Liz Claiborne: Super DARE-ing Woman!

I am so excited that my book is about to be published at the end of the month, hopefully in time for my birthday on June 19^th.

Entitled appropriately “Get DARE From Here™!” it the result of much research into the desires and achievements of women over 40 in our culture─ our dreams, motivations, and issues. In my research I came across inspiring stories of exceptionally passionate women over 40, some obscure, some famous, but they all had powerful traits in common. They all bravely applied their energy and leadership to empower themselves and their families, the companies where they worked, and their surrounding communities and society at large. A few good examples are Jean Nidetch (founder of Weight Watchers), Mary Kay Ash, Liz Claiborne, Julia Child, and you may know many more.

From the model set by over-40 women such as these, I devised the  DARE system, laid out in my new book,  to inspire, guide and challenge all you brainy, gutsy, passionate women over 40 who crave or need to pursue, develop, or lead something more fulfilling in your personal lives, careers, or communities.

You can Get DARE From Hereâ„¢!

Seems there’s less to TREASURE than almost any other year in recent memory.  (Unless your memory is lodged firmly back in the 1920s.)

Well, cheer up and get DARE-Borne! There are so many people, places, and things to TREASURE from 2009, but if you think this is going to be a Hallmark cards/American Greetings moment, think again.  Shit flies, pigs happen, many lie sleepless in their battle.

Here’s my take on why it’s important to DARE TREASURE your life, your career (the one you have, had, or want to have; it’s your experience that counts), and the fact that there are geeky, cheeky scientists who study what constitutes true happiness. 

TREASURE the comic relief provided by those who obviously don’t know or appreciate their TREASURES until someone else enlightens them:

• Tiger “The Cheetah” Woods - pouncing on so many cougars and cobras and chick-lets that it’s hard to fathom how he could keep score on anything else.  For us making less than millions of dollars per year, there are so many reasons to TREASURE one’s existing spouse or significant other, or one’s solitude, if that’s your TREASURE, and none of those reasons have anything to do with multimillion dollar post-nuptial agreements.
• White House social secretary Desiree Rogers – so narcissistic she couldn’t take her eyes off her own reflection in the Potomac swamp long enough to protect the real glitterati she was hired to serve.  TREASURE New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd (deliciously DARE-ING over 40), who wrote the most biting, hilarious and dead-on excoriation of the poseurs and “arrivistes” that swarm Washington at any given time in any administration’s tenure.
• Senate Finance chair and Montana Democrat Max Baucus – who nominated his state office director (a.k.a.: chief coat warmer, favorite foot massager, and main martini shaker) for the job of U.S. attorney in Montana.  Obviously the senator took literally his name’s similarity to Bacchus—god of wine, women, and song—while asserting that he was separated from his wife when he began the affair with his staffer.  (Pun intended.)  I worked in D.C. for two long solid and sordid years, long enough to know that there were always far more pelvises grinding than there were noses to the grindstone.  TREASURE the fact that you’re not working in a job that requires you to accompany members of Congress to cocktail parties, take an accurate head count of the “guests,” and then hit them up the next week for thousands of dollars in “support.”

TREASURE the example of these women (strong characters, all of them) who turned the lemons that life hurled their way into rain and dough – building far bigger rainmaking machines than they might have, had their lives been “perfect”:

• Grandma Moses, who began painting in her 70s, after arthritis forced her to give up her career as an embroiderer.  For the next thirty years (yes, that’s 3-0, you read that correctly) until her death at the age of 101, she painted dozens of masterpieces, many of them depicting the rural scenes that grace sentimental holiday cards.  She exhibited all over the world, and her work has sold many times over for thousands and thousands of dollars.
• Mary Kay Ash, who started her eponymous cosmetics company at the age of 45, after being passed over for a promotion in favor of a younger man she had helped train.  Her how-to book for women turned into the business plan for Mary Kay Cosmetics, which might well make your holiday shopping list this year.  In 2008, the company had more than 1.7 million consultants worldwide and sales in excess of $2.2 billion.  Ash died at 85 years old, seven years ago, enjoying for many productive years the TREASURES that her midlife DARE-ing led her to create.
• Meryl Streep, the undisputed leading female actor of our generation, is redefining what is sexy, smart, and DARE-ing in women over 40.  She’s portraying characters who are exuberant, intelligent, and not afraid to stumble in reinventing themselves after a certain age or after adversity hits their lives.  Earlier this year, Streep’s astonishing portrayal of Julia Child—another DARE-ing woman over 40 who did not even publish her first great work until she was 49 years old!—brought tears of joy and recognition to millions of women who saw the movie about Child’s rise (screenplay written by another DARE-ing woman over 40, Nora Ephron).  Now Streep’s starring in “It’s Complicated,” a romantic comedy with Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin where her character, a “dumped” divorcee, is so hot, even the commercials might make some men blush.
• Susan Sarandon, another DARE-ing actor who has taken on roles that might make Streep think twice.  In “The Lovely Bones,” the new movie release based on the breakthrough bestseller by Alice Sebold, Sarandon plays a big-haired, chain-smoking, whiskey-toting grandmother coping with the murder of her young granddaughter at the hands of a sexual predator.  Like Streep, Sarandon is not at all afraid to laugh at herself and invite others to laugh even harder.

TREASURE the fact that, in the midst of all the turmoil, trauma, and triviality leeching from the louses, losers, and lechers that generate our yucks (fleeting as they might be this year), there are brilliant economists who are finally focusing on what really makes us happy – besides money, that is.

• The so-called “happiness economists”—Richard Easterlin, Bruno Frey, Richard Layard, and Andrew Oswald, among them—have contributed voluminous research on the so-called “Happiness Index.”   Such an index could become a more reliable measure of a nation’s wealth than GDP or GNP.  If only!
• The bottom line on TREASURES, according to the happiness economists, is this:  After a certain level, money doesn’t really make us happy.  Even the rich and famous agonize over whether it’s wiser to be sexless, reckless, or feckless, and 2009 has proven to be the year when even they don’t seem very happy.

So, yes, your retirement plan exploded faster than that bag of 100-calorie popcorn you left too long in your microwave while you were surfing the Web for your next job.

So what if your 25-year-old son and his newly minted MBA diploma have moved back into the room you had transformed into your gym?  And, true, lemons are still rolling off American assembly lines faster than we can pour lemonade into their gas tanks.

But just look at the dubious TREASURES of the rich and famous: Tiger Woods (more women than ever!), Desiree Rogers (more leopard stilettos and hotshot close-ups than Michelle!), and Max Baucus (old Bacchus never had it so good!).

Do we really want to be like them?  Probably not, and that’s enough to at least make us smile.