WTF is 'tech neck'?
We need to stop selling insecurities. It's boring. And lame.
Every year, my friends and I make a bingo card for our goals. Big, small, frivolous or just plain simple - we note down 25 goals we want to achieve by the end of the year. Whoever gets bingo is owed a dirty martini.
I have some big bets on there, and some goals that feel plain fun. One of my more self-care related goals is to invest in a skincare routine for my body. My face, sorted. I have my key go-to products and even my hair routine has more steps than you expect for a humble bob cut. I love it all, the ritual of each step, the moments where my hands are forced to be disconnect from my phone, and wholly focused on the tactile experience of facial oils, serums and creams.
But my body I neglect. With the Melbourne cold rapidly approaching, I’ve noticed my legs are scalier than a snake in the Sahara. I spend so long on my face and hair, it feels only fair to extend this to my body. There’s been a calming routine in it all, to spend the extra five minutes focusing on my whole self.
In this new routine I’ve been building, I’ve been loving a dry body oil. Particularly, I’m obsessed with this one from Alpha-H. It’s quick-dry, luxurious and has all the hallmarks of what you’d want in a great body oil.
So, as I’ve been implementing new steps into my evening, I realise I never really switch off my brain as I’m making more mindful moments. Like any good comms gal, I scan the sides of packaging for their copy, and assess the tone, structure and formatting in my mind for inspiration. No brand has been safe from the unconscious copy audit as I’ve added more products into my evening routine. As I scanned the sides of Alpha-H’s Firming Peptide body oil, I saw all the usual buzz words.
Collagen. Fine lines. Firming. Dehydration. Quick-dry finish.
But what caught my eye was a phrase I hadn’t heard of.
‘Tech neck’.
Initially, I didn’t think much of it, and assumed it was some kind of condition where you strain your neck from staring at a screen for too long. Naively, I conjured an idea in my mind where you’d use this oil to massage the neck strain, an added benefit for the modern-day working woman.
I continued with my routine, massaging the oil into my skin. But, the words kept rolling around in my mind. A new phrase I’d never heard, repeating again and again - inherently I knew it wasn’t a positive thing. Tech neck. Tech neck. Tech neck.
Curiosity killed the cat, so they say, and I googled it.
In the world of beauty, tech neck refers to: horizontal wrinkles and sagging skin caused by repeatedly looking down at screens, accelerating premature aging in the neck and décolletage.
New insecurity unlocked. Before my cognitive brain could connect with my physical being, I noticed my hands were already massaging the oil into my neck.
It is exhausting. I was nonplussed about the whole discovery - does everyone else know about ‘tech neck’ except me? When insecurities are marketed to us, I wonder how much of it is an act of creating demand versus something that everyone actively cares about. And I’m the nonce who had no idea.
I guess that is how insecurities begin, there’s an element of feeling like you’re left out of this bubble. Everyone knows something you don’t and they’re already ten steps ahead of you in ‘fixing’ it. To put the words tech neck on the product packaging, implies to me that there has to be plenty of people who know this is a thing… right? If working in marketing has taught me anything, you pick the buzz words you want to either own as a brand or target due to search interest or demand from market. From my quick search, I don’t think Alpha H are the creators of the term ‘tech neck’. You can find many, many, many facials and treatments online trying to sell you a solution for the same ailment.
If you were like me and blissfully unaware about the existence of tech neck until I shared this information with you, I am deeply sorry. But you’re all coming on this doom spiral with me. Lock in.
I want to take the higher ground and reject the standards, say that I don’t care and that I haven’t booked an appointment for micro-needling on my neck. But I can’t, because no matter how privy you are to the marketing of beauty, it still finds a way to embed into your mind and convince you to buy a million different products for your concern. And we can’t deny that investing in anti-ageing routines has its benefits. I was recently served this TikTok, from Melbourne Marketing Girlie Ebony, where she admitted she refuses to go makeup free in the office. Her reason? Stats show that women who wear makeup to the office earn 20-30% more than women that don’t. It’s a statistic, in my opinion, that is deeply entrenched in misogynistic standards. But how are we meant to reject beauty standards and call out the system, when using them to our advantage does in fact, give us an advantage?
Recently for a work assignment, I wrote about the rise of the longevity industry and the tension this causes with our fear of ‘appearing’ old. It seems that we all want to live forever now, but god forbid you show a wrinkle! To age is a privilege, but it is tiring to always think about maintaining our appearance. The line has been blurred between treatments that promote skin health and those that are purely cosmetic and in the nicest way possible, entirely vain. I am someone who invests in microneedling sessions, high-quality skincare, and wears SPF everyday. I am aware of the standards and still, it plays me like a fiddle.
I weirdly feel the same way about pedicures. I’ve never had one done, but I can’t help but notice in every Pilates class I go to, everyone has a pedicure.
You comment on a friend’s new sandals, their instant reply: “oh don’t look at my toes, they need a pedicure!”
All I can think: I don’t have a pedicure either. Should I be getting pedicures? Again, what does everyone know that I don’t? Does everyone think I’m insane for raw dogging my toenails?
Hyperbolic, yes. But with the unity of standards, we create a feeling of otherness, and I’ve totally lost touch with the reality of acceptable vanity. It’s rife, and it begins for girls at an age before we’re even cognisant of beauty standards. When I was 16, a boy I almost slept with told all of our friends that I hadn’t… removed my hair. It was deeply humiliating, mostly because I felt left out of this unspoken education everyone else seemed to understand. I felt silly for not knowing this was something I should have done and allegedly should be ashamed of. Honestly, it felt like I had been called a witch and I deserved to be burnt at the stake. From that moment on, I invested an awful amount of money into Brazilian waxes and permanent laser hair removal because the trauma of such a rumour doesn’t really leave you.
Again, all the girls knew something I didn’t. It felt crushing.
Truthfully, I never thought I’d be writing about my hairless vagina on the internet, but here we are, I guess. Because that is what beauty standards do to us.
So be it tech neck, fine lines, or body hair - I don’t drop into your inbox today with a profound answer of how to overcome it all.
Rather, I approach you with a question. How do we find comfort in the standards put toward us? How can we reject them, when the world is built around us needing to embrace them?
Can I embrace the idea of ageing, whilst simultaneously caring about my appearance? I want to approach this intellectually, and create an argument for feminism in this cause, but it’s exhausting. To constantly rationalise and intellectualise every choice in life.
But, just like ageing, this is another privilege to uphold. To think and care so deeply. I will continue to think so deeply as I massage my firming body oil into my neck tonight.
Sigh.