So you may have noticed — I have a few issues with my looks, with getting older, with my complete inability to understand how I can be the only human being alive who gains weight in the summer, while everyone else says things like “Oh, it’s so hot, I couldn’t think of eating!”
For a few years now, I’ve felt that I lost that “certain something” that men find attractive. Not that I was ever such a looker, but youth (and, ok 36DD’s) did have their privileges. I used to be able to smile and bat my eyes and have a chance at getting faster service from the plumber, a better cut of meat from the butcher, you know the drill. Now, I’m getting the Patagonia guy comparing me to his mother.
But today, in the Hamptons Bays King Kullen supermarket, I found my audience: men over seventy. Seriously. To these guys, I am a babe. Even today, in my totally formless smock-style Zachary’s Smile sundress (on sale at Barney’s Coop last year, so cute!), Lands End flip flops, and with my twins and husband in tow, these guys couldn’t take their eyes off me. (And in this particular smock dress, trust me “the girls” were NOT on display.)
Now, there was a time when the adulation of septuagenarians might have repulsed me. There was a time when it might have just made me laugh. There was also a time, however, when I didn’t have to search for errant chin hairs in the bathroom mirror. Times change. (more…)
