Within spitting distance of 60, I faced a novel task: finding a floor-length gown for a formal banquet. Having lived for much of the past few years in sweatpants and other garments that stretched along with me, the prospect of slipping into an attention-grabbing dress that put my six decades on display was sobering.
Also, what should this gown say? About me, about women, about bodies and the passage of time? I’d be wearing it in winter, in Stockholm, at an awards ceremony for my husband, who won a Nobel Prize in chemistry. It crossed my mind that warmth should be a consideration. But of course, it wasn’t: The look I envisioned bypassed the practical and moved directly to sucking it up for glamour.
Still, I wondered, at what age does the balance between provocative and pragmatic tip? Could I dare reach for unbridled va-voom, or was I relegated to mother of the bride?
I’d recently noticed new signs of aging; loose, crepey skin at the elbows, the slap of upper-arm sag becoming louder as I jogged; breasts not aligning as they should. The Spanx came out of storage, but they could only do so much. I’d rejected surgical nips and tucks, more fearful of medical missteps than gravity’s impact on the hips and belly that had held my two children.
I quickly realized this pursuit of the perfect gown came to embody one question: Would it be a sheath to divert attention and hide my perceived flaws, or could it, possibly, serve to showcase a 60-year-old figure, still sexy and sublime?
Dress shopping and memories
I began my online search with a young girl’s fantasy of a gown: deep rose with pale pink appliqué flowers, short, capped sleeves, cinched waist and a flowing taffeta skirt that would swirl when the dancing began. As I shimmied into the dress, the itchy bodice swallowed me up in floral details and so much taffeta that I needed GPS to escape. It became clear that at the age of senior discounts, less is more.
I moved to form fitting, a simple black off-the-shoulder affair. Resigned to my curviness, I reached for the extra-strength Spanx. Staring at my belly in profile, I was thrown back in time: age 15, growing up in Brooklyn, in the heyday of nonfat diet culture — half-grapefruits and chalky cottage cheese and pride in going to bed hungry.
Back then, I’d asked my mother to let me join her at a “health manor” in Upstate New York, where we consumed nothing but three glasses of diluted orange juice each day for a week, with a small bowl of lettuce on Day 5 to regain our strength. A man who called himself a doctor, but wasn’t, showed up every morning to take our pulse. It was Thanksgiving, and when we returned home, our bellies were flat. And we felt powerful.
When I asked my mother, now 87, and still checking the scale every morning, why she allowed me to starve myself in that way as a young teenager, she said: “You wanted to go.”
I try not to pass along this distorted self-loathing to my own daughters: I don’t deem french fries to be evil, and I don’t comment on their bodies. I try to distinguish between hunger and yearning, and see that the comfort of food can bridge the two.
Even though I don’t always model the best behavior when it comes to enjoying the pleasure of eating, I see my daughters are more at ease in their skin than I ever was. With their exposed, crop-topped bellies and the way they relish a dish of soft-serve with sprinkles in summer, I believe they’ve reclaimed some of the power I’d lost.
My daughters would be joining us at the formal banquet, where we’d all be photographed and interviewed. For them, dress shopping was easy; straightforward without baggage. My younger daughter, 18, transformed into a princess with the very first gown she slipped on: a dusty-pink sequined A-line with satin straps that fit her exquisitely. “I just need shoes,” she said.
My 20-year-old repurposed the thrifted gown she wore at her high school prom: black velvet with Day-Glo long-stemmed flowers embroidered just off center. My stepdaughter, 21 and an athlete, chose three dress options, each more perfect than the last.
Could a dress reflect a complex life?
For me, the emotional burden of choosing this packaging for my body was exhausting. Sixty came up suddenly, it seemed, without warning. I’d given birth to children late, at 38 and 41, and spent my 40s parenting young girls.
At 50 — the time many women begin facing the invisibility of middle age, the decline in desirability and desire — my first husband died by suicide. My 50s became a decade of grief, regret for all my girls had lost, and then, the work of clawing our lives back together.
Menopause came and went, and I hardly noticed in the midst of negotiating our finances and figuring out kid pickups and spinning with anxiety about how to be two parents at once. I missed the reckoning that comes with this transition, and by the time I looked up, I found myself in a more settled life: with a new marriage and young-adult children who’d found ways to cope and thrive.
How could a dress reflect this complexity? Coming to terms with a life you did not choose, but one that turned out, even with residual sadness, to offer days of abundance and joy?
I bought and returned at least a dozen gowns; silk and vintage, ruffled, velvet, one-shouldered and strapless, for which I spent far too much on stick-on, backless, adhesive bras, bunny-shaped lifters and nipple covers. All of them failed to contain my breasts reliably.
Then, in the mail, a promising dress arrived: a silver Halston, the “Loretta” in lace sequin, sleeveless with a V-neckline, center ruching and a godet skirt that flared just slightly, accentuating the best of my contours. I zipped it up and swished, noticing a shimmer of light. A little tailoring, I thought, and I could really move freely in this. It looked great with the Spanx, but also, without them.
On the night of the banquet, I descended into the hotel lobby, my glittering dress, hair and makeup in place. I was ready to party. The women at the concierge desk applauded. “And I’m almost 60!” I announced, twirling off my middle-aged invisibility with vigor. “Really?” one of them said. “I don’t believe it.” “Yup,” I nodded.
And my starry-eyed daughters saw it, too. This dress was a chance to show them the 60-year-old body I actually had — in sequins. I wasn’t slim-hipped and dewy, the way they were. I was the matriarch, elegant, but still alive — hot, even — and photo-ready.
The dress did its job at the banquet, drawing attention and compliments; I even made it into the Swedish tabloids for my sparkly ensemble.
But it wasn’t until 2 a.m., at the “nightcap” after-party, that I realized the true strength of this dress: It became invisible, porous, as all concerns about my outward-facing body melted away. I was all sweat and motion, limbs taking up space, fists in the air, swaying to covers of Aretha and Abba. With my eyes closed, I embodied a girl, ageless, who could dance her way toward the light of a new day.
Rachel Zimmerman is a journalist and writer based in Cambridge, Mass. She is author of the forthcoming, “Us, After: A Memoir of Love and Suicide,” to be published in June.
