Why Old People Dress Poorly

I just realized why so many older people are poorly dressed. It's because they're Crew, not Talent.

"Talent" represents the shiny centerpiece:

Talent looks like a million bucks:

"Crew", by contrast, looks like shlubs:

Talent relies on good genes, excellent skin products, and heaps of chutzpah. Little actual talent is required (not to say it never appears). Just the familiar combination of ambition and shamelessness.

Crew is a whole other universe. Crew knows how to actually focus cameras and point microphones. Crew needs skills. Talent, if you will. Crew actually does stuff.

Talent seems like "somebody,” even if they're nobody. Crew seems like nobody even if they're somebody. That’s the underlying distinction, right there.

I was Talent for a long while, but deliberately switched over to Crew seventeen years ago. I'm immensely happier, though the switch disappointed people. I appear to have given up. I once appeared in media a lot, wrote for millions, played in concert halls and nightclubs, and was the impressario of a famous web site. I coulda been a contender!

I've actually accomplished more this way, but it's been easy to miss, because the hallmark of Crew is anonymity. "Talent", by contrast, scintillates! I'm not scintillating. Merely talented. Which is deprecated, because seeming talented is vastly more impressive than being talented. This is not a bitter grievance, just a clear-eyed assessment of our world as it is. Earth, if you examine it at all closely, is a poseur planet to its very core.

Most singers become singers because they want to be singers, not because they want to sing.

Those ambitious to actually do a thing - rather than to be acclaimed as thing-doers - find that Doing requires single-minded devotion, leaving little juice for Seeming. That's why frumpy Ron Howard on a movie set looks like a pimple compared to glorious Audrey Hepburn, though he's a creative mastermind while she's just swanning around in an evening gown. Isn't it striking how his vastly greater power and accomplishment are so invisible to the eye?

If you work with the rabid commitment necessary to create something truly worthwhile, you can't divide your attention by simultaneously stoking an image. That's a whole separate pursuit, where you'd compete with specialists who've devoted their lives to image cultivation. That's their accomplishment! As I wrote in my posting on Intelligence:

The most impressive intellects are not always fast or flashy. Not, in other words, impressive-seeming. In fact, most truly intelligent people I've met haven't been very impressive-seeming, because if you've got the goods, you tend not to waste effort on the "seeming" end of it. Watch out for seemers!

It never fails to blow people's minds when they learn that I - the guileless shlub before them - founded Chowhound. I once assumed the startled gasps gave testimony to my loftiness. Nah. It's just flabbergastment that this doof could pull off anything the least bit remarkable.

Did you imagine I'd arrive via helicopter with a security team, sneering disdainfully at "the little people"? Having sweated blood to build and run and sell a beloved operation, am I compelled to sweat even more to cultivate the image of someone who built/ran/sold a beloved operation? Am I incomplete until I’ve looped back to learn to pose as a person in "my position"? If I did, I'd face stiff competition from Talent, who can spew mounds of gravitas on command. They're great at it! How could I come anywhere close? I'd do a comparatively crappy imitation of someone like me!

So I don't walk around with ascot and top hat and a frozen haughty grimace of high-handed superiority. I dress comfortable and act normal. Just like my mechanic, who can rebuild transmissions (one of the hardest feats a human being can attempt), I'm proudly Crew.

And it's worked beautifully. The more deeply I've released my Talent aspirations, letting go of all pretension, the more freely talent flows. I've gurgled up fresh credible answers to most of the mysteries that have absorbed my insatiable curiosity. And self-cured numerous incurable health problems. And learned to not just appreciate, but prepare delicious food. And found peace (by opting out of infatuation with "What's Missing"). And bottled lightning by recognizing the full power of shifting perspective; of reframing.

Your elderly aunt Ethel, shlumpy in her sweat suit and waffle slippers, may not have a litany of accomplishments. But she does boast one towering attainment: higher perspective on the shiny spectacle. This marks her as Crew. And that, in turn, explains her dress code. One dresses up - fronts - to make an impression. Talent is compelled to suit up and thrust itself into consideration in order to market its brand. ABC! Always be closing!



As you get older, you begin to transcend that desperate urgency. You shake free of obsession over the (as described here) "ever-vanishing prize no one's ever actually won or seen or can really even describe." To observers, you appear to collapse, decline, resign. The ravages of old age!

Jack Lemmon's character understood some things Alec Baldwin's character did not. I was once on team Baldwin, but now I'm a proud Lemmon.

The image of an aging starlet pushing a shopping cart through Walmart strikes a deep cord of sadness; of shabby diminishment. Yet unless you're prone to peering at yourself on a mental silver screen accompanied by sad violins, it doesn't feel sad in the least. Crew happily shops at Walmart! Hey, why the hell wouldn't we?

But some people remain forever preoccupied with the vague prize just beyond the horizon. Lacking higher perspective, shallow posing continues to seem like the only game there is, so they remain Talent - dressing quite well! - until the bitter end. Nothing wrong with that. It's a choice as valid as any other.

Me? I'm fine at Walmart. The alternative would strike my deep cord of sadness. But, hey, I'm Crew! I do stuff! Who has time for shallow pretension?

This, I think, is what old age is about. I've reached these shores a tad before my time, but that's okay. I've always been an early-arriver.

And this explains why I don't wear natty sport coats with matching jaunty straw hats. I'll steer clear of the Roger Stone endgame. Now, that guy is Talent!