KIM JOHNSON GROSS can ADVISE YOU ON DRESSING STYLISHLY AS YOU AGE

Missy here: I'm linking to the web site of KIM JOHNSTON GROSS, whose book "What To Wear For The Rest of Your Life" (Ageless Secrets of Style) is my personal recommendation for you mistresses who need to learn to AGE GRACEFULLY.

"As our bodies and lives transition, many of us lack the style-confidence or know-how to rethink, redefine and re-imagine our self-image. Even as a style expert, I know how easy it is to get stuck in old style notions that no longer work as well as they once did."

We've been reading Leslie's story about becoming first one of the worlds most beautiful women and beauty pageant winners to an abused mistress. We're thinking about aging and competition here (though some mistresses never face that problem because they move on into marriage or another loving relationship or are treated well and have a life-long romance with a man they share with his wife or another woman.)

AGING GRACEFULLY by self acknowledging your body changes is what KIM JOHNSON GROSS' book is all about.

I HAVE ANOTHER REASON I WANT TO RECOMMEND HER ADVISE TO YOU. You see, your years as a mistress and buying clothing that you might not be able to afford on your own salary may be limited, but that doesn't mean you can't be financially sound through INVESTMENT. And investing in yourself - getting your teeth straightened, having a beautiful wardrobe that will last past those years is a really good idea!

So take a look at this site and KIM's book!

CAROLE KING : WILL YOU STILL LOVE ME TOMORROW

ALONE FOR THANKSGIVING? DON'T YOU BE! (UNLESS YOU WANT TO BE!)

Are you by any chance ALONE for Thanksgiving? This is the All-American family holiday in the United States, celebrated by people of all religions, and so it's one of the most likely times a mistress will find herself alone, or at least without a visit from her man.

And your friends? Is it that NO ONE has invited you to their table?

How could this happen?

Easily enough!

It's happened to me! Some people just never think of their single friends when it comes to family holidays.

So we are going to make the BEST OF IT!
Put on some music - good music - and make yourself an elegant meal. It does not have to be a WHOLE TURKEY, OK? TURKEY BURRITOS will do! And wine? A glass - not the whole bottle.

OR BETTER YET, get yourself involved now in charitable work, perhaps serving food to the HOMELESS at your local shelter. This will help you keep your perspective!
Yours,

Missy

MISSY ASKS YOU : HAS BEING A MISTRESS DRIVEN YOU TO DRINK ?

... I don't mean a glass of wine or two with dinner. I mean alcoholic!

KEPT WOMEN by LESLIE MCRAY with TED SCHWARZ : EXCERPT

page 71 (This is the lowest point Leslie experienced as a mistress...)

"I was forty in a world where players in their twenties were overage. I had come to recognize that I was addicted to a highly destructive life-style. Increasingly I had been involved with men who were violent toward me, yet with whom I continued to associate. I retained photographs of myself from when I was a top international model. I framed a letter from the office of a major presidential adviser. I talked of what was happening in Monte Carlo, Cannes, Rome, London, Paris, and other sections of the world, but I was speaking of past trips, past associations. The telephone no longer rang with offers for the modeling jobs I once dominated. The men who contacted me were fewer in number, less sophisticated that in the past, no longer, the world's elite. My time was past and I knew it."

Page 73

"Then there was another man because there had always been another man. "Use my house, consider my staff your staff, drive my car." It was a familiar litany I heard and I fantasized that all was well again. I was still in the game, still competing with the twenty year olds ...still a prize to be won by men who competed for the attention my presence on their arm would bring... But the man who loaned me his house could not keep me there, did not want me there. He had his own life, his own kept woman. I was no longer his but merely a friend, or perhaps a faded memory for whom he retained enough love or enough guilt to provide what was a little more than a few day's vacation... I was on the streets, living from my car, desperately calling men I knew, yet trying to disguise the panic in my voice...

MONTGOMERY WARD'sS SILKY UNDIES FOR THE LADIES

In the days before VICTORIA'S SECRET and FREDERICKS OF HOLLYWOOD...

KEPT WOMEN by LESLIE MCRAY with TED SCHWARZ : BOOK EXCERPT

The following is a list culled from the book of Leslie's "Prince Charmings"
(She says many Kept women have a Cinderella fantasy.)

The Politician
The Arab Entertainer
The Swiss Industrialist
The Billionaire Industrialists
The Jewelry Magnate


C 1990 by Leslie McRay and Ted Schwarz. William Morrow and Co is the publisher

May 2021

I have been thinking about this idea of a Cinderella Fantasy and the thing is, until recently most women expected to be married and have children and not work outside the home for income. It was considered to be the best way to live, perhaps the only way (unless you wanted to join a monastic group or a nunnery) for a decent woman to live, and there was great pressure on women to fulfill the FANTASY that they would get everything they wanted and needed from one person for the rest of their lives and that they could be all to that one man as well. To me that's circa 2021 a Cinderella Fantasy.  Cinderella was an abused orphan who married a Prince who took her away from it all and gave her a good life, not only because she was pretty but also because he was looking for someone so special.  When the shoe fits.

Missy

DECLARATION FOR MISTRESSES - Aging Gracefully

"I will dress and make-up in an age-appropriate way."  

Missy here! This is a hard one for many women, because there is so much emphasis on youth in our culture. It's not easy for all of us to understand our looks, or be able to count on an outside opinion; certainly not all those salesclerks in stores tell us the truth; they too often just want their commissions.

Never the less, a woman who is trying too hard to look younger than she is, simply looks ridiculous and is fooling no-one. Age gracefully!

KEPT WOMEN by LESLIE MCRAY with TED SCHWARZ

EXCERPT

Leslie McRay "For the first time there was a change in what was taking place in my life. As a beauty contestant, I found people looking at me differently... All I knew was that suddenly I was receiving special attention, attention that both embarrassed and delighted me... I was crowned Miss Fullerton, the first of more than seventy contest I won. It was also the first major step toward becoming a kept woman... I had no identity, no self esteem. It was the 1960's, the end of an era for beauty contestants... That first beauty contest radically changed my life. The contests were still considered legitimate ways to break into modeling and show business careers..." page 65 of her book

ALANIS MORISSETTE : YOU OUGHTA KNOW

LESLIE MCRAY BOOK AUTHOR, ACTRESS, ACTIVE FILM PRODUCER : MISTRESS OF THE MONTH

LESLIE McRAY is our MISTRESS OF THE MONTH, NOVEMBER 2010

Leslie wrote a book that was published in 1990 called "KEPT WOMEN" subtitle "Confessions From a Life of Luxury" which is now in it's 3rd edition.
She wrote it with Ted Schwartz.

The book is heavily dependent on psychotherapy, and the diagnosis of kept women as being abused children who grow up with a real lack of self esteem and an addiction to the approval of men, usually based on their beauty and sexual prowess.

Yet, I noticed, she said that many of these Mistresses had their own incomes of $30,000 to $100,000 a year. So most of them really didn't need the money, as I see it, and probably had some education or intelligence and the self esteem to be competive in the work place.


I feel sorry for Leslie that her mistresshood came to what it did and I admire her courage to overcome her past and her own demons to write the book, which does delve into a very dark, scary, aspect of mistressing that some, not all, mistresses experience. This includes sadio-masochism.

Many mistresses apparently "shared and bared" their souls to Leslie, and of course they remain unnamed.
Leslie is also psychology-sure that the whole set up of being kept, by a usually married man, is one in which the man and the mistress are people who cannot keep a commitment (something I personally do not believe is always true either).
Leslie is from a world of beauties who modeled, won contests, and met and were kept by men of international fame. She won something like 70 beauty pageants.

These men who kept Leslie and other women were men with great fortunes - doers - important men. Yet her experience with them was horrible.

She left the mistressing life that caused her so much pain and survived. She is now an active film producer. She has a film on the 9/11 terrorist attack to her credit.

I'm linking to the IMDB database that has a bio of Leslie...
Missy

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