What's really real?

Yesterday, after a fab catch up with Clever Katie, I indulged in an episode of Colleen’s Real Women. This week saw her searching for girls who could be the new face of KitKat Senses and she found three who seemed lovely.

But then something rather sad happened. On presenting the girls with their portfolios, the quirkiest of the three announced that she hated her shots and didn’t realise she was that ugly.

It seemed a genuine shock reaction, not fuelled by a deep-set insecurity but a here-and-now realisation of ‘I look like that!?’

She pulled herself together on the surface but I wondered how it really affected her – to have this new vision in her head of what she looked like.

I don’t think she’s alone in this horror though. I mean, you’re the one person that can’t actually see yourself. Sure, you can see everything except your face and a bit more if you’re really bendy, and with a mirror, there’s a clear image of yourself staring back. But how do others see you? And does everyone see the same? And what the heck influences what people see?

When I was growing up, I always wanted to look like someone else. I thought that by putting on clothes that were like that person’s, I would achieve this, or by styling my hair in a certain way, I would magically transform my face.

Thankfully, over the years, I’ve come to like the me I see when I look in the mirror, and the me I see grinning back at me from photographs – which as Emma discovered often don’t look how you’d expect them to.

I thought I’d moved beyond all those insecurities. So just imagine my shock when it happened all over again...

Aurally or maybe orally!

You see, at the weekend Jenny M, Advertising Girly and I were driving along with Abba blaring out the car stereo. The sun was setting and creating the most incredible light, so I started to film Advertising Girly singing, looking out of the window.

Aside from the insane wobbling of the camera, it made quite a good film, but as we were playing it back, I heard the most hideous sound – my voice!

It sounded posh, nasally, and quite frankly wrong! Red faced, I deleted the video and asked Jenny M if I really sounded like that.

She laughed at me and informed me everyone hated the sound of their own voice, but to other people it sounded normal.

It’s so weird. It’s almost like we are prisoners inside our own heads. Our eyes and ears are there but neither gives us a clear perception of how we really look and sound.

So which one do you believe? The mirror, the photograph, or other people’s view? The voice you hear in your head, or the voice on the recording of a home-made Abba video?

But then, on second thoughts, does it really matter? I can’t change my voice or my face and someone out there is bound to think both are quite nice.

And this is what I want to say to the quirky girl on Real Women. To quote the biggest cliché of all time, Beauty really is in the eye of the beholder, and while she might think she looked ugly, I think she was pretty alone in that thought.