Happy Blogaversary to me; or I can't believe it's been eight years.

You know, back in 2004, when I first started blogging--eight years ago on August 10th, in fact--blogging felt far freer than it does now. Self-publishing on the internet (which is all blogging is, when you think about it) was a new frontier. But there were a few unspoken rules.

The first, of course, was that you weren't supposed to blog under your real name. Hence Poppy Buxom, a/k/a Poppisima (a variation provided by my pal Joke--and that's not his real name, either.) It wasn't a privacy issue so much ... well, OK, a little bit of it was for privacy. But picking a blogging name was like picking a new handle for an email account: it was a chance to be creative. To play with your identity.

Also, bloggers started off as writers. Maybe not published writers, but blogging was about the words. You could put up post after post with no photographs, and nobody would complain. Can you imagine? (No photos in this post--I'm kicking it old school.)

Another rule--at least amongst the thirty-something female bloggers I was reading and/or emulating--is that you were supposed to convey a sort of artsy, slackerish image. This is probably because blogging was invented by Generation X, which has been chronically underemployed for decades now. (I realize this is supposed to be the Baby Boomers' fault, but don't look at me; I was a slacker before the term was invented.)

Another rule was honesty. You could be as confessional as you wanted. We were encouraged, nay, expected to blog about our depression, infertility, and marital woes. Which meant that a lot of bloggers were constantly whining about their problems, personal and financial.

Later we got BlogHer and advertising and domain names and twitter and Facebook pages and giveaways and sponsored posts and search engine optimization and whatnot. People started blogging for a living. But way back when, it was pretty much me talking to myself, in the company of a small circle of similarly-pseudonym-ed cronies.

Because of the general poor-me 30-something zeitgeist, I worked hard to conceal the amount of privilege I enjoyed. After all, some of the biggest names in what would be called  mommyblogging were struggling financially. It seemed in bad taste to blog about my latest Mother's Day shopping spree at Neiman Marcus when bloggers I admired were putting tip jars on their blogs.

And really, what was with all the shopping, anyway? Was I completely shallow?

I suppose I was. And am. A better woman wouldn't get so much pleasure out of amassing large amounts of high end crappe. But I am no better than I am, so I do. And I gloat over my pretties like Gollum with his Precious.

This is why I stopped blogging about my personal life, and became a beauty and style blogger for middle-aged women. A lot of my real-life friends read my blog, and I was fine with that. But the game had to change when the kids at my kids' school discovered my blog.

I didn't want to stop blogging, but it behooved me to find a different subject. Something that didn't revolve around my kids. Something that wouldn't embarrass them. Something that would bore the pants off the playground bullies. Something I knew really well, like ... makeup. 

Now, I realize that as we age, makeup has diminishing returns.  I can spend 20 minutes putting on primer, foundation, concealer, highlighter, contour, blush, eyeshadow, eye liner, mascara, brow color, lipstick and lipgloss, and my 15-year-old daughter will swipe on some lip balm and look 100 times more beautiful than I do.

But age has some compensations. When I was a teenager, I lived and breathed fashion magazines. Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, Glamour, Mademoiselle, and Ingenue. (Does anyone else remember those last two?) They were my bibles. I couldn't afford to buy anything in them, but I pored over them.

I knew that one day I'd come up with the money, and I'd go to New York, shop at Bonwit Teller, get my hair done by Kenneth, and eat lunch at La Côte Basque.

Oh, well. I guess it's too late for any of that. But by God, I can still buy Chanel makeup.

You may be wondering, what's with the navel-gazing, Poppy? It was Perilously's Pale entry into the Most Expensive Face competition.

Anyone who's hung around here for any length of time realizes that I love high-end department store makeup. For me, makeup is a luxury, and I really prefer it to feel luxurious. I'm not opposed to drugstore brands, but the packaging rarely thrills me.

No, I long for the stuff you buy at Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom, and Saks. I love the the advertising campaigns, the way the department stores set up the counters, the packaging, the loud snap of the compacts when you open and shut them, and those smells. I love it all.

But I still feel a little guilty about my deep interest in such a shallow subject, not to mention the vast sums I spend on what is, after all, just makeup.

And that's why I get a vicarious thrill out of reading about how someone else spent over $3,000 on one day's face products.

With my Garnier moisturizer, L'Oreal mascara, and Maybelline concealer, I'm nowhere near that figure. And when the blogging sans-culottes go looking for beauty bloggers to take to the guillotine, I might just squeak by.

The Beauty Boomer Manifesto

Hello, invisible internet friends!

I have a confession to make. I'm older than you are.

I'm 53, and at 53, I have to work twice as hard and spend twice the money and time to look half as good as I did when I was 27. Well, I have two options; I can continue to fight the good fight, or I can give up.

I plan to keep fighting.

I plan to keep fighting because I feel better about myself when I do. I plan to keep fighting because it makes my husband and children feel better about me. Most important, I plan to keep fighting because it shows the world that I'm still in the game. My glory days are not over; they're just beginning.

Like it or not, people judge you by your looks--and they do it all the time.

One of the things they judge is your age. Another is your perceived level of hipness.

Here's the deal: age and hipness do not have to co-relate. Perceived age is the combination of the impression made by your size, silhouette, complexion, coloring, grooming, clothes, accessories, and makeup. Some of these things can be easily fixed. Others you have to live with. But hipness? Looking in the know? Can easily be tweaked. And that makes you come across as younger.

It takes work. You have to leave your comfort zone. Because let's face it; your comfort zone is frumpy. It's the same hair style for 20 years. It's the overcoat you bought in 1995 that still has plenty of wear in it. It's glasses from 2004.

And frumpiness sneaks up on you. Like age, a lack of hipness doesn't happen overnight. You get busy with other things, and you gradually lose touch. You look up and the 90s--the decade you were hoping to catch up on because babies and graduate school made you miss most of them--are already being revived.

Now, I may be a recovering frump, but at least I've developed some taste and discrimination over the years. Forty years of reading fashion magazines tends to have that effect. In this blog, I'm planning on sharing what I've learned.

I also want to find out what you've learned. What has worked; what hasn't. Some of you posted comments back when I first starting moving in this direction. I've got several posts in draft that are dealing with these issues, so please keep the comments coming!

Elsewhere:

Poppy at BlogHer BeautyHacks:

Shimmery Makeup: Not Just for Teens

Nail Polish Trends for Spring, 2010

Upcoming:

I. The Five Cs of keeping your look fresh:

1. Cull
2. Coordinate
3. Cost -- How to prioritize
4. Change
5. Compromise -- When a fashion from your past is resurrected

II. 30/10--a month-long series of posts--10 minutes to looking younger.

1. Find a MLBB lippie
2. Update your eyebrows
3. Establish a beauty triage
4. Curl your lashes
5. Perk up the girls
6. Exfoliate
7. Rethink your jewelry
8. Make friends with concealer
9. Loop on a scarf
10. Lighten up, Francis
11. Make new friends
12. But keep the old
13. Wear a camisole
14. Wear blusher
15. Bump up your nails
16. Rethink your hair products
17. Be a brownie
18. Grow
19. Be true to yourself
20. Think like a decorator
21. Back away from black
22. Blot, don't powder
23. Find a younger mentor
24. Be all wet
25. Break some rules
26. Bags are the new shoes
27. The legs are the last to go
28. Move on
29. Use your rear-view mirror
30. Play

Blog365 Fail and other updates

• On Monday evening, I returned from my second out-of-town jaunt in two weeks. This time it was a choir trip to NYC. (Frankly, I don't know how you road warriors do it. OMG the laundry alone is killing me.)

• I'm a Blog365 wash out. We had a group registration with the hotel, and the front desk was always so busy that I didn't register a credit card with the hotel until Sunday. This means I couldn't access the wireless until Sunday night.

• Also, we were incredibly busy. The kids and I sang services at the Church of the Heavenly Rest (5/90th) and the Cathedral of St. John the Divine (113th and Amsterdam Avenue.)

• After rehearsal on Saturday, the four of us ate lunch at Centolire. Then my daughter and I got our nails done and shopped our way down Madison Avenue, with stops at Olive and Bette's and Betsey Johnson.

• That night we went out to dinner and then to Lincoln Center to see South Pacific. Which was fantastic.

• My daughter looks adorable in her new loot (black puffy satin skirt from Betsey Johnson; black Uggs from Olive and Bette's)

• I look far less adorable in my Betsey Johnson loot:



• Yet I'm wearing it even as I type.

• Makes you wonder how I have the nerve to dish out advice on beauty and style for baby boomers, doesn't it?

• But I'm going to, anyway. More of that anon.