It's a Girl!

I've gotten some great compliments from women lately. A co-worker whom I see only once every couple months asked me the other day if I had new glasses. "Nope." "Your face looks different," she insisted. So we gabbed for a good long while about my diet and exercise regimen. A friend of mine told me yesterday how young I was looking these days. Incredible compliments, I tell you --- I'm so grateful. The women around you can build up your spirits and your resolve in a wonderful way.

But it's the reaction of men that has been the zinger.

It started on the street one morning as I was walking to my office building. A middle-aged man looked directly at me and gave me an appreciative smile. It's probably the first time that's happened to this former frump in several years and it caught me completely off-guard! (I think it must have been the red lipstick.) The men I work with are all too dear and polite - and much older than I am - to even breathe a word to me about my having lost weight, but some of them smile in a new way when they see me lately. Kind of in a curious, appreciative, it's-nice-to-see-a-pretty-woman-around-here kind of way. Like they'd like to ask what I've been doing with myself, but there's a rule in the Book of Masculine Etiquette that a gentleman never brings up weight around a lady.

It's not that I'm interested in what any of these particular men think of my looks, but it has been a strange and novel experience for me even to sample that kind of admiration again. I'd forgotten the power that an attractive woman can have when it comes to men. I don't think I've sensed that power since I was in my early to mid-twenties. Oh, it was heady stuff in those days... These days, I'm more than content that the men I work with, for instance, think of me simply as a trusted and accomplished colleague. I guess they just happen to be serving as a kind of mirror to me lately. Allowing me to see myself in a new light.

Maybe it's my crush. (I'll call him Curly.) There's such electricity in the air for me these days - I don't know which end is up when he walks by. I guess what I'm trying to say in a very clumsy way is that I'm actually feeling like a woman again. And it's been a long time coming. It makes me teary even now just to try and express this in writing.

When I had to shop for some new clothes (in a new size) a few weeks ago, I picked out clothes in colors - passionate lipstick pinks and bright, beautiful yellows. What a change they brought to my old wardrobe of neutrals! Blacks, whites, grays, khakis --- now I'm reaching for colors that make me feel more feminine than I have in years. I even bought a silk flower on a clip to wear in my hair. Since picking up a set of curlers a few days ago, I've been experimenting. It feels so good to have a little bounce and sass to my hair. I'm going to start sounding like a broken record soon, but it's a far cry from the buns and ponytails and the ever popular hair-tucked-behind-the-ears look that had become my signature hairstyles.

Gosh, if this is what losing 20 lbs. can do, I can't even imagine what I'll find myself thinking and feeling - and doing - at 40!