Is It Just Me? (12 page)

Are you actually saying that it’s better to have been ugly? Like big Lucy Bingwall who had four boobs and a hairy mouth?

Yep. This is one of your biggest life lessons, Little M. And by the way, she’s now Lucy Bingwall who lives on a private island –

Yeah, it’d have to be a private island, with a face like that.

Good one. High five. No, really, she lives on a private island, with her explorer husband, speaks six languages and flies a light aeroplane. So.

Oh.

Quite.

Sorry. Continue.

Shall do.

However much I might have yearned to be one of The Beautiful Ones, particularly at those ghastly school discos, where any desperate attempt to impress the opposite sex led to at best deep humiliation (we shall discuss later, MDRC), I now feel extremely blessed that I wasn’t. I see them at school reunions from time to time – many of them are still beautiful, and clearly put a great deal of effort into maintaining that beauty. Good for them. Some of them are ‘just mothers’ – the most admirable of jobs if chosen, but you can tell a lot are wondering what they have really achieved for themselves. They’re nowhere near as jolly as ‘The Ugly Ones’, who are all very cheerfully running international banks and breeding vast stables of racehorses and doing marvellous things in developing countries, all whilst juggling a family brood. No – ‘The Ugly Ones’ won, a thousand times over, I reckon. They had the roughest ride, and emerged the strongest.

But what about us neutral ones? The ‘normals’, stuck somewhere in the middle? The tomboys, the sporties? We didn’t pay much attention to our place in the looks-department hierarchy. Then, by our mid-twenties, when still not having had a serious long-term relationship, there was an interesting and confusing time when we got a bit self-conscious and started to consider what ‘The Men’ might think of us. This meant we went from looking like ourselves to trying slightly too hard to look like someone we thought men might find attractive. But styling ourselves to please others didn’t work: it was like trying to hammer a square peg into a ra-ra-skirt-shaped hole. So we were forced to make a decision about our attitude towards the beauty game.

Mine was something along the lines of ‘This is who I am, and this is the level at which I’m going to present myself, I feel fine, and if you don’t like it then you’re more than welcome to look away, thank you very much.’ I decided, quite simply, not to care very much at all. As long as my rear-end and stomach were hidden from the public gaze, then I considered any outfit a roaring success.

People are either going to like the look of me, or they’re not. And apart from remaining vaguely clean and healthy, there’s not very much I can do to control that. Is an eye-lash tint, a facial and the right handbag really going to make all that much difference?

With this decision, I think I’ve spared myself a lot of misery. You may look at me and see a slightly frayed, wool-clad woman with an inexplicably hefty rucksack, but I look in the mirror and simply give thanks for all I’ve opted out of.

Hang on, Mrs Frayed Wool-clad woman . . . are we therefore not or ever a model?

I am afraid not.

I just thought what with me being this tall and thin, and the fact that most catwalk models are quite odd-looking in their beauty, I fit the bill . . .

We were to be a catwalk model, were we? Obviously before government-office posts. I had forgotten that brief realistic aim . . . But don’t worry: height and not being ‘pretty’ can be used to advantages in other walks of life.

What like – a children’s entertainer? A clown?

Close enough. And moving on.

Now, MDRC, let’s start a sub-chapter in this unsettling world of beauty and discuss . . . (imagine the
X Factor
voiceover man is saying it) . . . GROOMING. Such a good word said like that. I suggest you now say it out loud as Mr
X Factor
Voiceover Man would: ‘GROOMING.’ Satisfying.

E
ven the slightest encounters with the world of beauty and grooming have led me to feel nothing but utter confusion at the sheer
weirdness
of it all. I’m talking spas, hairdressers, clothes shopping . . . Oh, it all sounds lovely, does it? Such benign, appealing things they are. Except they’re not: you’re kidding yourselves, and you know it. At least, I hope you do and this isn’t just me, because they all provide me with considerable anxiety and are high on my list of life’s puzzling areas.

First up: hairdressers. Even though my formative experiences of hairdressing involved my mother, a bowl and a pair of kitchen scissors, I still prefer to cut my own hair, with the kitchen scissors, often whilst stirring a pan of beans and bopping along to Magic FM. The results are patchy, I grant you, but at least I’m spared the hideous experience that a trip to the hairdresser can be.

Ladies (and Gentlemen, of course – you’re very welcome to join), I humbly offer you:

MIRANDA’S TEN REASONS TO HATE THE HAIRDRESSER!

And the length of time for which you’re forced to stare at your own reflection. Because it’s weird, isn’t it, when you’re made to look at it for too long? It becomes craggy, or puddingy, and then you get worried and it starts to look even worse. At a certain point, it even stops looking like your face and morphs into something altogether more peculiar. In my case, the face of a chubby choirboy.

Yes, that thick, black neck protector thing that’s so heavy and tight it makes you claustrophobic and panicky so that you want to FREAK OUT, RIP IT OFF and DESTROY THE SALON LIKE A WILD ANIMAL.

Or rather, the awkward, lie-back-with-your-head-in-this-little-curve hairwash basins? Where the very sweet work-experience girl will ask, ‘Is the water too hot for you?’ and you’ll politely reply, ‘No, no, that’s lovely, actually,’ as rivulets of what feel like molten lava blister your poor hurting chubby choirboy face.

The embarrassing walk from hairwash-area to haircut-seat, with a turban on your head and your weird gown around you, so you feel like an old Moroccan man selling dates at a market.

That phrase, that terrible, terrible phrase that you think you’ve so cleverly avoided: ‘Going anywhere nice this year?’

To which I want to reply, ‘SHUT UP! WHY WOULD YOU ASK ME THAT? WHY KOWTOW TO THAT STEREOTYPE? YOU DON’T CARE, DO YOU? AND ALL YOU’VE DONE IS REMIND ME THAT NO, NO, I AM NOT GOING ANYWHERE NICE. I NOW
WANT
TO GO SOMEWHERE NICE, BUT I AM NOT GOING ANYWHERE NICE. I MAY NEVER GO ANYWHERE NICE AGAIN.’

Being given a very lovely and free cup of tea, but being unable to drink it as the hairdresser suddenly shoves your head down to cut the hair at the back of your head, or suddenly pushes your head to one side as you try and take a sip.

Anything that involves the hairdresser pressing your head down, pushing your head to one side, or suddenly and alarmingly lowering the level of your chair, so you jolt towards the ground with an alarming ‘whoomph’, smashing whatever dignity you had remaining into a million little pieces.

Invariably sitting next to the woman with the longest, thickest most beautiful hair in the world, so all you hear is, ‘Ooh, what lovely hair, doesn’t she have amazing hair, gorgeous hair, really gorgeous, amazing hair,’ as you stare grimly at your own meagre, limp barnet.

STOP TELLING ME ABOUT HER HAIR, I HATE HER HAIR, AND I HATE HER.

Being shown the result of your cut and blow dry. Realising they have gone for what can only be described as the ‘Princess Anne’ – a style at once bouffant, risky and ageing. Then saying ‘Thank you so much, I love it, you’re amazing,’ as you blink back tears.

Leaving the salon assuming everyone thinks you look ridiculous. And cue rain.

Whilst on a Day of Beauty and Grooming (in order to ‘take myself seriously as a woman’), I might then feel the urge to nip into another salon for a pedicure. I sit on a bench with my trousers rolled up to my knees, and my feet in a basin of water. Rather than feeling pampered, I feel slightly shamed, as if I’m in the stocks or on the naughty step. Then a person – a
stranger
, as if this couldn’t get any odder – will rub, sand and pumice my feet for longer than is strictly comfortable.

^*
interjects, wildly, from twenty years earlier
^*
WHAAAAAAT? THAT’S THE WEIRDEST THING I’VE EVER HEARD. Have you taken leave of your senses?

I must have done. And I’m telling you now, I’m not enjoying any of this.

You’d better not be, you GIANT PERV.

I mean, a stranger, cupping and fondling my
feet
? That
is
odd, isn’t it, MDRC, when you really think about? And because I am painfully ticklish, it’s not in any way relaxing: it’s an infuriating sensation that makes me want to cut my feet off and slap them in the face of the tabard-wearing pedicurist. She then paints my toenails a shade of fungal green, which I’m too polite to refuse, before ushering me out into the street in flip-flops. On a freezing winter’s day.

‘Why didn’t you go to a proper spa, Miranda?’ I hear you say. ‘A delightful destination spa with whirlpools and saunas and soft fluffy robes and crystal jugs full of apple and mango juice?’ Well, I’ll tell you why I didn’t.

A friend once persuaded me that spending £400 for two days in a rural spa retreat would re-set my mind, body and soul for the next decade. What a load of . . .

Allow me to present:

MIRANDA’S TEN REASONS TO HATE THE SPA!

I DO NOT WANT to lie with half-naked strangers in a sealed wooden cave, avoiding eye contact as our sweat pools mix gently in the centre of the floor.

I DO NOT WANT to lie flat on a mortuary slab, caked in bandages and soil, thinking only of what I’d do if the fire alarm went off.

The last time I had one, my head got stuck in the head hole and I became increasingly stressed as it wedged itself tighter and tighter with each stroke, pummel and spooky undulation of whale music.

They’re never quite big enough, which means walking around in constant fear of exposing myself to the assembled company (and probably being arrested for flashing, which is one of the top ten LEAST desirable things to happen on a ‘relaxing’ spa day).

All the disadvantages of the sauna, plus your visibility is impaired by the steam. This heightens the risk of accidentally placing your hand ‘somewhere it shouldn’t go’ when groping for your towel.

Where not only calories, but nutritional content and health benefits of each available food are clearly listed. Consequently, you feel you have to justify your choice to the waitress: ‘Oh, yes, I know the quinoa’s a little on the carby side but, to be honest, after that lymphatic drain massage, I really feel I need the riboflavin.’ When it comes, the quinoa fails to fill you up, and you have to run out to the car – flashing at a new arrival in your too-small dressing gown – and get the big piece of Emergency Cheese you stashed in the glove box, which by now is sweaty and tastes of de-icer. (You eat it anyway, because otherwise you might gnaw off your own fist in the middle of your manicure.) Which leads me to . . .

Which are basically just holding hands with a stranger for forty-five minutes whilst listening to Enya.

The conversations with other spa visitors. Which will all be along the lines of ‘Isn’t this
lovely
?’ and ‘We deserve it, don’t we? We really deserve it.’ To which the only honest response would be ‘No, it’s awful. We’d all much rather be at home eating a bag of crisps and watching
Britain’s Next Top Model
, laughing at how they are all dangerously thin.’

A trim woman in a uniform will lead you into a little interrogation suite, where she’ll quiz you on your current diet, exercise and skincare habits. You’ll lie through your teeth and claim that you jog five times a week, enjoy yoga, avoid sugar and that your only vice is the occasional splurge at the Eve Lom counter. The trim woman will look at you sceptically as you stand and your Emergency Maltesers fall out of your pocket onto the floor.