When I was a magazine editor, many hours were spent getting me camera-ready. A stylist provided designer clothes, a make-up artist spack-filled and blow-dried me to perfection, then a photographer took endless photos until I was happy. This was an arduous process. But, as I was the editor, everyone had to suck it up. Click, click, click, click … Now I’m on my own. Just me and my dwindling collection of lipsticks and eyeshadows from the media years. (They’re starting to smell a bit funny.) Combined with my general laziness, it’s not a pretty picture. So I’ve been avoiding cameras. Occasionally someone steals a sneaky shot. They’re invariably terrible. Whenever I pull my finger out and create albums of family holidays and festivities, I fill them with photos of Husband and the Sprogs. Just so it doesn’t look like Husband is a widower, I include the least offensive photo of me. That’s been working fine. But yesterday I was asked to provide a headshot for a website that’s republishing one of my blog posts. This – as Lola’s brother Charlie would say – was a very hard job. I searched and I searched and I search. I rejected and I rejected and I rejected. After going back five years I thought I should stop because it was getting completely non-representative of my rapidly advancing years. In the end, I settled for an out-of-focus photo of me wearing a jogging T-shirt and tracksuit top. Very little make-up, quite a few wrinkles. But I looked happy and my hair was quite fabulous. So fabulous, in fact, that I’m taking it to my hairdresser as inspiration for my pre-cruise cut and color. I’ve also booked my first school-mum-administered fake tan so we can practise shades before the final spray. I’m doing endless gym classes to prep for stripping off. Every muscle in my body hurts, even some on my scalp (all that grimacing while planking?). I’m starting to think it’d be easier to keep ageing disgracefully.
housegoeshome 
Love it very funny. Have you noticed though that when you actually look back at photos you hated at the time you always look better than you though and definately better than you do now? Or is that just me….
Oh yeah, I was a goddess back then compared to now. And I didn’t appreciate it at all.
So, you’ve been pretty vague about which magazines you worked at in the posts that I’ve read here on your blog but after seeing the picture above, and, of course, recognising that gorgeous face, I decided to google you to see which mag you last worked at. Woman’s Day, hey? That was a FAB editor’s pic but you look great with your long hair and natural visage.
By the way, in my acting days I did an ad for Woman’s Day. It was a TVC montage of lots of different women dancing around to the song “There she goes. There she goes again…drifting through my veins etc.” It was very catchy and cute but it was apparently a song about heroine use. Was that on your watch? Haha.