Gold Tone American Lifestyle: The Appeal of Faux Real

We love what we love. And there is something special about our childhood first loves.

It was so easy to form attachments.

But things in life don’t stay pristine. They age. We age. Everything alters. Everything becomes… complicated.

Still, the pure affection endures for those first innocent infatuations and attachments, even after we understand the complexity and contradictions of what we were looking at. I love an old Barbie doll and realize at the same time the machine behind her was setting me up for a lifetime of body image issues.

The other day, I bought a Jordache jacket from the 1980s, you know, like you do.

Slightly damaged, with faux chinchilla and large knit sleeves. I love it. It reminds me of Brooke Shields, and all the associations and attachments of little Dawn. I was absorbing the ski chalet lifestyle and urban glamour. I bought it knowing my cozy season is coming, so I look forward to wearing it with my stretch curvy WallFlower denim, my fitted sweaters, and my chunky vintage gold-tone jewelry from the forties through the eighties.

As a child, I admit, I wanted to be Brooke Shields. I also wanted to be Kira from The Dark Crystal and Madison from Splash. But those are different conversations. I also wanted to be Gloria or whoever the kids from Kids Incorporated were singing about.

But before that, as a child looking at a television set, basking in its warm glow with both my parents on either side of the couch, it was that beautiful innocence from The Blue Lagoon. That is where it started. Before the world broke open on Little Dawn.

Then my attachment grew to include the sultry, glamorous image from the Calvin Klein ads and the celebrity images of her with Michael Jackson. Beauty, clothes, wealth, celebrity, access. A whole world I could look at without knowing much about how it worked or what it really cost. I was getting the message. I was receiving it loud and clear.

And I’m embarrassed. Even when I saw the jacket on the rack, I saw the irony of it. They said buy it and be like us, and part of me still wants to!

And now I’m buying it, forty years later. But I’m just buying the jacket, eyes wide open. It does not come with a Corvette, it doesn’t come with a boyfriend named Biff, it doesn’t come with a horse named Blaze. I’m just getting a cozy jacket that reminds me of that time of attachment and possibilities.

Today, I wore my chunky Monet gold-tone necklace and matching earrings. In the car, the radio was telling me to get up off the wall and dance. Come on.

It made me laugh. WallFlower jeans. Get off the wall. Some pairings arrange themselves.

My recent listening has moved between Stevie Nicks and the Pretenders, Tiffany and Debbie Gibson, Duran Duran, Tears for Fears, and Depeche Mode. Different days, different company. Meanwhile, I’ve been hunting vintage Miriam Haskell, Coro, and Monet jewelry, and discovering how much I enjoy Betsey Johnson pieces.

This is nostalgia. This is sentiment. This is me reaching back and touching the things from before my deepening awareness.

And even while I’m playing at dress-up and revisiting the happier moments, I’m reading a noir classic.

I’m finishing The Long Goodbye. One chapter left, with Philip Marlowe’s cynicism keeping me company.

As I read him, money runs through the ugliness he keeps uncovering: what people want, what they protect, what they’re willing to do. He needs to confront people with what he sees. There is little comfort in it, and little hope of something better. The truth is ugly, and he won’t let everyone politely look away. He doesn’t allow the privilege and glamour of rich society to block out all the ugliness on Mulholland Drive and in the valley.

That book and his self-righteous tough-guy company make an interesting pairing with my gold-tone afternoon. I’m sitting there like one of his dames. They, of course, in their real fur and diamonds. Me in my faux gold-tone lifestyle, having lived through all the plastic decades that came after.

I think about the world that taught me to want the jacket.

The invitation seemed simple: be us by buying this.

You might not have the mansion, the yacht, the beautiful person’s life, the trust funds, the ounces of gold in a safe-deposit box, or the Ferrari. But you could buy the jeans. The synthetic fur. The gold-tone jewelry. A little accessible luxury. Something that suggested you were on your way.

And what a world there was to be on your way into.

Dallas. Dynasty. Falcon Crest. Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. Fantasy Island. The Love Boat.

Solid Gold Dancers.

There was also Pee-wee Herman, Max Headroom, Commodore 64, Atari. Punk, rock and roll, disco, new wave, country. So much to watch, hear, play, and want. Cable networks. Headphones. Eventually, dial-up and cell phones.

My childhood recollection of the eighties is crowded. The glamour shares space with frightening words from the news. The Cold War. AIDS. Beirut. Drugs. Just Say No. Hunger in Africa. Grain to Russia. Vietnam still somewhere in the adult conversation.

I didn’t know what an ayatollah was or why someone was singing about him hating the dancing at the casbah. What was a casbah?

Politics and war kept leaking into the music. But the 1980s made it palatable.

Spies Like Us. The Man with One Red Shoe. Weird Science. Number Five staying alive in Short Circuit. And what was Val Kilmer doing making lasers for the military in Real Genius?

All she wants to do is dance. She wants to party all the time. Girls just want to have fun. Holiday.

And we did.

While deadly things were knocking on the doors and scratching at the windows.

We were all buying our acid-washed comfort.

At least, that is how I remember it: entertainment, clothes, familiar songs, something soft to wear while the world continued doing scary things I sometimes understand more than I want to. I’ve seen the emperor. He has no clothes. And I don’t know what is going to happen.

I understand more why I wanted the jacket. I can see the aspiration being sold, the insecurity it could comfort, the promise that buying the appearance might bring us closer to that on-top-of-the-world life.

But even so, I also still find the jacket cozy.

I probably won’t ever get to go skiing ever again. It was expensive. It was demanding. Whatever life I was sold as a child, that lifestyle was never going to be mine. I was a suburban mall rat who was supposed to go to work to support the consumer system and continue to buy my way into it. I worked in a mall multiple times in my life. I’ve lived the unconscious, self-conscious faux life—I crave more… substance, while I’ve learned to adapt.

Here at home, I made slow-cooker beef stew for the family and crusty bread. I enjoyed wine. I read a little Jung, considered a few ideas from Buddhism, and kept working out. I gathered the last of the last last tomatoes. Seriously, where do they keep coming from?! It’s October! And here, after three months, my stamina has improved. My muscles are responding. I can see my deltoids!

There is something satisfying about feeling that change while I’m also confronting aging. I’m becoming older, and I’m becoming stronger. My tastes have more history behind them. My ideas are enriched and deeper. So are my questions.

Marlowe can stay with me through the last chapter. I want to see what he uncovers. Then I’ll put the book down and choose some music.

And when the weather turns chilly, I’ll wear the jacket.

It has damage. It has survived. I’ve been damaged. I survived. Decade upon decade.

I still look forward to putting it on. While I wear it, I will embody my real life while wearing the faux fur and the gold-tone jewelry. I have my records if not live concerts. I have my wine if not a trip to the vineyards. I have my chocolate if not my overseas vacation. I have my books and my movies, and I let them take me places. I have my website and my art to explore ideas and have conversations with myself to deepen my understanding.

Yes, I know my life is faux real.

I’m American. We’re all living the dream in paradise (trademarked) while somewhere something is knocking at the doors and scratching at the windows like gremlins, critters, and tremors all at once. But… we’re still going to dance even in our dreams, like it’s 1999, again.