Laurie Gould -- Midlife Mom Songs

I have brown hair and brown eyes, and I am 5’5” tall.  The Great State of Massachusetts puts these identifying details on my driver’s license, my main mode of identity verification, because they are immutable facts. 

Except, of course, that they’re not.  My hair grows grayer every day.    I suppose I could mess with my eye color via contact lenses, unless the cataracts get there first.   And fifteen years ago, the immutable fact on my driver’s license was that my height was 5’6”.   

I miss that inch.  It…

I live less than a mile from the Boston Marathon finish line, and even if you don't watch the race itself, the exuberance of the event is everywhere.   It’s easy to identify the marathoners.   They are impossibly lean, impossibly fit, not an ounce of fat.  Plus they wear those silly leggings, always, even in the days before and after the marathon itself.   After the race, they occasionally parade around with medals around their necks, or wrapped in the mylar blankets that are handed out at the finish line.

…

It's been a week and a half since my last post as a newly-minted Style Icon:  not a particularly auspicious start to my 15-year sprint to the cover of Vogue!  I know that all 15 members of my faithful following have been waiting patiently for me to answer two critical questions:

• Did that expensive Vitamin C stuff I bought at Sephora (prompted by my phone’s insistence that I do so) really deliver Visible Results in Seven Days
• What did I wear to the Oscars?

First things first. It has indeed been more than…

My first full week as a style icon finds me on a four-day work trip to San Francisco, staying and working in a hotel near Union Square.   

Here is what I see every time I turn on my phone, at all hours of the day and night:

In my life, I try to be guided always by that still, small voice.   I just never thought it would come from Sephora.   

It is Friday afternoon, at the end of the work week, before I finally have a little free time to walk around the city (still gorgeous, by the way, despite its obvious…

My second day as a style icon sees me hitting the road, on a work trip for the day job (the one I plan to keep only until I land that Vogue cover).

I arrive at the airport ready to share my travel look with the world.   Yet I am immediately confronted with a problem:   my arms are apparently too short to take a selfie that captures anything more than my head.   

I am, however, in an airport:  where better to shop for accessories for my small electronics?   I set off in search of an item I have long avowed…

The time has come for me to launch my new identity as a style icon.

This decision seems inevitable after a wave of articles in the past few weeks about how women of a certain age are finding a place in the fashion world.   First, this headline in the Wall Street Journal  declared that “Older Women Ruled New York Fashion Week,” with "modeling’s silver wave” (that is, women between 40 and 70) prominently featured in several shows.   

The article featured photos of very elegant, astonishingly thin older women…

I just don't get all the fuss about plagiarism.  Here's a little ditty that explains why:

An Offer

Last week, I turned 59. 

This week, I got on a moderately crowded Orange Line car, and a young man near the door promptly offered me his seat.   A few hours later, when I boarded a slightly-less-crowded Orange Line car for the return trip, another young man did exactly the same thing. 

Astonishing.   In a lifetime of riding public transit, I can recall only one other instance of being offered a seat, when I was struggling with several heavy grocery bags.   More memorable are the times when I really needed a…