On the Edge of Fifty!

It is the week before my birthday and one week and a year before a huge milestone for me. On September 30^th, I will turn 49. The thing is, I don’t even feel like I’m in my late forties.

When I was a young girl, I remember women in their fifties looking old to me. They had short, helmet hair, wore old lady clothes, and listened to old lady music like Glenn Miller or the Lennon Sisters. They used Rose Milk skin care cream because Lawrence Welk told them they could “really feel the difference!” And every woman over fifty smelled like Este Lauder Youth Dew and Coty lose face powder. Back in the seventies, it seemed to me that all women over fifty looked like Edith Bunker. 

I look nothing like Edith Bunker. My favorite outfit is jeans, an Amsterdam T-Shirt, an Alexander McQueen skull scarf, and black Doc Martins. My vintage pageboy hat is adorned with Punk Rock pins, and yesterday I cruised around town in my black convertible listening to Smashing Pumpkins and Vampire Weekend. I am definitely not the poster child for women about to turn fifty… or am I?

Today we’re active, educated, healthy, and vibrant. Some of us are becoming grandmothers yet we hardly look like we should even have children over the age of ten! We came of age in the era of Barbie, a woman who has already passed the fifty milestone and the ultimate woman who can have it all. 

Like Barbie, I have a Dream Home, a convertible and I too, broke up with my version of Ken (great to have as an accessory but not really needed to further my existence.) I’m the new face of fifty – independent and embracing the wisdom that half a century of life has given me.

Over the next year I’m going to document what it’s like being on the precipice of fifty – my highs, my lows and my in-betweens. Just passing the time until my complimentary copy of AARP the Magazine comes in the mail!