PUSH AND PULL

Can a little strip of tape reverse the inevitable effects of gravity? Lena Dunham contemplates the ixotic promise of an adhesive. Photographed by Steven Klein.

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When Nora Ephron wrote the words “I feel bad about my neck” it was a rallying cry for women everywhere. Yes, they thought. Finally! A woman widely considered an intellectual had come clean about the fact that no matter your deep and worldly concerns, your keen understanding of the beauty industrial complex’s choke hold, or your desire to be free of it, you will—at some point or another—realize that you are aging, and you won't like it. Nora was a beloved friend and mentor, but it took me a long time to understand what she was talking about.

I have been test-driving beauty trends at Vogue for over a decade. In my tenure I've done everything from microblading to lash extensions, red lipstick to red hair, tooth whitening to mob-wife nails—and even a foray into the Gen Z trend of face glazing. Some have been informative (wow, tooth whitening isn’t as cut-and-dried as I'd thought) and others life-changing (my microbladed brows won friends and influenced people, and my face remains glazed), but none threw me into an existential tailspin quite like this assignment on face tape—how suddenly you can hardly open a social media app without being offered some form of tape that is not Scotch or duct, but is instead meant to delay the inevitable, to offer you sweet sleep that will leave you bright-eyed and youthful, or even rejigger your visage before your very eyes.

Fear of aging is, after all, about more than just the resultant wrinkles, the sagging in places you never knew could sag, the literal thinning of your skin. It’s about more than libido waxing and waning, or your role as an object of desire moving—at least in certain settings—to the background, as your crone status takes foreground (