It was a freak out day. That is my caveat and defence before you read on. Copying the actress Liz Hurley was a rather bizarre aberration. I thought that I had left behind my days of wanting to copy a celebrity for the vacuous notion that it would make me feel special in some way.
After all, It had been decades since I emerged as a second class copy of someone famous. As a confession, I did it twice in my teens.
The first occurred when I forced my mother to take me to a hairdresser and asked the poor lady to give me a ‘flick’ hairstyle. That is what Farah Fawcett in Charlie’s Angels had. For the ignorant, a ‘flick’ hairstyle had curled sides that were meant to float when you walked. I even had a cut out photo of Farah from a magazine just to make sure that the hairdresser knew what I was on about. Another time, I wanted to look like Marie Osmond. I cannot remember the details (midlife brain fog) but it was a dress which she was pictured wearing. I wanted similar.
Neither attempt worked out well. My ‘flick’ hairstyle blew all over the place and ended up more ‘f..k’ than ‘flick’. That dress – I looked like a white snowball fast melting in tropical Asia which is where I grew up.
Obviously neither experience had ingrained itself so deep into my psyche as things never to repeat.
You reach midlife and gloat about how you have grown up and cannot be influenced by faff anymore. That is until I spotted photos of Liz Hurley looking lockdown fantabulous in her 50s. In my defence, I was having a rather off day. Having been notified by the health authorities that I had been added to the shielding list in February 2021, I was having a particularly highly pressurised cabin fever day. Added to that, my perimenopause was playing havoc with my hormones. These may be excuses to you but these are life affirming self-pitying statements to me.
Normally I like to think of myself as a badass midlife woman brimming with originality, breaking barriers and boundaries. A suburban explorer of sorts blazing a trail. Except on this particular day, I reverted to my teenage days. Putting on this fantastic Leopard skin spring coat which I bought from Harrods, pre-motherhood when I had a lot more disposable income, I ordered (more like begged) my daughter to take photos of me in it. Her words were something to the effect of ‘lifelong trauma from this…blah, blah’ but being the good mother that I am, I ignored her protestations.
I posed while holding my tummy in the whole time. Afterwards, I viewed the photos with a brave face on with my daughter laughing and telling me over and over again, ‘I told you’.
Thrice bitten and forever shy, I am not falling into that self-laid trap again when I need a morale boost. Least of all because Liz Hurley has once again made a splash by posting photos of herself looking doubly fantabulous AND in leopard skin. My aping days are well and truly over. There comes a time when a girl has to hang up her dream.
