Liz Jones's Diary: In which I cancel the pre-date Botox
I am about to be the most unfiltered I have ever been. I often send texts to myself. Things to do. Shopping lists. Ideas. In advance of the gallery and lunch date with the photographer, whom I have never met, I sent myself this. I am ashamed. I am deeply ashamed…
Being perfect and having nice things just makes men resent you
‘Start M2 eyelash serum when it arrives. Visit Ana, the Queen of Youth, for Botox and filler. Have an eyebrow transplant. [I read Chrissy Teigen had one in order to look more natural; I usually ink mine in. Which is fine until you lie face down on a massage table with your face through the little hole, are late for a date with your famous boyfriend at Pastis in New York, and he suggests you look in the mirror, as you have a David Bowie-style jagged line across your forehead, due to smudging.] Book treatments – extreme bikini, facial threading, nostril waxing, deluxe pedicure, hair tint Urban Retreat two days before.’
The reason for the text to self was that I finished my column last week with the sentence, ‘Let the renovations begin!’
You can see I wasn’t kidding.
I was planning to ask my colourist: ‘Do you think I’m going bald?’
I keep studying my scalp in the mirror, and a couple of months after my hair fell out in hanks,
I now have baby fluff growing in its place. The weird thing is that this new hair is jet black. A medical miracle, and really useful now Valentine’s Day is looming.
But I never learn, do I? I’m planning a tranche of expensive procedures, which will involve not just injectables and bruising, but being asked very personal questions by women barely out of their teens, such as, ‘Do you want the lips waxed as well?’
All for a man I have never met, who will probably just iron a T-shirt and hopefully brush all his teeth before we meet. I feel stupid, frankly. I have just opened the February issue of Vogue, wondering if I can afford anything new to wear, and there, on page 110, is a model with a full Maria Schneider bush. I can’t be fussier than a Vogue model, surely?
And such is the influence of Vogue over my psyche – I once saw supermodel Janice Dickinson’s sister photographed eating a watermelon and spent the next decade peeling difficult fruit – I cancelled the Queen of Youth. Being perfect and having nice things just makes men resent you.
I remember when I had my mini mansion, lawn sloping down to the river, a staff cottage, staff, a Land Rover Defender and a new Mercedes convertible, my then boyfriend came for the weekend. ‘This must cost a fortune,’ was all he said. A stark contrast to the time he took me to a bonfire party at the house of a friend of his and I had whispered, ‘Why are they building an extension when it’s just the two of them,’ and he had said gravely, ‘You can never have too much space.’
He never once remarked on the beauty of my home, the wildlife, the views. All he said, of the triple-aspect drawing room with two marble fireplaces, was, ‘What is it with women and floorboards?’ When he cracked
a rib falling down my stone staircase, he moaned, ‘Should have got fitted carpets!’ So, you see, anything nice about your person, any lovely possessions merely make men chippy. They prefer women who buy self-waxing strips from Boots, because they don’t intimidate them.
I should know better. I’ve been around magazines long enough to know that models aren’t perfect, that no one is. I did a cover shoot once with the Brazilian supermodel Fernanda Tavares. Her roots had grown out and she had a dirty hairbrush. I’m quite certain she is now married to a very rich man.
The old me never felt good enough. Before one man came for dinner, I bought wheelie-bin liners and had my lawn returfed. It was pitch black, and he never went outside. He refused to take out any rubbish. So my lawn, for want of a better word, isn’t going to be mown. I’m re-wilding it. Monty Don will be thrilled. Did Linda McCartney ever use eyelash serum that costs £85? No, she did not. And Paul still loved her. Most importantly, she loved herself.
Contact Liz at lizjonesgoddess.com and stalk her @lizjonesgoddess
