Plain speaking

One of the cliches of spinsterdom is that spinsters are plain, almost by definition. In this image-obsessed world, you are not going to pull a man if you look homely, let alone like the back of a bus. I can only speak for myself here, since I haven't a handy panel of top flight spinsters to consult, but I don't much care for being pressured to look like a fashion plate. I don't think they have fashion plates any more, unless we're veering into Cath Kidston territory, but that's neither here nor there. No, one of the perks of being a professional spinster is that you can dress how you please and if you choose to go bare-faced and skip the hours in front of a mirror that's fine because no-one's going to wonder if you have an ulterior motive. I never went through the pink and sparkly girly phase when I was young. I went from cars to books quite rapidly, and the dolls I did play with were used for soap operas with long-running story arcs, rather than styling nylon hair into, well, pretty much what you started with, nylon hair not being terribly easy to style with a plastic comb larger than the subject's head. I did have a half-hearted attempt at glamour in my student days, along with one or two three-quarter-hearted attempts to throw spinsterhood aside in favour of relationships with men who, it turned out, had no interest in providing the other quarter. While the allure of looking like a woman from a Vettriano painting still lingers on in the outfits I never take out of the wardrobe, I have had to resign myself to the two facts that have led me to embrace the single life: I am plain and I have terrible taste in men. And I've realised it doesn't matter. Being pretty is all very well, but once it fades you've nowhere to go. Being plain is fine, because if you're even halfway lucky your face will gain character as you get older, etched in, unless you're going to use Botox to deny your nature. Because it's true that you get the face you deserve. It's not just getting older that frightens people into jabbing poison under the skin. It's the prospect of facing themselves once the mask of youth falls away. So why bother with make-up and all the rest of the ritual? Unless you're going to spend all day staring in a mirror, you won't see what you look like and why should it matter what other people think you look like? Feel good on the inside and never mind anyone else's opinion. By all means look after your skin, but don't abuse it in the pursuit of some unattainable airbrushed image. Life is too short to roast yourself on a sunbed. Go and do something constructive instead. Be brave. Be interesting. Be yourself.