Their response reminds me that the Formerly years are just a film still in a (knock on wood) long life of moving images, and that someday, no doubt, I'll look back and think of how young I was when I wrote this book. And maybe how silly. And probably how good I looked. That's where I expect to be at some point, and time and the process of writing this book has moved me closer to feeling like the Formerly years are winding down.

When that happens, I will be Formerly a Formerly. Unlike a double negative, however, I'm pretty sure they don't cancel each other out, magically zapping me once again into my hot 20-something self. I don't know exactly what the phase beyond Formerly looks like, but I have a feeling I'll be keeping all the excellent developments from this period-the groundedness, the confidence, the social ease and peace of mind-and hopefully putting some of the panic behind me. There will be new positive developments, and most likely, new things to panic about.

Right now, though, the Formerly shift feels very real to me, and worthy of the magnifying gla.s.s I've been applying to it. How I power through the Formerly years and the realizations I come to are critical to where I ultimately wind up. I don't think I'll be one of those women, who, like the one I corresponded with through my blog, is devoted to maintaining "hotness" until she dies, by any means necessary. I know I won't be a cougar, if they even really exist, feeding on youth like a vampire in hopes of extending my own youth. I definitely do not want to be one of those women you see everywhere in California, who look like a 25-year-old from behind, but from the front, between 45 and 60, tired, bleached-out and somehow both puffy and hollow at the same time. Their strange, misshapen facial features broadcast their unhappiness with themselves, and no matter what I wind up looking like, unhappiness is not an option.

What has made me happiest and most unhappy in my life, no matter how old I am, is the degree to which I feel free to express what I think, without fear of other people's reactions or their withdrawing their love. That fear is looking teeny tiny in the rearview mirror, which is to me the best thing about getting older. (I hope, of course, never to be the crazy old lady with blue hair and waaaay too much rouge on the bus who tells you you're a terrible parent and that you look trashy, to boot.) The other day, I had an episode that both made me feel as free as I've ever felt, and not a little old-and that was more than OK. It was transcendent.

I was rushing down 14th Street to go pick up my daughters, and this young woman with a clipboard angles over to me. She was wearing a light blue Greenpeace T-shirt, and was no more than 21. I shook my head no as I pa.s.sed her, to indicate I didn't have time to stop.

"Oh, so you don't care about saving the planet. OK," she said.

I wanted to smack her-OK, yes, I am p.r.o.ne to violent fantasies when my blood sugar is too low, which it was then-but instead just rolled my eyes and kept walking. About 30 feet past where she was standing, however, I realized I couldn't contain my ire. I circled back.

"Excuse me, but you should know that what you said is really obnoxious. You don't know me, you don't know where I'm going, you don't know what groups I belong to or what my priorities are," I said (not for nothing, shifting my nylon shopping bag loaded with organic produce over to my other shoulder). "You're going to turn people off to your cause by saying things like that."

She protested that she asked me if I cared about saving the environment and I shook my head no, so she said, "OK, you don't care about saving the environment." She was simply innocently reflecting my own sentiments back at me. Right.

I said that I was saying no to stopping to chat with her, and she knew that full well. "I used to canva.s.s for an environmental group"-I managed not to add, "when I was your age,"-"and I know how discouraging it can be, but you shouldn't a.s.sume you know why I'm not stopping. I'm going to pick up my children. I care about them, too." She tried to argue but I brushed her off and continued down the street, fuming.

I felt angry. I felt righteous. And then I felt like a crazy lady. OK, like a crazy OLD lady. Why did I even bother? She was a twit and I'd likely never see her again, and there I was explaining myself to her. I didn't like that she was a poor amba.s.sador for Greenpeace, which does good work, but that wasn't really it. There was simply something about her smug, poreless, freckled face that made me want to give her what for, which I am aware is an old person's expression.

They say you really start to feel that you're getting older when your parents become creaky or infirm. I think it's when you begin to believe that you have something to teach snot-nosed NYU students with too much eyeliner who are exactly as likely to give a s.h.i.t what you say as there is for the leaders of Palestine and Israel to hang out, smoke a bowl and come to a lovely, bi-lateral accord culminating in a giant group hug.

When I got to the Y to pick up my kids, I had a snack and felt better. Within minutes, I was drawn into looking at my daughters' drawings of fairies and ladybugs and finding their sweatshirts and listening to their tales of school yard dramas of hierarchy and exclusion. What to give them for dinner became my most pressing issue.

But I felt different than I had before my little contretemps with the canva.s.ser. I felt true to myself-true to some larger truth-and not a little bada.s.s.

Indeed, I felt hot. No, not hot in the way I was when I was a big-haired man magnet in my 20s. And not hot like what Paris Hilton is alluding to when she gazes vapidly toward something and declares, "That's hot." (The words she'd be looking for if she thought to look are "exciting," "interesting," "current," "newsworthy.") But I felt hot, as in "on fire," "hot s.h.i.t," and "not to be messed with." It was a different kind of hot, but the thermometer topped out just the same.

As hundreds of women have pointed out to me-when they hear the term "Formerly Hot" and think I mean that older women cannot be hot just because they don't look as they once did-hotness comes from within. I've always felt that way, even as my societally defined hotness has diminished. That Greenpeace incident reminded me that there are many measures of hotness, many ways of feeling hot, and that some are much easier to access as you get older. I, for one, am looking forward to finding out about the other ways, and seeing just how hot I can be.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.

There simply isn't enough ink to thank all the amazing people who helped me channel my crazy into this book.

My husband, Paul Lipson, who did double and triple duty at home while I became one with my laptop; my girls, Sasha and Vivian, who point out my every Formerly flaw utterly without judgment and who, like most children, think getting older is thrilling; My amazing editor, Marnie Cochran, who finished my sentences in our first phone call, and my agent Rebecca Gradinger, who somehow makes me feel like her only client; my mom, Jessica Reiner, who began laughing at my jokes early and often; My dad, Anatole Dolgoff, who instilled in me the need to be heard; and Marge and Walter Lipson, for producing my husband, without whom I couldn't have produced this book (not to mention an armoire, a bureau, three night tables and a beautiful handcrafted cutting board).

I really want to thank the FormerlyHot.com early adopters, including Robert Kempe, who made this book seem like a forgone conclusion as soon as the blog went up; and for making my website so fun and inviting, and then making it even more so; for her sage blog advice; Carol Hoenig, Kimberly Gagon and others for telling me their life stories, which indirectly helped me shape this book; and Julie Stark for her legal aid.

This book would not exist but for my very own "kept women," (and a few guys), my Formerly friends Andie Coller McAuliff, Kely Nascimento-DeLuca, Rhonda Davis, Julie Wright, Barbara Herrnsdorf, Amy Redfield, Joel Jacobs, Ronni Siegel (the woman let me post a picture of her upper arms, for crying out loud!), Margaret Bravo, Hugh Siegel, Demetra Vrenzakis, Julie Bolt, Tula Karras, Alison Frank, Alan Blattberg, Emir Lewis, Marlene Merritt and (for letting me grill them about women's health), Melissa O'Neal, Rachel Fishman, Lauren Peden, Pam Redmond Satran and Alexandra Marshall, Harlene Katzman, Melissa Kantor, Judy Minor, Kristin Whiting, Carla Johnston Young, Marijke Briggs, Jenna McCarthy, Heather Greene, Freddi-Jo Bruschke, Rachel Berman, Marisa Cohen, Gina Duclayan, Karen Wolfe, Bennah Serfaty, Gina Osher, Jen Levine, Michele Barnwell, Susan Paley (for going all Hollywood on my a.s.s), Michele Nader, Hanna Dershowitz and Maryn McKenna, Jennifer Maldonado and Heidi Schwartz.

Thanks, too, to Marika Guttman for being the (beautiful) face of the Formerly, Rachel Talbot for making my Formerly video, and for allowing her 29-year-old self to be whipped into a premature Formerly frenzy in marketing my book.

Hugs to the editors who encouraged me and my writing over the years, especially Paula Derrow, Dana Points, Elizabeth Egan, Lucy Danziger, Bonnie Fuller, and Susan Kane. It meant the difference between dithering and doing.

And thanks to you, for reading.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR.

STEPHANIE DOLGOFF writes for many magazines including Self, Health, and Parenting, and blogs for More.com, as well as her own popular blog, Formerlyhot.com. She has been a contributing editor at Real Simple and editor-at-large at Parenting, the features director at Self, and the executive editor at Glamour. Among other publications, she has written for The New York Times, the New York Post, O: The Oprah Magazine, Fitness, Parents, Redbook, and Ladies' Home Journal. Stephanie lives with her husband and twin girls in Manhattan.

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