Vanity, thy name is woman.

I know, I know. I’m a dirty little sinner.
Just tell me one woman who isn’t vain, not preoccupied on some level with how she looks. It’s simple survival. It’s a jungle out there!

When I was a little girl I was very small, skinny and ringleted. Yes, ringleted, only not as cute as Shirley Temple. My mother could only manage two ringlets so the result was a pair of dangling intestines on either side of my head. It didn’t help that I was a brainiac and founder of the unbelievably embarrassing Robin Rabbit Club. I was catastrophically uncool and destined to a social life beyond redemption had it not been for two things.

Hormones and Vanity. My Saviours.

Year 8, high school and yet another year of Very Bad Hair, (much, much worse than the pair of intestines) I realized I had a lot of catching up to do. Credibility could only be gained by spending rigorous hours in front of the mirror, cultivating my new St Trinian’s Catholic Schoolgirl Slut persona, leaving ringlets, rabbits and ridicule behind.
It worked. I was cool. I was popular. Boys looked at me. Some boys even liked me.
By the end of my secondary school education I had well and truly graduated to Minx status.

It’s a formula I’ve been loath to abandon for obvious reasons. I’ve perfected it over the years with the inevitable hurdles of age providing the need for extra attention.
Hormones haven’t always been the good friends I thought they might be, but good old Vanity has stood me in good stead.

I may be heading straight to the Terraces of Purgatory but I won’t be lonely.
I’ll be doing lunch there with all my good-looking girlfriends.