first husband in college and we got married when I was 21 and he was 20. He was from Ozone Park and his friends called me The Debutante. I had no idea what love was. I was not attracted to him and I never would have married him in normal times, but it was the war and there were no men.
What has aging given you? Taken away from you?
Aging gives you a sense for the physicality of decline in your own body. There are many years, if you’re lucky enough to be healthy, in which you’re doing the same things, tennis, running, and all of a sudden, there comes a point when your body can’t do them anymore. You’re aware of your body letting you down. When you’re younger, you don’t really think about your body. If you’re playing tennis, like I was for many years, you’re interested in getting better at the game. You don’t think that one day you’re not going to be able to play. It happened to me all of a sudden. I was playing tennis and doing well until five or six years ago. When you’re younger, your intent is to improve your game, but as you age you feel the frailness of your body. You feel the muscles and everything collapses.
How has getting older affected your sense of yourself, or your identity?
I still get my hair done once a week. I am still very interested in clothes. I have always been accustomed to compliments and I still receive them, not the way I received them when I was younger.
My mother-in-law said I would retain my looks because of my cheekbones. I’ve had my face lifted twice. I’ve maintained myself. So I haven’t suffered, but I think a lot of women must suffer terribly from that. It doesn’t affect men that much, although my husband had his neck done when I had my face done the second time. He always looked elegant, right to the end.
And as far as how I felt inside, my husband and I were so much in love and we led such a wonderful life that there was no reason to change internally because I had his love and he had mine. We enjoyed each other’s company. Neither of us lost our acuity, so we were able to live life to the fullest together, which everybody tells me is rare. I didn’t change much internally until he died. And then, of course, I’ve never been the same. That changed me. I often feel terribly alone. I want to turn to him to say something and he’s not there. A sadness has come over me that I never had. My whole life I was a happy person and I have a kind of sadness that I carry with me.
Bill found out about our affair and said he would divorce me, so I agreed not to see him. Every year on Valentine’s Day I would call Guy and ask, “Are you married yet?” I couldn’t believe that he was the love of my life and I wasn’t going to have him. I was heartbroken. Three years later, I got a phone call and they told me my husband had been killed in a plane crash. Guy and I were married three months after that.
What are some age-related milestones you are looking forward to? Or ones you “missed,” and might try to reach later, off-schedule, according to our culture and its expectations?
Come on, that’s a crazy question! What am I looking forward to? I’d like to turn the clock back! In terms of things I didn’t achieve, I’d always wanted to have a daughter, but I had three wonderful sons. I never had milestones. I never thought I couldn’t ever do something. I can’t answer that question.
In terms of cultural expectations, when I was growing up, you were considered an old maid by 25, so I just assumed I’d get married. I never gave it much thought. In your life as a girl, you just drifted. I had always had a boyfriend from the age of six or seven. My first boyfriend was Red Van Appledorn. I remember riding on his handlebars. I was always playing with boys. I was comfortable around them.
I studied psychology in college because I was interested in people, but I never intended it as a career. As a child, I took lessons in singing, tap, toe, elocution, ballet and intermediate/advanced ballroom dancing. I had a vague feeling for theater, but didn’t pursue it because it would mean leaving home for a cold water flat in Manhattan.
I met my first husband in college and we got married when I was 21 and he was 20. He was from Ozone Park and his friends called me The Debutante. I had no idea what love was. I was not attracted to him and I never would have married him in normal times, but it was the war and there were no men. He was in the V-12 Program, studying to be a doctor. I got food poisoning from chicken salad at our wedding reception and was sick for the whole honeymoon and then on the last day, when I was finally well enough to go out, I got a sunburn. The marriage was off to a bad start.
I was working for a commercial photographer. I booked people and did sets for the commercials. They used my hands in them. I was the only woman there. It was a very racy environment and I was having a ball. Then I got pregnant and my husband was sent to Boston as a doctor. We lived outside of Boston. I hated it. I didn’t like staying home all the time. I would get on the subway and everyone looked the same, there was no diversity like in New York. About a year later we were sent to Falmouth. We spent winter on the Cape and there was dancing. But I wasn’t really my full self. I was not in love. I was never aroused. It was like that song, “Is this all there is?”
It was the golden age of theater: Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman; Tennessee Williams, there was lots of Shakespeare on the stage. We went nightclubbing with our friends. We’d hear Mabel Mercer, Cole Porter. Everybody gave a party in those days because everybody was still dancing. There was a party every weekend. We rolled up the rugs and danced in the living room. Next to sex, I love to dance. New York was a magic place in the 1950s and we didn’t realize it wouldn’t last. We thought it would be that way forever.
My granddaughter’s husband is a psychologist and he says that my whole life I have been practicing mindfulness. I come by it naturally. I take life as it comes. I don’t like to be unhappy and so I avoid situations that make me unhappy. My father’s sister lived with us when I was young and she used to say, “Don’t think of the future or the past; think of the present,” and that had an effect on me. I think that’s a valuable tool. A lot of people feel they can afford to not have a good time because there’s heaven. As an atheist, I don’t believe in an afterlife. So every moment counts. You must make your life as pleasant as you can, because that’s all there is. You shouldn’t waste a minute of your life. My second husband, Guy, was the same way.
As a teenager, I used to go to Bloomingdale’s. They had rooms in the furniture department that were designed by prominent decorators and I would go stare at them. The one I loved the most was the foreign correspondent’s room. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be married to one, I had thought. There were things in that room from all over the world and it filled me with a sense of longing.
My parents became friends with Guy’s father who used to visit and read us Guy’s letters from his trip overland from England to India. Listening to his adventures, I felt I was back in the Bloomingdale’s furniture department, living that young girl’s dream. I fell in love with him before we ever met.
My first husband never paid me any compliments. I never thought of myself as pretty, but I always cared about clothes. One day, at my parents’ house in Old Lyme, I was wearing these silk shantung chartreuse pants and a matching top. I came up the stairs into the living room and this mellifluous voice said, “Oh, what a beautiful outfit.” I had already been stirred by his letters and now there he was!
He had just come home from abroad and was talking about finding a job in New York or D.C. Bill and I had moved back to New York by then. “Do stay with us,” I said. I was flirting with him from the get-go. The first day he was with us, as soon as my husband went to work, I put on a Frank Sinatra record and said, “Let’s dance.” The song was, “You Make Me Feel So Young.” I was 32. The song didn’t end.
Bill found out about our affair and said he would divorce me, so I agreed not to see him. Every year on Valentine’s Day I would call Guy and ask, “Are you married yet?” I couldn’t believe that he was the love of my life and I wasn’t going to have him. I was heartbroken. Three years later, I got a phone call and they told me my husband had been killed in a plane crash. Guy and I were married three months after that.
My husband and I were so much in love and we led such a wonderful life that there was no reason to change internally because I had his love and he had mine. We enjoyed each other’s company. Neither of us lost our acuity, so we were able to live life to the fullest together, which everybody tells me is rare. I didn’t change much internally until he died. And then, of course, I’ve never been the same.
What has been your favorite age so far, and why? Would you go back to this age if you could?
My life was so varied and there were great things about each age. Guy was with the foreign service until 1976 and so we lived in Europe and all over. There’s not a numerical age I would want to go back to, but I loved New York in the 1950s. It was the golden age of theater: Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman; Tennessee Williams, there was lots of Shakespeare on the stage. We went nightclubbing with our friends. We’d hear Mabel Mercer, Cole Porter. Everybody gave a party in those days because everybody was still dancing. There was a party every weekend. We rolled up the rugs and danced in the living room. Next to sex, I love to dance. New York was a magic place in the 1950s and we didn’t realize it wouldn’t last. We thought it would be that way forever.
Is there someone who is older than you, who makes growing older inspiring to you? Who is your aging idol and why?
My friend, Phyllis Gangel-Jacob–she was the judge who divorced the Trumps and Woody Allen and Mia Farrow, and her daughter, Jamie, is a host on CNN–had an aunt, Aunt Ray, who was 100, still in high heels and still going out and dancing. Every time I saw Phyllis and asked about her Aunt Ray. I thought she was wonderful.
Another person I admired a lot, but only read about, is Jeanne Calment, who lived to be 122. She lived in Arles and knew Vincent Van Gogh. She sold him his paints and his crayons, his colored pencils. She smoked Gauloise cigarettes and rode a bike until she was 100. I would always say I wanted to be like Madame Calment. She was my idol.
My mother-in-law said I would retain my looks because of my cheekbones. I’ve had my face lifted twice. I’ve maintained myself. So I haven’t suffered, but I think a lot of women must suffer terribly from that. It doesn’t affect men that much, although my husband had his neck done when I had my face done the second time. He always looked elegant, right to the end.
What aging-related adjustments have you recently made, style-wise, beauty-wise, health-wise?
I’m still wearing the same clothes I wore 20 or 30 years ago, including very short skirts which horrifies some of my viewers on Instagram!
What’s an aging-related adjustment you refuse to make, and why?
I refuse to act like an old person. I’m still the same person. I still curse. I still drink. I refuse to change my personality in any way from what it ever was.
What’s your philosophy on celebrating birthdays as an adult? How do you celebrate yours?
My family has always been very nice about my birthday. My sons have always joined us. We always have a good meal. We always went to a restaurant when my husband was alive. Now I have friends over. It doesn’t have to be a huge thing, but whatever you do it needs to happen on the actual day. I don’t like putting it off because it’s inconvenient or it’s the middle of the week. I only celebrate my birthday on my birthday. My husband Guy and I always celebrated both our birthdays, both in August. I never made that big a deal out of each passing decade, but I did give him a huge party when he was 100. And I want to have a huge thing when I’m 100, I can tell you that.
I always read these questionnaires and wonder who my aging role model would be… I think I’ve found her.
“I don’t like to be unhappy so I avoid situations that make me unhappy’. Words to live by.