Morning routine: brush teeth, wash face, moisturize, lather on sunscreen. Face – check. Neck – check. Knees – wait, what?
Ladies, hold the phone. Apparently I’ve been applying sunscreen wrong. Face, neck, chest, back. I’ve got them covered. But knees? A friend of mine recently revealed that she makes sure to slather her knees in sunscreen every day because she doesn’t want saggy old knobs connecting her thighs and her shins (full disclosure, we’re on a tropical island where it’s shorts all day every day, so it’s not like she’s SPF-ing under her jeans – that would just be weird). But apparently my knees are going to look A HUNDRED because I have not been attending to this newfound (to me) task. Have all of you been putting sunscreen on your knees and not telling me? Was this some conspiracy to flaunt your teenage-looking knees to the rest of us who weren’t in on the secret? And is this just one more thing I’m meant to worry about as a woman?
Eyebrows need to be threaded. Skin needs to be lasered. Bikini lines need to be waxed. People are shaving and dyeing and weaving and extending and all sorts of ‘-ings’. God forbid we have any body hair below the neck. And now, to add to our list of worries: saggy knees. Actually, Google tells me this is a thing. In 2006 Demi Moore apparently underwent cosmetic knee surgery to remove saggy skin. And if you believe the Hollywood Reporter, Hollywood is awash in “knee anxiety”. Celebrities are rushing “to unwind the clock on leg joints”. That’s a direct quote. There’s even a name for this much feared bodily disaster - “kninkles”. Yes that’s right ladies, just in case you don’t have enough to worry about with wrinkles and cellulite and cankles and underarm jiggle and saggy bums and big bums and flat bums, now you can add kninkles to your list.
Do I sound angry? Maybe I am. Maybe I’m tired of people/society/media pointing out all the things that we need to “fix.” Maybe instead of buying into a lifelong struggle to correct the things about ourselves that we’ve been told are horribly wrong (spending tens of thousands of dollars on treatments and products to fix them), we should accept ourselves for who we are and give thanks to our bodies for holding us day in and day out. Maybe we can engage in a lifelong journey of learning to love ourselves instead of fighting against the inevitable effects of aging and time. Maybe we can find happiness without perfect shoulders, perfect abs, or perfect knees. Maybe we can say that kninkles are the result of years of long walks, squatting down to pick up yummy babies, and biking for miles on seaside rides. But what do I know? I don’t even know how to apply sunscreen correctly :P
