Job Description: Know-It-All

Yesterday on local television: Up next—Our fashion consultant gives the lowdown on you what you'll be wearing this summer!

Out trots a 30-year-old fashionista wearing a royal blue buffalo-plaid top with a maroon-and-gold floral print dirndl skirt, a bejeweled rope headband, and fringed leather boots. The woman looked as if her five year old had dressed her.

The previous week, authoritative guidance on the same topic had come from a young woman dressed entirely in neon orange: crocheted, cropped sweater with flared cap-sleeves and pleated, wide-legged pants. This maven of stylishness proceeded to introduce a model wearing a high-waisted, loosely fitting, full skirted number with the same flared sleeves, called a Nap Dress—because it's purportedly comfortable enough to sleep in. I have McCall's patterns from the 70s with the identical lines, yet this outfit was described as "vintage 50s." Hmm. Perhaps in an alternate, gen-x-ruled universe.

The same TV program often features a 20-ish female podcaster with a flawless complexion who offers the rest of us schmucks advice us on how to camouflage our less-than-perfect facial features.

In what appears to be a trend in itself, viewers regularly get introduced to yet another svelte sophisticate—usually a woman— proclaiming herself to be a Lifestyle Expert. You never see any degrees on the wall behind these gurus of elevated living, so I'm thinking this is a designation one can bestow upon oneself. It seems that, if you can convince enough people that you know something they don't know, anybody can self-anoint as an authority.

This lowered standard presents some exciting possibilities. Perhaps I, too, can be a Lifestyle Expert! I did, after all, gradually progress from doing virtually everything wrong in my 20s to a firm commitment to healthy living in middle age. Might that count as a qualification?

I could use a paying gig right now, too, an activity that would get me out of the post-Pandemic rut and back on track toward a purpose. Trouble is, everything is virtual these days, and I look horrible on Zoom. It's as if I accidentally downloaded a Grandma Moses filter, something like the age progression software they use to update photos of missing persons. Not exactly how I see myself in the carefully lit mirror of my bathroom. (Maybe that makeup pro, who hadn't even been born yet when I began my pilgrimage to a wiser approach to Existence, could offer advice on how to prep for the fisheye shot.)

Meanwhile, I could share my counsel in writing. But I'd want to offer an alternative to the Susie Sunshine/Ethel Exuberant approach of all the Lifestyle Experts I've come across. Having spent decades thoughtfully, even cynically, observing and documenting life, I'm prepared to impart an informed opinion on pretty much any subject.

I can see it now, a column in an online publication aimed at bored Boomers: "Ask Ms. Know-It-All." Anonymity plus a soap box. How sweet would that be?

I may even inspire a punny new title: Lifestyle Hack.