Insults my face and I have survived

You've got to laugh. Because otherwise...

On a very on-brand January afternoon last week - biblical rain, gale-force winds - I dumped some freshly soiled garments with my local dry cleaner. I’ve been giving him my clothes most weeks for as long as we’ve lived in this neck of the woods, more than 20 years.

With the weather being so gross, all his doors and windows were shut which is unusual, and it made the shop as steamy as a Swedish sauna. My glasses immediately fogged up and so I took them off for a second.

‘Jo!’ boomed dry cleaning man. ‘I’ve never seen you without your glasses before!’

I just smiled because… well, what is there to say to that, that’s of any use or interest. But it was fine because he had a follow-up ready to go:

‘You look so much better without them!’ he said, smiling from ear to ear.

So then I just burst out laughing and said, ‘Oh don’t say that! I need these!’

‘But it’s true!’ he continued. ‘I can’t believe the difference.’

I don’t think the dry cleaning guy meant to be rude. His whole demeanor is a kind of affable, but cheerily tactless kind of vibe. He’ll just say the first thing that comes into his head. 

Genuinely, I find such moments quite funny. And in this case, I believe in my heart and soul that I actually look better with my glasses. They’re a bit on the oversized side, and as such I think they act as a foil for the crows feet and under-eye bags. I treasure them. They were a very generous gift from the brilliant Tom Davies who personally designed them for me. I’ve had them for about eight years and the only time they’re ever off my face is when I’m asleep. Also, I really need them to read my phone or put cinnamon rather than cumin on my porridge. So if you do agree with the dry cleaning guy that I look better without them, we’ll all just have to crack on regardless, because they basically are my eyes. 

Then again, I cannot deny that this is now a new ‘core insult memory’; one of those things said to me that causes outrage in a way that stays with you. I file these Core Insult Memories under ‘so rude it’s pretty funny’, and mine them for self-deprecating laughs with my friends (hi!) at every opportunity.  

In that spirit, I thought I would use this new Glasses Insult as a jumping off for all the Core Insult Memories that have stayed with me. 

I was on set in a house in the Hollywood hills for the occasion of making the television show, The Great British Hairdresser. Together with A-list hairstylist, James Brown, I was judging several hopeful young hairdressers in a competition with a prize of working on a celebrity’s hair for a Glamour cover and launching a career as a session stylist.

With James Brown and Abbey Clancy, hosted the show. I don’t know what happened to that Philip Lim top I’m wearing, I wish I still had it.

On this day, some local stylists had been drafted in to do hair for our contestants and other on-camera people, like hairdressing legend, Vidal Sassoon. Over lunch, I found myself in a group chatting to a couple of these stylists on the vast lawn near the pool. Suddenly, a young man, about 25, said to me, ‘I’ve been admiring your haircut all day, I really love it.’  

‘Oh! Thanks!’ I smiled. He happened to be very good-looking so I thought, ‘That’s a nice compliment from a cute young guy, I’ll bank that for a day when I’m feeling a bit shite.’

Then he followed up….

‘I’ll tell you what I really love about it,’ he said, smiling. ‘I love that it’s so… age-appropriate.’

I burst out laughing. (Why is this apparently my knee jerk reaction to a verbal kick in the guts?)

‘Oh god!’ I said, still laughing. ‘I wish you’d just left it at “nice haircut”.’

‘No, seriously!’ He’s still smiling. ‘Living in LA, I see so many women of your age kidding themselves that they can stay looking young if they keep their hair long. It’s so refreshing for me to see a woman of your age just owning and embracing the age you are now. 

Women of your age. Reader, I was 40.

I smiled and said, ‘Ha, I guess I know what you mean. Well… thank you. But stop talking now, yeah?’ 

More on the hair. Short hair is still seen, largely, as the brave, less feminine choice, isn’t it? As the young man above was kind of alluding to, so many people have the innate belief that it’s for the time of life when you’re ‘too old’ for long, youthful locks and therefore no longer pursuing male appreciation. And that belief beds in early, as was proven on a night out with my husband and daughter, who was eight at the time. We were eating our pizzas in a comfortable silence when she pipes up with, ‘Mum, some of the girls at school say you have ‘man hair’.’ And while I sat there looking at her open-mouthed, it’s my husband who collapsed laughing.  

All I was doing was crossing the road. I was walking back to the Glamour office on Old Bond Street after a meeting. At Conduit Street, which is always hectic, I stopped on the median strip in the middle of the two lanes waiting for a break in traffic. A white van turned into the street and as it drove past me, standing there on the little concrete island, the driver leaned his head out of the window and said to me very quietly and calmly, ‘Get off the road you ugly c*nt.’ And before I could arrange my face into a reaction, he was gone. It is the single most shocking and needless interaction I have ever experienced. I don’t know if I can say I found that one ‘funny’, but certainly remarkable. I tell everyone. 

Similar scenes at a bus stop close to my house. I was waiting for a bus. A car drove past and a woman leaned out of the passenger window and yelled, ‘Bitch!’ at me and then the car sped off. So that was the second weirdest and needless interaction I have ever experienced. But, a few days later at the very same bus stop, a man walked past me and said, ‘Nice lady.’ He said it in such a gross, pervy, ‘Austin Powers’ style and he was also about four feet tall. The whole moment struck me as so comical that I couldn’t help but burst out laughing. And that was unfortunate because he took that as a flirty welcome. I walked home and left him there. 

So I think we simply must conclude that I am neither a bitch, or a nice lady, but somewhere in between, and I just live near a Twilight Zone-esque bus stop where really mad things happen. It’s also the very spot where my husband got his phone snatched by a youth on a bike. 

A few years ago in Sydney, I was meeting my lovely friend Jayne for a long overdue catch-up lunch. I took my time wandering through the shops before I met her and - oops - bought a Zimmerman dress which I still wear a lot to this day. Here it is at the Glamour Beauty Festival years ago meeting Winnie Harlow.

That’s Chad over my shoulder, our celeb booker who moved back to Canada. I miss him even more than my missing Philip Lim top.

I was really pleased with it and ripped it out of the packaging to show her. She agreed it was a very nice dress before blurting out, ‘See, you can wear styles like that because you’re so flat-chested.’ I retorted that any more than a mouthful is a waste, bitch, and I have never let her forget it. She insists she meant it as a good thing. And it’s fair to say I cannot ever really know of the trials unique to my more busty sisters. We laugh about it a lot.

My former colleague at a teen magazine was drunk. I will say that in her defence. I was trying to figure out how to politely suggest she get a taxi. I honestly couldn’t make out every word of her stream of conscious ramble, but it was basically about the time her father and his policeman friend sat her down, about aged 14, and gave her a stern talking to about the evils of lecherous boys and men, and all the millions of way she should be on her guard. It’s a familiar story, right? But after she told me about some of the things they warned her that men might try in bars, or to please be careful when travelling alone because there’s lots of bad men out there, and they were worried about her because even at just 14 she was so very pretty, she blurted out, ‘You’re so lucky that men don’t really look at you that way, Jo.’

There’s a lot to unpack in that sentence. Am I supposed to be jealous of her being pretty enough to invite more unwanted attention than me? I don’t think that’s how it works anyway. Like I said, she was super drunk. But there was no slurring on that line, I heard every word. She was also more senior than me in the company so I guess that if this was now, instead of in the 90s, I could have made a big fuss to HR or something.

But I just shook my head, walked away and told everyone I worked with the next day.  She later ended up saying something similar to a friend of mine in the office - something about her ‘great personality’ compensating for her face - and I realised that we were dealing with someone who was either just not very nice, or struggling with complex mental health issues around her own self image. Possibly both. 

Interestingly, my Core Insult Memories have a strong theme: my appearance. Maybe they hit home and stay with me because my face has been a source of insecurity for me for as long as I can remember. I’ve written before about my primary school nickname, ‘fly shit face’. It’s probably why it’s just easier to land a killer blow with me on that subject, who knows? But it was a random insult in my Instagram DMs that somehow managed to change something in me. 

‘Hey, I hope you don’t mind me saying,’ she started. ‘But I wonder if you should get some better advice about your hair and make-up style?’

I hope you don’t mind me saying.

Has it ever occurred to you to say anything like that to anyone? Let alone someone you don’t know? It blows my mind that people feel entitled to. But while I did not take her advice and rush out and get a style overhaul, her comment did have the effect, weirdly, of ushering in a new era of peace for me. I was so outraged that someone would think that is an OK thing to say, unsolicited, to a stranger, that the anger finally gave me this clarity: I do not have to apologise to anyone about my face. It’s mine, it’s the only one I’ve got and we’ve had some bloody good times, we have. I’m not forcing anyone to snog it, let alone even give it a passing glance.

Weirdly, - and a bit annoyingly - that comment, above all the Core Insult Memories, was the one that made me stop placing so much importance on what anyone thought of my face. So I guess I owe that rude woman a sort of begrudging thank you.

What about you? What are the staggering things  - funny or otherwise - that sit in the back of your brain to this day? We can’t stop these things from bedding in to our souls, but laughing about them can absolutely neuter their power.