Today an idiot told me to enjoy my mini-skirts and 5-inch heels because my days of enjoying those are numbered. Excuse me? Did I just receive a death sentence? What the hell!?

It turns out that apparently once a ring hits your finger and you plunge down that aisle, you’re uterus begins to plan your sex appeal demise and you lose the right to wear anything you damn well please. Really. I kid you not. This is what happens. Or some—yes, even women—would have you believe.

Oh hell no. I’d rather give up internet access for an entire month, forgo my double tall skim cappuccinos and my Mercedes before I give up my right to wear what I want, when I want and how I want.

I just don’t get it. Where is it written that women just “can’t” wear something once they’ve become a doctor or a lawyer or even percolated a few babies? I must have missed that memo.  

And this memo does exist. It enumerates that there’s a trajectory of growing up, graduating college, getting married and having a baby, then “looking your age” and maybe even “looking the part” and for heaven’s sake, “wearing sensible shoes.” When that memo was written, no one was yet familiar with the miraculous collaboration of Cole Haan and Nike, the wonders of Spanx and Wolford and MBT sneakers and running strollers. 

While women are too busy taking care of their own lives, careers, husbands, kids and the home (pretty much the entire world), men—for all intents and purposes—remain untouched, simply unblemished in their appearance and dress by the sands of time. My husband, no lie, looks better and better every day—more dignified, more schooled, more whatever. No one ever says to him, gee, you can’t wear that or you really should invest in some sensible shoes or a sensible jacket because you’re married. Nope. He can parade around in whatever he damn well pleases and no one will bat an eye. But I, marching around the courthouse in sky high stilettos, somehow begin to look like the eighth deadly sin. A married female attorney shouldn’t dress in heels higher than 2 inches. This is the rule, after all, floating around somewhere in the bollocks-rule ether.

Think about this example: gray hair. If a woman has even a few streaks of gray hair, she races to the nearest salon or drug store to get her hands on the arsenic and formaldehyde laced dyes to cover those suckers up. Women get words of wisdom about it too, like from Sex in the City, when Samantha Jones proclaims that you never pluck a gray hair because seven more show up for its funeral. And so as a woman with any gray hair, you just have to eradicate it, quickly. You learn, almost from the womb, that blonde is sexy and gray is an abomination—unless, of course, you’re a man. Well, then you’ve hit the Power Ball jackpot. Then, women will call those gray streaks on your head “dignified, mature” and dare I even say it, "sexy". How many of us girls have oft fantasized about the beefcake George Clooney types with their salt and pepper hair, perpetuating  this double standard nonsense. You needn’t even look further then the “touch of gray” products for men. “Just for Men” will give you “just enough” to make you a raging stallion. Never in a million years will we see “Just for Women” giving us a “touch of gray”—that would be preposterous!  Instead, we're taught to deploy a full scale tactical team to search and destroy gray--at all costs!

 In this world, I say thank God for women who stand up against this lunacy; for women who maintain their own identity and own sense of sexuality regardless of their age, regardless of the number of love handles on their body, and even regardless of their station in life.  Women like Sharon Stone—challenging this thinking and who keep trying to rip apart that blasted memo. She’s trailblazing that path for those of us who refuse to go gently into that awful night of sensible shoes, momma jeans, granny panties and elastic waistbands!