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How to Be Old

Lessons in Living Boldly from the Accidental Icon

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How to Be Old

Written by: Lyn Slater
Narrated by: Lyn Slater
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About this listen

One of Elle's Most Anticipated Nonfiction Books of 2024

A personal memoir in which Lyn Slater, known on Instagram as “Accidental Icon,” brings her characteristic style, optimism, forward-thinking, and rules-are-meant-to-be-broken attitude to the question of how to live boldly at any age.

When Lyn Slater started her fashion blog, Accidental Icon, at age sixty-one, she discovered that followers were flocking to her account for more than just her A-list style. As Lyn flaunted gray hair, wrinkles, and a megadose of self-acceptance, they found in her an alternative model of older life: someone who defied the stereotypes, refused to become invisible, and showed that all women have the opportunity to be relevant and take major risks at any stage of their life. Youth is not the only time we can be experimental.

How to Be Old tells the ten-year story of Lyn’s sixties, the sometimes-glamorous, sometimes-turbulent decade of Accidental Icon. This memoir is about the hopeful and future-oriented process of reinvention. It shows listeners that while you can’t control everything, what you can control is the way you think about your age and the creative ways you respond to the changes in your mind and body as they happen. Rather than trying to meet standards of youth and beauty as a measure of successful aging, Lyn promotes a more inclusive and empowering standard to judge our older selves by.

In this paradigm-shifting memoir, Lyn exemplifies that even with its unique challenges, being old is just like any new beginning in your life and can be the best and most invigorating of all of life’s phases, full of rebellion and reinvention, connection and creativity.

©2024 Lyn Slater (P)2024 Penguin Audio
Art & Literature Women Fashion
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What the critics say

“In equal parts inspirational and aspirational, Lyn Slater’s How to Be Old is a rousing, thrilling ride of a book. Being old is a privilege and a gift. Slater’s combination of curiosity, glamour, and activism will make readers of all ages take heart.”—Dani Shapiro, New York Times bestselling author

How to Be Old is a story of aging, of course, but it's primarily a story of living: with verve, with introspection, with great majesty. No one makes me more excited to be old than Lyn Slater."—Anne Helen Petersen, author of The Burnout Generation and Out of Office

"I have watched Lyn Slater from afar for years. She is the kind of woman I have been drawn to all my life, perhaps the kind of woman I am genetically coded to latch myself unto. She is older and wiser and does not seem to give many f--ks about the social obligations of either. In this book she does what I have always wanted a cool older woman to do. She kicks out a chair beside her and casually invites you to soak in her courageous vulnerability. How to be Old is a vision for your life this year, next year, in the older years that popular media has made a blurry blank space for women. Through this compelling narrative of career, identity, and aging you can borrow pieces of Lyn's journey, her vision, and her inspiring closet to assemble a version of womanhood that grows as you grow. That is the promise of this inspiring book. Womanhood does not have to be a cage. It can be a stage. And we can dress for whatever part we would like.”—Tressie McMillan Cottom, author of National Book Award Finalist Thick

What listeners say about How to Be Old

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candid and refreshing

Lyn Slater shares ten years of her life and gives us a glimpse into the influencer world but most importantly reflects on aging as a woman. The book is intelligent, thoughtful and charming as no doubt the writer is too.

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Not for me, maybe for you though!

Not my cup of tea, my mother who is 80 and sees fashion as important, would probably like it. I don’t see fashion as important, I shop at Walmart.

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