Apparently, if you're over 40, you shouldn't wear miniskirts.
I am 40. I wear miniskirts.
Let's get our definitions clear here. A miniskirt, as far as I'm concerned, falls mid-thigh. A micro-mini falls mid-arse, or thereabouts, and is best left to the spawn of Geldof. A pencil skirt falls on the knee.
I am very fond of pencil skirts, but they don't concern us here. No, I'm talking miniskirts.
There is a world of difference, by the way, between a summer miniskirt — in other words, a skirt accessorised with naked legs — and a winter miniskirt, with which you wear opaque stockings. I wear both, but I'm thinking of giving up the bare-legged variety next summer, when I'll be 41 and officially long in the tooth. Plus, I am the colour of a cage-laid eggshell, so bare legs require pots and pots and pots and pots of fake tan, and that shit don't come cheap, I'm telling you.
There are exceptions to my bare-legged miniskirt rule though. Even when I reach the age of 204, and I fully intend to, I will still wear summer miniskirts:
- on the beach, with thongs, and while eating hot chips, and
- on those ludicrous summer days that only Melbourne can produce when the temp is 45+ and everyone stays indoors with a frozen hand towel over their face, crying.
However, I'm not quite sure I'm ready to give up mid-thigh winter dresses with nice thick tights. A July evening; a laneway bar; a smattering of one's closest, cleverest, wickedest friends; a Worthy Australian Novel, almost certainly written by Eliot Pearlman, to viciously diss; an inappropriate affair to dissect in favour of the partner most likely to provide one with future work; a hunky new single aquaintance to set up with the spurned half of the inappropriate affair — all these things need an outfit that makes you feel like you're still in the game, that you're still chic, and rakish, and still, relatively, young.
Ish.
And now, according to, inter alia, The Daily Mail, I have to worry that my skirts are too short.
Ok, par example, I took a shot of one of my winter staples today:
Note that Martha would not be included in the actual hypothetical laneway bar gathering. And I would look much cooler if you could discern from these crap photos that my boots are uber-retro and made of denim.
Yes, denim.
Am I mutton dressed in lamb? At forty, can I still get away with this crap? Or do I have to resign myself to thumbing through my copious collection of pencil skirts every Friday night? Which would be fine, except it means I probably have to go on a [*blurk*] diet, because pencil skirts necessitate some kind of waist, and my waist is currently in hibernation, living off its own fat until the next millennium.
Or, in other words, is 40 too old to wear miniskirts? Please to be commenting, ye few readers o' mine.
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7 comments:
I think you definitely have the legs to carry off such a look. I say stick with the "mini" thing as long as you can - I think you'll be fine for quite awhile. Sexay.
You are a very attractive young lady.
See, now I feel like I was just fishing for compliments.
Thank you, but.
I think you look very nice, and demand to see a proper photo of the boots.
Oh, please, you are fishing for compliments here. I wish I could still carry off that dress and boots. Anyhoo, don't throw them away, because us frumpy over-forties have found that we can still get away with short dresses if we wear them over pants.
Yairs, if I had your pins, I'd be rocking the mini until I was an octogenarian. I'm a pants-under-mini girl, because my knees still have their original roll of baby fat.
Work them! Own them! yada yada.
dear miss schlegel, surely you have had occasion to hear me say over the years, especially those more recent ones in which this issue has become increasingly pressing, that none of us are mutton dressed as lamb, but hoggett dressed as hoggett?
Hoggett in the sheep world is the intermediate age between lamb and mutton. Back in the day when I was a country lass, hoggett was cheaper to buy than lamb and better tasting than mutton. So your father would go to the butcher in town, buy half a hoggett, then spend some hours sorting chops and sausages and legs etc. into freezer bags, and stick it all in the deep freeze so large you could have stacked three coffins in it that sat on the back verandah near the laundry.
I sometimes wonder what mutton dressed as lamb would look like. Wilting parsley, those little paper skirts for the chop bones and a spritz of artificial moisture of some kind perhaps?
Anyway, you've always had excellent pins, not nun's ankles like me good self, and that more than compensates for the "what a waist" issue in my opinion. xx
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