YOU see what I'm doing in the picture? Not the concealing myself behind a chair, though that's part of it. I mean my necklace. Big, isn't it? And shiny!
I was only knee-high to a grasshopper when my mother taught me the importance of drawing the eye up, away from trouble spots such as cankles and hips, toward the northerly regions where, it had to be hoped, judgemental types would be distracted by t
winkling eyes, healthy hair and a mouth emitting witty badinage.
Failing that, rhinestones will do.
Have you ever noticed how many Size Ls have impeccable manicures and wear interesting jewellery? I saw a magnificent specimen at a charity do recently: hair swept into a French twist, enormous teardrop shaped crystal-encrusted sparklers dangling from her lobes, an artistic, cabbage-sized brooch – she looked fantastic. Even one as alert as I am to such things looked twice before noticing that she was swathed in a vast, shapeless overcoat of the sort favoured by Bea Arthur in The Golden Girls.
I recognised a kindred spirit – these fingernails may not be polished, but my collection of baubles would make a magpie incontinent with excitement.
Pity my poor colleague, then, the talented Neil Hanna, forced to pander to my neurotic vanity – it's inversely proportionate to my looks, when pictures are threatened – to create a series of images suitable for publication that would amuse you without also inspiring me to leap from a great height.
There he stood, poised for action, while I darted coyly behind items of furniture, dressed and re-dressed and despairing the lack of bone structure that makes attractive pictures of me rarer than hen's gnashers. I do pray he's handsomely rewarded in the afterlife; I certainly owe him a favour in this one.
You can't see it, but in this picture I'm touching my tongue to the roof of my mouth – it tightens the jaw line ever so slightly. There's another famous ploy I've dubbed "chubby lady author". In it the writer strategically places one or, in extreme cases, both hands below the chin. To the unenlightened it conveys a job-appropriate air of thoughtful meditation. To those of us with equal cause for worry it screams: "Just one chin, thanks!"
Are there other tricks? Well, there's a reason I eschew picnics – lying down on grass does spread one out so. And we all know about the pose so beloved of celebrities, where you thrust one hip forward at an angle, while bending that same leg (see Victoria Beckham or Liz Hurley for tutorials). Sadly, it's useless for women with long torsos, short, heavy legs, and thick peasant ankles. I look less Claudia Schiffer, more My Little Pony attempting dressage.
The self in my mind's eye and the one you, the viewing public, are subjected to can never achieve balance. When I feel ugly what I envisage is worse than reality; when I feel pretty (oh so pretty), it lasts no longer than the time it takes to blot my lipstick.
Anyone who thinks chubby women aren't light on their feet should see us perform the mirror dance. No lingering – it's Tarantella time. A supple twist, a swift sashay this way and that, a glance over the shoulder, a pulling up of the neck… small, manageable pieces only; anything to avoid seeing our whole selves for any length of time.
So, much as I loved Tokyo's swanky Conrad hotel, it's damned as "that place with walls made of mirrors" after an accidental glimpse of my entire naked body tattooed itself on my mind's eye.
I felt (feel) disgusted, ashamed and overwhelmed by the stark choice confronting me: surrender to "living large" for the rest of my days, or do something about it.
It seems I don't give up that easily.
