Broad Appeal

CONTENTS

Introduction

What surprises you?

What’s great about this age?

I am passionate about . . .

Friends & family: love large, ditch the weenies

Marriage, divorce & men: what the hell is “Happily Ever After”?

Rated X for sex: let’s talk about it

Health is not a laughing matter

Get over it! Physical changes are a laughing matter!

Hey God, are you there?

To work or not to work: is that a question?

If I were “Queen for a Day” . . .

Money: the other emotion

Born free, or getting there

The give-a-shit factor: a new life measurement

Advice: take ours and make new mistakes

Conclusion

Contributors

About the author

Introduction

“The bottom line is you can’t prevent the body from getting older.

I guess that’s what pisses me off.” - Susie, 60

Turning 60 felt like the end of the world. I’d had no real trouble with the previous decades. Heck, in my late 40s I’d had two men vying for me. That was a fabulous and unexpected place to be: over 40 and a femme fatale. And it only got better. When I turned 50, I was married for the second time and deeply in love. He said I was perfect and beautiful, so that’s how I felt. Since he was much older he said I’d always be the “kid” to him. He called me his “dream girl.” But a nightmare loomed. As I approached 60 he died on me. I had to face that “over the hill” decade alone, no longer feeling perfect and beautiful, no longer a kid and nobody’s dream girl.

Plus I was disappointed in what I’d accomplished (meaning not accomplished) with my life. I’d always wanted to feel that when I left this world, I’d leave behind some sort of legacy and the world would be a better place because I showed up and made a difference. In my opinion, I’d not done much. And now I saw “the end” pretty clearly. Odds were I could count on maybe twenty good years left to make that difference.

While I aspired to make the world a better place I expected to do it looking cute. But my body had ideas of its own. Now over 60, it seemed as though parts were falling off and falling down. My face started sinking. I found I was literally fading away, my olive skin lightening and my salt-and-pepper hair losing its pepper. I solved that by dying it. But what do you do with your hands? Mine now had crinkles and speckled age spots between puffy blue veins. Is there Botox for hands? I doubt it, and Michael Jackson’s the only one who could get away with gloves as a fashion statement. My knees wrinkled, and while in the Down Dog yoga pose I could count the wrinkles around my ankles–sort of like age rings on a tree. Who would have expected that? One of my best assets had always been my ass, with men telling me how great it was. Now it had grown to become a different “great”; I could stand naked in front of the mirror and see it without turning around. And I seem destined to gain ten pounds a decade. I exercised my ass off (well, obviously not) yet the pounds kept on comin’. I used to have a shapely waist and now I resembled a fire hydrant. When I was young I was small-breasted (okay, flat-chested). After menopause my breasts grew–don’t ask me why–so I finally had cleavage but it was wrinkled. Ya can’t win.

Deep into my 60s misery, I thought perhaps I wasn’t alone, that other women 60+ might face similar feelings about the rude realities of being “over the hill.” This perked me up since misery does love company. I wanted to find out, to connect with other women and hear their stories. I thought it might even make a fun and interesting book. But when it came down to actually doing it, I had no confidence that I could. Me, write a book? I shelved the idea.

Then sometime after 65 I noticed big changes happening. I started to like myself more. My “give-a-shit factor” began shifting. The oughts, coulds, woulds and shoulds of life lessened, and I found myself doing what I wanted and letting go of what I didn’t. So at 68 I finally decided I didn’t give a shit whether I could do it or not, and set out to create Broad Appeal.

I reached out to women I knew who were over 60; to women they knew; to others interested in writing their stories or letting me interview them. We talked about the full range of the human experience including passions, kids, men, money, sex, sagging body parts, what was great and what was shitty. More than seventy women opened their lives to me. Most are based in California but I also have contributors from Maine to Florida to the Midwest, and even one from across the pond. Each contributor had potent stories, insights and advice to share. What follows are excerpts from their writings and interviews, with my two cents thrown in. Between us, we have 5,000 years of experience, wit and wisdom.

Who are these women? They are our friends and neighbors and while some are outrageous (as you’ll soon see), none are celebrities. They are the “everyday women” you see at the supermarket, the gym or having dinner at the next table.

After talking with them, I was struck by what a cool bunch of broads we are. We’re so much younger than our mothers were at our ages, in our thoughts and our approaches to life. Our mothers and grandmothers lived in a man’s world and were expected to have children, tend the home fires and not think too much since thinking was his job. But that man’s world started changing. We broads who came of age in the1940s, ’50s and ’60s rode those waves of change and kicked open so many doors for today’s women. We are the ones who burned our bras and became “feminists,” which to many was a dirty word. We were determined, focused women who strove for equality in the workplace and in our personal lives. The pill made a huge difference, giving us an even footing in the world of sex. Once we didn’t have to worry about getting pregnant, we were no longer considered “bad” or “fallen” if we chose to have sex outside of wedlock. We forever changed expectations of and opportunities for women in America. Fairer sex, my ass. The only “fairer” part was we could have affairs just like a man and have just as much fun. Many of us (me included) made up for lost time.

I’d set out to learn how other 60+ women felt about aging and discovered that most women were like me: we don’t feel old; we don’t think old or act old. We look in the mirror and wonder who that old lady is, and nearly all of us feel freer than at any other time in our lives. We may be over 60 but we’re still that young, feisty, determined person inside, regardless of what the damn mirror reflects.

My grandkids call me “Nana” and one of them asked their mom, “When Nana gets old, can she be my grandma?” Even my grandkids know I’m not old.

You’ll see on the following pages that we are not the grannies of yesteryear. We smash stereotypes and shatter perceptions. We’re not who you might expect. You’ll see interesting insights on handling health issues, laughing about physical changes, dealing with money and cherry-picking who we let into our lives, along with an inside look at sex and some damn good advice on how to live life.

I hope younger women reading these words see that there is a full, rich adventure yet to come. These last thirty-plus years have the possibility of being fabulous. There is more to celebrate and much less to mourn than you might imagine. Sixty is not the end of the world, although you may be able to see it from here. On the contrary. Over-the-hill is now the new frontier. John Wayne epitomized the cowboy riding into that new western frontier. Like the Duke, we wild over-60 women are tough, have swagger and are enjoying riding into our new frontier. Yes, we have new challenges. No, we don’t look like we used to. But we’re here and in more ways than you can imagine, we’re better than ever. Yippee-yi-yo-ki-ya!