Glamour isn’t glamorous in any way.

 The concept of glamour is a minefield of contradiction. We’ve all marvelled at the flawless beauties on the red carpet, but please allow me to debunk the theory that glamour is in any way glamorous.
 It’s not something we’re aware of as little girls. I’ll never forget the look of distress on my mum’s face when, aged 12, I came home from school and announced I wanted to shave my legs. It wasn’t the fact that my legs boasted less hair than Peter Garrett’s head that concerned her. No, she merely wanted to protect me from the slippery slope into the world of never-ending female maintenance. If only I’d known the life sentence I was committing myself to.

 Let’s consider the inconvenient, sometimes barbaric rituals women regularly endure. I’ll start with the most obvious, and challenge any woman to deny she hasn’t lain on a beautician’s table, pre-wax, wondering if our great-grandchildren will shake their heads in horror at what we put ourselves through, just as we do when we consider corseting and foot binding. (At this point, I could easily veer off into the modern mystery of why it’s OK for men to have hair and not for women but, instead, I’ll move on to tanning.)

 Bronzed skin is a must on any red carpet, but it doesn’t come without a price – and I don’t mean the $80 you hand over to the lady with the spray gun. I’m talking about tandoori-stained bed sheets, the 10 hours of sticky isolation while not being able to touch anything for fear of smudging or streaking, and the lingering chemical smell that not even the strongest perfume can mask.

 Then there are the hours spent at the salon having hair yanked, burnt, twisted and ruffled to look as if you’ve just rolled out of bed. Wouldn’t it be easier to put $50 under the pillow and thank it for its services?

 And it doesn’t stop there, because what sort of sadistic villain invented the instruments of torture we willingly strap to our feet before going out? You’d think the inevitable blisters, corns, and bunions would deter us. But no, we grimace and stuff our bags so full of bandaids; we put the St John Ambulance to shame.

 Naturally, even though I acknowledge the hypocrisy of what I’m saying, I fully intend to carry on being a sheep in the herd of conformity. On the inside, I’m still that little girl who dressed up in her mum’s heels, who never wants to admit that once she grew up, it was nothing like she dreamt. I’m simply not prepared to be the Joan of Arc of beauty and sacrifice myself by rejecting all these painful rituals. Must I remind anyone of Julia Roberts’ hairy armpit incident at the 1999 Notting Hill premiere? She’s still living that one down.