I feel bad about my neck and other physical manifestations that can't be ignored

Or how Nora Ephron was right about many things

“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 if it had a neck.”

I love this quote from the late writer Nora Ephron because it’s true. It is also why whenever I go on Instagram I see adverts for neck tightening treatments. I have obviously clicked on one of these treatments, and now the algorithm shows me hundreds. I stare fascinated whilst these different techniques break down the wattle. Pointy stones, zapping gadgets, lasers. I flit between the before and after photos. The wattle is there and then gone. I am no fool. I know that we can eradicate some signs of ageing but not all.

Sometimes I think about life as Madonna, and how there must be a small inch of flesh (maybe between her toes) that is the age she truly is, untouched by interventions. I don’t judge her because I am sure I would also do a lot of treatments if I was her. We look at ageing through a magnifying glass. Women are either invisible or very much noticed. I recently examined a photo of Demi Moore on Instagram for about twenty minutes, and deduced that the whites of her eyes didn’t look as youthful as they perhaps could have done. Is this how we will tell the real age of people in the future perhaps- by the whites of their eyes?

I am vain. I have always been vain. I have also used make up and fashion to make life feel less dark and to give myself a sense of purpose. I get up and apply make up even in the midst of a full-blown life apocalypse. I get Botox when I can afford it. I experimented with fillers in my early forties, and didn’t like the way it made my face look like plastic. I always wear make-up. If I am not wearing make up then I am in a morgue with a ticket on my toe that reads - ‘Dead and Vain Female.’

The application of make-up makes me feel in control. I recall after the birth of my daughter, applying a full face, whilst wearing a giant bandage/nappy, support tights and with fifteen stitches between my vagina and bum. There are some mornings these days when I stare for a moment too long, and see the faintest of twitches just under my right eye - this is my exhausted, true, ageing self trying to surface, but I’ve learnt that tinted moisturiser, blusher and mascara can convince anyone that you’re doing okay and on course for something better.

For a vain person the ageing process is difficult.

For anyone it is difficult. It has taught me that I cannot control anything, that even if I exercise or eat the right foods, things are going downtown. Wattle appears. Bruises on my shins because I constantly walk into things. A wide, expansive back that is like a dolphin dipping up from under the waves. The years of laptops, snooping on celebrities and their flaws on my phone, watching endless tutorials for neck shonky-ness, bending over a toddler to pull their socks up (like trying to fit shoes on a bucking donkey) have taken their toll. I look at my children and their straight spines, and force my shoulders back but too many years of abuse have taken effect.

My knuckles are grazing the carpet some days.

In changing rooms I am shocked at the weight gain. I have always been a size 14 (and then some) and yet this new weight is in unpredictable places. I love buying clothes but this joy is slowly disappearing. I always loved the idea that if I wear a certain outfit, if I get that outfit just so, then my life will be better. I grew up in the eighties where characters in Dynasty and Dallas demonstrated that amazing clothes and hair were the most important criteria. I watched women crying, their lives falling apart but it was made bearable because they had really good perms. I have yet to have my theory proven right but persist in buying clothes nonetheless.

The wattle and the weight: the damage done. It sounds like that old Neil Young song.

Then the other things like the swollen feet with purple veins, the short, spiky hairs that grow out of my nose, the white ones that grow out of my chin, the coarsening of my nails, especially my toe-nails, so thick that I struggle to cut them with nail clippers, the cellulite that has spread out from small pockets of my body so it now covers every inch (apart from the backs of my hands) and my Gollum-like hands themselves which when I peer down on them are impossible to ignore.

I have to accept that I cannot change all of these things. That nature is taking its course. That it’s okay. It doesn’t make it easy however.

‘I have an overweight vagina,’ I said to a friend, ‘It’s the final straw.’

‘I can’t see it,’ she replied laughing, ‘Just pull your shirt out and over your trousers instead.’

For a few days I Google ‘overweight vagina,’ but find nothing. I have to prioritise. I cannot eradicate it all.

A couple of weekends ago I invested in some good shape wear. The kind of pants that make spontaneous sex impossible (this is very unlikely for me anyway but that’s another story). The kind of pants that require you to lie on the floor and roll from side to side in order to get them on. The kind that are a relief to take off at the end of the day. I used to only wear these pants at weddings or special events. Now I wear them every day.

‘I think I’m really going to enjoy this next phase of my life,’ one of my best friends said to me over the weekend, ‘The fact that I don’t have to care what I look like or how I’m perceived.’

I feel envious of this approach. I also want to teach good things to my kids. I don’t want my daughters to let their appearance eat up so much of their time. I want them to realise that clothes and make up are good but they won’t make the difference in terms of whether you have a happy life or not.

It’s also nice to believe there is a level of nirvana to be reached by casting all self-doubt aside and fully embracing the ageing process. I see women dancing in the waves, their pubic hair growing wild and free, their curved spines baking in the sun. I want to accept these signs. I want to stop focusing on them and allow myself to surrender.

I am also tired of the work required to fight these various signs of ageing. The plucking and shaving and shifting and massaging and injecting. Also the rolling from side to side to get the pants on and off. And the time spent applying lotions and potions and then taking them off again. It is a lot of time all this stuff. It is enough time to write a novel for sure.

In the meantime I am like one of those diagrams of cattle you get in the butchers shop, the ones that show the different cuts of meat on sale; I have areas that I try and work on, others that are neglected.

So my neck remains the same. It is my true age.

The wattle swings lightly in the breeze as I walk invisible through the streets.

When will you accept me? It taunts.

When will you be free?