Stephanie Dolgoff's Blog, page 14

I'm an 11 in a one to ten world

I work at a silent writers' space, essentially a big room with a bunch of carrels where people can go to get out of their cramped NYC apartments, and in my case, away from the siren song of the refrigerator. There is NO TALKING and no beeping cell phones and it's taken really seriously, which is good.

But that means that out in the common space, where you're also not supposed to have long and loud conversations, many long and loud conversations take place, because, well, no one wants to go back into that cacophonously quiet room and work, what with all the good procrastination to be had.

So today I see Jessica, a woman my age with whom I've previously bonded about the fact that we both wear size 42, or 11 shoes, which are hideously hard to come by, for many reasons but mostly because the competition for the one size 11 most stores order (if a shoe even comes in that size) is fierce. Here in NYC people hoof it, and while I have no evidence, I believe the fact that I now wear an 11 (up from a 10 years ago) is due to the force of several times my weight with each step. Do that for 43 years and you've got a closet full of tiny kayaks.

I look at her feet. She looks at mine. Our eyes meet. We're both wearing shoes from Sacco, a small chain of stores here that only recently went belly up. Immediately we began our long and loud conversation about what a tragedy this will be for us, because they were the only good store that regularly stocked our size. They treated us like women, damn it, not as freaks with gigantic water skis for feet! [Those are actual Sacco boots--incredibly comfortable, truly, not in that macha way some women have of bragging about how they can wear heels all day long and not feel a thing. Why do people do that?]

Doing anything not to have to go back to our computers, we vow to start a blog on the subject of women with big feet and the shoe travails we must endure because of what we are certain is size discrimination. On the blog, we will post pictures of cool shoes that are available in size 11, demand will rise, and we will thus change the world, one pair of ballet flats at a time.

As happens at the dawn of potentially life-altering career decisions, we ask ourselves: What kind of people are we? Jessica quickly asserts that she, at least, is not noble enough to do this blog because if we tell the world where they can find the lone pair of size 11 shoes that a store has ordered, we cannot possibly own those shoes ourselves. I point out that we'd have right of first refusal on the shoes, and that honestly, we can't own every single pair of size 11 shoes, simply because there's a scarcity. We'd be shoe hoarders. I'm already a shoe hoarder. It's bad.

And so we make a future plan to have a future loud and long conversation about our future blog and how to monetize it, and go back to work, happy to be women because we can create a satisfying social interaction out of absolutely nothing.

Skype me up, baby!

I had a reading in Montclair, NJ, last week, and it was so much fun. It was a teeny, tiny bookstore (Watchung Booksellers) with a shredded wing back chair, pink wine, M&Ms, and room for maybe 20 people. About that many showed up, including two non-women who didn't appear to have been coerced (although they escaped before I took this picture…maybe they didn't like the estrogen contact high.)

After I read a bit, the Q&A turned into a Formerly sharefest of the variety that I'd always hoped the topic would inspire. To this day, two years after starting this blog and six weeks after the book was published, I am still enormously relieved whenever other women relate to the whole Formerly thing, because it's yet more evidence that I am not alone in this bizarrely jarring yet completely expected life experience (and hence not insane.)

So since a people have been asking me to come to their book groups, and I thought, hell, why not put it out there! So here's the official offer:

If you have a book group of 7 or more and read My Formerly Hot Life as your book, I will happily either come to (if you're in or around NYC) or Skype into your meeting, if you think that would be fun. Email me here, and we can talk about it!

Oooh, Brooke, I feel you

Brooke Shields, one of the few actresses I can see playing the main deluxe Formerly in the (thinking positively!) future megahit sitcom based on my book on ABC went on Ellen and told her that she could still fit into her 1980 Calvins, as in "Nothing comes between me and my Calvins…Nothing." If you are a Formerly, you will likely remember that tag line.

(I told you that the book was optioned, right? Option only means they're interested so don't get too excited…lots of things get optioned and...

I love this! From iVillage.com

I can't figure out how to post this so it looks pretty, so you'll just have to click HERE.

Ass forward, Part II

Early Formerlyhot.com adopters will forgive the rerun from last year.

This evening I went through my warm-weather clothes, paring down my piles and getting rid of stuff that I know I won't wear again.

This is always a hard process for me. Compulsive shopper plus sub-clinical hoarder equals lots of stuff. Mix in a dollop of optimism (mental illness?) and you've got a gigantic pile of "keeper" clothes consisting of items such as a pair of leather pants that still fit but are cut in such a way...

The 10 Coolest Things about Getting Older–Wowowow.com

Wrote this for Wowowow.com–enjoy!

09/20/2010 12:00 am

Life

10 Cool Things No One Tells You About Getting Older

Author Stephanie Dolgoff reveals why aging is actually fun.

I've got two little kids, so the words "When you're older" come flying out of my mouth several times a day. It's one of those "mom phrases" that used to frustrate the hell out of me when my own mother used it, so I swore that I never would. And yet here I am doing it: "You can get your ears pierced when you're older." "When...

Adventures in Book Whoring, chapter 3,436

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Today's Today Show clip! Lots of fun.

Are you Formerly Fit?

Some Formerlies are good to leave behind. A few of mine I'm glad I left in the backseat of the figurative taxi of time: Formerly Bulimic, Formerly a People-pleaser, Formerly Overly Malleable. But there are things you never want to stop being, and you want to do what you can to hang onto them. If you're Formerly Fit, for instance, you can definitely move yourself once again in the direction of fit, if it's worth it to you. (That's the thing about being a Formerly–you do it or you don't, but...

Pretty cool, right?

An option is just that–an option–but this is still plenty exciting. This from Deadline Hollywood.

ABC Hot On 'My Formerly Hot Life' MemoirBy NELLIE ANDREEVA | Friday September 17, 2010 @ 5:00am PDTComments (1) Email This |  Print This | 

[image error]Book adaptations continued their hot streak this buying season with another TV deal. After interest from several networks, ABC has nabbed the rights to author Stephanie Dolgoff's bestselling memoir My Formerly Hot Life for a potential half-hour...

Laugh, write, repeat.

Val and Carla after my reading at Barnes & Noble Wednesday

If there's one thing I've learned in my 20 or so years of writing for women's magazines is that if you're going through something, odds are terrific that millions of other women are having that same experience, which means you're not insane. Or it means we're all insane, in which case it doesn't really matter, does it? We can all just sit around having a coffee and getting mani-pedis and validate one another's insanity so that it...