The Octopus Method

...is stealing my life away. And I'm over it, sort of.

“I could be writing the next great American novel,” I say to myself as I tediously cut small strips of cobalt blue kinesiology tape and lay them gingerly across the counter. “Maybe this is why men are more accomplished,” I muse, as I begin to delicately place the thick tape in strategic lines across much of my decolletage.

This is a new step in my now five-step nightly routine. I used to barely wash my face, but as of my early 30s, my pre-bedtime ritual has transformed into a half-hour segment of “let’s stay 28 forever”, starring yours truly.

I’m a side-sleeper, and Instagram has told me this is the worst thing I can be. I used to think that the worst thing I could be was a bully, a liar, or a fraud. Turns out, it’s a side-sleeper. That is, of course, if my top concern, my main priority, is preventing any more face, neck, or chest wrinkles from forming on my now-collagen-losing skin. Did you know your collagen production starts to decline once you hit 30? I didn’t, but some twenty-something with porcelain skin told me it did, and I believe her.

I’m now 10 minutes into this chest taping ordeal and realizing I don’t even spend 10 minutes a day on writing, a thing I love, the thing I feel most compelled to do, most like myself when I’m doing it. I don’t feel like myself bathed in a seven-layer dip of retinol, nighttime moisturizer, face oil, Lubriderm, and [insert latest skincare items I’ve been sold recently via social media]. I don’t feel like myself scrolling through endless reels of meal prep, gym plans, and snatched-waist-at-home-workouts. I don’t feel like myself at all, thinking and scheming all the ways I can spend my precious, short, little life fighting the clock, fighting the food, fighting the visible signs of laughter and sun and fun.

My chest and neck are now covered in a tangled, grid-like pattern of tape, but I didn’t wait long enough after applying the GoldBond Anti-Aging Retinol Lotion some TikTok dermatologist recommended, so the strips are already beginning to peel off at my collarbones. Blast! Better try it again.

Justin’s playing a board game right now with his friends, which is so lovely. I consider all he’s accomplished in his life, all he has taught himself: music, filmmaking, sound engineering, carpentry, rafting. He can do anything in my mind. Is that partly because he hasn’t had to spend a single minute of his life applying eye cream? I’m going to ask him when he gets home.

Last May, I bought a piano keyboard that has since taken up half the bedroom and played host to my fingers for all of a few hours. I could be practicing the piano right now. I could be outside pondering the great mysteries of the universe, meditating, singing, or drawing - I have some sketch pads stashed somewhere in this trailer. But instead, I’m using this tiny pair of right-handed scissors (I’m a lefty, so it’s taking me twice as long) to cut a new set of strips into an octopus-like shape, because someone less qualified than the TikTok dermatologist said this would shave 10 years off my decolletage. I don’t even think I knew what decolletage meant 10 years ago.

I don’t think I’m mad at men for not having to participate in this daily anti-aging dance. I don’t have to. But if I could snap my fingers and they’d be the ones applying frownies to their forehead lines every night because an entire society, an entire world, told them that their value lies in their looks and their youth, I would. So that we could all actually be in it together for an evening.

Should I opt out of all things outer-shell related and only invest in actual health: movement, mental well-being, and non-gimmicky lotion available in bulk? What if Justin stops loving me? What if I stop loving myself? What if all the other women keep participating, and when I’m 50, I look 70, and they look 40? Then I’ll be forgotten, cast aside, left to hold the door for myself.

I free my fingers from what I swear are the world’s smallest scissors and forgo the octopus pattern entirely. Solid strips will have to do because I’m clearly about to talk myself out of this regimen entirely, but I bought a five-pack of k-tape and am anything but wasteful.

I already know who benefits from me looking younger, from me striving for thinness that looks like fitness, from me following and liking, and subscribing to one-dimensional beauty ideals. Better question: who doesn’t benefit? Me.

I don’t know yet what’s true for me about aging gracefully in a way that allows plenty of free time for nature walks or piano practice, but what I do know is this: we can’t fight back if we’re underfed. We can’t dance or make travel plans or make friends if we’re distracted by trying to stop time. We can’t even let ourselves out of the bathroom to begin dismantling the patriarchy because our hands are covered in snail mucin.

But I live in an Airstream with a curtain for a bathroom door, and I just spent the last thirty minutes writing this instead of obsessing over my wrinkles. Your move, patriarchy.