So young, so beautiful, so insecure: Few women appreciate their looks when they're in full bloom. Here three relive old insecurities in letters to their anxious young selves
Why do women never appreciate their looks when they’re in the full bloom of youth? Actress Nadia Sawalha recently expressed just this sentiment when she said: ‘I wasted a large part of my youth thinking I was hideous, when in fact, if I look at old photos, I was lovely.’ Here, three writers look back at a photo from their salad days and write a letter to their 20-something selves, reflecting on beauty, ageing and missed opportunities…
The photographer’s caught you at a good moment. Aged 20, you no longer have teenage spots, you have gorgeous dark eyes, long curly eyelashes and thick glossy brown hair.
Enjoy the hair because, sooner than you think, it will turn grey (you spot your first grey hairs in your 30s) and — this will make you laugh — you are going to spend the second half of your life as a blonde.
Enjoy your body, too. I know you think you have fat thighs and a big bum but you’re the slimmest you’ll ever be. You have a narrow waist and a flat stomach and the most gorgeous slim arms. You look good in a bikini and you can’t imagine that the day will come when you want to hide your arms and suck your stomach in.
Lesley Garner tells her 20-year-old self: 'If you knew the life you are going to have, you would be amazed'
But really, the way you look doesn’t matter. The more I think about you, the more I think how lucky you are. You were born into a blessed generation, and right now you are at Sussex University having the best time of your life.
You’re surrounded by friends, studying subjects you find fascinating — literature, history, philosophy.
You’ve made a sweep of Biba’s new shop in Brighton and love your new mini-dresses. You’re dancing to The Beatles and the Stones. You’ve marched for Nelson Mandela and hung out with the future president of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki.
You’re the fashion editor of the student paper and you’re beginning to think about your future. I don’t know where you’ve got it from, but along with the creative chaos of your student life you have a bedrock of self-belief.
So when the careers advisor says there’s no point thinking about journalism because you have to be very clever or very well-connected to succeed, you think she’s talking rubbish — and you are right.
You thereby demonstrate one of the essential qualities of a journalist, which is to challenge the first thing you are told.
Nadia Sawalha recently said: 'I wasted a large part of my youth thinking I was hideous, when in fact, if I look at old photos, I was lovely'
If you knew the life you are going to have, you would be amazed. You will have your first by-lined column in a national newspaper by the time you are 22. You will travel throughout Africa. You will get married in Ethiopia, live in Afghanistan, survive a coup.
You will get a second degree in art and design. You will get great joy from singing in choirs. You will bring up two daughters, have a grandson.
You’ll have your share of difficulties, but who doesn’t? Your marriage will end, your parents will become sick, but life’s problems will lead you to think deeper, to write your books, and will qualify you to become an agony aunt.
So my good news for you, at 20, is that in your 60s, older and wiser, you will still be essentially the same person. You’ll still think that life is exciting, that you have a lot to give. And what’s more, you’ll be blonde.
Winifred Robinson, 55
Looking back, it’s hard to believe you ever looked so good. But then, marvelling at the beauty of anyone whose skin fits tightly is as sure a sign of ageing as reaching for the reading specs.
Of course, at twenty-something you were not comparing yourself with women of a certain age. You were not even comparing yourself with any of the women you knew or saw in daily life.
You compared yourself, always, to the models in glossy magazines — particularly Jerry Hall, the great beauty of the day. Compared with Jerry, you found yourself so horribly lacking in so many areas that it’s hard to know where to start.
'If time has taught you anything, it is that these comparisons with the most beautiful women on Earth are as damaging as they are ridiculous', Winifred Robinson tells her 29-year-old self
So let’s take it from the top: your hair was too thin, your nose too big and bumpy, your teeth too uneven, your chin too large, your legs too short and thin and your skin too fair ever to gleam with Jerry’s burnished, all-over Texan tan.
If time has taught you anything, it is that these comparisons with the most beautiful women on Earth are as damaging as they are ridiculous.
Why do women never appreciate their looks when they're in the full bloom of youth?
Indeed, she was the Shergar of women. No one could be as beautiful as the Jerry Hall you idolised from those photographs — not even Jerry herself, who I saw close up in the flesh at a radio awards ceremony 15 years ago.
She was exceptional and striking, yes. But was she the woman of all those photographs you pored over? Not quite. She was taller and more angular than you’d imagined.
This brings me back to the photograph and the fact that you had — and still have to this day — good, honest eyes and an open, friendly smile.
When this photograph was taken, you were 29 and had just joined the BBC as a TV reporter.
Those looks you agonise over will serve you well in your work: they’re part of the reason why people will be willing to talk to you when they would probably shy away from someone less friendly looking.
A few months after this picture is taken, you’ll be dumped by the man you are engaged to marry. He’s cheating on you and decides he prefers someone else.
You will be utterly heartbroken, but your rival is another girl-next-door type. Thicker hair would not have made him stay — not even hair like Jerry Hall’s.
You’ll eventually learn to think of yourself as a woman who looks fine compared with other women of your age at the school gate or work. It’s enough to look fine.
And you’ll realise that you are exceptionally lucky to have people who’ll tell you that you are beautiful — your parents, your sisters, the good man you’ll eventually marry, your son.
Love makes ordinary people seem beautiful and keeps them so, even when looks fade. It may seem just a trite cliché in your 20s, but it is what’s on the inside that matters most. The only really beautiful photographs are the ones that are framed by love.
You don’t know it, but you and your friends — girls leaving their teens as the Sixties begin — are probably the last of your kind. You might be 20, but being properly grown up seems a long way away.
Young women of the same age today — so many of them perfectly groomed, desirably thin and often quick of wit — would doubtless be amazed by your childishness, chubbiness and even by your general cheerfulness. Not for you, I recall, the agonies of eating disorders, nagging self-doubt or work-related stress.
You all dress like younger versions of your mothers, and it’s not expected of you to have to earn your living for long. It’s assumed marriage and motherhood are just round the corner.
'You might be 20, but being properly grown up seems a long way away', radio presenter Sue MacGregor writes to her younger self
Your ambition to work for the BBC — radio, of course — is still formed around a hazy notion of being someone’s useful assistant. A lifetime’s career in front of the microphone is an impossible dream.
Besides, at 20, you are madly in love and waiting for the object of your desires — an attractive man you met at a party and who makes you laugh — to express his devotion to you. By the age of 22, you will realise you’re waiting for the wrong bus.
You are heartbroken, but you assume another bus will appear over the horizon in good time. If someone had told you that you’d remain single from then on, you’d probably have had a fit — but now, looking back, I’d like to say to my younger self that the single state has not been all that bad, considering.
'Your ambition to work for the BBC — radio, of course — is still formed around a hazy notion of being someone’s useful assistant. A lifetime’s career in front of the microphone is an impossible dream'
- Sue MacGregor
There were, though, different pressures around looks and abilities for a privileged white girl growing up in Cape Town. You were not obviously pretty, nor were you blonde, which you felt was rather unfair. You have dark red hair and the pale skin and thousand freckles that so often accompany it.
The irony of South African whites wanting to be darker (though not too dark, of course) while the naturally dark-skinned majority were legally unable to enjoy any of the privileges bestowed by a pale skin, was not lost on you. But, oh, how you wanted to be browner, slimmer and sportier. How you longed to be terrific at tennis, a super scuba diver, a fearless rock climber. Instead, you decided that your attributes, if you had any at all, lay elsewhere.
You make your move. You buy a ticket for a cheap cabin on a mail boat and take yourself to London, where it seemed that pale skins and a lack of sporting skills in females were considered quite normal.
It was also a place where being young was something to be celebrated, especially in popular music, and where in a large city, for good or ill, you and your personal little angsts about appearance and ability were of little consequence to anyone but yourself.