| Self Portrait Her father’s curls, which despite tantrums at the hairdressers, mother kept shorn, citing Julie Andrews and Twiggy as cropped haired beauties. At 16, she entered a hair growing contest with Rapunzel. But her adult locks were neither curly nor straight and refused to learn new styles painstakingly copied from magazines, ‘Lazy hair’ the stylist at Vidal Sassoon labelled it like a teacher issuing a bad school report. Now middle aged she owns £100 straighteners powerful as industrial laundry irons. Nevertheless needs conjurer’s props of hats and scarves to repel damp that still spins her hair into candyfloss. Her father’s skin too, waking up one morning at 13 to find the acne fairy had paid out generously, coating a glaze of grease over her face like candied fruit. Class mates who had blossomed into Jenny Agutter were entertained by her lunchtime application of phlegm green mask followed by the monstrous peeling of her face like a Roald Dahl witch. At 30 her epidermis became hysterical, defending itself from so much as a dirty look by throwing a tough carapace over every injury. Until her upper body is littered with scars like botched tattoos. For years she ignored her boyish breasts like a mental double mastectomy. No attempts made with push up bras to put them on display for fear of glimpsing an extra bump. Jumped as if touching another woman’s when she brushed them with her hand. And like a Victorian prude never looked at them. Then at 40 nature gave her a boob job confirming unfortunately that she has her mother’s breasts. Attempts at self examination find their touch loathsome as dead flesh. Envies women who joyfully pet theirs like puppies, because hers are a pair of time bombs waiting to go off. Fiona Sinclair |
