I Feel Bad About My Neck

In the fifteen essays collected in I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman (2006), American author and filmmaker Nora Ephron explores a variety of themes through her unique lens as a woman of a certain age in twenty-first-century America. From biological changes to evolving relationships, from empty-nesting to the nature of life and death, Ephron utilizes her trademark razor-sharp wit and storytelling candor to honestly and unabashedly plumb what it means to grow up, grow old, and grow wise.

In the title essay, Ephron examines the issue of aging necks—her own and others'. The neck is a particular sticking point in the whole aging-gracefully business because no matter how much makeup one applies to one's face, no matter how many injectables one gets, no matter how much hair dye and creative hairstyling one attempts, there is no repairing or concealing the ravages of time upon the neck (short of surgery, that is). Ephron notices that even though neither she nor her close female friends are especially vain or evasive about their age, they each go to great, unspoken lengths to conceal or direct attention from their necks. Suddenly, she realizes both she and her friends wear more turtlenecks and flowy scarves and mandarin collars than they used to. Ephron then discusses how outraged she gets whenever she reads books by authors claiming how great it is to get old. "What can they be thinking?" she wonders. "Don't they have necks?"

The essay "I Hate My Purse" addresses the problems inherent in one of the most essential features of any woman's wardrobe: the almighty purse. Purses are, for Ephron, are a major pain. She detests that they cost so much; that they are as fundamental as wallets but, unlike wallets, still follow the rules of fashion, requiring certain styles for different times of year; and that they inevitably end up a chronically disorganized storing-house for all the detritus one accumulates throughout daily life.



In "On Maintenance," Ephron presents a rundown of all the ways she maintains her appearance now that she's older. She describes all the weekly beauty rituals she undertakes to continue looking at least marginally like the woman she once was. Then one day, on the streets of Manhattan, she sees a homeless woman about her own age. Ephron realizes, with some discomfort, that she herself is "only about eight hours a week away" from looking just like the homeless woman.

Even mundane, seemingly minor events fall under Ephron's lens. In "The Lost Strudel or Le Strudel Perdu," she documents her quest to find the perfect cabbage strudel. She had eaten it in the 1960s and, according to her, it is the only thing she remembers about her first marriage. Since then, the strudel has remained elusive. Perhaps, at the end of the day, little pleasures like the perfect strudel are just one more thing life takes from us.

Not all the pieces in I Feel Bad About My Neck are comic monologues, though all are shot through with Ephron's unique perspective and dry wit. In "Consider the Alternative," she reflects on the death of her best friend, leading her to delve into the subject of death in general. Looking back, with so much of life in the rearview and death looming ever closer, Ephron admonishes young female readers to be kinder to themselves, especially when it comes to self-image. She advises young women to run out, "put on a bikini and don’t take it off until you’re thirty-four." Even then, keep it on for nine more years, just to show off how fabulous you are, because you are more fabulous than you think you are.



It can be easy to forget just how accomplished Nora Ephron was in her life. Her breezy style of writing and enduring sense of humor are easily accessible and mostly lighthearted, but in her career, her achievements were considerable. She went from working in the John F. Kennedy Administration to earning three Academy Award nominations and directing some of the biggest romantic comedies of our time. Though she remembers many of these events in her essays, Ephron doesn't take even such accomplishments too seriously. For instance, of her time in Washington, D.C., Ephron writes in "Me & JFK: Now It Can Be Told," "I am probably the only young woman who ever worked in the Kennedy White House that the President did not make a pass at."

I Feel Bad About My Neck hit shelves six years before Ephron's 2012 death. Serving as a testament to the joys and pains of growing older, ultimately, it is a tribute to Ephron's gifts as a writer, her one-of-a-kind voice, and the legacy she left the world.