I feel bad about my neck, too

I inherited the neck of my father's side of our family. Thick. Connects directly from chin to throat. I've always thought it was one of my worst features. If you think that's vain, I'm here to tell you that all women know exactly which body features they hate. Just ask anyone. She will tell you, with scary precision, what she believes is horribly wrong with her nose, or her thighs, or her eyebrows, or her ears.... It is a sickness we all carry.

So when I saw Nora Ephron's book, I Feel Bad About My Neck and other thoughts on being a woman, I about shrieked with delight. A whole book about fat, bad necks.

As it turns out, the book is about much more than necks; it's about aging, and it's the best thing I've read on the topic yet. An excerpt:

"Every so often I read a book about age, whoever's writing it says it's great to be old. It's great to be wise and sage and mellow; it's great to be at the point where you understand just what matters in life. I can't stand people who say things like this. What can they be thinking? Don't they have necks?"

How can you not just love her for speaking THAT TRUTH?

Her neck deal has to do with the fact that necks start going in our early 40s and there is really no fixing them. Some women choose to do all kinds of things with their faces to slow down the inevitable advance of disintegration, but, as Ephron says, "necks don't lie."

We've all seen women -- mostly Hollywood types and rich people -- who tighten their faces up to the point of silliness, and look even more ridiculous because under that over-lifted face is an over-droopy neck.

My neck is indeed getting worse with age. It's thicker, jowly, and careening towards a gigantic double chin. I actually think about how to minimize my neck-ness when someone is taking a photo of me. And I avoid turtlenecks since my neck kind of flows over the top of them. Not cute.

Yes, this is silly. Yes, this is vanity. We all say gamely that we don't really care, "considering the alternative," but we do care.

For me, it's mostly about coming to grips with leaving the "older side of young" and moving into the "younger side of old." It's a new, surprisingly scary place, where you come home from work too tired to do anything but watch TV, have the short-term memory of a pea (a friend calls it "CRS" or "can't remember shit"), aches and pains, yaddy yaddy yada... It's a time when movie stars your age who once were the hotties have jowls and saggy necks, and now show up in minor, non-hottie, sporadic roles on TV. It depresses me. I am 52, a phase of aging where Ephron says we go through "age shame." I think she's right.

In your forties you are still on the old side of young. You still look juicy. The fifties are when you come to grips with the fact that you are no longer one of them. That you realize, as Ephron says, "now" is "their time," and not "our time" anymore. You might know who Alicia Keys is, for example, and love her music, but she is not of you, she is of them.

And Ephron says this about the sixties:

"When you cross into your sixties, your odds of dying -- or of merely getting horribly sick on the way to dying -- spike. Death is a sniper: It strikes people you love, people you like, people you know, it's everywhere. You could be next. But then you turn out not to be. But then again you could be."

I feel that coming and I'll be honest -- it terrifies me. So we focus on hating our necks (or what ever aging body part we hate) because it's easier than being terrified. We hate our necks because they symbolize the slow march to the end of our days. We hate our necks because they remind us it is not our time anymore.

Maybe more of us need to take off our game face, be more honest, and fess up that aging really sucks, no matter how great our lives are, no matter how happy we are to be alive.

So I'll just say it: I really do feel bad about my neck and I am so not ready to be sliding into old.

~~~~~

P.S. Nice collection of reviews of Ephron's book here. I hope you'll read the book, whatever your age.

That cartoon

You know which one. New York Post. Our President as a dead monkey. Do we perpetrate the power of such trash by commenting on it, objecting to it, posting the cartoon on our pages as proof of its horribleness? We know the New York Post is a trashy paper. We know that this kind of racist crap will be happening over and over with Obama. We know people of color deal with racist behavior all the time. So here we are, 2009, and what's the response? Of course it's racist. At the same time, the outcry has generated more free publicity for the cartoon and NY Post than it's probably had in years. Ignore or respond? Check out the conversation on this blog http://peaurl.com/KCT9 (Thanks Erica @ cinna.mn)

What do you think?

WOC and Allies Blog Carnival!

I am very excited to share that the Tell it WOC Speak (and allies) blog carnival is up with some fantastic entries, kicked off by Transgriot blogger Monica's piece Becoming a Quality Black Woman. The Carnival includes entries from across the planet on topics including Sexual Violence, Racism and Colonialism, Feminism, Identity, Sex and Sexuality, Gender, and Politics. I am very proud to have two blog posts (One week until Inauguration and all things are not equal, and My wuzband is a drag king (and queen)) published in the Carnival and humbled to among some fabulous writers and women. Thank you, Renee, for putting this amazing thing together!

We will not be erased

This came to me over email so I don't know who wrote the very good intro to this, but it is about the relative invisibility of the Rev. Gene Robinson, an out gay Episcopal bishop, who gave the opening prayer during President Obama's inauguration. The beautiful prayer follows the brief commentary. I love "O God of our many understandings..."

WE WILL NOT BE ERASED

As many of you know, the Right Rev. Gene Robinson, the out Gay Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire, gave the opening prayer at yesterday's Lincoln Memorial event. It was the first event in the inaugural festivities this year. HBO, which had paid for exclusive rights to the event chose not to broadcast Bishop Robinson's prayer. So if you watched there you wouldn't have caught it or even known that it occurred. To his ever-lasting credit, Brian Lehrer at WNYC in New York aired the first two minutes of the prayer on his morning show. But shamefully, there's no record of it in images placed on the sites of Getty20Images, New York Times and the Washington Post.
It's a complete erasure of his ever having delivered the prayer.

As if that wasn't enough, the chorus appearing behind Josh Groban, was none other than the Washington D.C. Gay Men's Chorus...also unidentified in the chiron, unlike virtually every other performer.

Such is the continuing policy of silence and erasure we have to live with from people who should know better. We are used to this. If you know your Gay history this has happened again and again. In fact White Crane is really about recovering the truth in our history and celebrating it. So we're going to celebrate it by providing here the full text of Bishop Robinson's prayer. We suggest you forward this around so that everyone has a chance to enjoy it.


Opening Inaugural Event
Lincoln Memorial, Washington, DC
January 18, 2009
Delivered by the Right Reverend V. Gene Robinson:

"Welcome to Washington! The fun is about to begin, but first, please join me in pausing for a moment, to ask God's blessing upon our nation and our next president.

O God of our many understandings, we pray that you will…

Bless us with tears – for a world in which over a billion people exist on less than a dollar a day, where young women from many lands are beaten and raped for wanting an education, and thousands die daily from malnutrition, malaria, and AIDS.

Bless us with anger – at discrimination, at home and abroad, against refugees and immigrants, women, people of color, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.

Bless us with discomfort – at the easy, simplistic "answers" we've preferred to hear from our politicians, instead of the truth, about ourselves and our world, which we need to face if we are going to rise to the challenges of the future.

Bless us with patience – and the knowledge that none of what ails us will be "fixed" anytime soon, and the understanding that our new president is a human being, not a messiah.

Bless us with humility – open to understanding that our own needs as a nation must always be balanced with those of the world.

Bless us with freedom from mere tolerance – replacing it with a genuine respect and warm embrace of our differences.

Bless us with compassion and generosity – remembering that every religion's God judges us by the way we care for the most vulnerable.

And God, we give you thanks for your child Barack, as he assumes the office of President of the United States.

Give him wisdom beyond his years, and inspire him with Lincoln's reconciling leadership style, President Kennedy's ability to enlist our best efforts, and Dr. King's dream of a nation for ALL the people.

Give him a quiet heart, for our Ship=2 0of State needs a steady, calm captain in these times.

Give him stirring words, for we will need to be inspired and motivated to make the personal and common sacrifices necessary to facing the challenges ahead.

Make him color-blind, reminding him of his own words that under his leadership, there will be neither red nor blue states, but the United States.

Help him remember his own oppression as a minority, drawing on that experience of discrimination, that he might seek to change the lives of those who are still its victims.

Give him the strength to find family time and privacy, and help him remember that even though he is president, a father only gets one shot at his daughters' childhoods.

And please, God, keep him safe. We know we ask too much of our presidents, and we're asking FAR too much of this one. We know the risk he and his wife are taking for all of us, and we implore you, O good and great God, to keep him safe. Hold him in the palm of your hand – that he might do the work we have called him to do, that he might find joy in this impossible calling, and that in the end, he might lead us as a nation to a place of integrity, prosperity and
peace.

AMEN."