40 Over 40: 40 Things Every Woman over 40 Needs to Know About Getting Dressed
by Brenda Kinsel
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Book Summary Information
Author: Brenda KinselIllustrator: Jenny M. Phillips
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2000-03
ISBN: 1885171420
Number of pages: 192
Publisher: Wildcat Canyon Press
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Book Reviews of 40 Over 40: 40 Things Every Woman over 40 Needs to Know About Getting Dressed
Book Review: Fun for the Fortysomething Fashionista, Or Wannabe.
Summary: 4 Stars
Scarves "are benevolent by nature and only dangerous in the wrong hands." page 108, @1999 Wildcat Canyon Press)
This and other lighthearted injunctions are compiled in this small easy to read volume of fashion forward advice for the over forty set. You will hear the standard good advice; exploit accessories, groom well and buy clothes for who you are now, youth cannot be recaptured by dressing like a faddish twenty year old.
Kinsel celebrates the confident femininity often displayed by a woman old enough to know herself yet young enough to spurn appliqued sweatshirts. She debunks the outdated shopping advice you learned at Mom's knee and commiserates with you on the short shelflife of contemporary fashions. Kinsel feels your pain as you confront endless racks of matronly jumpers and teeny bopper playboy bunny tees on your fruitless search for clothes that convey full-fledged womanly allure and cover your butt.
But lest you think you have landed yourself in a Maya Angelou poem remember this is a fashion writer and perforce she includes the same silly advice and facile observations you might find in a fashion magazine.
I don't have the stomach for "love boot camp" where I devote self-indulgent stretches of time to perusing shops, catalogs and magazines in order to find the clothes that express my true inner self. As soon as I settle into the steaming tub with this months fashion mags someone bangs on the door yelling that they have to go to the pot! And if I were to compile such a collection of clips and snapshots I would probably lose it under piles of coupons or school lunch schedules. Years of bad buys behind me Kinsel will just have to trust my forty-something instincts at the clearance rack because shopping has become a cut to the chase experience for me.
"When you are in clothes that bring out your essence, your uniqueness, everyone sees you - you, not necessarily your clothes." (page 71) This bit of fashion wisdom pulled out time and again is simply untrue. A woman who admires your appearance will brightly smile and exclaim a gushing compliment as her assessing eye scans your entire form quickly pinpointing the change in you - a new sweater, updated hair, wearing makeup when you are normally fresh faced. In ten seconds she has mentally calculated the cost, noted the specific items on you that she admires and is wondering where you might have shopped. Men might be so bowled over but a woman who admires the spiffy new you wants to learn how you made it happen so she can be spiffy too.
"Why not have your clothes be the most delightful items you can choose..." Because sometimes you just need a white tee and you have ten minutes to find it, size it and u-scan your way out the door before daycare charges you extra for being late for your kids pick up.
Which leads me to my biggest disappointment in a volume purporting to speak to the realities of the fortysomething female. Women in this age group are usually in the full throes of family life having the most limited time and budget for fashion. Kinsel certainly loves the beauty, wisdom and femininity of these women but I find the exhortations to just "buy it" not in keeping with the realities of life. I dislike the implication from the fashion world that not purchasing their stuff at full price is a lack of true self esteem on your part. Most women are not emotionally stunted. They have no idealogical reasons to avoid paying full price. What keeps them shopping the sales and clearance racks is a sense of duty and sacrifice. Housing, food and education are more worthy purchases than full price designer handbags. Nowhere in this volume do I read an honest avowal of the true cost of fashion. A working or middle class woman with a few kids may only have $500-1000.00 a year to clothes herself if she spends that much. Kinsel like most fashion writers dismisses that reality or due to her own work as a fashion consultant her primary contacts are women of certain means and she doesn't often have the challenge of creating fashionable wardrobes on a truly thin budget.
That disappointment aside I found Kinsel to be an enjoyable writer who unlike some fashion writers truly likes women and doesn't demean the average woman's figure or desire for great clothes that fit her currently unfashionable womanly curves. A fun read for the fortysomething fashionista, or wannabe.
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Summary of 40 Over 40: 40 Things Every Woman over 40 Needs to Know About Getting Dressed
Introduction MY MOTHER WAS FORTY the day the photographer came to our house on Cherry Court and lined us kids up behind my parents, who were sitting shoulder to shoulder on the piano bench. I?ve never forgotten how she looked. She was in her mint-green knit suit. Her brooch and earrings were the same gold tone as the buttons on her closed jacket. Her soft strawberry-blond hair was in tamed curls framing her bespectacled, confident face. I was a teenager looking through a different lens that day, but what I captured was just as permanent an image as the portrait that hung for years on our dining room wall. While the photographer was setting up his tripod, I was looking into the future. In that moment, watching my mom settle onto the piano bench, I saw how profound it was to be a woman at forty. Forty meant freedom. When you were forty, you could be yourself, you didn?t have to live up to other?s expectations. Forty meant you could wear whatever you wanted to, because by then you were your full, radiant self, not a copy of someone else. I could hardly wait to be just like my mom, an original, in her mint-green suit on that fall day in North Dakota. Now, twenty-some years later, it could be me sitting on that piano bench with my teenaged daughters and my son posing behind me. I?ve grown up. Not only am I in my forties myself, but it?s also my good fortune to be working every day with women in their forties, dressing them to look their beautiful selves. I wonder if it really was easier back then, or did my mom just make it look easy? Life seems so complicated today. Women have been crazy busy. Look around. We?ve climbed the corporate ladder, survived a divorce or two or three, been to therapy. If you?re forty, you may have earned a black belt in juggling careers and family. I know you. While you?re making time to mentor a coworker, you?re also closely following the basketball or soccer seasons of your kids, consoling one friend through a breakup, or helping another one plan her wedding. Chances are you?re the most likely one to be neglected. While you?re chasing life down the fast lane, you?re not sure how to dress yourself anymore. Your wardrobe?s been slogging along in the slow lane for a decade or maybe two. Where does a real woman go for relevant advice on style and clothes? Fashion magazines? They?re filled with pages of twenty-year-olds weighing less than a hundred pounds. Do you take the advice of your teenaged daughter?in orange hair and skimpy T-shirt, with a pierced tongue and belly-button ring? No. When you manage to grab a minute to shop for yourself, what do you find on the racks? Retro fashions in Day-Glo colors, showing up again like a bad dream. Aaaugh! This is hard work! Everything?s stopped making sense. To confuse the issue even more, you?re living in a different body. Your shape is changing, and your hair and attitudes are too. Where do you fit in? I?ve heard the lamenting. If you could make it all go away, you would. You may be older and wiser, but opening your closet door still brings you to your knees. You could have written the Roy Lichtenstein caption on the T-shirt that says, ?I feel like such a failure! I?ve been shopping for over twenty years, and I still don?t have anything to wear!? Should you just give up? Hold everything! Amidst the world?s clatter, it?s time to do the unthinkable?to slow down, turn the focus on yourself, and do a major check-in. Who are you right now? Get current. Take a good long look, discover yourself anew. It?s the right time to take a look in the mirror and make peace with this body, these arms, these thighs, these gorgeous lips, and this hair flecked with gray. This precious body of yours has made it through one million comparisons and has defied the look of the Kate Moss print ads on the sides of city buses. It?s time to invite a new love affair into your life?a love affair with your every line, every tooth, every toenail, every facial expression, every whim and desire. Passionate, wild, crazy, frivolous, impulsive?make it a love affair with yourself. You?ve earned it. There are no more excuses. There?s no time to waste, nothing?s more important. You have collected half a lifetime of laughs, wisdom, accomplishments, mistakes, integrity, and experience. You?ve kept getting better and better. Now it?s time to express that on the outside?confidently, boldly. There is freedom at forty, the freedom I saw in my mother?s eyes, in her sure smile. With a little excavating and renovating of attitudes, you?ll be wearing that freedom too. It?s under the surface, waiting to reveal itself. You?ll find it in these forty chapters of fashion advice. You?ll learn how to combine looks, passion, personality, and preferences into the perfect recipe for wearing clothes and accessories?while having delicious fun. Forget about problem areas! Go somewhere else to hear about camouflage tricks. You?ll be too busy falling in love with yourself when you put the focus on what works (a great smile, pretty skin, shapely calves). Other body parts will quiet down and assume their proper proportion. You?ll find the correlation between your personality and preferences and discover how to wear them proudly. You?ll learn how to shop for a bathing suit with dignity and courage, what to wear while going through a divorce, what to do instead of (or until) plastic surgery, and how to walk away from clothing with ?potential? and only buy what works. I won?t ask you to do anything I haven?t already done in my forties. I?ve been the mom who frantically shopped for school lunch ingredients at 7 A.M. in my accessorized jammies. Following my own advice on dressing for a high school reunion, I snagged a sweetheart at mine. I?ve given in to friends who insisted I?d lost ten pounds when all I?d really done was lift up my bra straps and loosen my belt. It?s all doable. My clients in my style and wardrobe consulting business prove it to me every single day. I invite you to zero in on the ordinary thing that you do everyday?getting dressed? and turn it into an opportunity
for personal expression, peace, and joy
beyond words. After you?ve done your homework, it?ll be so much easier to turn off the screaming consumer ads, ignore questionable advice from teenaged daughters or well-meaning friends, and trust yourself. You can and will love how you look in clothes. Come on, I?m going to show you how.
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