The humidity factor.(Letter)(Letter to the Editor)

NEW YORK, NEW YORK -- This morning I noticed that my vertical toothpaste tube was beginning to resemble a commuter standing on a rush hour subway platform. I scanned the items crowding it and realized that the product inventory on my bathroom sink had exceeded the contents of my refrigerator. I consider myself an average 60-ish woman in good health with a skeptical attitude towards fitness and beauty panaceas. But I realized I was the purchaser of all these commodities, and clearly it was time for a reckoning.

Most of what I am stocking is related to moisture replenishment of various body parts, organs, and apertures. Skin, eyebags, heel pads, hands, elbows, hair, eyeballs, ears, gums, personal parts--are post-menopausal women totally dehydrated from top to bottom? Inside and out, parts of us that used to function without management now need constant irrigation and addition of liquids. It is as if Central Park suddenly needed hosing every day.

Before I started seeing a dermatologist I just used soap and water all over and Oil of Olay on my face. Now I have a prescription shampoo, six products comprising a facial protocol, European sunblock, a prescription lotion for the bottoms of my feet, replenishing eye-drops, a nail hardener, and three different potions for my splitting nails and hair ends, respectively. There are oversized bottles of mouthwash, perfume, One-A-Day vitamins, and calcium supplements that don't fit inside the medicine cabinet. If pharmaceuticals are any indicator, I am a parched, malodorous, dried-up bag of money who has been persuaded, mainly by medical advice, that enrichment is essential to my continued existence.

Compared to mine, my husband's vanity is spartan. (Somehow you knew we would be a two-sink couple.) He's got the toothpaste, mouthwash, and sunblock (domestic). But somehow he doesn't need to minister to his aging face, hands, feet, nails. The ...