When she reached fifty, however, Vinnie began to abandon these strenuous efforts. She ceased tinting her hair a juvenile and unnatural shade of auburn and let it grow out its natural piebald gray-beige; she gave away half her clothes and threw out most of her makeup. She might as well face facts, she told herself: she was a disadvantaged woman, doubly disadvantaged now by age; someone men would not charge at with bullish enthusiasm no matter how many brightly colored objects she waved to attract their attention. Well, at least she could avoid being a figure of fun. If she couldn’t look like an attractive woman, she could at least look like a lady.
But just as she was resigning herself to total defeat, the odds began to alter in Vinnie’s favor. Within the last couple of years she has in a sense caught up with, even passed, some of her better-equipped contemporaries. The comparison of her appearance to that of other women of her age is no longer a constant source of mortification. She is no better looking than she ever was, but they have lost more ground. Her slim, modestly proportioned figure has not been made bulgy and flabby by childbearing or by overeating and overdieting; her small but rather nice breasts (creamy, pink-tipped) have not fallen. Her features have not taken on the injured, strained expression of the former beauty, nor does she paint and decorate or simper and coo in a desperate attempt to arouse the male interest she feels to be her due. She is not consumed with rage and grief at the cessation of attentions that were in any case moderate, undependable, and intermittent.