Elizabeth Wurtzel Whines about Regret and Getting Older

Prozac NationI've never had much sympathy for Elizabeth Wurtzel of Prozac Nation fame (She wrote the book that later became the movie starring Christina Ricci) and after reading her latest article in Elle magazine, I have even less. She writes about being the beautiful child, who turned into the beautiful teenager, and then the beautiful young adult. Now, at the tender age of 41, she is regretting her choices as a capricious 20-something-year-old and worrying that she is old.

Oh why oh why was she cheating so frequently on her widely-admired  boyfriend "Gregg" in her 20's? Where have her youth and beauty gone? Not that she is not still counted as a beautiful woman mind you, but always with the qualifier "for her age". She wants us to know that she has no wrinkles, no age spots, lovely hair and her breasts have grown larger over the years, but that she has also somewhat  tragically lost the luster of her youth and perhaps a certain sparkle in her eyes.

Boo-hoo. Poor, poor, Elizabeth. Not a wrinkle, not an age spot, and a more supple body. However does she manage? Does she really expect us to believe that her aging is more  painful because she was one time considered stunning enough to adorn her book cover half-naked? Are we supposed to sympathize with her that she, too, has eluded the fountain of youth and has suffered the results of her own poor decisions in the indiscretions of youth? I know she has suffered from horrible, mind-numbing depressions, but she is hardly alone in this.

Her reflections, which span four pages of Elle online, seem hardly those of a mature woman, but indicate more than she has not grown up or matured from her self-proclaimed rather tumultuous 20's. She expects us, it seems, to sympathize with her not only for losing the luster in her eyes, but for the the fact that she is a flirt who can easily attract men, but never keep the ones she truly wants. (Except of course for the mysterious Gregg, who she had and was bored with.)

Elizabeth ends the piece somewhat dramatically, as she is wont to do, with an image of her clinging to her sexuality as she can "feel her fingers slowly giving way, knowing I’m going to free-fall to a sorrowful demise. "

There is one sure thing in this world, Elizabeth. We will either die young, or we will get older and then we will die. Your beauty offers you no special exemption from this rule, so I suggest you get over it and put your over the top vanity aside once and for all.