Sophia Money-Coutts faces up to the impossible glamour of Jane Fonda
The gulf between the Hollywood glamour girls and me in my leggings has never seemed so wide
Blame Jane Fonda. Did you see her on the red carpet at the Golden Globes? There she was, accepting a lifetime achievement award (“83!” screamed the headlines), looking so youthful that, in the unlikely event she and I were to find ourselves out for dinner together, some waggish waiter might well guess that she was my younger sister. Although it wasn’t just Jane. There was Anya Taylor Joy, The Queen’s Gambit actress, looking like a radiant mermaid in her green Dior dress. There was Rosamund Pike, haircut as sharp as a knife, in red tulle and matching lipstick. Emma Corrin, The Crown’s Princess Diana, smiled winsomely from her sofa in Miu Miu.
There’s always been a pretty substantial gulf between the glossiness of a Hollywood actress and me on a Monday morning, but this week the disconnect felt especially comical. There they were – dolled up, pink-cheeked, foreheads as smooth as a bowl of custard; there I was, changing from my pyjama leggings to my daytime leggings, making a mental note to cut my toenails later in the bath. You know, really make a night of it.
In other physical news, on Monday night I discovered my first grey hair. That, I thought with a drooping heart, is definitely grey. I have the skin condition vitiligo, which means there are white patches all over my body that lack melanin, plus the odd spot on my scalp, too, turning the hairs growing from it white. But this hair was more menacing than the soft white ones – thicker, wirier. I yanked it out and took the surrounding clump with it. If anyone needs an extra for a film about a Victorian asylum, my diary’s pretty free.
Has the past year made us more or less vain? I would have thought less, until recently. For weeks, I’ve drifted through my flat in elasticated clothing; I open my bathroom cupboard and blink at the make-up tools as if a palaeontologist uncovering ancient bones; I’ve eaten a lot of cake.
When I conduct one of my scientific straw polls by asking a few girlfriends about our collective vanity, they suggest otherwise. One has just ordered a pot of moisturiser so expensive it must contain gold leaf or the tears of Aphrodite, or both, because she’s so worried about returning to Zoom calls after several months of maternity leave. Another’s been nipping to her hairdresser’s flat every couple of months to keep her blonde highlights touched up, like a particularly glamorous member of the Resistance. Another still tells me she knows a Botox doctor secretly operating, “if I need?”
As we limp towards freedom and emerge from a winter of lockdown, there’s creeping nervousness in the air about our physical appearances. Jane’s managed admirably, but less so the rest of us. Newspaper supplements talk of getting fit for April; waiting lists for hairdressers and beauty salons grow even longer than my toenails; my friend Gav and I trudge around the park promising one another that this week, this week for sure, we’ll “be good” and try not to have any wine on Monday night.
I’ve heard it said that we should write off the past year or so, forget it ever happened and deduct a digit from our ages accordingly. If only, I thought, squinting at my head in the mirror. But then again, plenty of souls won’t be coming out at all. Worth remembering when we fuss about our jeans being too tight, or the odd grey hair, over the coming months.