WHO knows what it was that brought the star of The White Lotus, Aimee Lou Wood, to cry in a London street the other day.
But many would hazard a guess that she was hurt and upset by the recent skit on US television, which .
The irony, of course, is that the sketch wasn’t even funny.
It was a lazy bit of supposed writing which saw Sarah Sherman , impersonating Wood in a skit.
And there was little ol’ naive me secretly hoping that mocking a woman for her appearance might be a thing of the past. Turns out, not.
Unsurprisingly, like most of the rest of the world, Wood found the comedy wanting and called it “mean and unfunny”; on her page.
She says she’s not “thin-skinned”; and doesn’t mind having the “p*ss”; taken out of her, but this was unkind.
And I fully empathise.
See, when I grew up, my mouth was much the same as .
My milk teeth had been cute and straight but, by the time my adult teeth came through, I struggled to get my top lip over them.
It was like trying to cover two gravestones with a hanky.
I was so goofy that, when I bit down, I was able to fit my entire thumb between my lower teeth and my top ones.
My front teeth were so prominent that my dad, a keen photographer, would ask me to smile in order that he could use them to set the focus on his camera using them.
Nice one, Dad.
Smiling was a big no-no for me. In every pic up to the age of 14, you can see me struggling to get my lower lip over my two offensive protruders in order to hide them from the world.
Making me look not unlike the late, great .
I was so conscious of them that I would go out of my way NOT to smile. So I have lived with teeth like
Of course, in my day, it was standard to “do something about them”;; to correct nature’s wrong.
And it started me on a long journey, which lasted nearly five years, of different orthodontic approaches to my “problem teeth”;.
Initially, I had hooks cemented on to my back teeth, into which a metal frame was attached and secured with elastic at the back of my head.
As if to add insult to injury, I looked like a walking TV aerial or metal detector.
It was meant to pull back my whole row of top teeth but, alas, it brought more shame than success.
When I came to at the age of 12, it was decided that two teeth would be extracted to make space for the front, goofy ones to be pushed back into their rightful position.
It involved wearing a disgusting plastic retainer in my gob, which had three metal wires across my teeth that were tightened at regular intervals, causing indescribable pain.
‘Indescribable pain’
All really ideal if you’re a self-conscious teenager and hoping to get a snog off a boy.
It blighted my life during the most formative and awkward years of my adolescence. I had it done because I was told that was what you did.
I also had it done because I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life being referred to as the girl or woman with the goofy teeth. Society does not like outliers.
So, the first time I saw Aimee Lou Wood on screen, in the comedy Daddy Issues, of course I noticed her teeth.
But my initial response was genuinely, “good on her for not conforming and choosing instead to love what God gave her”;. It really was.
Because it made me question whether I would have the courage to leave my teeth as they were, if I had my time again. And the chances are that I wouldn’t.
What stood out for me about Wood was not her teeth — it was her credible, effortless and stupendous acting and her beautiful big eyes. I forgot about her teeth in no time.
Apparently, society does not.
Oh, definitely not. It wants all women to yield and comply.
It’s crucial for the patriarchy to impose its uniform will on all women to not stand out in any way that may make anyone feel uncomfortable.
Women should look a certain way — like all those female characters with big eyes, fulsome lips and straight teeth, not to mention the tiny waists and straight legs.
So we now find ourselves living in a world full of carbon-copy women who have discovered , filler, extensions, acrylic and false eyelashes.
And, not forgetting, filters on their phone. What chance does any woman really have when the gold standard is that of a girl?
I’m the mother of four kids — two of whom are young women. Beautiful creatures in their own right. But over the past few years, I’ve heard critical self-assessments by both of them that they should maybe get lip filler.
‘Plastic fantastic’
That their frown line could disappear with Botox; and the latest was a chat about the possibility of some sort of jawline procedure.
Naturally, I rail against all of it. My girls are 24 and about to turn 21. I love the personality of their faces.
I don’t want them to look like the needy babe who is influencing others to follow her cosmetic path. It breaks my heart to think that they look at their faces and find fault, rather than love the skin they’re in.
All these “plastic fantastic”; women are not helping society change its mind about women still only being appreciated and accepted for their appearance.
I’ve always been open about things I’ve had done. Botox once a year on my frown line and some filler around my chin. I’m about to turn 58 and have no intention of trying to look 28.
I look at women like, for example, former Wag , and all I see now is the work she has had done.
And I wish she’d have been a bit more fearless when it came to ageing naturally. I wish we all were.
It was heartening to see that much of the world jumped to her defence.
Ulrika Jonsson
Women are their own worst enemies. Just because they can have things improved or corrected, doesn’t mean they should.
Yes, I had my breasts reduced at the age of 41, but that was because I’d suffered decades of back and shoulder pain and had to have them forcibly detained in a support bra, even at night.
Women across the globe are making their breasts, lips, hair and bums etc bigger, with the sole purpose of attracting men — I’m guessing wildly here — and turning themselves into clones and walking perfections of an unspoken standard laid down by some kind of dangerous Beauty Police.
But we should remember that there are original, unique and genuine women like Aimee Lou Wood, who are prepared to say that there is nothing wrong with how they look — only something wrong with how the rest of us think.
It was heartening to see that much of the world jumped to her defence, like and other slebs, in an uncompromising wave of support.
But it’s the revolution amongst normal women that we need to take note of — those rejecting what we perceive as “perfection”; and who are proudly saying that they are more than just their outward appearance.
In short, in a world full of girls, be an Aimee Lou Wood.
