I've Rediscovered My Vanity After 40

A few months ago, I took my annual pilgrimage to The Runway Sample Sale Boutique in the Atwater Village neighborhood of Los Angeles. I don’t live in Los Angeles, and I am not in a line of work that requires me to be fashionable. In fact, I spend most of my days at a desk in my bedroom closet. I’m not dating – the man I’ve been with for twenty years thinks my rattiest sports bra is sexy. And my two children do everything in their power to destroy nice things.

And yet, I find a way to make it there, with whatever I’ve put aside to spend, to take a few hours to try on the dozens of delights I always find amongst the eclectic, locally-sourced designers whose discount merchandise they peddle. Why? For me, just for me.

A surprising phenomenon has occurred in the past few years – after my children started going to one free and local school and I turned forty and started to slip from the male gaze. It’s that my style is, I believe, only just peaking. More days than not, I am looking at myself in the mirror before I go out the door and thinking “damn, she’s fine!” I am putting in just the right amount of effort. I have started wearing my “New York” outfits at home because, who cares if everyone else is in hoodies? Despite not having a flat stomach, I am wearing crop tops.

It’s not that I feel young again, it’s that I feel, finally, like myself.

It’s not that I feel young again, it’s that I feel, finally, like myself. When I was in high school, I painstakingly picked out my outfit for the next day each night. I would sit in my cranberry-red room, talking to Mae or Jeannie, the cordless tucked under one ear and Portishead blasting on my boombox, while I painted my fingernails to match. Butter yellow to go with my shell-toe Adidas. Deep pink to match the accents on the sheer blue top I “borrowed” from my brother’s girlfriend for years.

Of course I am nostalgic for those nights – having the time and attention span to devote to decking myself out like a new bride each day. But if I really return to the feeling, it wasn’t luxury, it was fear. Of being judged and rejected. Of never, ever, being loved back. The effort was a cover, a wild scrambling for something to control. My ex’s best friend was rumored to have said back then, “What do you get when you slap Sarah Wheeler in the face? A handful of make-up.” It was true. And the make-up served as armor against the sentiments in that joke. If I was going to be slaughtered, I decided, at least it would be in my prettiest dress.

Since then, my relationship with my body, my self-image, and of course, with fashion, has charted a complex course. Trying to get pregnant forced me into therapy for my disordered eating and body image. Pregnancy and birth and postpartum forced me to get comfortable with not having much control over how I looked. And perimenopause, or the adjacent space my body currently inhabits, has forced me to ask, if there are no more hoops to jump through to prove myself as a woman, can I just have fun??

These days, this is my idea of fun: Sephora with my seven-year-old, despite my anxieties about her shifting girlhood. Instead of asking “do I look good in this lipstick?” I model for her “I feel so happy with this purple eye shadow!” Sharing custody of an LED face mask with my buddy, because we are too self-obsessed not to be intrigued by the promises of better skin, too frugal to buy our own, and too wise not to pass up an opportunity to make a silly game out of our vanity.

I even stay up late in my bedroom sometimes, Facetiming with my bestie and applying nail stickers, my latest obsession (this is my favorite brand), which last longer than one day, cost far less than a trip to the salon, and give me a little thrill every time I gaze at my hands.

At the end of the day, I want to use the time I have left in this body to adorn it – to treat it as a canvas for artistic expression, for humor, for happiness. That is what I feel when I rock the hard-shelled silver mirror clutch I picked up on my last LA visit, something I would have questioned, a decade ago, whether I could “pull off.” So if you’re pushing 40 or 50 or have lost the thread on what your image means, I’m here to encourage you to make it your own. You can pull it off, trust me. Don’t be afraid, luxuriate in yourself.