It all comes back to the playground. I was seven years old, had a permanently runny nose, had my hair cut in a bowl shape, and was wearing my (male) cousin’s hand-me-down clothes. It wasn’t attractive. And I knew it instinctively. I wanted to be Trina, with her blonde pigtails and her ra-ra BHS dress.
Even then I could see that, thanks to her charming looks, Trina’s life was more charming than mine. The elders were kinder to her, other girls wanted to invite her to their parties. She was boring as a plate, but her pretty face more than made up for her mediocre personality.
My childhood self witnessed “nice privilege” in action. As humans, we are instinctively drawn to beautiful faces, a fact proven by studies showing that even babies look at attractive people for longer. We might think that as society progresses we prefer other attributes to appearance, but modern research suggests that they remain an important factor in the development of our lives. Daniel Hamermesh of the University of Texas at Austin has dedicated his career to studying pulchronomics (the economics of beauty), proving that right now, in 2024, your attractiveness dramatically affects your life experience. Beautiful people earn more, live longer, and live in more prosperous areas. They are also less likely to be sentenced to death in a US court.
My real-life experience shows me that no one is immune to the seductive power of beauty. I have met prominent intellectuals, strident leftists, and feminists, all of whom have been reduced to dumb fools in the presence of supermodels. Even the most erudite man can’t help but glance at an attractive woman on the train. It’s instinctive.
I have always appreciated beauty: in design, in nature, in architecture, but especially in the human form. I was fascinated by fashion magazines from the late 80s and early 90s, poring over images of supermodels. The first Vogue I bought had Helena Christensen on the cover wearing a white dress and leading a white horse. I was captivated by her honey-drenched skin and her big aquamarine eyes.
Rosie and Catherine Zeta-Jones in Los Angeles, late 1990s
As I entered my teens I became aware of my own physical strengths and weaknesses. I was tall, relatively thin and athletic. But my eyes weren’t big enough or magically colored. My hair was healthy, thick and dark but I wanted to be blonde. I had good teeth and only suffered from occasional pimples, but my jaw was weak. My nose was bulbous at the end.
I had aristocratic ankles (according to my grandmother) but my hips were wide. I knew I was just above average; However, he longed to be extraordinary.
Because I loved beauty, I was attracted to attractive friends. My two best friends were (still are) beautiful. K is so, so pretty, with a snub nose and big blue eyes rimmed by long dark eyelashes. (Much to his mother’s chagrin, he did everything he could to counteract the good looks God had given him as a teenager, piercing his nose and dreadlocks his hair.) J is tall, with incredible bone structure, refined symmetrical features, and agile limbs.
Rosie with Donna Air at an awards ceremony, circa 2000
When we were teenagers and a modeling agency looked for K in The clothing parade Live while I didn’t, he confirmed what I knew: I was a seven out of ten and these guys were nines. It made me feel bad, but not that bad. My feminist mother insisted that my worth did not depend on appearances, which helped mitigate my disappointment.
But like a moth to a flame, I found myself drawn to an increasingly extreme beauty that both excited me and undermined my self-esteem.
I worked in fashion magazines styling photo shoots with models and movie stars. The team (photographers, hairstylists, makeup artists) shared a love for exquisite faces and derived collective satisfaction from creating beautiful images. I came face to face with Helena Christensen. She was incredibly beautiful. I went to the bathroom, looked in the mirror and sighed.
By then I was in my early 20s and writing about beauty. I witnessed how products, treatments and tricks could improve someone’s appearance. I saw celebrities and models transformed by hair and makeup professionals. Then I learned about the procedures that were done in the background: hairpieces, contouring, dentistry.
Some people hate sitting in a colorist’s chair for hours, fear the “dead” minutes of a manicure, or are wary of painful touch-ups. They don’t care if they look slightly better afterwards, they’d rather be baking or going to an art gallery. Me? I love it. Thinking about it, beautification is my hobby.
And that’s how little by little I have improved my appearance. By trying hard, I have improved from an average seven to an impressive nine. (I have based these numbers largely on what my friends and colleagues have told me. I wouldn’t be so presumptuous as to assign these figures to myself.) God loves a trier! When I arrived in London in my early 20s, I was a size 12; healthy and fit but a little soggy thanks to a diet of cosmopolitans and roast potatoes. He had curly hair and his front teeth were slightly crooked. I couldn’t get into the clothes that came into the fashion closet.
Now I exercise five or six times a week. I run with the dog four mornings. I do two weight training sessions with a physiotherapist and a one-hour session of sit-ups, push-ups and triceps dips in my friend Gemma’s garage on a Sunday at 8am. I don’t eat the croissant or say yes to a pudding. I eat a lot of fruits and vegetables, hardly any processed foods, and have a very low unit count when it comes to alcohol. I’m the one who eats the salad for lunch, not the sandwich. As a result, I am now a size 8-10. I had braces on my teeth for two years when I was in my early 30s and whitened them twice a year. I receive Botox and skin boosters three or four times a year.
I am a regular at eyelash extensions (they take me a couple of hours every month). I visit my colorist every six weeks. I have (subtle) eyeliner tattooed. I had filler injected into my hands and had laser treatment on my face to remove sun spots. I underwent Ultherapy (where heat energy damages the tissue within the skin and the healing process then tightens it) on my jawline and had fillers to lift and sculpt my face.
As you age, if you are willing to invest effort in all care and treatment, you become proportionally more attractive than your peers. As? Well, even those with natural beauty are affected by the passage of time and if they don’t address gray hair, sun-damaged skin, sparse eyebrows and a widening waist, they will slide down the appearance scale.
Of course, the time I’ve spent on my looks has changed over the years. During my time as a mother of young children I was too busy reading hairy maclary and mashed carrots for exercise or blow-drying, so I looked and felt less hot. After the divorce, with grown children, I felt radiant. Nothing like being suddenly single to focus.
As always, when I write these articles, I am mindful of my teenage daughter and the message I am sending to her and any other woman reading this. You may roll your eyes and think how shallow I am, but I invest in myself and my appearance because I’m attracted to beauty. I like to see straight teeth, radiant skin and silky hair looking at myself in the mirror. I enjoy it the same way I enjoy a beautiful pair of shoes, a stunning view, or the perfect soufflé. I don’t judge others who are less involved; In fact, I envy them. Not giving a fig would be refreshing.
Despite all this, I just took an online ‘rate my attractiveness’ test, in which you upload a photo and it compares you to others. I got a measly 55 percent. Let’s hope he never ends up in a US court facing the death penalty.