the wrinkle-erasing products i can't stop talking about

it's honestly becoming obnoxious

Gloria Swanson sleeping wrong — also she’s younger than me here, just 50.

I recently discovered that the way I sleep is making my face lopsided and giving me wrinkles, rendering my skin thinner and generally aging me faster than if, say, I could manage to slumber serenely and immovably on my spine. I uncovered this when a dermatologist place her gloved hand on my ever-slackening jowl and said, “You sleep on your side or your back — I can tell” then proceeded to show me all the damage I’ve done by dozing in a fetal position like a womb-ensconced baby, AKA the way God intended.

You know how sometimes you lock in on a topic that’s mundane and even kind of vapid and doesn’t reflect well on the quality of your brain but for some reason you’re fixated on making conversation about it? This is the way I’ve been about the Rapid-Aging Sleep Position — I truly cannot stop telling everyone I know.

This news coincided with an equally un-fun revelation, which is that, after a half-century on the planet (and many decades spent in sunscreen scarcity), I’ve developed the décolleté of a wizened, beachcombing witch. This would be fine if I hadn’t recently decided that, after a solid six-year “oh no! my neck is melting” panic run, it was time to break up with turtlenecks and give my middle-aged upper torso some fucking air before I die (said in Joan Cusack Working Girl voice). So, I bought a few scoop-neck shirts, started unbuttoning my button downs. Someone called me “rigid” recently. I’m trying to loosen things up.

All of which is to say, in an effort to fixate on something that is not [gestures everywhere to everything], I’ve been thinking and talking a lot about chest wrinkles. As it turns out, everyone hates this aging “problem” which is, of course, not a real problem and in any case, there’s an easy solution.