Caryl remembers: Charla Krupp

Photo by Kristin Booker

Charla Krupp, popular author, magazine editor and commentator on fashion and beauty whose bestsellers included How Not to Look Old and How To Never Look Fat Again died in Manhattan last month of breast cancer. She was 58 but, according to the New York Times obituary, “looked the perennial 49.” That says something coming from The Old Gray Lady.

For several years, Charla and I worked together at InStyle Magazine. Our offices were on either side of then managing editor Martha Nelson’s, and, because Charla was the magazine’s Today Show contributing editor and because one of my responsibilities was to insure continuity between magazine and television content, we spent a good deal of time together. We were not close friends but we had a lot in common: we were from the Chicago area, we had gone to journalism school, we were magazine addicts, and we followed the advice from long-time Glamour editor Ruth Whitney to never underestimate the intelligence of the reader even if what she was reading was mostly fluff. Because Charla genuinely loved women and wanted to help them, she never would. And, though I preferred covering hard news to celebrity journalism, I never did either.

There was something else we had in common: we were both busty. Growing up I wished I had smaller breasts- a more boyish silhouette- but would never chance surgery. Charla, who didn’t favor cosmetic surgery (quoting fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi, “Do you want to look 70? Get a face lift”) had had breast reduction as a young woman. I mention this seemingly obituary-unlikely fact for a reason: it is both revelatory and prophetic. From very early on, Charla believed in taking whatever steps you needed to make yourself attractive. Looking your best not only made you feel better but it was critical to “your personal and financial survival," she said. That philosophy got her in the door of the highly-competitive world of women’s magazines and eventually up the corporate ladder and onto the best seller-lists.

Charla’s colleagues and friends have enumerated her virtues in their remembrances; they said she was kind, generous, funny, fun, hard-working, driven, down-to-earth and “fabulously glam"--to quote current Glamour editor Cindi Leive who recalled Charla as the first person she knew to have highlights. I would add another attribute to the list: Charla was savvy. She was her own brand long before personal branding became a goal. With her trademark high-lighted hair, brightly-colored skirted suits (the rest of us were wearing black pants and jackets), and gold-inked, gold-embellished stationery (she was a master of the thank-you note) she set herself apart. Her savvy went farther than that, however. She could read the cultural winds and reduce them to sound bites, write cover lines and brilliant book titles. HOW NOT TO LOOK OLD: Look 10 Years Younger, 10 Pounds Lighter and 10 Times Better. Who could have said it better?

Charla would never reveal her age, except to say she was over 40. It was her mission, she told Gayle King on Oprah radio in 2008: "I don’t think we should be asking women how old they are. Nothing good can come of it. It just pigeon holes women. I don’t want to contribute to sexism and ageism. We have to look out for ourselves in this youth-obsessed culture." In a job market like this, women over 40 are the first to go, she said. So she filled her books with tips on how to look younger (Have your eyebrows professionally arched. Brows are an instant face lift, she wrote) and truisms (Nothing ages you faster than yellow teeth). She showed readers five ways to "look thinner before dinner": start with a properly-fitted bra. (She wore shape wear every day). She understood the stuff she was suggesting dealt only with the top layer—she acknowledged she wasn’t talking about inner beauty but outer beauty. “I’m not suggesting changing your core—your values, your brains, your wit, the things that makes you different and unique.” Her mantra was looking good makes you feel better. “It gives you the confidence you need to exist in the world-- and to survive.”

Well, at least the first part is true.

Maryl asks: Do you really "like" us?

"You like me.  Right now, you like me!"

Remember those immortal words from Sally Field’s 1985 Academy Award acceptance speech? As much as they’ve been bandied about since then, who would have guessed they’d become the catchphrase for the current social networking craze? Today “you like me” is more than just words though; it’s a button that you click on a Facebook fan or business page and it’s not to be confused with “friends” on one’s personal profile page. The distinction can be fuzzy because big name brand companies have fan pages to ultimately promote their products whereas sites and blogs like SecondLivesClub have them to create a community that is united around a topic or manifesto. So we use Facebook to get followers and to follow others and ultimately to get people to this web site. The more people who “like” you the more people have the opportunity to see what you’re posting on your page. 

As much as I hate to admit it, we’re caught up in the hustle of getting more “likes” on Facebook. But if someone likes me is she really going to follow me? I try to keep up with all the pages we’re following but there’s over 300 now. SecondLivesClub currently has nearly 400 “likes” but some of the pages I go to have thousands. It takes time to build those kinds of numbers although I have a hunch some of them cheat. Well it’s kind of cheating: you can go to web sites like www.coffeeandpower.com or www.fivrr.com and someone will get you 200 “likes” for $20, for example. These small job sites can fulfill a range of work assignments and needs for reasonable prices and have received favorable reviews. The issue with the 200 “likes” is that they will most likely not include your target audience and most likely not follow you.

SecondLivesClub targets Gen X and Boomer women, the fastest growing groups on social networks. A very effective way we’ve increased our “likes” and a following at the same time is with a practice started by a few of my LinkedIn women’s, business and reinvention groups. One person will start a discussion asking for members to leave their Facebook page addresses so others can check them out and “like” them if it’s to their liking, which it typically is since the group is already made up of like-minded people. I was part of a recent group discussion on the legitimacy of using one of these small jobber sites. In the long run it doesn’t pay off but it can be helpful for new business fan pages that need some early momentum.

So we’ll keep working the “like” numbers just because, but real success for us is when our followers comment after our blog posts. That’s how we find out what they think and are interested in and we love the input. Not everyone participates in this way and that’s okay too. I attended a social marketing seminar this week and learned that typically only three to six percent of a community actively comment and 30 percent occasionally. So like us on Facebook if you like but if you really like us, you can make a comment here.

Caryl writes: The End of the Story

The 90-minute ride to the “charming village” followed the Hudson River due north from New York City, where I lived with my daughters in a mid-19th-century loft with fir beams, steel columns, and the original factory floors. You don’t get more industrially charming than that. More interested in the aesthetic arts than home crafts, I was a deeply urban creature. The only thing I had ever built was a fierce career. The only thing I raised was my consciousness—and of course, my daughters.

When I did fantasize about a place outside the city, it was rarely a cottage. I imagined myself in an eco-chic structure—perhaps prefab, even—that was distinguished but indistinguishable from the landscape, welcoming sunlight from every window. Not an inaccurately described cottage (it was nowhere near Nantucket) with a fussy garden in a too-quaint village.

Nevertheless, Mary Lou and I hopped aboard Amtrak’s Empire Service line and headed upriver. In less than two hours, we were lunching on homemade bread and soup at a Main Street café and shopping in the notions department of a five-and-ten, an almost museum-quality replica of another time. Finally, we headed to The House. “If it has a trellis with roses, that will be the tipping point,” I said. “Tipping toward ‘Get me out of here.’“

We approached the corner of Mulberry and Chestnut streets (am I on a movie set here?), and there it was: the world’s cutest cottage. It had lilac French shutters (I could already see them in Farrow & Ball’s Studio Green), a white picket fence, and trellised roses. We were well beyond the tipping point. Inside, the two bedroom, bath-and-a-half house was tastefully decorated and pristinely maintained. (A rigorous inspection turned up a tiny chip in a soap dish.) Did I mention that the garden shed reminded me of Virginia Woolf’s writing shack at Monk’s house in East Sussex? I was certain the seed of a book idea I had been contemplating could florish there.

On the train ride back to the city, we hypothetically considered the house’s merits. It was easily reachable along a glorious train route. (I didn’t have a car.) It was in great condition. (I wasn’t handy.) It was enough for one (I was one) but big enough for my daughters to visit. (Later I would reprise their childhood room, complete with canopied cast-iron beds and their Steiff bear collection.) For the past few months since my mother’s death, I had been debating how to invest a small inheritance that sat restlessly in my bank account. Add some of the severance I received from a job I had loved and lost and the house would be mine. By the time we returned to Penn Station, I was ready to make an offer.

There were two other bidders, it turned out, but my all cash offer sealed the deal. (Thanks, Mom). The owners, a couple in their 80s, didn't attend the closing (which happened to fall on my late mother's birthday) and hadn't wanted to sell (their son insisted they move closer to him). Dottie and Joe were sad to be leaving their cottage, and that afternoon, when I visited my new house for the first time I found a welcome present: tools for the garden (from Dottie, a passionate gardener) and for the house (from Joe, a talented handyman), along with a directory they had compiled of local service people, including a slipcover maker and a septic tank repairman. Sometimes you choose a house--and sometimes a house chooses you. You just have to get on the train.

Thanks to all our commenters for expressing interest in the ending to my previous post, to my daughter Annie who typed in this entry and to Huck Hill who had the house photographed when I couldn't make it up this weekend because of snow.

Caryl asks: Does she or doesn't she buy this house?

Here's an essay I wrote recently that appears on the last page of the February issue of Martha Stewart Living, the one with the cover of a beautiful tissue-paper flower heart that we will never make (and the cover line suggesting 147 ways to show your love.) The story, (which includes this picture-perfect illustration of a house I fell in love with), is called:

THE ACCIDENTAL COTTAGER

The newspaper ad read like a wish list of everything one might want in a second house---if one wanted a second house. "Nantucket cottage in charming village: bluestone patio, wood-burning fireplace, English garden." The listing didn't mention that the house was within walking distance of an independent bookstore, an art cinema, a health-food store, a yoga studio, and two farm-to-table restaurants. But it was.

Let's go see it," I said to my friend Mary Lou (aka Maryl). I wasn't really interested, but the two of us had a habit of taking trains to random destinations. Train trips assured a nice long visit with plenty of talking time, few interruptions, and on occasion, heart-stopping scenery. We were lucky this time. The 90 -minute ride to the 'charming village' followed the Hudson River due north from New York City, where I lived with my daughters in a mid-19th century loft . . . .

Now if you want to know how this little tale ends, whether I buy the house that was not my taste at all or if I just went along for the ride, you will have to read the magazine. Or, if I get five comments begging to know the answer (yes, it's come down to that), I will print the ending which, by the way, involves my dead mother, a kindly old couple and a Steiff bear collection (have to keep you interested). Or maybe you want to know instead how to commission a painting of your own home or a dream house or maybe the portrait is of one in the same. Well, I know a talented artist: the girl with the pearls shown here. But you'll have to leave a comment to find out her contact information. Looking forward to hearing from you on either account. Think of it as the 148th way to show your love.

Maryl eyes: Oscar’s Documentary Shortlist

The Oscar nominations will be out Tuesday, January 24. It’s the documentaries that interest me most. That was the film genre I worked in years ago. I even had one qualify for the documentary shorts category. There were 124 films that qualified for feature length documentary consideration this year and that list has been shortlisted down to fifteen. I’ve had a chance to see and enjoy only four so far.

Buck and Bill Cunningham revealed the rare livelihoods and personalities of two unusual men. Buck is a real live horse whisperer and was the inspiration for the film Robert Redford made famous. As remote as that profession is, it’s his back story that will make you wince. Bill Cunningham is the photographer and octogenarian who chronicles fashion trends on the streets of Manhattan, on his bike, for the New York Times. These boys are still on their first lives and probably permanently but they're having fun. 

Pina, the documentary on the brilliant German dancer and choreographer Pina Bausch, is one of only two documentaries on the short list about women. (The other one is on Dr. Jane Goodall.) Dance may not be to everyone’s taste but experiencing Pina’s expressive ballets explains why she was so loved and appreciated. Especially since the director, Wim Wenders, shot the film in 3D with his camera moving among the dancers. Unfortunately the film winds up being a tribute to Pina as she died suddenly just before production began. One can only imagine what she would have done second. 

That last somber thought underlies We Were Here, a documentary on the aids crisis in San Francisco. What makes this one especially moving is the five individuals who actually lived through the epidemic right there on Castro Street and tell us what it was like with heavy heart and tears. I remember travelling to SF during that time, looking up an old friend, David deCastro (apropos), and learning he had just died of AIDS the week before. He was a young man who bravely came out while in college and needed the freedom to express himself.  David was my best dance partner ever and a talented artist. Here was a first life that was just getting off the ground.

Over 15,000 people died in San Francisco during that dark period. AIDS drastically affected the death rates in New York City as well. But today better HIV testing and treatments are behind NYC’s recent highest life expectancy statistics. It would be a different world if we hadn’t lost so many to AIDS. We miss those that didn’t make it this far and value our second lives that keep getting longer.

2nd Look: Jane Fonda

Jane Fonda's Workout Book

Jane Fonda first wore this leotard on the cover of her famous 1981 workout book. Now more than 30 years later and at age 74, she put on the red and black striped number to promote her new exercise videos – Jane Fonda Prime Time. The series' title takes its name from her most recent memoir, which mixes tales from her own journey post 60 with scientific breakthroughs and self-help remedies. Unfortunately the videos don't show you how to stretch the life span of your spandex but they do provide Fonda-tested exercises to keep you fit and strong whatever your age.

Today is the first day of your 2nd life!

Second lives are always about fresh starts. Begin again, we wrote in our first blog post on the first day of last year, the opening salvo of Second Lives Club.

Second lives are also about fits. . .as well as starts. And, this holiday season we were catapaulted back into our first lives, filled with super-sized to-do lists and dominated by tasks directed mostly towards others (not bad). The feverish frenzy distracted us from our core values and we forgot that life's about the journey rather than the destination (not good).

Luckily, we knew to push pause --( that’s why you haven’t heard from us for a while): to stay calm and follow along with what we know works. We cooked indulgent meals (oysters and lobsters on New Year's Eve), we read in lazy stretches (The Marriage Plot and Steve Jobs), we saw movies, even a triple feature of our own making (A Dangerous Method, The Artist and Pina in 3D!) The first morning of the new year, we walked the beach—the sun was bright, the weather uncharacteristically warm, our spirits joyfully replenished.

We could see our true selves again . . . in the shadows cast upon the sand. (Our own version of ground hog’s day. A second spring is on its way.) We were moving forward once more, encouraged by every step—even the backwards ones--into a new year.

A Life Well-Lived: Bonnie Prudden

Bonnie Prudden, fitness guru
1914-2011

An early champion of physical fitness, Prudden was an author, instructor and entrepreneur who followed her own advice and exercised regularly until her death at 97 on Dec. 11.

Long before Michele Obama adopted her campaign against childhood obesity, Prudden had been part of a study team that documented America’s out-of-shape youth in 1955 for another president—Dwight Eisenhower. As a result of the report, Eisenhower called for the creation of “The President’s Council on
Youth Fitness.”

The woman who, with her husband, climbed the Matterhorn on her honeymoon was one of the first fitness instructors with a national presence on TV. An author of 15 books, Prudden developed exercise classes for babies, the blind , those who wanted to improve their sex lives or prevent incontinence. She invented exercise equipment, rock walls and a line of fitness apparel. That’s a full-body leotard of her design that Prudden is wearing on the cover of Sports Illustration.

Despite a broken pelvis in her 20s and a triple bypass in her 90s, she never stopped working out. “ You can’t run back the clock,” Prudden said, “But you can rewind it.

Maryl tackles: Color Blocking, Another Fall/Winter Fashion Trend

As we move further into the Fall/Winter season, I’ve been noticing another fashion trend that is bold and eye-catching and yet easy to pull off. It’s referred to as color blocking. Actually there’s two looks I’ve been coveting; the other is pattern-mixing. It intrigues me and it can work with the right patterns but takes a lot of time and practice. If your ensemble hasn’t been thought out beforehand, it could be too much to subject yourself to if you dress on the go as I do. (Although I thought I was successful teaming up a floral blouse with a brown pinstripe pant but that’s as far as I got.) 

Pattern Mixing

Yves Saint Laurent & Costume National

Back to color blocking, which is much more effortless and a relief from the total black silhouette that has predominated the fashion scene for so long. It simply means the wearing of three or more clothing and/or accessory items of separate and different solid colors at one time. I believe it’s creative source was Piet Mondrian’s abstract paintings of colored squares, rectangles and thick black lines. Yves Saint Laurent used these as inspiration for his 1965 Mondrian day dress. There’s been a few designers this season mimicking that look as well. And J Crew has been long known for its unusual mixing of colors with its latest catalog and web site chock full of these chromatic ideas. 

                           

J Crew

A dress, jacket or sweater may be a design of two or more colors itself making color blocking easy to pull off. I remember I once made a dress where the sleeves, bodice and skirt were each a different hue. (I was so ahead of my time!!) But if you want to really dive into the trend, you can start off easy by choosing from a family of analogous colors (per the color wheel) or by simply introducing a third color with an accessory like a belt or handbag, a bold piece of jewelry or even hosiery. I recently wore burgundy tights with my teal dress and carried a purple handbag. A teal skirt with a navy blouse and sweater coat was so easy I added a red purse. I was so comfortable with that the next time I swapped out the navy blouse for a salmon colored one. I feel I’m on my way now. 

My Color Blocking

Give it a try. It’s actually fun and an easy way to be a trend setter and look like you know what you’re doing on the fashion front. Start with accessories first and then analogous colors. Be brave and move to complimentary colors. Mix some orange with blue, some green with red and no black or white please. They’re not colors!

Color Wheel

Caryl says: It's beginning to look a little like Christmas

My garden is dormant. The Christmas tree awaits being cut until closer to The Day. So this weekend I went to The Phantom Gardener in the Hudson Valley to buy some holidays bulbs to cheer up the house and my pre-winter solstice blues. I bought a bunch of paper whites and three amaryllis bulbs in white, light pink, and wine rose. Planting them and watching them grow is sort of like having a living advent calendar (without the chocolate treats behind each door my children adored.) First I put eleven of the dozen paper whites in a Le Fanion polka-dotted green bowl filled with stones. (The red pitcher, which I plan to fill with ivy from my garden or boxwood mixed with lilies in a couple of weeks, is also from the same charming French store in Greenwich Village.)

I had one paper white bulb that wouldn't fit so I stuck it an unpolished brass bowl I had bought last spring in Orissa, India. All the other items the man was selling in a remote tribal village were shiny and bright but this one was dark with age and inattention. It was made by his grandfather, he told me. Now this bowl from a century ago and a half a world away gives me immeasurable pleasure sitting atop my fireplace mantle while I await its fragrant blossom.

Finally, I found an empty urn on the patio outside that my former boyfriend left when he moved back to the city and broke my heart. (There's some symbolism in the urn, no? ) I've always liked the lines of it, and the amaryllis and the abandoned vase seem happily at home atop the hope chest that had belonged to my ex-husband's mother (Is this some kind of memorial to dead love?) I suspect the many-hued amaryllis flowers will be glorious come Christmas--and my scarred heart filled with the joy that accompanies this time of year. After all, tis the season to be. . . and all that.

Caryl wonders: What Makes a Book Worth Reading?

Lately, I have been stalled in my reading. Mostly because I am reading everybody else's recommendations. (Right now, my new book club's choice--Alice Hoffman's The Dovekeepers is simmering on my Sony reader.) The last book of my choosing was Julian Barnes' The Sense of an Ending, a slender hardbound I loved, both for the writing and its particular truth: that memory is unreliable, that truth is subjective.

My teacher-friend, who I wrote about in the recent Thanks post, suggested two books she thought I’d like, both by a young author, J. Courtney Sullivan. Commencement, Smith's debut novel, is the story of four Smith College friends and their “graduate school of life”, as I call it—their escape from the cloistered ivy-covered walls of an elite women’s college and entry into the unprotected adult world. Sullivan followed with Maine, a fictional study of a matriarchal Irish Catholic family at their beach house in Maine, three generations of women each dealing with their own demographically-correct challenge: motherhood, marriage, legacy.

I read them, I liked them, I’m not sure I can recommend them to you. They were were well-written-- even if the structure of alternating narrators in both books was repetitive and felt sometimes like an MFA exercise. They were certainly engaging; when I left my copy of Maine at Maryl’s beach house over the weekend, I ordered up the e-version to find out the ending.

My teacher-friend liked the books, I presume, because they were an insight into a familiar world. She’s Irish and a (lapsed) Catholic, her kids all have Ivy-League degrees and are forging their way in the world. Much of the same could be said of me (no Ivy degrees, but my girls are the products of a liberal arts education as well) but the books felt like "lit lite" to me. After reading them, I looked up Wikipedia’ definition of another common term for this genre of writing: chick-lit. Though it can be a derogatory label sometimes--though not necessarily so-- I think it applies here. The talented Sullivan is a still a chick, if you will. Her truths feel too new—not test-driven. I have no doubt she will grow in her craft—in time.

TIME! That’s my test, I’m afraid, of what I read. Is it worth my time? Does this writer know enough about life or has had a unique experience or a unique take on a common experience that can show me something about life or myself. Writing may be one of those things that actually gets better with age, where truth is not crafted but home-grown and then dissected, examined in the light of longevity.

I recently complimented a fiction writer I know (her last book published over a decade ago was The Black Madonna) on a short story she had written in her youth published in a long-defunct literary magazine. "It's wonderful,"I told her, "Nearly perfect. You should be writing now."  "But that was 25 years ago," she protested.  Think how much better your writing will be now, I thought to myself --in your second life. Writing always improves when you have a sense of an ending . . .

THANKS . . .

In the past few weeks between Halloween and Thanksgiving, I visited with three good friends from three separate chapters of my life. The first to arrive was Betsy. She and I had attended graduate school together at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. Our last semester, which coincided with the Watergate investigation, we lived in Washington, D.C. and worked for the Medill News Service. It was both fun and exciting--and great training. In the intervening years, Betsy has married, gone to law school, had four children and made partner at not one but two firms. She was in New York to give a speech the morning after Halloween. On the night before, we met at dusk and walked to the World Trade Center memorial. It was the first visit for both of us, and we each touched the engraved names of those we knew who had lost their lives a decade before. It was a somber and emotional moment. Afterwards, we headed to the legendary Greenwich Village Halloween parade where we marched the length of the parade route in our work clothes (wishing we had Pan Am flight attendant costumes). Later we stopped for dinner shared a bottle of wine and talked late into the night. (Hope that speech went well, Bets!)

The next weekend was Veteran's Day and Joan, my college friend and sorority sister, came for a three-day, jam-packed weekend. We saw plays, visited museums and galleries, walked the High Line and went to the WTC memorial. This time was even more moving with so many veterans and members of the armed forces in attendance. Joan is a dedicated history teacher in a girls’ prep school outside Boston—and I knew being at the site of this tragic event would be incorporated into her lesson plans. The previous two years, Joan had won fellowships that took her to China and India. Those experiences too added depth to her curriculum. Education is Joan’s second career, if not her second life. Previously she had been a stay-at-home mother of three children, now grown and living independently—no small feat in this economy.

Then, last weekend, I flew to Columbia, Missouri to see my high school friend, Mary Kay. Like me, MK is one of the WOWs--Women Of the World-- a club we started senior year to keep us in touch when we dispersed to various colleges. While in Missouri, I spoke to MK’s classes at the university’s journalism school where she teaches advanced writing. She hasn’t always been a professor. In her previous life, she raised two sons as a single mother, survived a nine-day coma in her 30s and for the past decade was a devoted caregiver to her mother who suffered from Alzheimer’s. She now has a new boyfriend, four grandchildren and a fourth book in progress. (You'll read more about her second life in a future profile.)

Seeing these friends back-to-back reminded me how grateful I am to have them in my life, and how lucky I am to have the time to spend with them. Friends are our living history. They are the eyewitnesses to the people we used to be--and the guides to those we yearn to become. They are not only the keepers of our past lives but they are the nurturers of our future hopes and dreams. This year I am thankful for many things--not least my beautiful daughters-- but particularly for these and other friendships that have sustained me throughout my life. And, this Thanksgiving like many Thanksgivings before, I will take my seat beside one of my dearest friends, my fellow sojourner and co-founder of the Second Lives Club. By the way, Maryl not only is an excellent cook but she sets a beautiful table.