00:02:04.740She began taking continuing education classes in fashion because she just liked learning, and she liked clothes, and she wanted to spark things in her brain.
00:02:14.580The students and professors in the classes kept telling her that she had to start a fashion blog, just because they liked her style.
00:02:51.100too. How dare she? All of the stories about Lynn tended to focus on her age as if it had some kind0.98
00:02:59.440of shock value. Oh my gosh, look at this woman in her 60s who dares to be fashionable and actually0.99
00:03:07.440talks about it. That's why Lynn calls her stuff accidental icon. None of these stories were about1.00
00:03:16.280Lin as an individual who loved style. They became about Lin, a woman who is old. But Lin rode this
00:03:25.020wave. She's smart. And Accidental Icon gained hundreds of thousands of followers. Still,
00:03:32.900the work of an influencer is hard. Being beholden to brands is hard. And today, Lin calls herself
00:03:42.580a reformed influencer. When she was about to turn 70, she decided that she didn't want to live
00:03:48.860another decade on the influencing merry-go-round of posting and creating things that brands
00:03:54.100wanted from her. So she sat down and started to write about the things that she wanted to write
00:04:00.360about. And that eventually became an entire book called How to Be Old. I love this book. I love
00:04:08.800that Lynn is taking the piss out of everyone that only wanted to describe her as an old woman.
00:04:15.020And I gained so much knowledge, so much knowledge about how now in my 40s, I can start to plan
00:04:23.160for who I want to be in my 50s and my 60s and my 70s. This book is filled with so much wisdom
00:04:31.280for women of all ages. I am Lynn Slater. I am a writer, an activist, a grandmother,
00:04:43.840a mother, a partner, a former professor, a social worker, and a reformed influencer.
00:04:52.560A reformed influencer. Tell me what that means.
00:04:57.820It means that I transitioned from blogging to Instagram. And once that began to happen, I began to be approached to start promoting a lot of different things, which I did.
00:05:18.860And I fell into a whirlpool of frenzy and over time found myself feeling unhappy because of a lot of the limitations of creating as an influencer
00:05:38.980where you have to conform to sort of what the brand wants you to look like in your photos and
00:05:49.640put in your captions and that's not why I started my project and so I began to be very unhappy
00:05:58.680and right before the pandemic I was really at a point where I was saying what am I going to do
00:06:07.020And then the pandemic happened. And I had a moment. I stepped off the merry-go-round of constant events, engagement, posting, and had time to really critically reflect and think.
00:06:26.440And so that sort of led me back to writing and then to thinking more about how I wanted to live the rest of my life since I was getting ready to turn 70.
00:06:43.940I feel like a lot of women use these decade milestones as a place to reevaluate our lives.0.90
00:07:00.060What's interesting, because I think the bigger question sort of is what yardsticks are you using to evaluate that decade, right?
00:07:11.680Is it society's yardsticks? What people think women should do? Or is it sort of a set of measures based on your own values and your own sort of needs and desires and pleasures?
00:07:30.660And so for me, as I was about to turn 70, I was actually feeling very good about where I had landed at the end of the decade.
00:07:43.880And I saw the beginning of the decade was really exciting.
00:07:48.760It was a huge creative reinvention for me.
00:07:52.100much of the time I did Accidental Icon with the exception of maybe the last three years
00:08:00.400was really a fabulous adventure so I felt grateful for all of the travel and all of the
00:08:07.680opportunities and then like in any other decade of my life I made a few missteps a few miscalculations
00:08:18.900but I got back on my feet and ended up sort of standing exactly where I wanted and needed to be
00:08:29.180as I was about to turn 70. I love that. I love that. Let's back up a little bit for people who
00:08:37.760don't know about Accidental Icon. What was it and why did you start it? So, you know, I have worked
00:08:47.260as a social worker for 47 years. I was a professor of social work and law for 20 years. And in 2014,
00:08:57.480I was feeling a bit burnt out, which had, you know, happened to me. It happens to you
00:09:03.820over a long career as a social worker. And I had this sort of thing that I would do, which is
00:09:10.020I would say, okay, I have to go outside of this field and I have to do something creative.
00:09:16.340and something really different. And I've done that my entire life. And so I probably have taken
00:09:24.460like 800 continuing ed classes. I was starting to get interested in clothing, not fashion per se,
00:09:33.760but clothing and power and its ability to express identity. And I just wanted to find out more about
00:09:43.280it. So I started taking classes at Fashion Institute of Technology. Very, very random
00:09:50.480things like jewelry fabrication, building your own vintage brand.
00:12:44.120And I got a press pass from my blog to the market shows.
00:12:51.400So this was well before I got to the point where I was invited to runway shows.
00:12:57.500And it's like in huge convention centers, and there's all these young designers with a rack of clothes, just like hoping some buyer is going to come to them.
00:13:10.920And so they would be more than happy to spend time talking to you.
00:13:16.400And so through these young emerging designers, I began to learn about the fashion system.
00:13:25.500You know, they would take me as we became friends into the garment district and took me to their pattern makers and taught me about tech packs and really the sort of not seen part of fashion that was about their hopes and dreams and inspirations.
00:13:45.940And when I was doing that, it was really inspiring. And once I became on the public radar, your sort of story gets taken over by the media and social media, and you kind of lose the ability to insert your own narrative into the mix.
00:14:15.040Yeah. And unfortunately for me, what began to happen when I started to have prefs was, for me, it had nothing to do with my age. As I said, it was a pleasure project. My blog was for any woman, any age who liked to think and talk about satchelor.
00:14:34.380and interestingly for most of the time i've done accidental icon my audience has been 25 to 55
00:14:46.460not older women and so i think now it probably is skewing a bit older but
00:14:53.760i think the media started to make it be about my age oh look at the 62 year old who's in fashion
00:15:04.280isn't that amazing oh look at this 63 year old who can really handle you know knows how to work
00:15:11.120social media oh isn't that surprising and so you know over time it became not about me as
00:15:19.820an individual woman but about me as a woman who was old yeah yeah well and i i think that's so
00:15:30.340interesting because I've read a lot of the coverage of you and of Accidental Icon. And
00:15:36.720on one hand, a lot of it wants to make it seem like, aren't we so anti-ageism? Aren't we so
00:15:45.280progressive? We celebrate women because we're profiling this woman of a certain age. But then0.99
00:15:51.660all that they can talk about is your age as if you're some strange, exotic creature in a zoo.0.97
00:15:59.620Like, look at this woman in her 60s put on clothing.0.96
00:16:09.280But what it speaks to, of course, is the fact that we do not have nearly enough, you know, we have a lot of role models of women of different ages, but we don't celebrate them nearly enough.
00:16:22.120Well, and I think we don't particularly now in this era of, you know, youth, beauty, perfection, celebrity that we don't show enough ordinary women. Right. Right. It's like, oh, well, look at Jane Fonda. And I'm like, but what about like, look at your mom or your aunt? Yes, exactly.
00:16:43.180And I think that's sort of how I'm seeing myself now in the world is, you know, we have these two extremes, right, that the media shows.
00:16:53.840You're either going to be disabled with dementia, you know, you're going to be depressed, you're going to be a drain on society, you're ruining it for every generation behind you because you're such a, you know, burden.0.98
00:17:09.780And then on the other hand, you have now, and I think it changed from when I first started Accidental Icon, but now it really is, on the other end, that ageless, perfectly fit, 85-year-old, marathon running, totally well-resourced, needing-nothing, independent, older person.1.00
00:20:38.160Okay, we are back with Lynn Slater. And I talk about this on the show so often about how on media and social media now, because social media is media, women are portrayed in extremes.1.00
00:20:53.240You are either a stay-at-home mom, a word that I hate, or you are a hardcore career woman.1.00
00:20:59.680You are either, you know, an older woman who needs a walker, who, you know, has her hair set in rollers, or you are Jane Fonda.
00:21:08.580And I think most of us are just, we're in the middle.
00:21:11.980And there's no space in media for those of us in the middle.
00:21:15.520Exactly. And I think one of the reasons in the earlier years that I was popular was because I was in the middle. I was an ordinary woman. I had gray hair. I had wrinkles. My partner did not have Photoshop because he was a film camera person, really.
00:21:35.780and you know in you know my pictures in the earlier years if you look closely there's like
00:21:42.400garbage and cigarette butts around my feet and I I think that was appealing to a lot of people that
00:21:50.500okay look at this woman she's just kind of putting herself out there with this look that says0.99
00:21:56.440you know I don't care I'm just having fun you can like me or not whatever and then over time
00:22:04.120right as you get into this sort of fake world well it I guess how can I describe it I was living a
00:22:16.180double life so the life on social media was glamorous I'm flying all over the world I'm
00:22:23.580wearing all these fabulous clothes but at the same time I was living my life in a 600 square foot
00:22:31.500apartment in East Harlem, cleaning my own toilet, visiting my mom, taking care of my
00:22:39.000granddaughter. And I think, you know, that is the life that was invisible. And what I'm trying to do
00:22:46.880now is show that life, is show the real life that I have, which at the end of the day, I found
00:22:56.480was more fulfilling and made me much happier than the other one.
00:23:03.480Right. Exactly. Exactly. But you also never know what's going to make you happy.
00:23:10.120Talk to me about the early days of when your account first blew up. You have a lot of followers.
00:23:15.580Accidental Icon got freaking huge. Were you enjoying it in the very beginning or was it
00:23:22.260very overwhelming i think it was a bit overwhelming because i like the small nature of it in the
00:23:33.200beginning where like every time i got a new follower i sent them a rose emoji and in 2017
00:23:44.100there was an article about me i think it was on a site called board panda and it was sort of the
00:23:54.080cinderella story of how this 61 year old ordinary teacher got mistaken for a fashion icon and got
00:24:04.200fena and so this story was then picked up across a ton of media literally i was getting a hundred
00:24:14.840thousand new followers a day that's bananas yeah yes and so that was sort of the beginning
00:24:23.360right of the moment when I realized in retrospect that I was beginning to lose control
00:24:35.040of my story and of my project and it was shortly after that that I started to appear you know I
00:24:46.280got signed with the modeling agency and I started to appear in campaigns that were international
00:24:52.680and, you know, started to travel and just sort of do so many different things.
00:25:34.980and she basically said I'm gonna put you forth as a personality because I think brands are gonna
00:25:43.080start moving away and start using people who are more personalities who like do different things
00:25:51.380like photographers and musicians and she was absolutely right she was right she was right
00:25:57.120yeah in fact did happen and so I kind of liked the way that she wanted to position me
00:26:03.700And so that was the main reason I signed with her.
00:26:09.940And I have to tell you that having my photo taken was never a comfortable experience for me, which is why in all my photos you see me wearing sunglasses and not smiling because it was the only way that I could sort of put myself out there and do that.
00:26:32.580and I remember the first big campaign that she got me. I was so anxious and so stiff,
00:26:42.940like it took them three hours to get a good shot. And I felt like I had just had a facelift
00:26:50.700because my face was so frozen from, you know, just anxiety. So it did get easier over time.
00:27:00.420But that was really not my favorite part of it. I enjoyed having conversations with people and being interviewed by people who had interesting questions and wanted to talk about interesting things.
00:27:16.680I think the photography part was my least favorite. And unfortunately, my agent left and she could not take her clients with her. And so after that, I left the modeling agency and I got more of a talent management firm to take care of me.
00:27:44.920And that's actually when I made the transition to doing more of my business on Instagram than through fashion campaigns and things like that.
00:27:59.580And so you talked a little bit about how you turned back to writing during the pandemic.
00:28:04.900Give our listeners a synopsis of what the book is about.
00:28:09.340So I devoured this book. I devoured it in one night, and then I gave it to my mom, who is 68.
00:31:45.700and the last couple of chapters of the book are really about my new home and my new community
00:31:56.620and my grandchildren and throughout the book too I'm referencing my mother and my grandmother
00:32:04.820who both were very rebellious women in very different ways but yeah kind of figuring out
00:32:16.620by the end of the book who am I as I turn 70 who would I like to be and really setting myself up
00:32:26.500as I did when I turned 60 to be open to whatever a new decade was going to bring me.
00:32:37.420And so it really is, I guess, the rise and the fall of that accidental icon, but really just
00:32:46.280the joy and the happiness and the pleasure when you have lost yourselves and you kind of regain
00:32:53.700yourselves and are really living in a way that's true to you.
00:33:01.620Well, I think a lot of our listeners, and we have listeners of all different ages and stages of life,
00:33:07.220but I know that we have a lot who are mothers with young children, which is also a time when
00:33:14.080women lose themselves. Absolutely. And let me tell you that
00:33:20.200And it doesn't end because of how we do not honor caregiving work and we do not give support to moms because one of the things I did, which was the greatest blessing, is shortly after I moved here, my daughter had my grandson.
00:33:45.100Oh. And because viruses and things were still around and unfortunately she only had six weeks
00:33:53.920of maternity, I said, I'll do daycare. So for the first year of his life from six in the morning
00:34:01.500till five at night, I had him. He was on in his little pack on my chest when I was writing this
00:34:10.180book. So I think one of the things that I wish very much is that younger women who are in the
00:34:24.280midst of that loss of yourselves that comes when you're mothering and making a career and
00:34:32.040trying to have a relationship and all the things that you do is that if we weren't so afraid of
00:34:39.680being old, we could have a vision in our head of what we could be when we are an older woman.
00:34:49.080And I think now when I myself was in those moments, if I had known, because I always wanted
00:34:56.600to be a writer and I always, you know, it was like, oh, you don't have time. You can't support
00:35:02.420yourself that way, you know, all the excuses. If I had known that at 70, I was going to publish
00:35:10.160a book, it would have been a comfort to me. I would have said, okay, okay, this is your life
00:35:18.340now, but it's going to change. And you're going to take that dream off the shelf and it's going
00:35:25.880happen for you and i would love to recommend to all of the young mothers who are in that place
00:35:34.740that you sit down and you make a mood boards of who you want to be when you are old
00:35:40.460and then start preparing for it i love that i love it so much i'm gonna start i i can't make
00:35:51.000it today. I have to fly to Sicily to solve a family murder today in a few hours, but I'm going
00:35:58.120to make it, maybe I'll make it there in Sicily and then I'll bring it back. I'll get it a seat
00:36:01.620on the plane. Yes. Yes. Yes. All the things. Start bringing your older self with you because
00:36:07.200she's an amazing companion. Oh, she's going to be so great. I'm very excited for my older self
00:36:12.620definitely wears caftans all the time. I'm wearing overalls right now. Also overalls. Overalls and
00:36:19.400caftans are her are her jam um tell everyone where they can find you and where they can find the book
00:36:26.220well i'm living most authentically and fabulously on substack these days and that's where i plan to
00:36:35.760live as after all the hoopla of the book and so that's linslater how to be old substack you can
00:36:46.300also find me on instagram at icon accidental and uh those are probably the two places
00:36:56.900that i'm spending most of my time yes everyone subscribe to the sub stack which i think that's
00:37:04.180where a lot of us are living more authentically these days that's where i'm living more authentically
00:37:09.280so yes your sub stack is excellent and i'm going to send all of my people over there and everyone
00:37:15.420has to order Lynn's book as well. Oh, thank you so much. I appreciate it. Yes, yes, yes. Order
00:37:24.280Lynn's book, How to Be Old. Make yourself a mood board of who you want to be and how you want to
00:37:30.080feel at 50 and 60 and 70. And as Lynn said, start bringing your older self along with you. Make her
00:37:39.040your companion. She's great. I'm going to bring her on that plane to Sicily, and we are gonna talk
00:37:46.160and drink some wine and eat some pasta. This reminds me, of course it reminds me,
00:37:53.560get your order of the Sicilian inheritance in today. Tell your friends, tell your book clubs.
00:38:00.280I want to make this book the book of the summer, but I can't do it without you, without the readers.
00:38:05.240and I promise you this is the book that will get you out of your reading slump and it's going to
00:38:11.400give you so much to think about and talk about and it's just an adventure. It's a delicious
00:38:17.380adventure. Now go do something nice for yourself and for your older self right now. Both of you