Bookshelf: Midlife perspectives
Nora Ephron’s 2006 book is, I guess, now one of the “classics” on midlife women and aging. And despite its title (and one of our favorite quotes below) it is not focused solely on the trials and tribulations of the aging neck. In the very readable and short 160 pages, Ephron muses on many topics that she’s viewing with a different lens in her mid-50’s, the age she was at the time of writing. Everything from her hatred of purses, to serial monogamy to parenting. A particularly amusing chapter is the one on “maintenance” – about the increasing amount of daily, monthly and annual maintenance many people go through to maintain a youthful appearance. I deeply agree with her insight on hair dye and it being the reason 40, 50, 60 and beyond no longer “look” like those ages. She goes on to surmise that hair dye is the most powerful weapon older women have against “youth culture” and is at least partly responsible for women keeping their jobs into middle/late middle age. Sad, but true. A quick, relatable and humorous weekend read.
“According to my dermatologist, the neck starts to go at forty-three, and that’s 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, there’s 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 wouldn’t have to if it had a neck.”