BRAVE. BUT WHY DIDN’T SHE USE PICTURES LIKE THIS IN VOGUE?

ALeXANDRA Shulman and I could almost be twins, being born one day apart, in November 1957. To save you doing the maths, we’re both looking down the barrel of 60.

So how does she choose to celebrate it, after leaving her super-stylish job as editor of Vogue? With a selfie in a bikini that she posted on Instagram to her 96,800 followers. She is, it has to be said, a very brave woman.

No sooner had she posted the image — wobbly bits and mosquito bites displayed in all their glory — than the online sisterhood went crazy with congratulations.

Good on her, they shrieked, for showing the world what a ‘ real’ woman looks like. how ‘ beautiful and refreshing’ it was to see an older female showing the world the unairbrushed truth about the female form. Within hours, the post had received almost 4,000 ‘likes’ and 150 gushing comments, variously describing Alexandra as a ‘hero’, ‘gorgeous’, and ‘one amazing woman’.

Well, up to a point. Alexandra — a lovely woman, whom I have met socially on occasion — is a brilliant journalist who justly had a long tenure at the helm of the magazine referred to as Britain’s fashion bible.

This was the same Vogue which encouraged its female readers to conform to a certain glamorous stereotype: impossibly-thin, tanned, untouched by mosquito and devoid of all wobbly bits.

One of Ms Shulman’s effusive commentators yesterday was none other than Ginnie Chadwyck-healey, retail editor of Vogue. Without a hint of irony, she posted: ‘Why was this not our September cover?!’

I’ll tell you why. Because while Ms Shulman may look refreshingly ordinary in her unappealing Boden two-piece, her curvy, unairbrushed form would never in a million years be chosen to grace the cover of the style bible she edited for 25 years.

And if it did, there would be a revolt from those high-end retailers whom Ms Chadwyck-healey represents.

To be fair, Shulman has always been up front about her personal failure to live up to the physical stereotype peddled by Vogue. She has previously described herself as being ‘ slightly overweight’ and having ‘sandpaper-like skin’.

Still, as a fellow 59- year- old, I wonder if Shulman is wise to be sending this image into the social media stratosphere, where it will spin around the globe in perpetuity. Unless, of course, she’s got a how To Look Great At 60 book coming up and these are the ‘before’ pictures.

Thank heavens I’m not on social media, or my Twitter account would be red- hot with furious women attacking me for betraying the sisterhood. But is it really unkind to point out that Shulman — like most of us mature women — might have looked so much better in a wellcrafted, stylish one-piece?

hasn’t this obsession with selfies gone a bit too far? Does she feel she doesn’t exist if she’s not all over social media? Do we really need to know how wobbly she looks in her bikini?

Perhaps — having paraded unrealistic images of women on the pages of her fashion magazine for so long — it’s some form of penance for Alexandra. Or is it some form of apology to the countless ordinary women who felt unhappy with their bodies when they were subjected to the remorseless physical perfection, even if it was on the anorexic side, promoted by Vogue.

I suspect that when the cheers from the feminists die down, Alexandra will think this is one picture that should have been confined to her own private family album.