<\/p>\nA simple lass from the suburbs of New Jersey. This is me at 21 in a beach hat, too much lipstick, and not enough eyeliner.<\/p>\n
<\/span>Courtesy of Judith Viorst<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\nWhen I was 21, I moved from my parents\u2019 home in the suburbs of New Jersey to the seemingly boundless options of Greenwich Village. It was there I first consciously chose to acquire a \u201clook,\u201d an intense, free-spirited Greenwich Village Girl look, a look that suggested coffee houses, poetry readings, and existential angst. This involved a great deal of head-to-toe black clothing, plus hair hanging freely and frizzily down to my waist, plus\u2014my special fashion statement\u2014green eyeliner so extensive that it kept on lining almost back to my ears. In addition (though this is embarrassing to admit) I usually wore my Phi Beta Kappa key, hoping to convey\u2014without dropping names like Hegel, Picasso, or Dostoevsky\u2014that I was not only interesting-looking, but deep. I got looked at a lot, especially when I went to visit my parents back in New Jersey.<\/p>\n
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Even now\u2014in my mid-90s\u2014I don\u2019t especially want to be invisible.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
In my 30s, I was a married mommy living down in Washington, DC, where my Village Girl look was looking a little tired (as was I, with three kids under six) and most of my clothes had spit up on the shoulder. Washington, in my early years there, was a rather staid and protocol-proper town, but I kept my hair long and my eyeliner ever-green.<\/p>\n
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\n<\/p>\nMy Village Girl era: black top, statement earrings, long hair piled on my head. What deep thoughts was I thinking?<\/p>\n
<\/span>Courtesy of Judith Viorst<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\nAnd then\u2014oh, wow! oh, wow!\u2014the 1960s explode\u2014and was I ever ready and eager to dress for them. In a coat made out of a fake Oriental rug. In a tent dress made of a white lace tablecloth. In a gown, which I wore to something called the NOW ball, composed of bright plastic squares in neon orange, flamingo pink, and poison green the color of my eyeliner. I accessorized my wardrobe with feathers and beads and headbands and sweeping bright fringed shawls, as well as an adorable Mickey Mouse shoulder bag. And because I was mini skirting through my 30s, often with children dangling from my arms, the look I was aiming for was \u201cWith-It Mommy.\u201d<\/p>\n
I liked my new look, and I liked being looked at, too. But then I hit my 40s. And then my 40s started hitting me. And in the 50-plus years that have ensued, I\u2019ve had to strategize and negotiate with the assaults of age on my no longer youthful, then no longer even what you\u2019d call middle-aged, self\u2014that slowly shrinking body and wrinkling face relentlessly reflected in the mirror. \u201cWhose breasts these are I think I know. But have they always hung so low?\u201d I once wrote about that reflection in the mirror.<\/p>\n
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\n<\/p>\nIn my With-It Mommy period, I often wore this glorious Gussie and Becky fake-Oriental-rug coat, which I bought in the mid-1960s. It has aged better than any of us and here I am still wearing it on cold winter days.<\/p>\n
<\/span>Courtesy of Judith Viorst<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\nNow some of my body\u2019s decline can be attributed to nature\u2019s inevitabilities. But some must be attributed to a seriously poor attitude toward exercise. For instance, I lived for decades in a three-story house with a treadmill on the top floor, and three times a week I ran upstairs and dusted it. (I\u2019ve been told by many this does not count as exercise.) My daughters-in-law, by contrast, seem to exercise every damn day, and their bodies are as firm and fit as my grandchildrens\u2019. None of them is ashamed to be seen in public in a bathing suit, while I long ago adopted what I tactfully call a \u201cbathing-suit alternative\u201d\u2014a beautiful floor-length floaty flowery caftan.<\/p>\n
The caftan is one of many adjustments I\u2019ve made to my body\u2019s changes, changes which have also included the vanishing of what I once called stomach muscles; the ever-expanding circumference of my waist; the contracting of my body from five foot six to a barely five foot four and three quarters; and the corrugation of my upper arms. For temporary remedies I suck in my breath and tighten my \u201cstomach muscles\u201d; add height by taking another deep breath and trying to put some space between belly and chest; and firmly plant my hands on my hips, which immediately smooths out those upper-arm wrinkles, but makes it hard to hold a glass of wine. I deal with my widened waist and with my pervasive softness of body by only wearing clothes that never touch, just slip tactfully past, the doughy sections.<\/p>\n
I have not worn a belt since I was 52.<\/p>\n
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\n<\/p>\nThe Hat Lady years: Starting in my 50s, I wore hats all the time.<\/p>\n
<\/span>Courtesy of Judith Viorst<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\nAs for my look, from my 40s on, and for any occasion including trips to the cleaners, I\u2019ve been unofficially known as the Hat Lady, for I\u2019m frequently wearing a hat from my vast collection. My favorites tend to possess a large brim that falls in gentle folds around my face, covering my now shorter and remorselessly thinning hair and quite sensitively shadowing the varied assaults of time on my complexion. Within its kindly frame, I\u2019ve finally switched from my heavy green liner to a soft gray. And sometimes one of the women or men who live here in my retirement community will say, as I\u2019m heading out, \u201cI love the hat!\u201d<\/p>\n
My Hat Lady look flattered my face, drew attention away from my body, and, on bad hair days, always hid my hair, which I have continued\u00a0to\u00a0color\u00a0a plain dark brown. Don’t ask me why\u2014surely I’m not convincing anyone that I am the world’s oldest-living\u00a0natural brunette.\u00a0But somehow this simple unhighlighted brown, rather than white or\u00a0gray, feels like the real me, so I’m sticking with it.<\/p>\n
My Hat Lady look has worked for me for decades. But it seems I’m not finished finding new looks quite yet. For I\u2019ve recently taken to wearing tattoos, specifically the tattoo of a single rose. It\u2019s the right time to be doing this, since I\u2019m spending more hours hatless and at home, having given up driving and taken up cooking again. Though temporary\u2014the rose tattoo lasts just about a week, it\u2019s easy to apply and to replace, and comes in red or pink, in bud or bloom, and with or without a bit of greenery. I wear my rose on the side of my neck, slightly below my right ear, my hair pulled back to quietly display it. I have several reasons for liking it a lot.<\/p>\n
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\n<\/p>\nMeet Tattooed Grandma. Showing off one of my flasher rose tattoos at 94.<\/p>\n
<\/span>Courtesy of Judith Viorst<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\nI like that I\u2019ve got a new look at 94.<\/li>\n I like that my new look is a tattoo.<\/li>\n I like that my tattoo is a rose, because\u2014guess what!\u2014my middle name is Rose.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\nAnd in keeping with my earlier looks\u2014with Village Girl and With-It Mommy and Hat Lady\u2014I\u2019m thinking of naming my new look Tattooed Grandma.<\/p>\n
–not quite the end–<\/em><\/p>\nMy new book of essays and poems, about life\u2019s Final Fifth, has nothing at all to say about hats or tattoos or Village Girl or With-It Mommy. In talks with many women and men in the course of writing my book, I heard about loneliness, loss, second chances, community, and new definitions of happiness and home. And when they spoke of their body\u2019s decline, or feeling unseen and invisible, they could be rueful, bemused, and even quite funny. But humor is only one among many serious ingredients crucial to making the best of what\u2019s left of our life. So why, in this little follow up to my book, did I choose to write a light-hearted piece about \u201clooks\u201d? Why should we care so much about how we look? Why does it feel so important to be seen? Aren\u2019t there more meaningful things to think about, to read about, to do? Or, as one unsentimental friend of mine recently put it to me, \u201cGive it up already! You\u2019re wasting your time. In six more years, you\u2019ll be either 100 or dead.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n
As one friend of mine put it, \u201cGive it up already! In six more years, you\u2019ll be either 100 or dead.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n
I get it. I really do get it. I totally get it. These people are concerned that the superficial\u2014attention to looks\u2014will obscure and distract us from what is truly significant, turning us into unserious and unreflective people incapable of making the best of what\u2019s left. But the people I love the most embrace what\u2019s playful and fun as well as what\u2019s profound. Celebrate as well as cogitate. And are willing to discuss, without apology, both eyeliner and the meaning of the universe. The people I love the most have always looked beyond my look to what\u2019s inside. But I can\u2019t wait to introduce them to Tattooed Grandma.<\/p>\n
–the actual end–<\/em><\/p>\nRead more about aging:<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Many years ago, preparing for a visit to LA, I called a friend who had grown up there and asked<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19408,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-beauty"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/tendancesetobjets.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/judith20Viorst_essay_lead.jpg?fit=1280%2C720&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tendancesetobjets.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tendancesetobjets.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tendancesetobjets.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tendancesetobjets.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tendancesetobjets.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19407"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tendancesetobjets.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19407\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tendancesetobjets.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19408"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tendancesetobjets.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tendancesetobjets.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tendancesetobjets.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}