STAY RELEVANT STAY VIRAL DON'T DIE LIVE FOREVER
Whenever I go to LA I feel like I need to start putting shit in my face.
Ever since I was 13, I wanted to be 40. It seemed like this magical age when a woman became a woman, when you really come into your power. I collected vintage clothing throughout my teens and 20s with the caveat “will I wear this in my 40s?” Then when I reached 40, and recognized how FUCKING AMAZING my life is, the goal post changed to being all about my 60s. I have a 1990s vintage Gianni Versace white leather fringed and braided coat that I got in my early thirties, after a friend convinced me “you’ll wear it in your 60s.” I started to see my 60s as the decade where I would exhibit a truly wild version of myself, become the free love hippie that I am way too uptight to embrace now. I will reach a whole new awareness, wisdom, empowerment and say fuck it while rocking vintage Versace like a BOSS.
My mom told me that the best thing about getting older was “not giving a fuck anymore.” I took that as gospel but the other day she told me that she felt “irrelevant” and I cried. Because I could relate, because I was sad that she felt that way about herself, because I was angry (and sad) that living in these stay relevant stay viral don’t die live forever times make it even harder to age gracefully.
When I was 12 and wanted platinum streaks in my red hair my mom used to replace my “Sun-In” hair bleaching solution with lemon juice and hot water. She told me that the beauty industry was a tool of the patriarchy to suppress women and make us feel bad about ourselves. But then she ate a bran muffin every day and perpetually said she needed to “lose 10 pounds” and paid me to lose weight when I was a pre teen and got a face lift in her 50s and I was confused by all of it and where I landed on any of these ideas. Should I stay au natural with my full fat Greek yogurt and honey face masks or hate myself too? For years I did a combination of both while trying to resist the tide as long as possible (but damn it’s hard when you live in Hollywood.)
So I drank my green juice and ate my quinoa and kale and shopped at natural grocers and made macadamia nut mylk and meditated and did my pilates. But I still got bi-monthly chemical gel manicures in blood red because everyone knows the “non toxic” manicures don’t last. Now influencers have ruined Erewhon and alt right trad wives masquerading as spiritual wellness girlies are destroying any possibility of “natural” health & beauty practices being taken seriously. So where does that leave me?
I moved all the way across the Pacific only to find more men extolling the virtues of Jordan Peterson, raw meat and “The Way of the Superior Man” as their bible and women who have fallen under their spell, worried that their kids are going to turn trans if they are exposed to fluoride or critical race theory. Somehow my algorithm is full of viral videos with grass fed butter on dates and breakfasts of duck eggs and steak tartare and apparently Winnie the Pooh is on Ozempic and fuck if this is what it means to be relevant I want to be passé like a 2016 pink knit pussycat wearing girl boss.
Better yet take me back to 12 when I was awkward and questioning and 40 seemed far away and 80 further still and I didn’t have all the fear of aging and dying being pushed down my throat every second and the climate crisis was something only hot celebrity boys like River Phoenix talked about and there weren’t any podcasters or longevity bros talking about macros. I don’t want to go to Mars with a bunch of tech dudes with performance issues and ugly cars. I don’t want to live forever I don’t want to be relevant I don’t want to be viral I’d rather die than be stuck with them on another planet after they ruin this one.
So I’m going to LIVE FOR TODAY. I’m not going to save things for special occasions or wait until my 60s to live out my dreams. I’m going to wear vintage Versace on a Tuesday and fly to Brazil so I can learn how to breathe and move like an animal from a 90 year old martial arts master. I’m not going to obsess over every wrinkle or that comment from one troll that “no one in your family has any eyebrows.” I’m going to spend an obscene amount of money on Kendrick Lamar tickets for his LA show and smoke a big fat spliff with tobacco in it even though everyone knows nicotine is bad for you and my paternal grandmother died of lung cancer because YOU ONLY LIVE ONCE BABY.
xx Liz
Ps. Thanks to Janis Joplin for my new mantra GET IT WHILE YOU CAN & to
& for their podcast The Review of Mess helping me laugh and make sense of it all.
If you liked the above you might enjoy:
I just took the deepest breath of my life.
I love your posts, thank you so much, Liz! Hooray to saying FUCK IT and living for now! I'm in my 50s, which is definitely the "Fuck It" decade. I have just stopped caring what other people think and I also wear the vintage on a regular ol' day. That Versace jacket is stunning, and of course why would you NOT wear it bowling??
Your readers are right - there is power in being invisible. You can do whatever the fuck you want, wear what you want, say what you want. Pass along that wisdom to the youngs!