One of my Facebook friends, who like me is well over 40, posted a meme depicting women in leggings, leather jackets and platform shoes.
This was the caption:
"Twenty things women should stop wearing over the age of 40. Nos. 1-20: Other people's expectations and judgments."
It was a great day last December in California, when I went out -- IN PUBLIC (gasp!) -- wearing my blue tie-dye pattern tunic with a pair of leggings. Leggings! Form-fitting leggings! At my age!
My mother would have gone ape-doo-doo. Maybe, in heaven, she did. Ape-doo-doo was sort of my mother's default demeanor.
If leggings weren't shocking enough, a few months later, I actually acted on my hankering to buy a bikini. The rationalization was, "I'm buying this for our trip to Phoenix in late August. After all [telltale rationalization words], nobody knows me there."
I got it. I like it. I've worn it in the water, several times. I even got to show it to my beloved therapist Dan S., who was an instrument of the transformation that made my first bikini in 40 years a reality. (Dan, upon seeing me in a bikini, responded, "Wow! You're moving well!")
Over the last year and a half, I've worked hard, not just to reduce my body, but to learn to love my body. The "love" part actually started before I began substituting salads for Butterburgers at Culver's; in fact, if I didn't learn, in the warm-water therapy pool, to be confident and accepting of myself, I don't think I'd have embarked on this weight-loss journey, no matter what a surgeon might have said about the maximum BMI to qualify for knee replacement surgery.
So now I'm expecting to receive my second bikini today. If it fits, it's going to Phoenix with me, too -- but not before I try it out in the pool.
Also in my Phoenix suitcase: Shorts! It's 100-plus degrees there, so yeah, I plan to wear them in public, with lots of sunscreen.
On the plane, I plan to wear coulotte-like capris, so the TSA guys can see the surgical scar on my left knee, and know that my titanium joint, and not a concealed weapon, is setting off the metal detector. I'm not even ashamed of the scar. It's part of my body, my identity.
I have a reconfigured body. It might be six decades old -- very old for a mammal -- but it's active, it's strong, and it's in its prime.
I'll wear what makes me feel active, strong and in my prime.
And if my mother in heaven, or judgmental strangers on Earth, have a problem with that, I hope I will also discern the voice of my empathetic, supportive father, who's also in heaven: "Lyn, you look great, and I love you just the way you are."
This was the caption:
"Twenty things women should stop wearing over the age of 40. Nos. 1-20: Other people's expectations and judgments."
It was a great day last December in California, when I went out -- IN PUBLIC (gasp!) -- wearing my blue tie-dye pattern tunic with a pair of leggings. Leggings! Form-fitting leggings! At my age!
My mother would have gone ape-doo-doo. Maybe, in heaven, she did. Ape-doo-doo was sort of my mother's default demeanor.
If leggings weren't shocking enough, a few months later, I actually acted on my hankering to buy a bikini. The rationalization was, "I'm buying this for our trip to Phoenix in late August. After all [telltale rationalization words], nobody knows me there."
I got it. I like it. I've worn it in the water, several times. I even got to show it to my beloved therapist Dan S., who was an instrument of the transformation that made my first bikini in 40 years a reality. (Dan, upon seeing me in a bikini, responded, "Wow! You're moving well!")
Over the last year and a half, I've worked hard, not just to reduce my body, but to learn to love my body. The "love" part actually started before I began substituting salads for Butterburgers at Culver's; in fact, if I didn't learn, in the warm-water therapy pool, to be confident and accepting of myself, I don't think I'd have embarked on this weight-loss journey, no matter what a surgeon might have said about the maximum BMI to qualify for knee replacement surgery.
So now I'm expecting to receive my second bikini today. If it fits, it's going to Phoenix with me, too -- but not before I try it out in the pool.
Also in my Phoenix suitcase: Shorts! It's 100-plus degrees there, so yeah, I plan to wear them in public, with lots of sunscreen.
On the plane, I plan to wear coulotte-like capris, so the TSA guys can see the surgical scar on my left knee, and know that my titanium joint, and not a concealed weapon, is setting off the metal detector. I'm not even ashamed of the scar. It's part of my body, my identity.
I have a reconfigured body. It might be six decades old -- very old for a mammal -- but it's active, it's strong, and it's in its prime.
I'll wear what makes me feel active, strong and in my prime.
And if my mother in heaven, or judgmental strangers on Earth, have a problem with that, I hope I will also discern the voice of my empathetic, supportive father, who's also in heaven: "Lyn, you look great, and I love you just the way you are."
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