opinion

'This is the exact age I stopped looking at Victoria's Secret models.'

Being fascinated with models is a bit like believing that dark mulberry lipstick you bought with your best friend when you were 19 looks really, really good on you.

There is a certain end date to the love affair. One day you simply wake up to reality and go “My lips look like tiny eggplants. Organic eggplants. What was I thinking?”

Any relationship based on obsession, a learned avoidance of the truth and a healthy dose of self loathing is never going to last.

I understand about being obsessed by the current models du jour. About studying up and following their skin care routine. Copying what kind of sunglasses they wear. Trying to never eat blue cheese because they never eat blue cheese. Getting that cold hole in your stomach when you see them in a bikini on a yacht in the Mediterranean.

The Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show debuted in 1995. Model Stephanie Seymour was one of its stars. I loved Stephanie Seymour. Her boyfriend was Axl Rose from Guns N’ Roses when Axl was lean and mean rock, not middle aged and working on his superannuation. If people knew to mash up names back in the 90s instead of working out which character they were most like in Beverly Hills 90210 they would have called them Stefax. They were everywhere.

Stephanie Seymour, March 1991 on cover of celebrity Playboy

Stephanie was one of the original supermodels with her genetically blessed brethren including Linda Evangelista, Cindy Crawford, Christy Turlington, Elle Macpherson, Claudia Schiffer and Naomi Campbell.

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I used to dream of having a face like Christy (she could even ride horses bareback), a body like Cindy and Elle, cool like Linda and Naomi. I just wanted Claudia's bank balance. She was the sensible supermodel and looked as though she would invest it in stocks or something.

Christy Turlington was an original supermodel. Image Instagram

Basically back then I didn't think I good enough because the women I looked at in the pages of glossy magazines and on the screen, the women everyone held up as the most beautiful in the world, didn't look like me at all.

They were perfection and I was not. And by some misstep of logic I thought you could become beautiful by studying it. By yearning for it. Instead, what happens is you become a constant disappointment to yourself.

Then I grew up.

Around my late 20s there were seismic shifts in my life.

With work getting more serious I started believing in what I could do. I was good at something. I had a skill, a talent, what was going on inside me was becoming more important than wallowing in the failure of being a woman who does not have a completely flat stomach.

My world began to open. I started meeting and hanging out with people who were not carbon copies of me - older people, brilliantly crazy people, people who tested me - and I found so many of them incredibly attractive.

The Victoria's Secret fashion parade. Notice the wings. Image Getty.

I worked on a glossy fashion magazine for a while. I discovered first hand that model shoots are the most boring work days in the world. There is no glamour. It's a bunch of people poking and prodding a really pretty girl, taking the same shot 5000 times, looking at that same shot 5000 times, and always having a problem about the lack of vegetarian options with the catering.

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Seriously, what are you going to talk about at a dinner party? Image via Getty.

When I was 28, a friend fell ill and all she wanted was to not feel pain. All she wanted was to not be so tired. All she wanted was to not think about her breathing.

As I worked and got on with my life I saw the supermodels I once coveted hit huge speedbumps in their own lives; broken marriages, heartache, obsolescence, addiction. The model train moved on with the Next Big Things and they were left at the station.

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I also had a baby. I grew a whole human inside me. I then fed that human from my body. I then watched that human curl her whole hand around my finger, start to crawl and talk and I'm still watching her.

For me the obsession with model perfection stopped in my late 20s because I grew up. I grew interesting, which is so much better. I grew into a woman who cares more about great conversation, intellect, ideas, compassion, fun, experience, exactly how that bloody Apple iCloud works than how one woman looks.

I grew into a woman who knows that if I went to a dinner party and you said I can sit next to Gigi Hadid or Katherine Bigelow (movie director), Mu Sochua (human rights advocate), Tina Fey (bloody funny great woman), Geraldine Brooks (author), I know I wouldn't be sitting anywhere near Gigi.

Tina Fey - the perfect dinner party date. (Image via Getty)
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Being happy with how you look is important. It can make you feel good, but that is completely different in believing the fairytale that a supermodel's beauty has something to do with you. Comparing yourself to a model and wanting what they have wastes precious time you could be spending laughing and connecting with a brilliant bunch of women who have wobbly bellies and meaty thighs and crows feet.

The "beauty" of a Victoria's Secret model doesn't even come close to touching my life, my feelings, or even my insecurities.

There is a reason Victoria's Secret models always seem to be sporting a huge pair of two metre angel wings as they strut down the catwalk. They are trying to make themselves believe that heavenly perfection is real. But female perfection is as real as angels playing harpsichords on fluffy clouds.

I know it and they know it. It's a fashion show, a marketing extravaganza and at the end of the day they take off their makeup, they unclip their feathered wings and they step into their chauffeured car on a cold Paris night and check how many likes their selfies have racked up on social media.

The answer is probably not enough. And then the world's 'most beautiful women' glide under the streetlights of Paris wondering what's wrong with them.

 

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