Kerry would be smart to heed age-old wisdom
By Beth Teitell
Thursday, December 11, 2003
Here's something all of us girls know: When you hit a Certain Age, you stop shopping in Juniors.
No matter how much time you've spent with your personal trainer, nothing's more aging than a miniskirt and a cropped T, even if your Basal Metabolic Index is still in the 20s.
I mention this because a) it's always worth mentioning, and b) like a lot of people, I've started cringing every time John Kerry makes one of his stabs at looking youthful.
Senator, I say this with all due respect to your impressive record and windsurfing abilities: the Fonz jacket, the public displays of motorcycle riding, the ``F word'' - none of them is helping you appeal to the Rock the Vote generation.
I'm dreading the day you start talking like rapper Snoop Dogg and unveil your new slogan, ``It's the econizzle, stupizzle.''
So what should you do? Well, you know how your advisers are trying to lower expectations about your finish in New Hampshire? Why not take the same approach to your age? Play up how incredibly old you are. Take out ads in Rolling Stone and Us Weekly wishing you a Happy 60th!
That way, young voters will roll out of bed (in some group house they're renting with other Dean volunteers) and think, ``Wow, Kerry's 60? Most people aren't even ambulatory at that age. What a dude!''
How do I know? Well, instead of interviewing Washington insiders and pollsters about your problem, I talked to the people on the ground, citizens who've spent years embedded with the Youth: mothers of teenagers and recent college graduates.
Their basic message was this: Don't pretend you're one of them. It will only work against you.
As the mother of a teenage girl said in her memo on the subject: ``She and her friends are perfectly nice to me if I'm playing the role of the mother - if I'm saying, `Can I get you some brownies?' - but if I forget I'm not part of the group and laugh at a story one is telling, or tell one of my own, they all go silent.''
``You should never try to use their language or wear their clothes,'' the mother of two 20-somethings advised.
She relayed a story to make her point. She and her son were shopping recently and she saw a Phat Farm jacket she liked. ``Isn't this cool?'' she asked, thinking her appreciation of the garment would draw them closer. Her boy's eyes rolled. ``No mother of mine is going to wear Phat Farm,'' he said.
I asked her what lesson Kerry could draw from this episode. ``I'm not sure what he can do,'' she said, ``but I'm getting the old Al Gore feeling. He couldn't get hip even with Naomi Wolf as his wardrobe consultant.''
Hey, speaking of Gore, maybe he and his surprise Dean endorsement are Kerry's best hope. Perhaps the good doctor will inherit some of Gore's toxic stiffness. Or at least get some tips on the correct use of the eye roll.
