Proving it’s never too late to live the life you want, Louise Jacquet, 82, has been chipping away at a bucket list she began more than 40 years ago, in the 1980s. “I saw so many of my friends declining mentally, and others who were thinking about retiring and doing nothing,” Jacquet says.
By contrast, for her 60th birthday, she decided to go skydiving. It’s one of many adrenaline-spiking adventures Jacquet, a retired R.N., has embarked on. In the ’90s, she and her then-teenage daughter, Laurie, toured Australia and New Zealand together. “I’d just gotten a divorce,” she says. “I had no money.” Surviving on credit cards, they spent six weeks overseas. They climbed Ayers Rock, or Uluru, a sacred site for the aboriginal Anangu people that’s now closed to the public, and bungee jumped in New Zealand.
After adventures like those, Jacquet knew the typical golf-and-tennis retirement wouldn’t work. “That wasn’t for me,” she says.
Jacquet is my neighbor, and ever since we met, I’ve been in awe of her. In addition to bungee jumping and rock climbing, she’s exhibited her artwork in galleries, and hand-painted shirts she made have been featured in several high-end New York City shops, including Bergdorf Goodman. After retiring the first time, she took on a second career as director of nursing for an assessment and care planning firm, driving up and down the Suncoast, “from Punta Gorda to St. Pete.” Now retired again, she still crafts and paints. And the bucket list still beckons.
Earlier this year, Jacquet decided to have boudoir portraits taken. Laurie, now 53, and local photographer Louise Porvaznik, who offers boudoir photography, are friends, and the bucket-list idea was able to become a reality.
“I’d thought about it over the years, but it never fell into place,” Jacquet says of her session. Beforehand, she fussed over which outfit would work best. Back in 1963, she tells me, she stayed at the original Playboy Mansion in Chicago to recover from a train wreck. In those days, nurses rode on long-distance train rides in case medical issues arose, and Jacquet was one of two on that particular train line, which was en route to Florida. The person she was seeing at the time knew Hugh Hefner and suggested she reach out to him about recuperating from the train accident at the mansion.
Jacquet never met Hefner, but when she traveled back up to Illinois, the Playboy Bunnies were warm and welcoming. “One of the girls gave me a green bunny costume—my favorite color!” she says. For the boudoir session, she tried on a green bustier to recapture that moment, “but I didn’t like it,” she says. Undaunted, she paid a visit to Giggles, the adult shop on South Tamiami Trail, and found a blush-colored baby doll nightgown that was just right.
During the shoot, Jacquet’s confidence shone. “I felt very comfortable and laughed a lot,” she says.
“She was a hoot!” Porvaznik says, adding that it felt like kismet that the two share a first name. “It warmed my heart when Louise said to her daughter, ‘I had an amazing day.'”
Porvaznik took extra care during the session, considering Louise’s mobility and comfort remaining in sustained positions. “I built a guide in my head of which poses would work,” she says. “Louise had also seen my portfolio and knew she wanted a lying-down pose.”
I asked Jacquet what the feedback was like considering the prudishness that often surrounds older women’s sexuality.
“Laurie posted a couple of the pictures on her personal Facebook page. Women commented, ‘You’re so brave! You go, mama!’ and men said, ‘You look amazing!'” Jacquet says. “At 82, that does a lot for my ego. I’m of the generation where to look perfect, you had to be thin.” She tells me that when she looks back on vacation photos from when she was younger, she’s not sure why she didn’t feel sexy. “It’s been a battle,” she says.
“Us women need to love ourselves,” Porvaznik says. “Boudoir isn’t just about a sexy picture, it’s a bit of therapy, too. It transforms women. I love it. I don’t feel there’s an age where any woman should stop feeling sexy.”
“We’ve come a long way,” Jacquet says.
