Most magazines are no longer relevant to me, despite the fact I subscribe to eighteen each month. As a female Baby Boomer, I find it hard to source much in the wide, wide world of media that really rocks my world any more. In fact, with death of MORE magazine last spring and the cancellation of my favourite radio shows (What She Said on SiriusXM and The Judith Regan Show also on Sirius XM—damn you to hell, Sirius), combined with the absence of quality movies that appeal to our demographic, it’s getting increasingly difficult for Boomer Broads to get our jollies. Nonetheless, I keep subscribing to various media in the vain hope of finding a tiny thread I can connect to.
Thus, I waited patiently for the annual September issue of Vogue magazine. At a hefty eight hundred glossy, seductive pages, I always hope to find just a teeny tiny bit of content that warrants the cost of my subscription. I even took the precaution of warning my mail carrier a couple of days ahead of time that its arrival was imminent and he should either start working out or plan to hire a fork lift to hike it up into my mailbox. Today it arrived. In fact, it was such an event, my carrier personally drove his truck up to my front door, rang my doorbell and I had to sign for it. “You did warn me”, he said.
I’ve now had a chance to give it a quick once-over and thought I’d give you my immediate first impressions. It’s artistic; it’s colourful eye candy; it’s inspiring to someone, surely, but, alas, that someone is not me, your regular old-school Baby Boomer. That’s not a criticism, just a fact. Their demographic is obviously rich, tall, thin, trust-fund young things who have lifestyles and bank accounts worlds apart from my own. Unwearable clothes at unaffordable prices are modeled on genetically freakish young women in incongruent backgrounds. Praise be to darling ninety-five-year-old Iris Apfel who appeared at the end on page 785, like an afterthought thrown out to those of us with more than two decades under our belts. She’s the model for Macy’s new Iris Apfel line of clothing under the INC brand. Will definitely check that one out.
In cruising other media, I have to thank my friend Margaret for recommending Grace and Frankie with Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin. It airs exclusively on Netflix and is a lot of fun. The two main characters are the ex-wives of attorneys played by Martin Sheen and Sam Waterson who after several decades of marriage announce they want their professional relationship in law to include a gay marriage to each other. Grace and Frankie are rather overly caricatured with Fonda as the perfect, icy corporate wife and Tomlin as her bohemian, art-teaching, pot-smoking nemesis. After being tossed aside by their respective husbands, fate has thrown them together, along with their four realistically imperfect off-spring. Grace & Frankie is magically written with plenty of references Boomer women will relate to including invisibility, dating again after being out of the market for decades, physical deterioration and overall irrelevance. Even though some of the plots are a bit overwrought and the gay husbands too campy, you’ll laugh out loud at some of the dialogue and nod your head in empathy for their challenges.
My challenge now is to find my niche somewhere. There must be a website, magazine, radio show, movie, television program somewhere that acknowledges that Boomer women exist. Zoomer magazine published by the Canadian Association of Retired People (CARP) is obviously relevant. If you’re aware of a worthwhile media source that Boomer women can relate to, please let me know, before I completely lose my eyesight and hearing and no longer care. Praise be with you.
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