At the age of 14 I had an oversized mouth filled with teeth, metal and – on one sorry occasion – an ill-advised boiled sweet which had melted and fused to my brace. Additionally, I also wear contact lenses. Without them, I would find it difficult to see Susan Boyle, even if she was lowering herself onto me, mistaking me for a chair.

Declining to wear glasses during my high school years, I survived by learning the walks and demeanours of approaching friends, classmates and – most importantly – the scariest of teachers.

My eyesight has been getting progressively worse now for 20 years and shows no sign of stopping.

If there’s a zombie apocalypse and I forget to pack my lenses in the rising panic as we flee our homes, I’ll be zombie-food before I can even get down the road.

In addition to these things, I have various portions of my body waxed on a regular basis. I have my hair dyed and I wear very good bras to offset the fact that – due to their reasonable size – my breasts will indubitably be taken down by gravity quicker than most. Point is, I’m not anywhere near to being a natural beauty.

Most of the time, I live quite happily in the amnesia of this small detail.

Except on days like today when I consider women over a hundred years ago, and think how hard it must have been to keep up the pretence of natural beauty with hardly any make-up, no contact lenses and (one presumes) wax rationing.

I would’ve been goofy and bespectacled. Couple this with the fact that my father’s long since dead and I would likely never have been married off. In a barbaric time I would have been even worse off – no glasses, leaving me a sitting duck for predators. Though with all my body hair I would have probably kept quite warm in winter, if only I could find a nice cavern to bed down in.

It’s bizarre to think how far we’ve come in the 100 years since the outbreak of the First World War.

Besides anything else and forgetting all the huge, important differences; I now stand a chance of being betrothed. Best of all though? I actually don’t need to be.

And what is natural beauty anyway? Back then I’m sure the standard of beauty wasn’t less. It was just different.

And besides, there were larger things – like wars – to worry about.

Maybe I’ll do well to remember that next time I look in the mirror and sigh.

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