We step out of Broadsheet to a main feature (be still my heart) and it's all about a nice right-eddy-of-mainstream writer (no genius, but pleasant) who is obsessed with: her wrinkles, hair dye, a purse, and aging.

Or perhaps it's Traister. Thank you SO much for telling us what Ephron was wearing. Just as Salon does with the male intellects it interviews.

I think this article has finally convinced me to stop moaning about Broadsheet. I realize it's not because the Eds are "cheekily" contrarian...they really, truly, geuninely don't get it.

What a depressing coda to a long struggle for consciousness that seems to have been largely wasted on this journalistic bastion of social ... oh never mind.

(Please don't forget to do a spread on fashions in Afghanistan when everyone gets over their PMS over there.)

"she is a lot like her beloved Manhattan".... how about: SHUT THE FUCK UP ABOUT NEW YORK!! I a fucking city!

Jesus Christ... never avoiding NYC civic boosterism eh? This thoughtless writing from the woman (girl?) who writes treatises about men (boys) in her age group being immature....

After she covered the March for Women's Lives, I actually wrote RT to mention how unintentionally ironic breathlessly describing women's clothes seemed.

Dressed in fitted black pants and a top, her colorless hair long and recently washed, a brown leather knapsack thrown over her shoulders, and her big trademark brown-tinted sunglasses, the impossibly slim Steinem looked like she had stepped directly out of 1978...

Recently washed? wtf? I'm amazed Hugh Hefner didn't hire RT away. Making Gloria Steinem look silly is right up his alley.

Yes, describing a person's clothes, and, I suppose, recently-washed hair, can say something about them. But the value of that is sometimes outweighed by how fluffy it makes the subject appear, something that RT presumably still doesn't get.

The feminists were a better example. But still, Nora Ephron doesn't need to get any fluffier. The describing clothes thing is so annoying.

I like it when people describe clothes. Granted, I don't want to know anybody's wardrobe to the degree in this article. Aand that bit about "colorless hair" in an earlier letter: What color is "colorless?"

As a journalist for the last five years I like to mention it in my articles as well, especially when you have an interesting bit of clothing.

Once I did about peice about a 15-year-old murderer who showed up to his trial dressed in a monocromatic pitch black suit. Another time I did a piece about a man who wanted to turn a small town hotel into a world center for peace (complete with the Dali Lama and Jimmy Carter) who wore cowboy boots everywhere he went. He was like a liberal George W.

Those touches can add something. And for me its not so much about gender. I want to know what the subjects of a piece are wearing, especially when they write books about their own sense of vanity.

OK, NoName, you have a point about clothes providing telling detail sometimes. Your examples were fine.

I didn't really see that here, though. Again, it wasn't as bad as going on about the fashion choices of feminists, but the clothing stuff really doesn't add much to the picture of Ephron.

Ms. Ephron has a lot of accomplishments, a family, many friends, varied and storied experiences. So why is she so damn focused on her neck and other details of her physical appearance? We're designed to age. Our skin wrinkles, our hair gets gray, we get age spots. Big deal. It's not news that it happens, it's not news that most of us would rather not get old and then die. BTW, it's not entertainment either. It just...is.

Surely there are other things to think about, write aobut? I'm pretty sure that her world has not suddenly narrowed, at the age of 65, to a shallow superfiical place where only her looks matter and must be mourned. I'm pretty sure she's still writing, directing, being a wife, a mother, etc. You'd never know it from this interview or her book. Her fear of aging is a drumbeat that drowns out everything else.

I am 42 now, and would not trade my life as it is now to be 20, 25, or 30 again. I've had too many experiences, good and bad, that have shaped who I am and helped me undersand the world and how to relate to it. There are books I consider invaluable; there are people that are the bright shining center of my life, there are places I will never forget and places I've never been but had fun imagining for my whole life, and will continue to do so. There are things I know now I dind't know then that I would not trade to look ten years younger - how to pick my battles, how to negotiate rather than fight to win, the role of my mind in competition, the fact that my body doesn't feel much different than it did 20 years ago when I run a 10k, the satisfaction of building a career, and then a second one. How to trust, be vulnerable, love generously. I've learned all of these things with age and experience, and I wouldn't trade them for a the fountain of neck youth.

I suppose she's just trying to be funny but what's the point? We're all aging, all the time. I guess I just don't see the *need* to find so much humor in it. Aging, after all, is not a calamity. It's just what happens next, every minute. It doesn't deserve so much ink.

Ummm, because it is still better than the alternative? We can stop aging any time we want.

>Ms. Ephron has a lot of accomplishments, a family, many friends, varied and storied experiences. So why is she so damn focused on her neck and other details of her physical appearance?<

Because down deep, that is what she really values. She is still ruled by the lookist, "youth uber alles" standards she grew up with. (NYT columnist Maureen Dowd has almost the same problem--her accomplishments don't mean that much to her because down deep she's still the little Catholic girl looking for the right man/daddy to "complete" her life. Without that goal, she doesn't feel she's accomplished anything.) Ephron is a faux-feminist, always has been--it's one of the reasons why her movies generally ring false and shallow. She mouths the words of equality, but doesn't really believe them.