"Your skin isn't just dry," the woman next to me at the pharmacy counter said, nodding at the neck cream I was holding. "It's quietly losing what holds it up."
"After menopause, the collagen underneath thins out. And it happens to most of us, whether we notice it or not."
She smiled, took a pen out of her bag and turned over my receipt.
"Let me show you what's going on."
She drew a cross-section of skin in three layers.
"First, the collagen underneath keeps thinning. It's the structure that holds your skin up, and the longer you wait, the more your skin quietly loses."
"Second, creams sit on the surface. They can make skin feel soft for a few hours. But sagging starts underneath, where a cream never goes."
"And third — this is the part nobody tells you — most collagen powders are single-source. That's why so many women say it helped their hair but they never noticed a difference in their skin."
"Wait," I said. "So all these years I've been rubbing cream on the one layer that isn't the problem?"
"Exactly." She tapped the bottom layer with her pen. "You can't support this from the outside."