The Decolletage has Bolted

The following is an abridged version of my column, Deeply Superficial, which appeared in the (sydney) magazine today:

I have just finished reading Nora Ephron’s ever-so-light little book, I Feel Bad About My Neck And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman (Black Swan.) The American director and screenwriter (When Harry Met Sally) finds herself at that age when she has to wear sweaters that rise almost to her chin because of the crêpey – and creepy - state of her neck.

“According to my dermatologist, the neck starts to go at 43, and that’s that,” she writes. “Short of surgery, there’s not a damn thing you can do about a neck… the neck is a dead giveaway. Our faces are lies and our necks are the truth.”

Like Ephron, I wish someone had told me about necks earlier, although I do have a vague recollection of a female teacher advising we schoolgirls to stop pulling at our throats while we were studying. But who listens to anyone at 16? Least of all a fiftyish schoolmarm who, in retrospect, was having her own neck crisis?

Now that I am the age of Kim Basinger, Oprah Winfrey and Condoleezza Rice, I see the folly in neck neglect. I’ve always been careful about my face, in a modest way - always wearing sunscreen, not drinking too much, not smoking and never wearing makeup to bed. But all this care and attention stopped at the jaw, as if my face were a delicate hothouse flower and the neck just the bit of old wire that held it up. I had a lot of neck disrespect, I can see that now. And I’m certainly not alone in this.

The sun, of course, is the enemy here. We love to wear low-cut dresses and tank tops in summer and we have an unshakeable belief that a tanned bosom is superior to a white one. (That thudding sound you hear is Casanova and Lord Byron turning over in their graves.) Beyond this, there is another culprit – the drying alcohol in the perfume we spray on our necks and between our breasts. From the chin down to the bosom there is a swathe of unchartered and unloved territory that becomes a war zone by the time we are fifty. Some women say goodbye to plunging bras forever. Others discover chokers. Now I understand why women love jewellery – there’s nothing like a few strands of pearls for hiding a chest that looks like an unironed bed sheet with wet tea-leaves sprinkled all over it.

What to do? There are quite a few neck creams around but I haven’t worked my way through them yet. A few months ago I hit on the genius idea of using the anti-stretch mark cream, StriVectin-SD, on my neck and décolletage, thinking it might reduce the depth of the lines. No luck so far. I’ve had more success with simply doing to my neck and décolletage what I do to my face. (Although, actually, that’s not that simple these days.) Right now, I’m trying La Mer The Lifting Intensive (it comes in a tiny bottle with the serum) teamed with Dr. Brandt’s The Specialist V-Zone Neck Cream and it seems to be making a difference to the fine skin on my neck but, let’s face it, this is an extravagance if you’re on a budget and it does little for my chest, where the skin is tougher and the lines deeper.

ModelCo has just released Erase Those Fine Lines, a clever little wand that temporarily firms and tightens the skin around the eyes (great under makeup before a night out) but I find myself wishing they’d also release Erase Those Deep Crevices for my chest. Basically, the horse has bolted.

Girls – button up your blouses this summer!