In How to Be Old, author Lyn Slater (profiled in our Fall 2021 issue) serves up a master class of style, substance and self-reflection. With razor-sharp wit and unflinching observation, the memoir unravels the “Accidental Icon” myth behind Slater’s immensely popular social media presence, recounts her unexpected path from classrooms to courtrooms to haute couture and serves as an ode to the timeless—and ageless — power of reinvention.

UAlbany Magazine: First, a confession, we’ve pasted a quote from your book on our office wall: “All the ages we have ever been live inside us.” It’s a powerful thought that we’re not one age or even one person, but a collection of those things. When did you come to that realization?

Lyn Slater: My relationship with age has never been a linear one. As the oldest of 6 children, I inhabited a liminal state where I was neither parent nor child but someone else, someone that did not have an age. I’ve never done things in the prescribed sequence of chronological age. I was 54 when I got my Ph.D. The question really is are we talking about age here or are we talking about memory? Our numerical age signifies nothing interesting about us, it simply marks the passage of time. It’s the memories and experiences that we collect over time that give us the raw materials to experiment with different selves if we choose to. That makes us unique from those who may share a particular number with us. Chronological age is a construct that contains rules, limitations and other ways society tries to set standards and control you. Subjective age is your personal perception about how you feel inside. It is fluid and malleable and that’s why I prefer to privilege it over chronological age. It’s a much more radical state with the potential for disruption of oppressive institutions, for example as a woman or girl, patriarchy.

Given the book’s title, one might think it’s meant for a certain demographic but the experiences and advice you offer are universal. Who did you have in mind while writing it?

I meant to write the book for a broad audience. For those of all ages as I was writing from the perspective of “all the ages I have ever been.” I really wanted to speak to young women before they wasted so much of their time, money and energy on trying not to be old when it’s inevitable. In retrospect, I misread our cultural readiness to not be so afraid of the word “old” because I have become so comfortable being old myself. The word is completely neutral for me. Sadly, I think the title really limited the audience for the book. During promotional events, I found younger people buying the book for their mothers or older sisters, not so much themselves.

I watched with interest [recently] when there was a big online outraged response objecting to the use of the word “old” as ageist in the title of an article in Allure: “Old Lady Energy Flexed Its Well-Toned Muscles at the Golden Globes.” The writer of the article, Valerie Monroe, age 74, like me, does not consider the words “old lady” derogatory. As she said eloquently in her response to her critics, “What’s ageist is considering the word old the worst kind of insult.” That concept needs a lot more unpacking. Until then, a different title may have expanded the audience for my book because as you note, the concepts and ideas in the book transcend age.

In the book, you talk about seam-ripping as a practical way of taking apart a garment to repurpose it into something new, but it also functions as a powerful metaphor. How did you summon the courage to fully embrace this and how can others do the same?

It’s quite strange and I’ve never been able to fathom why people think what I did as Accidental Icon was courageous and risk-taking when all I was doing was be comfortable with my actual age and explore something I was curious about. There was little or no downside and minimal risk for me in doing this. When I started my blog I had a full-time job as a professor, a wonderful network of family and friends, a partner, good health, many privileges. Nothing gained, nothing lost if it came to nothing. In my criminal justice and social work career, I often dealt with life or death and high stakes matters. It required way more courage and involved way more risk to myself and others to function fairly in that professional role than anything I ever did as the persona of Accidental Icon, yet that is the identity people want to pin medals on.

When we suggest that being yourself as you really are, in my case, “old” and being curious takes a lot of courage, or involves a good deal of risk, we are instilling the idea that this is something that you should be afraid of and avoid doing. What if we took away all that risk and reward language and just thought of living as a process of exploring and discovering? Using all that came before to lead our curiosity to ask new questions. A place where there are no mistakes, no should or ought to. Where there is no self-limiting age. That’s what seam-ripping is all about. It’s a state of mind, not necessarily a big action. When practiced this way it can be liberatory.

You use the language of clothing, culture, and the spirit of the times to vividly tell your story, making your writing as artful and intentional as the way you dress. How did you develop this style — one that feels as layered and lovely as the wardrobe you so beautifully describe?

Well, first, thank you for this lovely compliment about my writing. While I started my career here at SUNY Albany in a specialist discipline, criminal justice, I later moved into a generalist discipline that of social work (at least it was when I trained for it, now getting too specialist in my opinion). Social work is by its very nature interdisciplinary drawing its knowledge base from many different fields, psychology, biology, neurobiology, ecology, politics, economics and others. I guess you could say I have an interdisciplinary and generalist brain that allows for the layering of many different perspectives. It also allows for a great deal of movement between disciplines and systems, and it was what made it easy to enter fashion which, in my experience, is just another system. When I write, no matter what it is I am writing about, that is the brain that comes with me and expresses itself in what gets on the page. As a way of mitigating burnout in my social work career, I would often take classes in the creative arts, for example improv and creative writing. I still take classes now. This combination of professional and expressive skill development probably figures into how I write.

As a successful social media influencer and a professor of social work, you have a unique vantage point from which to evaluate the promise and/or peril of social media and its larger effects on society. What is your prognosis for us?

Given the current context, my prognosis is dire. At first social media was a way to connect with and/or re-find others who were distant from us geographically and for everyday people to crash through all the institutional gatekeepers with [social media’s] promise for the advancement of democracy. It developed way faster than sensible regulation could keep up with given the atrophy and self-interest of our governmental structures and rampant growth of capitalism and consumerism. We now have lost control of it and there is a disinclination on the parts of billionaires, tech people, the current U.S. government and the ruling class to want to regulate it for the sake of the common good. It is now part of democracies’ demise and a hate-filled bin of disinformation and social control. My suggestion right now is to get off it, go to your local coffee shop, library or another gathering place. Start talking to people in real life and think about how you want your local community to be. Start creating new visions for mutual aid, inclusion, sustainability, circular economies and local futures. No one else has your back right now.

“Chronological age is a construct that contains rules, limitations and other ways society tries to set standards and control you.”

You write that “taking control of how you want to live your life and what story you want to tell about yourself is an act that transcends age.” What story do you hope readers take away about you?

That I am a woman who is always curious, always learning, always discovering, always loving and therefore always living and growing until the last breath I take.

Without spoiling it for readers, towards the end of the book, you write beautifully about denim jeans. How are they holding up today?

I have them on right now as I am writing this. They are more worn and threadbare than when I wrote about them in my book, but to my mind even more comfortable and more beautiful. They are becoming more valuable and meaningful with each passing year. Just like we do as we age. Just like me, lol.