About this item
When men stop making lecherous catcalls and Spanx get comfortable in your lingerie drawer, when marketers target you for Activia instead of $200 premium denim, when you have to start wearing makeup to get that "Im not wearing any makeup" glow and are "maamed" outside the Deep South, it may dawn on you that somehow you have crossed an invisible line: You are not the young, relevant, in-the-mix woman you used to be. But neither are you old, or even what you think of as middle-aged. You are no longer what you were, but not quite sure what you are. . Stephanie Dolgoff calls this stage of a womans life "Formerly," the state of mind and body she herself is in now: Her roaring twenties are behind her, but shes not in hot flash territory, either. My Formerly Hot Life,showcasing Dolgoffs wacky and wise observations about this little-discussed flux time, demonstrates that becoming a Formerly is intensely poignant if youre paying attention, and hilarious even if youre not. From fashion to friendship, beauty to body image, married sex to single searching, mothering to careering (or both) , Dolgoff reveals the upside to not being forever 21 - even as you watch the things you once thought were so essential to a happy life go the way of the cassette tape. You may be formerly thin, formerly cool, formerly (seemingly) carefree, formerly cutting-edge, but in reading My Formerly Hot Life you are reminded that you are finally more comfortable in your skin (formerly obsessed with your weight) , finally following your instincts (formerly ruled by the opinions of others) , and finally happy with where you are (formerly focused on the guy or job you thought would take you where you thought you should be) . While you may no longer be as close to the media-machine-generated idea of fabulous, you can do many, many more things fabulously.. Wildly entertaining and inspiring, My Formerly Hot Lifeproves that once you let yourself laugh about that which is passing, life is richer, more fun, and more satisfying. Despite what youre led to believe, growing older most certainly means growing better.
About the Author
Stephanie Dolgoff has been writing and editing for magazines and newspapers since she graduated from college in 1989. Her first book, MY FORMERLY HOT LIFE: DISPATCHES FROM JUST THE OTHER SIDE OF YOUNG, based on her blog Formerlyhot.com, is due out in September of 2010.Stephanie is a contributing editor at Parenting. Before that, she was a contributing editor at Real Simple, health director and features director at SELF magazine, and prior to that, executive editor and senior contributing editor at Glamour. She's written for "O" The Oprah Magazine, Fitness, Health, Parents, Redbook, Seventeen, CosmoGirl, Ladies Home Journal, Prevention, American Photo, and many others. For five years she authored a monthly sex column for teens, Ask Anything, for the now defunct YM magazine. Her articles have also appeared in the New York Times and the New York Post.Stephanie has won several awards for her writing, and a section she helped to oversee, SELF magazine's 2005 Breast Cancer Handbook, won the ASME award in the category of personal service. Her work has also been published in several books, including The Elephant in the Playroom (Penguin), and The Enlightened Bracketologist (Bloomsbury). One of her essays appeared in Behind the Bedroom Door (Delacorte), in 2008.To view a few of her television appearances, click hereWhen she's not working at Health, Stephanie is cranking out Formerly Hot, and looking for new and innovative ways to get the word out about her book.Stephanie was born and raised in New York City, where she still lives with her husband and twin girls. She attended Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT.
