Regular readers will forgive this rerun, but I’m hoping a bunch of fresh eyes are on the site today after the TODAY Show appearence. After watching the book trailer (above) and this and this video (oh, and maybe this one, too!) you probably know whether you’re a Formerly. But just in case…here’s one more!
PLUS!
20 SIGNS YOU’RE A FORMERLY
1. You’ve even once pulled the skin of your face back and slightly up to see what you’d look like with a facelift
2. High school kids are now wearing what you wore in high school.
3. You count calories in mixed drinks.
4. Your ass is starting to need a bra.
5. You suddenly prefer interior design magazines to fashion magazines.
6. A supermodel could give you one of her kidneys and you would still kind of hate her.
7. Whereas you used to be grossed out by obscene catcalls, you are now relieved first, grossed out second.
8. You have a doctor devoted to a single part or function of your body (your patella, your endocrine system) other than your vagina.
9. There’s a decent chance that the doctor is younger than you.
10. You need to pre-caffeinate before meeting someone for a morning coffee.
11. Your adolescent nieces and nephews are starting to regard you as a potential narc.
12. You let your mother friend you on Facebook because you have that little to hide.
13. Besides, moms is cooler than you ever gave her credit for
14. Conversations about mortgages and 401Ks, while not exactly interesting, are no longer stultifying.
15. You have heard of Death Cab for Cutie, but couldn’t ID their songs on threat of waterboarding.
16. You freeze bread. Like there won’t be another loaf at the store when you need one
17. You still think “hook up” means “let’s meet up for a drink”
18. You have been ma’amed outside the Deep South
19. You can’t fathom why they would remake such classics as Fame and Melrose Place
20. Cosmetic surgery that you once considered deeply anti-woman is now “a woman’s personal decision.”
August 17, 2010 at 12:20 am
I do find this funny… but – I’m only 30 and I relate to (many) more than half of these!! Is is possible to be a presently and a formerly all at once?
August 17, 2010 at 8:29 am
You were lovely on The Today Show. I’ve been following your blog for a few weeks now, and as a sister “Formerly”, thank you for your clever insight into our lives! Congratulations on your book – I’ll be looking for it!
August 17, 2010 at 8:48 am
How about showing up at a concert and relieved to see there are people older than 21!
August 17, 2010 at 9:33 am
You have put my thoughts into words!! I now have a name for what I am been feeling these past 2 years…. I am turning 37 and I AM a formerly
August 17, 2010 at 10:35 am
#21 – When you thank the waitress/cashier for carding you.
August 17, 2010 at 10:45 am
Well done! Finally a name to it all! So agree with what you said on Today this morning, would never go back to my 20s or even early 30s, so much more settled at 43 and ok with being “invisible at the mall”.
August 17, 2010 at 4:21 pm
I read your article in SELF last month, and loved it! I even read it aloud to my husband, and he thought it was great also. I didn’t realize you’d written a book on it, until I saw you on the Today show. I will definitely be buying it. If only we could put our “present” mind, in our “formerly” body. Those were the days, but these are so much better…
August 17, 2010 at 6:48 pm
What’s wrong with me… I’m a 36 year old man and I’m turned-on every time I hear a woman says she’s 40 (or older)… Women in their 40’s are sexy! Sexy is a word that should be reserved for 40+ for the reasons you state! Grow beautiful, not older! I’m a healthy, single, PhD in Los Angeles. Good men are out there and we love women who love themselves!
August 17, 2010 at 10:27 pm
Great blog, but if you already feel like you’re formerly hot now, you are not going to be prepared for your….50’s. Ladies, you will look at the photos of yourself in your 40’s and think, jeez, I was some doll back then! Being funny helps, so you can cheer yourself up. But, eventually you get used to being invisible to everyone except the people who already know you, and then you just do what makes you feel happy and comfortable. Which means wearing shoes by Merrell, if you must. Once you get thru menopause, you will also understand why women start to wear loose blouses. I like my 50’s better than my 40’s because in my 40’s. I was still stunned I was an actual grown-up who was aging. Now, there’s no fooling anyone and I am not surprised that I am no longer a really, really pretty girl. Now I aim for not embarrassing myself!
According to my 92 year old mother, if she didn’t look in the mirror she wouldn’t remember she wasn’t still in her 20’s. So don’t. Too often, anyway.
August 17, 2010 at 10:57 pm
0h yay it’s not just me
August 18, 2010 at 8:55 am
This is awesome! I’m 36 and so much of this stuff applies. It’s alot easier to laugh about it now because none of us are alone! At this point in my life I am so much more comfortable in my own skin, I work out hard and don’t take crap like I did in my 20’s! Thanks, very cool book….
August 18, 2010 at 10:56 am
I learned about your blog in an article on yahoo about your book. Now I know there is a name for how I feel, I’m 31 and I meet more then half of the items listed above including the #21 posted by Jennifer, I’ve done that too! Your blog has made me laugh in so many ways (Thank You!!) and I look forward to reading your book.
August 18, 2010 at 11:29 am
#22 – Seeing a gorgeous guy (in person or on TV) and doing a quick calculation in your head to figure out if you’re old enough to possibly be his mother.
#23 – Identifying more with the parents of young celebrity gone wild than the actual celebrity (“her mother must be so humiliated.”).
#24 – Your son’s teacher graduated from the same college as your husband – 17 years later.
I have identified with most of the things on this list. I think I need a glass of wine now. Maybe a bottle with a long straw. Sigh…
August 18, 2010 at 11:49 am
Unfortunately Stephanie, I can so relate. This is such a wierd time in our lives. I featured you on my blog today. I hope you check it out. Much success.
http://www.chatalittlechat.com
August 18, 2010 at 3:31 pm
At 26, I feel like a “formerly”. Why? four boys, one of which is starting puberty (a bit early, but typical of my family). My oldest is in the 5th grade, my youngest still in diapers.
Yes, I started early – moving on.
I have a few to add to the list:
1) When a remake of a show appears, and your kids tell you it’s brand new, and you bring out your VHS tapes you recorded of the original shows
2) When your kid watches a re-release of a Disney movie for the first time, YOU sing along with all of the songs because, miraculously, you still remember them word for word (but can’t remember where you put the car keys 30 minutes ago).
3) When you start repeating things your parents and grandparents used to say to you (i.e., “clean your room or I’m throwing it all away”)
4) When your kids start listening to the rock bands you used to, and claim they are new (Thanks Ozzy, ACDC, Metallica, etc).
5) When your kid watches an older movie for the first time, and you say “I was your age (or younger) when that movie came out”.
August 18, 2010 at 8:17 pm
I realized I was a formerly when after a 7 year hiatus from the bar scene (just finished nursing the second child) I went out–feeling gorgeous-new shirt makeup on, hair did. I extpected all of the guys to give me the up and down and rush to buy me a drink. That didn’t happen. I spent the night talking to my girlfriend about potty training and the terrible twos.
August 19, 2010 at 6:12 am
I am breathing through my nose, deep breaths to calm what I now know to be true. I am a formerly. Mercy me ( a little saying my mom has always said that now I repeat all the time!).
Here was my first sign: Walking down a grocery store isle, two stock boys are fixing the displays when one looks at the other (after looking me up and down) and says “4”.
“4”?!?!
Another very obvious sign is when men at bars want to buy me a drink, they are old enough to be my father.
Oh Mercy Me.
August 25, 2010 at 2:46 pm
How about when I went to Best Buy to get 3 cellphones (one for me, one for my mom, one for my husband). The 18 year old helping me says “Wow, you’re such a cool mom!” Problem: I have no kids and do I look like I have 3 kids old enough to be talking on cell phones? What the hell? I was 28 at the time too! Ugh
August 25, 2010 at 8:38 pm
Saw your article in Parenting Mag. and cracked up because it was a blog post topic I’d been working on in my head for a month or so. So awesome! I love your blog! I have just come to this reality myself and finding it awesome!
August 26, 2010 at 9:32 am
I saw you on the Today show and then had my 50th birthday…one of my best friends gave me your book and I have been laughing my way through it. I just have to be careful not to laugh too hard because I may pee a little bit (don’t lie…it happens to all of us over 40 who have had children) Even though I have hit the big 50…I still find myself in the category, I mean how can 35 have been so long ago??? But my Formerly Friends and I all agree our lives are richer, friendships better and we accept ourselves more than we ever did at 20. I do miss my neck however…
August 26, 2010 at 9:59 am
LOVE this! A good friend who just turned 50 received your book for her birthday.. she has been laughing ever since and will loan to me to read next.. I am well beyond the formerly, and well.. I guess into the age of qualifying as a COUGAR! 56 and turning 57 in December… I know I would not go back to my 20’s, hell I can’t even REMEMBER my 20’s! Barely remember my 30’s.. 40’s more so but that’s vague as well. 🙂 Have to have a good sense of humor about it all though. Any day above ground is a GREAT day, right?
Love it and will start following your blog.
August 26, 2010 at 2:25 pm
You know you’re a Formerly when. . . your college-aged son’s friend refers to you as a MILF and you’re more offended than flattered.
August 27, 2010 at 12:43 pm
Somebody finally said it out loud! We are supposed to all alugh and claim that hotness is an attitude…well, yeah, it is, but it wa alot easier to have that attitude when I didn’t so closely resemble Charlie McCarthy!
August 30, 2010 at 9:37 am
I’m 38 now, and went through my own version of “formerly” adjustments during my 37th year. What I can say is that I was aware that beauty was fleeting in my 20s. I remember both counting the # of catcalls and being aware, in that very moment, that those sounds were not directed at the person I knew as myself. And you can know those things, and think them, and speak your mind such that some of the people who hung around because of your looks flee. And it still didn’t prepare me for the kinds of disappointments that life would bring, like a chronically ill husband. I was introspective throughout my life, but until I was the sole breadwinner, I didn’t know that I could also long for the aspects of “formerly” that some women enjoyed, reveling in being hot. I never reveled in being hot; if anything, I felt guilty about it. I’m glad I am who I am, glad I’ve become the person who can be strong enough in herself to revel in what hotness remains to me, with a loving husband who has stayed with me despite a very bumpy last year. He’s not well yet, but we have hope.
September 1, 2010 at 7:13 am
I Love Love Love this book! I’m going to buy copies for all my “formerly” friends for Christmas. I’ve never laughed so hard ( being that I’m a 41 year old woman from NY , I can totally relate) . Thank you Stephanie Dolgoff for making us realize we are not the only ones going through this!
September 12, 2010 at 9:21 am
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llFDn2iyWOU