Okay, Instagram. I get it. I’m old.

I had no idea until I logged on one day and suddenly all the ads for hip, sensibly priced boots from brands with one-star reviews were replaced with reel after reel of women peeling plastic sticky patches off their faces and gasping at the wrinkles that peeled off with them: “The fifteen minute facelift!”

Thanks for shoving it in my half-century old face, Insta! I’ll have you know, my face looks exactly the same as it did when I was 30, well, maybe 38—even though my chin and neck have merged into one body part. Plus, I feel like I’m 25. Except when I get up from a chair.  

Welp, if I’m being honest Insta, maybe you read my mind before I could admit it to myself. I’d been toying with the idea of getting Botox, because someone told me I should be making video reels to enhance my brand, and in a test run, my forehead looked like it had ramen noodles running across it. But please. An entire feed of silicon patches? Couldn’t you at least have tossed in one ad for pretty scarves or cool N-95 face masks or the vibrating massager thingy that looks like a mini-jackhammer?

Then one day I logged on and the face stickers had disappeared. I was so relieved, I thought you understood me. But no, that’s when you brought out the big sticks—that is, women of a certain age smearing their faces with large, creamy, double-wide lipstick tubes of contour and highlighter. I couldn’t help but notice that all the beautiful women slinging those big sticks have senior faces framed by naturally grey hair. I’m technically middle-aged, okay? I’ve got a long way to go before I let my suddenly coarse baby hairs grow in grey and I’m not THAT into ordering in advance. Plus, hello? We’re in a pandemic, who wears make-up anyway? Zoom is about the lighting.

I mean, I get it, I do, you’re trying to tell me something. But you really pushed me over the edge when you started running ads about my dry vagina. I mean, come on. Do you have to be so confrontational, so . . . in my pants? I’m having a breakdown here. I just logged on to see what Roxanne Gay was baking and catch of video of Glennon Doyle’s latest, impossibly cute fight with her wife!!! I didn’t need a sermon on the perils of menopause!!!

Whatever, Insta. I can take a hint. Thanks for showing me I know what I need. Now please, how about showing me some ads for things I don’t need, like a five-star hotel you know I can’t afford but strive to stay at? Somewhere nice I can imagine wearing the fancy looking cheap boots I once bought, and schlep these budding jowls, droopy boobs and dry vajayjay?

It’s hard to admit that it took a fluffy social media to make me realize I’m going to die. But thanks, I did order that pussy moisturizer. It’s pretty good.