A couple of years ago, I received the most delightful book from my dear friend Jennifer, “I Feel Bad About My Neck.”
We had a good laugh over it. The writer, Nora Ephron, is fabulous ó so is the book. Nora pretty much obsesses about her neck all the way through.
You know ó you get to a certain age, and suddenly you have a turkey neck.
Funny stuff.
Well.
I am not laughing now.
My problem, however, is not my neck. It’s further down.
I know what you’re thinking ó and you’re wrong! I once had a friend for about 10 years before I realized he had no clue what color my eyes were.
It’s my knees!
My knees were in fine shape until I hit 41. Then they started sagging.
Oh, the humanity!
It is really about to drive me crazy. Every one of my girlfriends I see, I say, “Let me see your knees.”
I know it’s driving my editor crazy, because I talk about it at work all the time. Katie’s knees look just fine to me.
I had dinner with my college roommate the other night. I asked her about her knees and if they’d started sagging yet.
“When did this happen?” I asked.
“When I was 35,” Valerie said.
“What about my quads?” I ventured. “Can I do exercises to strengthen my quads?”
“I have strong quads,” Valerie said. “Won’t help.”
I asked my mom about this, because she and my aunt have had saggy knees for about as long as I remember. She was no help.They’ve been that way for as long as she can remember, too.I caught sight of the back of my knees at yoga the other morning. Whoa! I got so nauseated I thought I was gonna have to leave class. I’ve resolved never to look at the back of my knees again.
I was flipping through a recent People magazine and saw Demi Moore walking on the beach with her stud muffin, er, her hubby Ashton Kutcher. Demi’s knees don’t look so great either, so I figured there’s not much hope for mere mortals such as myself.
Now I don’t know for sure if this is true, but I read online that Demi had actually paid to have knee lift surgery back in 2004. I don’t know how I missed that, but, if you ask me, she didn’t get her money’s worth. The article went on to say that she’s had a half-million dollars’ worth of work done altogether.Was it worth it? Guess I’ll have to rent “Striptease” to find out.
There’s that old saying about growing old gracefully. I don’t know. A lot of women these days get dragged kicking and screaming into old age. The problem is, if they “have some work done,” you can usually tell it. Either way we’re out of luck.
Then there’s my friend Ester, who also has saggy knees. It doesn’t bother her in the least. She embraces it. She embraces all body types. I guess if Ester does, I should, too. As Nora writes in her book, having a saggy neck (or saggy knees) is better than the alternative. (Which I guess is having no knees?!?)
And for those of you who don’t know ó and you know who you are ó my eyes are blue.