My three-and-a-half year-old granddaughter already knows how to rub her lips together and do a big smack finish after putting on lip balm. And my 100-year-old friend, who lives alone on a mountain top, wouldn’t deign to answer her door until she has her lipstick on.. and her earrings. So, I guess this makeup ritual is pretty much a lifetime thing.

I started thinking about our girly-girl practice after Today TV anchors Kathie Lee Gifford and Hoda Kotb did a no-make up day on television, in HD, no less. It was so rare a sighting that Brian Williams reported it on the nightly news, right there with oil spills and global debt.

It might have been just a fun gimmick to boost ratings but maybe there is a real trend to this natural look, coming so soon after Hollywood announced it’s tired of overly-altered actresses and want women with real faces and breasts.

We all know the tyranny of too much. The scary orange face that doesn’t match the neck.

For most everyday women, how hard would it be to give up wearing makeup? I mean nothing, not even your favorite mocha lipstick that lives in your jeans pocket even when you’re walking the dog.

I live in Northern California where it’s not uncommon to see bare-faced women. There are plenty of them at 7 a.m. at the gym. There are a lot of us who work at home and we can go all day before even thinking about putting on mascara or a bra, for that matter. Still, many of us know about putting on our “game face” before doing business or going out in public, depending on the situation.

But we also know the tyranny of too much. The scary orange face that doesn’t match the neck, the Geisha girl eyeliner, the drag queen blush. Growing up I had a friend whose mother never went downstairs to breakfast before putting on her false eyelashes.

At the same time I recognize how important a little makeup is to friends who’ve lost their hair and eyebrows to chemo.

I once dropped some money into the hand of a homeless woman sitting outside Neiman Marcus in San Francisco. She looked up and I saw that she had on a tasteful bit of eyeliner. I thought that a good sign. The woman had not given up, she was having a hard time but hanging on to her self-respect.

I once went natural on TV. The day I was to be a guest on a Houston early morning talk show the light in my hotel bathroom burned out. I couldn’t tell what I looked like. Plus I’d forgotten my eyeliner. I had little time to primp when I arrived at the station and the other guest on the show – we were there to talk about how Boomer women deal with aging – had arrived in perfectly flattering makeup. Our tanned hostess with long blonde hair and sleeveless top was easily 30 years younger than both of us. My bare face and I had no choice but to ignore the monitor and smile. At least, I had whitened my teeth before Houston.

I have a problem with themed sweaters. That probably makes me sound like a curmudgeon to some people, especially this time of year. I think those little sweaters decorated with teddy bears and elves with candy canes are very sweet when worn by little children. And that’s where they belong.

On a mature adult they make me nervous. My friends and I sometimes do a fashion disaster alert over the holidays, looking for grown-ups in reindeer sweatshirts, Santa sweaters and jingle bell earrings. You can find them even in San Francisco, a city that takes pride in being fashionably astute and where even the dogs don’t go in for frivolous dressing.

Cute might have gotten you through your first few decades but cute doesn’t age well.

I know we’re just being wicked and they’re just having fun getting into the spirit but adults in kid clothes put themselves at great risk of looking silly. And worse, of being called cute.

This is a concern that goes way beyond holiday dressing. Cute might have gotten you through your first few decades but cute doesn’t age well. After a while it brings only unwelcome attention. When an older person calls a younger person “cute,” it is a compliment. When a younger person calls an older person “cute,” it is condescending. The same with referring to a person of noteworthy vintage as “adorable” or “just darling.” Pretty soon they’ll be patting you on the head and asking, “How are we today?”

This matter of how to dress after a certain age so as not to create a negative image is a favorite subject of mine. I started making a list of fashion warnings when writing about women over age 50. No one is deliberately going for the image of “instant old lady.” Department stores do not have special sections marked “matronly and dowdy.” But mistakes are made.

I started the list out with “friends don’t let friends wear knee-highs.” And added such casualties as cruise-style polyester pantsuits, weak pastels, long denim skirts and matching sweatshirts and sweatpants. I pointed out that women of my generation, blessed with jeans that know how to flatter a mature bottom, dress younger than our mothers and grandmothers. As one over-50 friend colorfully put it, “If we dressed today like some of our mothers did when they were our age we’d look like drag queens.”

Now that I’ve quit my regular day job and joined the ranks of the so-called retired, I’ve expanded my focus on what to wear when you’re no longer required to pull on pantyhose and some serious tailored outfit every morning. Do we now simply approach each day of the week as “Casual Friday?”

My friend Lee in Ohio, who nixes caftans and sensible lace up shoes, counseled, “If someone knows you’re retired by what you’re wearing, you’re wearing the wrong stuff.”

We may no longer have someone else’s dress code to adhere to but people are watching. You don’t want the UPS guy catching you in that old pink bathrobe with the orange juice stains and think all you do is mope around and watch TV.

My artist pal Marylu continues to wears short skirts and buys her glittery T-shirts in the teen section of Macy’s. She vows to forever “dress in an age inappropriate manner.” That’s one way to go. Eccentric, arty and individual certainly beats matronly.

Or go for the shock and awe approach, like the wonderful late Jeanne Claude, the artist wife of Christo, whose startling hair varied from pumpkin to pomegranate and who didn’t look at all retiring. And who no one would have ever dared call cute.

It was surprising news that fashion designer Eileen Fisher is leaving her old love for a younger woman but those things happen. I sighed when I read that the New York designer known for her sophisticated styles and lush colors had decided to leave behind her Boomer sisters to go after a younger, cooler customer.

When I was young and cool I wasn’t an Eileen Fisher fan. When I got older and decided to occasionally treat myself I was drawn to Eileen Fisher. First by her models and then her clothes.

The models in Eileen Fisher ads were real women – high school principals and airline pilots. Some of them had silver hair and wore glasses. They looked brainy and fit and confident. They walked on the beach. They held books in their arms. They even smiled. They didn’t look angry and starved like other models. Nor did they stand pigeon toed in stilettos, like some porn star. They were grown-ups.

Eileen Fisher was one of us. She too favored classy but uncomplicated clothes, the kind you don’t have to yank on and adjust but that made you feel pretty and even hip. I liked what I read about her – that she gave her employees yoga classes and health and education benefits and helped women in poor countries start businesses.

Her clothes and marketing style portrayed women of her generation in a new way.

If you were going to describe a stylish classic American woman you might handily refer to her as an Eileen Fisher type.

Her models had both age and flair. Here was one shrewd business person who did not avoid the aging market but invested in it and celebrated it.

Imagine, then, our surprise to find that others thought her clothes had “as much style and shape as a burqa.” That’s what it said in a New York Times story that reported the Eileen Fisher line was trading in its traditional base to appeal to the youth market. This new line would be different from the old Eileen Fisher line that was “designed for graying bobos who dabbled in ceramics and had lifetime subscriptions to the New Yorker.”

Ouch, said this graying bobo - after I looked up the word “bobo,” which is a word coined by conservative columnist David Brooks, short for bourgeois bohemian. Bobo or not, I do not feel scorned by Eileen Fisher. I have enough of her clothes in my closet and really, in this economy I don’t see a big shopping spree in my future.

If she wants to go back to her drawing board — the new line is to include biker jackets and leggings – then she should. She’s 58, a good age to try something new.

But I’m just sorry that she feels like she has to go after the kids like everyone else. Maybe she’ll do great with the younger, cooler crowd who will one day say, “hey, where are those stylish black dresses and asymmetrical sweaters you used to make?” I’ll mostly miss the women in her ads who look like people my age and wear clothes that don’t require a full-length industrial strength undergarment.

She won’t miss me. I was not a heavy investor. I bought some sweaters on sale and once paid full price for a smart ivory colored jacket for my daughter’s wedding. I still wear it, mostly with jeans. My last Eileen Fisher score was a black linen shirt from a consignment shop in San Francisco. It cost 12 bucks and looks nothing like a burqa.

The headline writers say that Eileen Fisher is giving herself a facelift. Well, you know how those can go. Sometimes they work and sometimes they just make you look funny. Then there is no going back.