Required Reading for All 80s Children

Talking to Girls About Duran Duran by Rob Sheffield and My Formerly Hot Life by Stephanie Dolgoff



Rob Sheffield owes me $15.00.

I'm not demanding a refund for the book (which I got out of the library anyway and thoroughly enjoyed.)  I just feel like he should foot some small part of the iTunes bill I incurred downloading 80s one-hit wonders whose existence I had totally forgotten until I read his book. (Come on Eileen, anyone?)

Sheffield, who used to write for Rolling Stone magazine, is a master at capturing small moments, and this memoir beautifully illustrates how intimately songs are linked with memory.  It's part coming of age story, part love-letter to the 1980s, embracing the decade warts and all.  A big part of the book's charm is Sheffield's persona; he writes about his earlier dorky days from an adult perspective that is not embarrassed by, but embraces, his past and present dorkitude. Which, as a total dork, I totally dig. Plus, he's cute!  I would have totally loved to see him with a boom box outside my window blasting Peter Gabriel. (Students, and anyone born after 1990, you'll need to ask me about the reference.)  (How thoroughly this book reconnected me with my misspent youth is proven by the fact that I used the word "totally" twice in one paragraph.)

I absolutely love the subtitle of Stepanie Doloff's blog-turned-book: Dispatches From Just the Other Side of Young.  What a great way to describe us children of the 80s, now in our early 40s, who don't seem to have an age bracket.  When I was at my class reunion last month, hanging out with my fab friends (and watching many of us dance JUST LIKE WE USED TO) it occurred to me that we don't seem middle-aged, even though we're now probably older than the teachers we thought were old, old, OLD in high school. "Just the other side of young" is a beautiful way to put it.

 While I imagine sitting with Rob Sheffield at Starbucks and picking apart Duran Duran lyrics (what, exactly, is "the union of the snake" a metaphor for?), I would love to sit down with Dolgoff for a cosmo or three. Except, as she describes, it'd probably take us three months to pick a date when we could both get together, and we'd be feeling it a lot more than we used to the next day. She describes perfectly the disconcerting experience of one's first non-Southern "ma'am"-ing, and all the other minor adjustments (fashion and otherwise) that one must make as one transitions from "young" to "just the other side."

I don't want to give away too much because I want all of my female friends to read this book, but I do want to give a big "AMEN, sister!" to Dolgoff's suggestion that we abolish the custom of saying a woman looks good "for her age." No one says that Denzel Washingon or George Clooney look good "for their age," so let's get rid of that last little bit of gender bias, m'kay?

Lest you get the idea that Dolgoff is some kind of militant feminist/age-ist, rest assured - her tongue is firmly planted in cheek for most of her observations.  In fact, her breezy, smart-ass, mildly self-deprecating tone is part of the joy of this book.  It is human, relatable, and utterly identifiable.