I MET up with a friend recently who is absolutely gorgeous.
You know the ones – the sort of woman who has an effortless sense of style with dewy makeup, dressed in clothes that hang just right.
Standing next to her I felt like a baboon having a bad hair day.
It’s actually quite hard being friends with her, not helped by the fact that the last time we met she asked me: ‘Why don’t you think about getting some Botox? Or having your teeth done? I can recommend a great place.’
I looked at her incredulously. It wasn’t just the gob smacking insensitivity or the fact she seemed oblivious to how hurtful her comments could be to someone who cared.
If you see me as ugly, then so what? It’s none of my business what you think of me – I honestly couldn’t give a f**k.
No, what stunned me the most was her self- obsessiveness and vanity.
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I mean, what middle-aged mum has time in the world for any of that?
It’s far better to be a middle-aged plain Jane with nothing to lose.
If you see me as ugly, then so what? It’s none of my business what you think of me – I honestly couldn’t give a f**k.
Acceptance of the world ugly is like a superpower that has finally freed me from the shackles of caring whether my face is symmetric, or I have high cheekbones.
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I can barely find five minutes to clean my teeth and put deodorant on in the morning. If I manage to match my jeans and shirt before greeting the world I feel like Kate Moss.
But now, I find myself surrounded by women my age who seemingly have nothing more interesting to talk about than their declining physical appearance.
God, it’s boring, and it honestly makes me realise just how lucky I am that I’ve never been blessed with good looks.
Listening to these women whining about wrinkles and droopy boobs, I just think: ‘Get over yourself. I’ve never been pretty. Now you know how it’s been for me for the past four decades.’
So what if I have a face that might crack a mirror?
Plus, you can’t miss what you’ve never had, right?
I’ve come to terms with the fact I don’t have a pretty face. It has taken me years to accept that men never fall over themselves to open doors for me and I am invisible to even the most desperate scaffolder on his tea break.
But the older I get the less it hurts. So what if I have a face that might crack a mirror? Why on earth would I care? I may be somewhat lacking in the looks department, but I am happier and more successful than most women I know.
I was reminded of this rather satisfying fact by the hugely acclaimed actress, Olivia Colman, who admitted feeling fortunate that she isn’t a ‘conventional’ beauty.
She says that there are fewer parts available for prettier actresses — suggesting she attributes her well-deserved success to the fact that she isn’t a looker.
It’s a searingly honest remark and I, for one, whole-heartedly agree — not that I think Olivia Colman is ugly (actually, she has a rather lovely face), but that being plain can often play hugely to a woman’s advantage.
Today, I look in the mirror and while the reflection staring back at me is unremarkable, looking this way has given me the strength, determination and force of character to get out there and prove myself in other ways.
When I think about certain friends from school – stunning women who still turn heads when they walk into a room today – I just remember painful years of feeling desperately inadequate when standing next to them.
I was utterly convinced that these gorgeous creatures were going to have much happier lives than me with handsome husbands, cuter children and whatever else they wanted the world to conjure up before the altar of their exquisite beauty.
Fast forward to middle-age and the opposite rings true. One has remained unhappily single having never found a man to meet her exacting standards, and while another married — someone equally as attractive — her husband turned out to be gay and left her for a man.
I’m not being smug when I say friends pore over photographs of my four children — Flo, 24, Annie, 22, Monty, 22, and Dolly, 20 – convinced that my life now is pretty near perfect. And, actually, I couldn’t agree more.
The reason for this is simple. Once I accepted what my limitations were on the looks front, I then set about making up for them in other ways.
Unlike prettier girls I knew, I didn’t make my prospective boyfriends jump through a series of inexplicable hoops before deciding to date them.
If they wanted to take me to an all-you-can-eat Tex-Mex buffet instead of a fancy French restaurant then — hey — who was I to complain? Bring on the chicken wings!
If one boyfriend turned out to have an unfortunately hairy back, I didn’t — unlike one girlfriend who did — dump him instantly with a shudder of disgust. I simply felt relieved that the pressure was off to shave my legs every single day.
When I eventually met my husband, Keith, now 56, at the age of 22, I felt unbelievably grateful that he was interested in me.
I didn’t think there was a more interesting, good-looking or richer man out there — I was just relieved that any man at all wanted to hang out with a woman who looked like me.
there is something quite unappealing about a woman in her fifties who is still obsessed with looking good.
Almost twenty-five years later we are still soul mates.
Contented marriage aside, it is also incredibly liberating to go make-up free and stick two fingers up at vanity.
Dare I say it, there is something quite unappealing about a woman in her fifties who is still obsessed with looking good. It just feels like a futile and exhausting battle you are never going to win.
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I think the author Matt Haig sums it up rather well in his book The Humans.
“If you think something is ugly, look harder. Ugliness is just a failure of seeing.”
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