My Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Fire Engine Red Bikini

Yesterday on The Today Show, during a segment on looking great over 40, Susan St. James Ebersol and a fashion correspondent whose name escapes me, made a reference to a Leonard Cohen song called, Ring the Bells that Still Can Ring. I hadn’t heard it before, but I love the concept, so I immediately went to my computer and looked it up. Here’s the chorus:

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.
Ring the bells that still can ring

This past Summer, I spent close to a week in the Cayman Islands, and as you might imagine, it was fabulous. One of my closest college friends lives there so I spent five glorious days with her and some of her best island friends at a wonderful little condo between The Ritz and The Westin on Seven Mile Beach during her big birthday weekend blowout. We spent part of almost every day on chase lounges sipping champagne, watching the sparkling green water and talking about life.

All of us are about the same age – somewhere between Lordy, Lordy, Look Who’s 40 and 50 and Fabulous. Though one or two of the women, my close friend included, are in amazingly great shape for their ages, a couple of the women are not. They don't look bad, mind you. In fact, they’re down right beautiful. They just wouldn’t have made the pages of Self or Fitness.

I couldn’t help but notice that I was the only one of us not wearing a bikini. Neither could they.

By mid-Summer, the hard work I had put into my pre-high school reunion food & exercise program, aka Operation Get My Groove Back, had paid off and I was back in low single digits and in the best shape I had been in years. Still, I felt the need to cover up.

I had been raised on the concept of less is more, or in this case, more (fabric) is more. I had been raised to show some decorum. I had grown up in the church where modesty is a virtue. A complete magazine junkie, I had spent countless hours comparing my body to Christie’s and Elle’s and Heidi’s and Paulina’s. I bought into the whole “women of a certain age” shouldn’t….. (fill in the blank).

One of the more outspoken women in the bunch, had some rather amusing things to say about all this and about the "uptight" American women they see on their beaches every weekend. The message I got that day was this: “You’ve got a beautiful figure. Embrace it. Show it off. Be proud of it and don’t let anyone make you feel like you’re less than you are.”

Of course that’s much easier said than done, like so many things in life. While I’m a relatively confident girl, I believed what one of my oldest – as in we’ve been friends forever, not as in she has a birthday decades before my own – dearest friends said recently, “Nobody over 40, with the possible exception of Jennifer Aniston, needs to be in a bikini. “ Well, guess what? I wore a bikini the rest of that trip and I came home and did the same thing over at New Smyrna Beach. Not only that, shortly after my last birthday, I did something I’ve wanted to do for years. I stood up on a surfboard for the first time in my life.

I tell you this because yesterday, I made my biggest, boldest fashion purchase in years. I stumbled upon a clearance rounder that housed a handful of last season’s bathing suits on it. One of them: an OP, fire engine red, string bikini came home with me. (Think the Phoebe Cates suit in Fast Times at Ridgemont High.) Just knowing it was in my possession made me smile the rest of the day.

Got an e-mail from another of my best childhood friends this morning. This past weekend, she went into a small town, Northern California restaurant. Most of the other women our age were wearing their warm and toasty and ever so practical cableknit sweaters. She, on the other hand, was decked out in a sparkeling silver stunner of a dress and boots. Since I know she can pull that look off, I can only imagine the reaction at the other tables. I trust that drinks were spilled, heads were turned and hearts were racing.

Perhaps we’re both going through a mid-life crisis ….or perhaps we’re just looking at ourselves with new eyes. Perhaps we’re both realizing that, darn it, we do still have it going on and we don’t have to buy into other people’s notions of what this time in our lives is supposed to be like.

Guess it’s time to get back to Hot Heads. A sassy new outlook on life and a fire engine red bikini demand a certain do and I know just where to get it.

See you at the beach. I’m counting the days. Hot Heads 407-671-0480

When It's OK To Be Late For A Very Important Date

I stumbled upon a quote I just have to share. I kind of hope no one I know reads this post, though, because my sharing it won’t go over well with anyone in my world. I’m going to do it anyway ...... for you. (You’re welcome!)

If a girl looks swell when she meets you, who gives a damn if she’s late? Nobody! ~ JD Salinger

Of course, this quote isn’t exactly accurate. Regardless of how you look or what the circumstances, your female friends WILL care if you keep them waiting. I can tell you that with certainty.

They won't let you off the hook if you have a finch that dies suddenly requiring you to stop what you were doing and lay it to rest. They won't be moved by the fact that a crazy woman parked behind you at the grocery store refusing to move her car until you took your cart back inside. They won't consider the fact that you had to return to the house to change one shoe because you accidentally left wearing a mismatched pair a valid reason for keeping them waiting. Even if you are waylayed by a flaming wire swinging across I-4 (because an Osprey's nest on the top of an electric pole had been hit by lightening), they will be looking at their watches and shaking their heads in displeasure when you finally arrive. It doesn't matter how cute you look. The girls in your life are not going to cut you any slack if you’re not where you’re supposed to be when you’re supposed to be there.

The men in your life, on the other hand? If you look fetching enough, there is almost no limit to what they’ll let slide.

So…. Want to get away with something outrageous… or at least get away with keeping the guy in an your life in an extended holding pattern? Take your looks up a notch. Hot Heads 407-671-0480.

Wishing You a Beautiful 2011

I had plans to post a (hopefully) amusing essay today about some of my hair resolutions :) for 2011. I heard some pretty sad news this afternoon, though, and that post just doesn’t “feel” right to me now. What I’m going to put out there instead is this: Life is short. Let the people who matter in your life know that they do.

I want to share this too…. There is absolutely nothing wrong with trying to look good and with caring about hair and fashion. In fact, I’m a big proponent of doing just that, which is part of the reason my car automatically pulls of I-4 at exit 101. When you get to the end of your life, however, what really matters is what you look like on the inside. I think so anyway. Wishing you a beautiful 2011. I wish you great hair, but I also wish you health, happiness and peace of mind and heart. Happy New Year!