MIA FREEDMAN: 'Guess who. I can't.'

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Time for a quick round of "New Hair, Who Dis?" in which a celebrity posts a photo of herself (ostensibly) after getting a haircut and instantly triggers mass confusion as the image is shared in group texts followed quickly by deep despair and the impassioned declaration that "the world has gone mad, I’m going to go and live in a yurt in Mongolia, who’s with me?"

May I present to you, this famous lady:

If I had 400 guesses, I wouldn’t have picked it. Image: Instagram.

When a friend texted me this image with a "guess who?" these were some of my wrong answers:

• Sofia Vergara
• Eva Longoria
• That woman from Sex/Life
• A Kardashian, any Kardashian
• Shakira
• Jennifer Love Hewitt
• Someone Brazilian I don't know
• AI

Hush now, child. You know nothing.

Because this is who it is:

Okay, so you’re Brad Pitt? Image: Getty.

Ms Shania Twain.

And this is the photo as it appeared yesterday on Instagram:

Shania Twain on Instagram. Image: Instagram.

Colour my hair, do what I dare, lol.

Here is the image pinned right next to it on Shania’s grid:

Shania Twain's "new" look. Image: Instagram.

Shania is 58 years old and I’m too existentially depleted by the Stepford Wife insanity of beauty standards to even say much more about it.

Because I already did, just a few months ago, when Jennifer Love Hewitt posted this photo, also after a haircut (which she has since deleted after the Internet had a collective WTF moment):

 Jennifer Love Hewitt. Image: Instagram.

At the time, I wrote this:

"Sometimes it can feel like famous women are all morphing into the same person whether it’s due to injectables or surgery or filters or Ozempic or all of it. It can honestly be tricky to know what a real person looks like when you’re flicking through Instagram.

And to whose benefit? If you use heavy filters and Facetune to alter the size and shape of your body and features, how do you feel about the gap between what you see in the mirror or the shower and what you see on your screen?

Is there tension in that gap? Shame? Pressure? And do those feelings cause the gap to widen further as you reach for more procedures, more filters?

Or perhaps it’s a more even playing field now that it doesn’t matter what you’re born with; beauty can be bought permanently in a doctor’s office or filtered temporarily in a photo.

I reject the premise that talking about these things is ‘judging’ women or ‘tearing women down’. Please. We have eyes. We have brains. We are able to see things and reflect on them in ways that help us try to make sense of this new world with its new cosmetic and digital beauty standards.

We can play the ball not the woman. Look, we just did."

Related: This is my yurt.

Image: Pinterest.

Feature image: Instagram/@shaniatwain.