Lucky to be deluded

There is a fashion section in the glossy supplement of our Saturday paper that I can rarely resist, despite the loud complaints that inevitably follow aimed in the general direction of My (totally uninterested) Man. "These prices are outrageous!", "Why are the pictures so dark that you can’t even see what the model is wearing?", "Who on earth would be wearing this kind of outlandish thing anyway?" It’s a sort of love-hate thing I suppose.

They also do a spread where they simply line up the same model (against a white background) and put her in six different outfits, almost exclusively from the high street. I like looking at these clothes, sometimes I even make a note of where I can find a particular one, although I rarely act on it. But apart from the fact that the model is inevitably on the thin side of skinny, and pretty in a strange alien sort of way, I don’t think I’m very different from her and I can at least visualise myself in the clothes she’s wearing.

But last Saturday they had lined up a male model instead, and I found myself wondering what on earth this whippersnapper was doing in the magazine, when surely he must still be singing in the boys’ choir. I couldn’t imagine My Man in any of the clothes.

Of course the unavoidable question was, well unavoidable. I found one of the old glossies, featuring a female model, in the recycling box and with the right page open and just a little nervous I went to the mirror to do a comparison.

And you know what, despite the fact that I’m going to be 38 in a couple of months, I really can’t see much of a difference, apart from the aforementioned divergence in size and prettiness. I’m convinced I still look like I did when I was 21. Maybe some people just don’t age, and I happen to be one of the lucky ones. Or am I completely deluded? I call to ask a girlfriend (a few years older than me), and she confides in me that she is also one of the lucky ones. We are clearly both deluded.

No it's not me in the photo, I found the picture on www.prankabuddy.com