Necking

Diane Johnson in the New York Review of Books has joined the throngs who love Nora Ephron's I Feel Bad About My Neck -- leaving me one of the few critics who found the book disappointing, trivial compared to her best, pioneering work in Crazy Salad and Wallflower at the Orgy. You can read my Aug. 27 review for The Dallas Morning News here.

But my friend Sarah Bird -- author of The Flamenco Academy -- has written one of her best columns for Texas Monthly in response to I Feel Bad About My Neck. A splendid piece that sets Ms. Ephron's kvetching about wrinkles against the gutsiness of Real Texas Women like the late Gov. Ann Richards:

"I was still puzzling over this question [why Nora was so obsessed with wearing black turtlenecks to hide her neck] when the news came that Ann Richards had died. Like the rest of the state and the nation, I could not stop staring at those piercing turquoise eyes, that white tornado of hair, the blinding grin. But mostly I studied her glorious and gloriously exposed collection of shar-pei-quality neck wrinkles. And then it hit me: Real Texas Women don't wear black turtlenecks. If neck wrinkles bothered a Real Texas Woman as much as they bother Nora and her bescarfed friends, she'd go out and find the best plastic surgeon around, have the damn lift, and throw a party to show it off. Or she'd get herself something a lot bigger to worry about, like taming a frontier or being governor or becoming one of the greatest female singers in the history of rock and roll. (Janis Joplin, you freed more women from undergarments and hair straightener than you will ever know.)"

Brava, Sarah. Read the whole thing here You may have to register; this month's password is "uvalde." Enjoy.