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Good news, I wear dress shoes five days a week! I have three pair, depending on the suit and level of wear (brown, black, cordovan). Of course I am not in the US.
I would also suggest re: hotness and rapidly diminishing, to borrow your term, fuckability, it really does depend (and to channel Rodney Dangerfield: "on what I have no idea.") I see women here (in Japan) who keep their looks and figures well into their forties (though even they are not blindingly hot in the same way as younger women) although I believe many of them, certainly if they are still single, seem to have an almost visible cynicism and contempt regarding men, as if the veil of Isis had been pulled back for them long ago, and if they ever did end up coupling with a man it would be with the resignation of a Circe looking at a particularly muscular swine and thinking, ah well....
As for my acquaintances back home any woman my age who still lives there has ballooned into an almost unrecognizable caricature of her younger self. I can think of two exceptions. The men fare little better, perhaps not better at all I'm just viewing them with different criteria.
It seems pretty obvious that taking care of yourself, avoiding putting on weight, are pretty simple and straightforward.
True. Also I think genetics has something to do with it as I would never suggest most Japanese people are particularly rigorous in their exercise regimens. Certainly diet and, so far, the lack of a culture embracing fatness has something to do with it as well.
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This was one of my major takeaways from my trip to Japan, though more of a confirmation than a surprise. East Asian women retain their youthfulness for a length of time unimaginable to most white (and nearly all black and Latina) women. I would look at Japanese women and think, “She could be 22, or she could be 40.” The neoteny is very real, and very appreciated.
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