Authentic Speech

Check out a feisty blog, Inventing the Rest of My Life, on the More magazine website.

More is an excellent magazine aimed at women over forty. I think the More articles would be of interest to a much larger group, but then I also read a number of men's magazines, and, more shocking, some aimed at 20-something fashionistas: "Drew, Ashlee, Kelis... share their secret shopping lists...," etc.

"Inventing the Rest of My Life" is written by 65 year-old Suzanne Braun Levine. "Recently," she writes, "an invitation to speak to a large national women's organization was withdrawn when the planners visited my Web site and saw the phrase 'the fuck-you fifties.'" That's the lead-in to her discussion of "appropriate" language and behavior.

I love her conclusion: "What I hope to see is not that the coarse language becomes commonplace, but that we get to the point that we Second Adulthood women don't have to call attention to ourselves in order to be noticed. Then each of us can find the words to speak out in her own voice and on her own terms." That's my wish for everybody.