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Tiffany Hansen: This is All Of It from WNYC. I'm Tiffany Hansen, filling in for Alison Stewart. A new memoir reflects on the lessons Accidental Icon blog creator Lyn Slater learned in her 60s as she transitioned from her life as a professor of social work to model, writer, cultural influencer. The book is titled How to Be Old: Lessons in Living Boldly from the Accidental Icon. In it, Lyn writes about her style evolution, her love for vintage clothing, and what it's like to sit in the front row at a fashion show.

She also delves into what self-expression through style looks like and what it means to get older. In her book, Lyn writes, "There is one aspect of getting older that is under our control, how we choose to think about our age, what we think about being old, and forms the way we feel about ourselves as people." How to Be Old is on shelves today. Author Lyn Slater joins us to discuss. Hi, Lyn.

Lyn Slater: Hi, Tiffany.

Tiffany Hansen: Welcome. First, I want to start with a definition. How do you define old? We hear a lot of people say age is just a number. What does old equal?

Lyn Slater: I am a real fan of good old dictionary definitions, and so if you look up the word old, it says very neutrally having lived a long time. For me, that is a privilege, and that's how I like to think of the word old.

Tiffany Hansen: When did you cross that threshold?

Lyn Slater: That's an interesting question because I actually never thought of myself as being old until I became the Accidental Icon and the media and society started telling me I was.

Tiffany Hansen: I do want to get into that, how you were portrayed by the media when you really started taking on a life in social media. I'm curious how that being labeled as old made you feel about yourself.

Lyn Slater: I'm a real rebellious person, and so I did not accept that identity. As the book goes on, a lot of people are focusing on the early part of the book when I was Accidental Icon. For me, the real story is when I decided to stop being her. A big part of that was how I was being described in the media in a way that felt like a stereotype and was very ageist. That led me to say, I'm stepping off and I am going to write my own book about what it means to be old and reclaim my narrative about what that actually means.

Tiffany Hansen: You mentioned the stereotypes that fly around, not just the internet, pretty much everywhere, about what it means to be old, what old people are. Talk to us a little bit about those. What are the main misconceptions that you take issue with?

Lyn Slater: I think right now when I first started in the early 2010s, I think me being shown as an older woman in the world of fashion was transgressive. I think over time like anything else, society doubles back and says, "Okay, we're going to put you back in the box that you belong." A few years ago, there started to be a lot of news stories that started to talk about what they called Instagramers, senior influencers, and putting anyone who was older with gray hair, who was expressing themselves on social media into those categories.

I think that in the early days, we had to be very, very positive about what it meant to be old because there were so many negative stories. I think we've gone too far, and like many other things in our culture right now, we have these two representations of age that are very polarizing. I think on one hand you have the decline narrative where we're going to be disabled and depressed and have dementia and be a burden on our family and very dependent and ruining everything for the generations behind us.

Now you have this other person who's being represented who is ageless, highly resourced, very fit, very hot, running marathons at 90, totally independent. I think the vast majority of older people are in the middle. Those are probably 3% on either extreme, but the vast amount of us being old are what I call, and a friend of mine, Elizabeth White calls the hidden middle.

Tiffany Hansen: Lyn, before we get too much farther down this road here, I want to invite our listeners into the conversation. Listeners, do you follow Icon Accidental on Instagram? Did you read the blog? Do you have questions for Lyn Slater about what it means to be old, about vintage clothing? All of it. Let us know. 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. You can also text that number, and you can reach out to us if you're on Instagram right now, or any social media platform @allofitwnyc.

Lyn, you mentioned the stereotypes around people with gray hair. I'm wondering if you see a difference between the way older men and women are treated, not only on social media, but in society at large. For example, I'll give you an example that popped to my mind. George Clooney has had salt and pepper hair for quite a long time now. Nobody really says anything about it. He looks distinguished.

We had entire conversations on social media when Andie Macdowell decided to let her hair go gray. Andie Macdowell has that famously long, curly, dark hair, now salt and pepper. There was a major difference in the way those two celebrities were treated. I'm curious your thoughts on that.

Lyn Slater: I think you summed it up that men-- although there is age discrimination in the workplace for both men and for women, but it is worse for women. I think that's how you could pretty much phrase it. Aging in many aspects is a bit harder for women. That's not to minimize the experience of men, but I think, for a man, it does get romanticized, as you said, he's so distinguished. For women it's, she's no longer young, she's not up to the standards of youth and beauty, and there's a lot of focus on our appearance as opposed to our achievements and accomplishments.

Tiffany Hansen: Is it harder because it truly is harder, or is it harder because society makes it harder?

Lyn Slater: I think it truly is higher because all of the things that affect younger women, like the wage gap, caregiving issues also impact older women. For example, I saw this recent post where it shows how motherhood impacts the wages in a very declining way for younger women. There's also evidence that because grandmothers are assuming a lot of care for their grandchildren, that some of them are losing wages because they are staying home to support their children and their caregiving. Women have this accrued challenge that continues to impact them in their older life.

Tiffany Hansen: Lyn, I want to bring a caller in, Lori in Manhattan, while we're talking about this. Good morning, Lori.

Lori: Good morning. Thank you for taking my call. I just saw the film American Fiction, and there's a conceit that this writer is being described as not Black enough, so he pretends to be a very different kind of writer and gets a great success. I was thinking about the art world. I'm a painter, and in my world, I'm not old enough at 68 because I think about people like Carmen Herrera who lived in New York all her life and gets a solo show at the Whitney at the age of 101, and then she dies at 105 or something. Those last four years must have been great, but I don't really want to wait another 20 years.

There are galleries that are basically ambulance chasers, and there's a weird thing going on whereby the politics of identity includes everybody except all of us who, if we're lucky, we'll all get old, but there's old and there's old. I knew Basquiat and Haring and everybody, but I made the mistake of staying alive and nobody's the slightest but interested in people that are working and producing in their 60s as much as if they're at death's door or just beyond it, which is very sad because you'd like to enjoy a little bit of attention. I just wanted to bring that up. I think the author is very interesting and I want to read the book.

Tiffany Hanssen: Lyn?

Lyn Slater: Yes.

Tiffany Hanssen: Any comments?

Lyn Slater: I think we're in a world of clickbait. I think that those extreme stories, whether it be a trauma story when you're young or that you've lived to be 105, that those are the stories that have that gravitational pull. It's similar to what I was saying about the two polarities. I think the challenge for us, whether we're artists or writers or older women, is how do we represent and get out into the world the stories of the hidden middle of the women who are still working and being so productive and creative and actually reinventing.

I am in touch with so many women who are 60-plus who had to put their deferred dream away in the midst of everything else they were doing in their earlier life. This is a time where they're dusting it off, taking it out of the closet, and making it happen. I think the challenge is how do we get those stories represented and letting people see the value that we add every day to our life and the people around us.

Tiffany Hanssen: We're talking with Lyn Slater about her book, How to Be Old: Lessons in Living Boldly from the Accidental Icon. Listeners, we would love to hear from you. How are you being old? That's a good question. You can call us, you can text us. 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. You can also reach us on socials @allofitwnyc. We will get to more calls in just a minute, but first, we're going to take a quick break. I'm Tiffany Hanssen for Alison Stewart.

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Tiffany Hanssen: This is All Of It from WNYC. I'm Tiffany Hansen, filling in for Allison Stewart. We are talking with Lyn Slater about her book, How to Be Old: Lessons in Living Boldly from the Accidental Icon. Lyn, I want to go right to the phones. Here we have [unintelligible 00:14:03] in Northern New Jersey. Hello, [unintelligible 00:14:08].

Speaker 4: Hi.

Tiffany Hanssen: Welcome.

Speaker 4: Thank you. This sounds like a great book, and I can't wait to get it. I just wanted to chime in and say that I have found-- I'm going to be 72 in a couple of weeks, and being my first time being old because nobody was born this way, I'm surprised at how great it's going. I'm post-work, I am post-children. I have become more myself than I was since I was a single woman. It's not to say I didn't love the in-between time, but I've found a community of artists and musicians and a place to express myself and it's extremely supportive.

I do miss the power of youthful attraction. That's a power in our society. On the other hand, I've found another power in just being myself and being free. It's a huge power, and there's a lot of support out there.

Tiffany Hanssen: Thanks, [unintelligible 00:15:02].

Speaker 4: I just wanted to add that.

Tiffany Hanssen: Thank you. Lyn, she talks about missing that power of youth a little bit. We do often hear older women specifically say, "I feel invisible now."

Lyn Slater: Right. I think--

Tiffany Hanssen: No, go ahead.

Lyn Slater: No, no. I think I have a chapter about that in my book, and at two different times during the decade that I wrote, I asked the question of my followers, "What would you like me to write about?" In the early days, it was pretty unanimous. How do you not become invisible? In the later part of the decade, a lot of women were talking about some of the pleasures of invisibility and not being the object of the male gaze and being more in control of when they were being seen and who they were seeing, being seen by, and really asking them the question, "Who do I really want to be visible to and why?"

I think that's the difference when you're focusing on appearance and youth and beauty, it becomes a very anxiety-producing question. I think if you ask yourself that question, "Who really do I want to be visible to and why?" you begin to think about the places and the people, as the caller just revealed, where you are seen and where you are visible in a way that is really life-giving and not creating anxiety about how you have to look a certain way.

Tiffany Hanssen: And to whom you are visible. We have a text here. "I'm 53, letting my hair go gray. I'm actually getting a lot of compliments on it too to my surprise." My follow-up if I could, would be compliments from whom. Is it other women, other people in your social group? Because I think that compliments can fly, but it is important to note where that recognition comes from. Yes?

Lyn Slater: Exactly.

Tiffany Hanssen: We have another text. "I'm 74 years old. I'm a performer with a group that is called Never Too Old To Play, directors in their 80s. One of our members is 97. We're working on a piece now on aging that will premiere in June." Lots of great work happening there, it sounds like. On Instagram, "I disagree with terms like anti-aging or age-defying in products, exercising, et cetera. What are we fighting? We should embrace our age." We should embrace our age. Right, Lyn?

Lyn Slater: Exactly. I think age is such a false construct. To me, it's the same but different than any other time in my life. Every decade, every year of my life, I had challenges, I had opportunities, I had losses, I had gains, I had sickness, I had health. I have learned over time through experience. I've gained a lot of skills that being old is just like any other time.

There's the same things. There's opportunities, there's challenges, sickness, health, loss, but now you have this incredible repertoire of experiences and skills and tools that you can creatively apply to the challenges. I think we're so focused on this construct of age, and we should really just think about it as how you live your life throughout the different periods that you're living in.

Tiffany Hanssen: This is a text that came in, Lyn, "Today's my 61st birthday. I applied for a promotion, resumed advocating with the local county and state officials on issues closest to my heart. I signed up for a gravel bike race in Grizzly Bear Country. I don't think I would've done that at 20, offering my skills and experience to make the world a better place." Lyn, part of your journey as the Icon Accidental was about fashion, so I don't want to leave this conversation without talking to you a little bit about style and fashion. First, how do you view style versus fashion?

Lyn Slater: Again, I always try to make it clear that I was never about fashion, I was really about using clothes and garments to express your identity and to experiment with identity. For me, style is an intensely personal thing that comes from inside of us. I think when you try to get your style from outside of you by looking, that you're always comparing and falling short. For me, it's like, "How can I use clothing to express who I am today or who I might want to play around with being today?"

It's much more like a creative material that we have access to. When you use clothing that way, it becomes part of you. One of my sayings is, the best outfit is the one that you don't even realize you're wearing.

Tiffany Hansen: Clothing and our general look, because I can remember, I don't know where I heard this or who I got this from, someone saying to me, well, old women shouldn't have long hair, for example. There are a lot of shoulds and should nots that have been placed on older women, specifically older women, about what they should wear and shouldn't wear. How do you get around that?

Lyn Slater: Oh, I think we're still working off a conception of older women that was more like my mother and grandmother. I came up in the '70s. I was a young woman in the '70s, and we were rebelling against everything. We were breaking every rule there was; free love, cohabitating. We did all of that. For people to think that we're going to start following rules because we're old, I think is a misnomer. I don't find a lot of women my age who pay attention to those rules.

I think people need to really get their head around what my generation of aging looks like, and it certainly is not like my mother or my grandmother, who would probably follow those rules.

Tiffany Hansen: Well, let's talk about somebody like Iris Apfel, who we just lost, who was over 100. She certainly didn't dress like my grandmother. She embraced her own personal style and was loved for it.

Lyn Slater: Yes.

Tiffany Hansen: What was unique about her?

Lyn Slater: She was in a creative business, and she was a creative person. She did use clothes in the way that I like to use them and think about them as a creative person, a material to really express who you are. She was very much of the same sensibility as I am, that style is a very personal thing and that it represents you and should come from within you. She surrounded herself in her work with beautiful textiles and traveled the world, and you can see that reflected in the way that she chose to dress.

Tiffany Hansen: From Instagram, "I'm 63 and finally living a life full of making. I don't care about who thinks what. It's for me and my heart. I'm not afraid to make mistakes or have failure along the way. I love myself now more than ever." Part of what you talk about in your book is learning from your mistakes.

Lyn Slater: Yes.

Tiffany Hansen: What have you learned about learning from your mistakes?

Lyn Slater: I think if you look at life and the things that come before you in an experimental way, that you're always going to be making mistakes. It's part of the process. If you're comfortable with them, it really is a message to you that you might have to pivot or this road is not working. I was actually listening to a great podcast the other day on the London Review of Books, and an author had written a book called Giving Up. It's along the line of being fine with making mistakes because he was saying we have such a meaning attached to the words giving up, I'm giving up.

He said something very profound that the giving up very often is going to actually result in the success that you really wanted to have. I see mistakes in that same kind of vein.

Tiffany Hansen: We've been talking with Lyn Slater, the Accidental Icon, about her new book, How to Be Old: Lessons in Living Boldly from the Accidental Icon. That book on shelves today. Lyn, thank you so much for joining us.

Lyn Slater: Thanks for having me.

 

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