i feel bad about my neck and other thoughts on being a woman by nora ephron

While having my hair done, and it cost me twenty thousand dollars. (If you can't laugh, after all, you are already, technically speaking, dead.) She does, however, concede that hair maintenance-styling, dyeing, highlighting, blow-drying-is a serious matter, not to mention the expense. While signs of mortality proliferate, Ephron offers a rebuttal of consequence: an intelligent, alert, entertaining perspective that does not take itself too seriously. Nothing, in the end, prevents the descent. Ephron's witty riffs on these distractions are a delightful antidote to the prevailing belief that everything can be held up with surgical scaffolding and the drugs of denial. Ephron refuses to analyze-one of her most refreshing qualities-and quickly moves on to Jane's céleri remouladeĪging, according to Ephron, is one big descent-and who would argue? (Well, okay-but they'd lose the argument if they all got naked.) There it is, the steady spiraling down of everything: body and mind, breasts and balls, dragging one's self-respect behind them.

Conveniently, there was a box of them by the front door. Besides, there's always Philip Roth for aging heavy.Įphron, in fact, offers a brief anecdote about Roth, in a chapter on cooking, concerning her friend Jane, who had a one-night stand, long ago, with the then 'up-and-coming' writer.

This is aging lite-but that might be the answer. Ephron drives the truth home like a nail in your soon-to-be-bought coffin: 'Plus, you can't wear a bikini.' But just as despair sets in, she admits to using 'quite a lot of bath oil. With 15 essays in 160 pages, this collection is short, a thoughtful concession to pre- and post-menopausal women (who else is there?), like herself, who 'can't read a word on the pill bottle,' follow a thought to a conclusion, or remember the thought after not being able to read the pill bottle. The honest truth is that it's sad to be over sixty,' concludes Nora Ephron in her sparkling new book about aging.

I feel bad about my neck and other thoughts on being a woman by nora ephron