I love a survey, as you may know. The general rule is: all surveys are bollocks, all statistics is bollocks and if you combine the two you end up with a level of bollocks that is significant to a statistical degree of bollocks-squared. Which doesn’t occur anywhere in nature.

But YouGov surveyed 2000 adults to find out how they felt about themselves. 1% of women thought themselves to be ‘beautiful’. Vain, deluded, arrogant… whatever. 2% considered themselves ‘good looking’.

There was no objective comparison. You can’t. Because beauty is quite literally in the eye of the beholder. But the interest comes with the men. 9% of them thought themselves ‘handsome’ and 7% ‘good looking’.

Which either means that men are 5 times better looking than women, or are 5 times better at overestimating their looks and at self-delusionment in general. Or that women are less forgiving when analysing themselves physically. Whereas men are actually much better at analysing women physically because we get so much practice and learn to make objective judgments in the time it takes to yell ‘fwoaoaoaoaoarrrrr; get’cha tits aaaart, darlin’!!!’ from a van window.

The issue in question really is self-image, which relates directly to self-confidence, which is so important in every facet of life.

So when my lovely mother, may her wonderful soul rest in peace, told me, at about 4 years old, that I was ‘handsome’ and ‘beautiful’, I took that on board totally and made it my mission statement for life. I didn’t know that all mothers tell all their children such fictions about themselves. How could I, I was 4, FFS. So when I was a gauky, skinny, clumsy teenager, with glasses and a school blazer in shit-brown, in my mind people simply didn’t come any cooler. Ok, I was cocky. Because I knew I could generally make people laugh. And for the ones I couldn’t, I could run quite fast. But even though (according to Mel looking at old photos), I was a creep, (and remember, she fucking married me not much later), I always managed to date the best looking girls around. Though stalking played a part, probably. ‘Punching half a mile above my weight’, I believe its probably known. Because I never doubted my mum’s white lies about how gorgeous I was.

I’m still gorgeous. I have no doubts. Though apparently all people feel better about themselves as they get older. Even women!!! Go figure that one.

Guess what Lila started today? Her teacher said she is undoubtedly the most gifted future ballerina since Darcey Bussell. Ok, maybe she didn’t but she thought it. Well, I thought it. Same difference.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx