KERRE MCIVOR

KERRE LEARNS TO LOVE HER ASYMMETRICAL FEATURES

It was the strangest thing. My brand-new prescription reading glasses were lopsided when I put them down on any flat surface. I had noticed wonkiness in my earlier reading glasses, the ones you can buy cheaply at supermarkets and airport bookstores.

After a certain amount of wear, I noticed one arm on every pair was always higher than the other, but I just put that down to rough handling and inferior quality. But now, my flash and pricey new frames were doing the same thing.

I picked them up and twisted them round. They seemed solid enough. No bending or warping when I pressed on them gently.

And then I remembered the first comment a friend had made when she saw me in my new glasses. “Ooooh,” she said. ”I like them. But...” and here she squinted at me, “did they fit them on your face? They seem a little crooked.”

I adjusted them and we continued our lunch, but from time to time, she would tilt her head slightly as if trying to get me into focus. I forgot all about the conversation until I noticed that both pairs of my new glasses were now just as skewed as the old ones. And then it dawned on me. Perhaps it was me. Perhaps there wasn’t anything wrong with the glasses. Perhaps I had wonky ears.

I rushed into the bathroom, grabbed the tape measure from the drawer beneath the sink and stared into the mirror. I pressed one end of the tape measure to the top of my right ear and ran it across to the left. The proof was irrefutable. My left ear was definitely higher than my right. By about half an inch.

I pulled my hair back into a tight ponytail and gazed at my face. How on earth could I not have noticed this before? The disparity was obvious once I had pointed it out to my own self. My ears grew bigger and bigger in the mirror the more I stared. I felt like a deformed Dumbo.

I turned this way and that, and briefly thought about seeing an ear straightener – or whatever doctors who move ears back into line are called – and then I came to my senses.

I fluffed my hair out and once the offending left ear was covered, the world went back to normal. Of course my ears would be asymmetrical – the rest of my body is. One boob is slightly bigger than the other; one leg is longer; one foot is wider. It was perfectly normal to be asymmetrical – in fact, it’s no longer considered the benchmark of beauty to have symmetrical features.

No-one’s entirely sure why symmetry and beauty were so aligned for so many years, although scientists have postulated that it may be because we equate regular features with good genes.

Anyone with a lopsided face was considered to carry bad genes. But now, thanks to the miracle of smartphones and Photoshop, we can see just how odd people look when one half of their face is made a mirror image of the other.

It’s the idiosyncrasies of a person’s features that make them memorable, unique and often beautiful. The good thing about getting older is that it’s so much easier being grateful for what you have, rather than to pine for what you haven’t.

Accordingly, I have decided I will embrace my ears. They might be wonky but they work. And thanks to them, I’ve been able to hear my grandson’s first gurgles and coos.

‘My ears grew bigger and bigger in the mirror the more I stared. I felt like a deformed Dumbo’