there should be a term for the fear of on-trend octogenarians

I’m terrified of the incredibly fashionable seventysomethings trend because it means no end to this longing and striving. No settling into polyester and flabbery. Also, they’re all so thin. I’m getting married this summer, at what if I were pregnant (I’m not) would be called “advanced maternal age.” Or maybe by this point (it’s been years since I checked), “dangerously advanced maternal age.” Which is not to say I wish I’d married earlier (the air from those bullets dodged still cooling my ears), only that the level of effort I’ve put into getting in shape for the photographic marathon while hardly Herculean would, likely in my 30s and doubtless in my 20s, have engendered far greater an impact on what I am striving mightily, day by day and magazine by magazine, not to call my “problem areas.” There’s a slim woman passing on the sidewalk below in a flowing and re-fashionable caftan. I know her slimness because she walks past often with her small dog and a man I assume is her partner or roommate. He and I work at the same coffeeshop, at our laptops on tiny tables. He’s friendlier than I am with the baristas, though I’ve been taking a cue and upping the effusiveness of my greetings and compliments and notations on the weather or news. The other day this effort was rewarded by an entirely unsolicited compliment on my outfit by the barista whose impish twentysomething figure makes the seemingless effortless 80s-90s Goodwill combos she rocks adorable. My dress had also been purchased at a second-hand store, though originally by someone else from Ann Taylor, and I cut off the sleeves which crowded my muscle- or wine-and-chocolate-bound upper arms so much as to make hugging or lifting my backpack impossible. I told her as much, and she said it made the dress look “futuristic,” which may have been a reference to how the shoulder seams rose slightly into points without the weight of the sleeves they were designed to bear, or perhaps she meant modern, less old-fashioned, or that this is my future, the modus operandi of the way I will dress the second half (everything willing) of my life -- find something well made and figure out what part of it to leave behind.