Nora Ephron - I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman

Contents

For Nick, Jacob, and Max

I Feel Bad About My Neck

I feel bad about my neck. Truly I do. If you saw my neck, you might feel bad about it too, but youd probably be too polite to let on. If I said something to you on the subjectsomething like I absolutely cannot stand my neckyoud undoubtedly respond by saying something nice, like I dont know what youre talking about. Youd be lying, of course, but I forgive you. I tell lies like that all the timemostly to friends who tell me theyre upset because they have little pouches under their eyes, or jowls, or wrinkles, or flab around the middle, and do I think they should have an eye job, or a face-lift, or Botox, or liposuction. My experience is that I dont know what youre talking about is code for I see what you mean, but if you think youre going to trap me into engaging on this subject, youre crazy. Its dangerous to engage on such subjects, and we all know it. Because if I said, Yes, I see exactly what you mean, my friend might go out and have her eyes done, for instance, and it might not work, and she might end up being one of those people you read about in tabloids who ends up in court suing their plastic surgeons because they can never close their eyes again. Furthermore, and this is the point: It would be All My Fault. I am particularly sensitive to the All My Fault aspect of things, since I have never forgiven one of my friends for telling me not to buy a perfectly good apartment on East Seventy-fifth Street in 1976.

Sometimes I go out to lunch with my girlfriendsI got that far into the sentence and caught myself. I suppose I mean my women friends. We are no longer girls and have not been girls for forty years. Anyway, sometimes we go out to lunch and I look around the table and realize were all wearing turtleneck sweaters. Sometimes, instead, were all wearing scarves, like Katharine Hepburn in On Golden Pond. Sometimes were all wearing mandarin collars and look like a white ladies version of the Joy Luck Club. Its sort of funny and its sort of sad, because were not neurotic about agenone of us lies about how old she is, for instance, and none of us dresses in a way thats inappropriate for our years. We all look good for our age. Except for our necks.

Oh, the necks. There are chicken necks. There are turkey gobbler necks. There are elephant necks. There are necks with wattles and necks with creases that are on the verge of becoming wattles. There are scrawny necks and fat necks, loose necks, crepey necks, banded necks, wrinkled necks, stringy necks, saggy necks, flabby necks, mottled necks. There are necks that are an amazing combination of all of the above. According to my dermatologist, the neck starts to go at forty-three, and thats that. You can put makeup on your face and concealer under your eyes and dye on your hair, you can shoot collagen and Botox and Restylane into your wrinkles and creases, but short of surgery, theres not a damn thing you can do about a neck. The neck is a dead giveaway. Our faces are lies and our necks are the truth. You have to cut open a redwood tree to see how old it is, but you wouldnt have to if it had a neck.

My own experience with my neck began shortly before I turned forty-three. I had an operation that left me with a terrible scar just above the collarbone. It was shocking, because I learned the hard way that just because a doctor was a famous surgeon didnt mean he had any gift for sewing people up. If you learn nothing else from reading this essay, dear reader, learn this: Never have an operation on any part of your body without asking a plastic surgeon to come stand by in the operating room and keep an eye out. Because even if you are being operated on for something serious or potentially serious, even if you honestly believe that your health is more important than vanity, even if you wake up in the hospital room thrilled beyond imagining that it wasnt cancer, even if you feel elated, grateful to be alive, full of blinding insight about whats important and whats not, even if you vow to be eternally joyful about being on the planet Earth and promise never to complain about anything ever again, I promise you that one day soon, sooner than you can imagine, you will look in the mirror and think, I hate this scar.

Assuming, of course, that you look in the mirror. Thats another thing about being a certain age that Ive noticed: I try as much as possible not to look in the mirror. If I pass a mirror, I avert my eyes. If I must look into it, I begin by squinting, so that if anything really bad is looking back at me, I am already halfway to closing my eyes to ward off the sight. And if the light is good (which I hope its not), I often do what so many women my age do when stuck in front of a mirror: I gently pull the skin of my neck back and stare wistfully at a younger version of myself. (Heres something else Ive noticed, by the way: If you want to get really, really depressed about your neck, sit in the backseat of a car, right behind the driver, and look at yourself in the rearview mirror. What is it about rearview mirrors? I have no idea why, but there are no worse mirrors where necks are concerned. Its one of the genuinely compelling mysteries of modern life, right up there with why the cold water in the bathroom is colder than the cold water in the kitchen.)

But my neck. This is about my neck. And I know what youre thinking: Why not go to a plastic surgeon? Ill tell you why not. If you go to a plastic surgeon and say, Id like you just to fix my neck, he will tell you flat out that he cant do it without giving you a face-lift too. And hes not lying. Hes not trying to con you into spending more money. The fact is, its all one big ball of wax. If you tighten up the neck, youve also got to tighten up the face. But I dont want a face-lift. If I were a muffin and had a nice round puffy face, I would bite the bulletmuffins are perfect candidates for this sort of thing. But I am, alas, a bird, and if I had a face-lift, my neck would be improved, no question, but my face would end up pulled and tight. I would rather squint at this sorry face and neck of mine in the mirror than confront a stranger who looks suspiciously like a drum pad.

Every so often I read a book about age, and whoevers writing it says its great to be old. Its great to be wise and sage and mellow; its great to be at the point where you understand just what matters in life. I cant stand people who say things like this. What can they be thinking? Dont they have necks? Arent they tired of compensatory dressing? Dont they mind that 90 percent of the clothes they might otherwise buy have to be eliminated simply because of the necklines? Dont they feel sad about having to buy chokers? One of my biggest regretsbigger even than not buying the apartment on East Seventy-fifth Street, bigger even than my worst romantic catastropheis that I didnt spend my youth staring lovingly at my neck. It never crossed my mind to be grateful for it. It never crossed my mind that I would be nostalgic about a part of my body that I took completely for granted.

Of course its true that now that Im older, Im wise and sage and mellow. And its also true that I honestly do understand just what matters in life. But guess what? Its my neck.

I Hate My Purse

I hate my purse. I absolutely hate it. If youre one of those women who think theres something great about purses, dont even bother reading this because there will be nothing here for you. This is for women who hate their purses, who are bad at purses, who understand that their purses are reflections of negligent housekeeping, hopeless disorganization, a chronic inability to throw anything away, and an ongoing failure to handle the obligations of a demanding and difficult accessory (the obligation, for example, that it should in some way match what youre wearing). This is for women whose purses are a morass of loose Tic Tacs, solitary Advils, lipsticks without tops, ChapSticks of unknown vintage, little bits of tobacco even though there has been no smoking going on for at least ten years, tampons that have come loose from their wrappings, English coins from a trip to London last October, boarding passes from long-forgotten airplane trips, hotel keys from God-knows-what hotel, leaky ballpoint pens, Kleenexes that either have or have not been used but theres no way to be sure one way or another, scratched eyeglasses, an old tea bag, several crumpled personal checks that have come loose from the checkbook and are covered with smudge marks, and an unprotected toothbrush that looks as if it has been used to polish silver.