Special Guest Jenna McCarthy – Author of I’ve Still Got It…I Just Can’t Remember Where I Put It: Awkwardly True Tales from the Far Side of Forty

10 Tips for Surviving Middle Age
by Jenna McCarthy

I don’t know about you, but when I hear the words “middle age,” I immediately conjure images of pot bellies and sensible shoes and floral-print blouses. But forty is the new thirty! Or is fifty the new thirty? I’m pretty sure chard is the new kale. Anyway, whatever the saying is, ours is definitely not our mother’s midlife. (Imagine never having to envy your friends’ frozen foreheads or wonder if you’re too old to wear skinny jeans. We could just chain-smoke unfiltered Camels all day and watch soaps in our big old polyester Mrs. Roper dresses. How awesome would that be?) Today’s midlife can be a confusing minefield of mixes messages and ridiculous rules. Here’s how to navigate it:

Forget about running with bulls. You don’t really have to do this.Oh, you have to act like you want or plan to—by putting it on your Bucket List™, which apparently is a midlife requisite or rite of passage, but I’m pretty sure nobody ever checks those things. If pressed, you can always say you did it, and it was really f*cking scary/exhilarating/rewarding. Done.

Dress your age. According to the internet, this means anyone over forty should avoid shorts, cowboy boots, miniskirts, ripped jeans, sweats, sequins, zebra stripes and low-cut necklines. (*I can only assume the internet means all together because what the hell is left?)

Purge your house of magnifying mirrors. God is starting to take away your close-up vision for a reason, honey. Do not thwart Her efforts with this Tool of the Devil. Everything looks better now from a fuzzy distance, ideally softly-lit by candlelight and a slight buzz. Trust me on this.

If you hate your kids’ music, act like you love it. Bust that Macklemore all day, every day. The minute you deem something cool, it will be automatically branded “douche-y,” “lame” or both and removed from the rotation. Sweet silence! (Too bad our ears don’t go as quickly as our eyes.)

Don’t have an affair. Just don’t. It’s cliché and stupid and messy and expensive and let me remind you, would almost certainly necessitate getting naked in front of somebody totally new, which is a move best played only as a very-last resort.

Discover self-tanner. Picture yourself in a pair of unlined, sheer, skin-tight white pants. Sit with that image for a sec. Now mentally take them off and slip into a pair of sleek, perfectly-fitting black slacks. That’s what a nice fake tan does for your naked bod.

Announce your every intention. If you’re like me, fifty-seven times a day you march purposely into another room to do, retrieve or accomplish something ostensibly Very Important… only to find yourself having no idea what you came in there for. I have now started narrating my actions (“going to get milk… looking for the remote control… making sure I put the lube away…”). It’s that or move to a one-room studio apartment. Your call.

Quit complaining about how tired you are. It’s exhausting and nobody wants to hear it anymore. We’re all tired. Embrace it. Tired is the new black!

Spanx. I think this one is self-explanatory.

If you think you drink too much, you probably do. That’s not really a tip, sorry. Wait, what was I saying?