I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman: Summary & Key Insights

I’ve long suspected that if someone had told me earlier in life just how much time women spend on maintenance, I would have reconsidered being female—or at least scheduled better. Maintenance is, frankly, exhausting. By maintenance I mean everything: blow-drying, waxing, coloring, plucking, exercising, moisturizing, and buying pants that fit. It’s a full-time job pretending that one’s body is not aging, and the cruel part is that no maintenance ever ends. You can work tirelessly to achieve a fleeting state of order—a tidy haircut, a smooth leg—but within days chaos returns. If you’re lucky, it’s only gray roots and chipped polish; if not, it’s gravity.

We live in a world that tells women, relentlessly, that beauty is both our responsibility and our right—but neglects to mention that maintaining it is unpaid labor. It’s a contract we never signed but feel obligated to uphold. I didn’t write these essays to scold anyone for buying moisturizer. I buy so much I should own stock in Estée Lauder. The truth is, every act of maintenance is a small defiance against invisibility. Yes, it’s absurd, but in the absurdity there’s also power. It’s how we say to the world, “Look at me—I still care.” And I do care, even when I wish I didn’t.

When you are a young woman, you think ‘being a woman’ means surviving heartbreaks and choosing the right shade of lipstick. But once you’ve lived past fifty, the definition expands—beautifully and relentlessly. Being a woman means managing an entire ecosystem of expectations, some of them cultural, some of them our own inventions. We are expected to remain effortlessly competent: mothers, wives, professionals, citizens, all while maintaining a sense of grace as the floor of our lives occasionally gives way.

There’s humor in this, but there’s also truth. One of the reasons I write with such candor is that I grew tired of pretending. Pretending that middle age is glamorous, or that wrinkles are badges of honor. They’re just wrinkles, and they can be very annoying. Yet, in the act of talking about them honestly—without self-pity—we find something vital. We find solidarity. We learn that everyone else is just as tired of pretending. Being a woman is, in many ways, a lifelong performance review. You’re constantly analyzing whether you’ve done enough, loved enough, looked good enough. The relief comes when you realize there’s no audience left to impress except yourself.