Sam caused outrage for daring to say her beauty made other women hate her… So could she learn to stop being so obsessed with her looks?

Women waste far too much of their lives obsessing over diets, bodies and appearance – energy that could be far better spent ‘taking up space in the world’.

These are the words of actress Jameela Jamil from an interview earlier this month, but it’s a sentiment that is finding support among a growing number of women online.

And study after study suggests she may have a point.

One UK survey of 2,000 women found the average woman checks her reflection around eight times a day, while another put the figure far higher – 34 glances every day, or roughly once every half hour while awake. Even at the office, we find ways to surreptitiously check our appearance in makeup mirrors and windows.

In that same survey, it should be said, three quarters of women admitted they actually disliked looking in the mirror, saying it often made them feel worse rather than better.

Another body of research found that even positive appearance-based compliments between women – those meaningless, throwaway comments like ‘You look amazing today’ or ‘I love your new haircut’ – were linked to higher body dissatisfaction.

In other words, the everyday discussion of appearance, even when done kindly, keeps women trapped in a constant mental loop. There is no escape from anxiety over how they look.

It is, as many feminist thinkers have pointed out, a relentless form of self-surveillance that saps time and purpose, while men have (occasionally) got on with something more important like running the world.

So I wanted to know: what would happen if I simply stopped? If I refused to engage with the female appearance – my own or anyone else’s? If I denied it my precious head space?

That meant no mirrors, no checking myself before Zoom calls, no commenting on friends’ weight loss, outfits or glow-ups, no diet talk, no Ozempic chatter, no body trends and, hardest of all, no love-bombing female friends with appearance compliments when they need a pick-me-up.

It sounds easy, right? All I needed to do was throw a towel over the one full-length mirror I possess in the bathroom and put away the rest.

To free myself, I had only to shake the concept of female beauty from my head.

In reality, stripping out one of the most ingrained habits many of us women have – constantly assessing how we and other women look – was surprisingly difficult.

It didn’t help that I’m particularly conscious of my appearance. I was the journalist who weathered a brutal backlash, 14 years ago now, for daring to write that other women were jealous of my looks. But if I’ve been guilty of vanity in the past, that’s even greater reason to relinquish it now. Or try to.

To simplify things, I wore variations of double denim almost every day. I own more denim shirts and jeans than any sane person probably should, but it meant I didn’t waste mental energy asking myself whether I looked ‘good enough’ or worrying about outfits.

When I told my French husband Pascal, 65, a retired carpenter, about the experiment, quelle surprise, he had opinions.

‘I don’t want to sound macho,’ he said, ‘but men do like having a nice-looking woman on their arm. We like it when our women make an effort — beautiful make-up, nice hair, lovely clothes.’

Does he have a point? Do we torture ourselves with our body image worries for men? Or is that beside the point entirely?

As an intelligent, university-educated woman, secure in my skin, I assumed this experiment would be easy. It wasn’t.

Friday 1 May

First thing Friday morning I download the papers onto my iPad. There’s an interview with 1980s icon Kim Wilde alongside a recent photograph.

My left brain immediately fires: ‘Wow, she’s put on a bit of timber.’

Thankfully my right brain quickly reminds my inner Mean Girl that the Wilde is 65.

Five minutes later I open Instagram and the first face on my feed is Jamie Lee Curtis -a woman famously vocal about ageing naturally. Her condemnation of cosmetic procedures as ‘disfiguring’ and unnatural interests me, but I force myself to stop scrolling through the comments. Stop wasting time, Sam!

Later, I have a Zoom interview with a woman for an article I’m writing on her area of expertise. During the conversation I casually mention that I’m 55, purely as a cultural reference point.

‘You are not 55!’ she gasps. ‘You look so much younger.’

And there it is. Normally I’d laugh, thank her, mention being a vegetarian, doing yoga, having good lighting – and then return the compliment.

Instead I smile politely and praise the brilliant work she’s done on her website. I say nothing wrong and am entirely respectful. So why does it feel so rude?

Afterwards I’m sweating. That’s how deeply ingrained this dance is between women.

Saturday 2 May

I take a make-up-free dog walk wearing my double denim uniform and try very hard to ignore the awkwardness of bare skin and unmascara’d lashes.

I have saved myself 20 minutes this morning, however, and use this time to listen to a podcast with Native American botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer while having a coffee sitting in the sunshine. It is weird not to have done my daily inspection of teeth, eyebrows and hair. Forever primping and preening in the mirror means my headspace is usually prioritising thoughts around dental appointments, hair dye or new tweezers.

Over breakfast, I scroll through Facebook where a good friend has documented her weight-loss journey via a carousel of before-and-after photos.

Now, normally I’d instantly press the heart emoji and tap:

‘Wow! You look incredible!’

Instead I scroll silently past and immediately feel guilty. Interesting – no?

I’m as culpable as the next woman for using appearance compliments as emotional currency. Not commenting feels surprisingly ungenerous, pointed, hurtful even. Will she interpret it, as me making a point, perhaps disapproving of the fat jabs?

I feel traitorous then tell myself I am doing us all a favour. Since when did we expect our friends to post such intimately personal content? The less feedback she gets, the less pressure she’ll feel.

The rest of social media is wall-to-wall build-up to the Met Gala and The Devil Wears Prada 2 premieres.

Apparently civilisation may collapse if we don’t discuss women’s appearances for 72 consecutive hours.

Sunday 3 May

I catch up with my dad. Safe territory. We never discuss appearance, clothes or diets. Instead we talk about everything from gardening to the 18-month bin strikes in Birmingham (where I am from) and – our favourite topic – the ongoing shambles of British politics.

By the end of the call I’m passionately ranting to my husband — again — that if we ever moved to Britain, I’d absolutely enter politics.

It suddenly strikes me that conversations with men often leave me feeling mentally expanded.

Conversations with women can sometimes leave me mentally reduced to a body. That’s an uncomfortable admission.

Monday 4 May

My mum sends me a photograph of one of my sisters wearing a fabulous white Me+Em dress.

Normally I’d instantly reply, ‘Wow, she looks Amazing!’ Instead I stare silently at the screen.

I realise how profoundly uncomfortable it feels not to validate another woman – my sister whom I adore – through her appearance, but I’m also beginning to see how childishly insincere these dashed-off comments sound.

If my silence is interpreted as jealousy, or withholding affection, then surely that’s evidence of a problem in the way we women communicate. Have we accidentally trained one another to rely on appearance praise as emotional reassurance, no matter how trite it is?

Instead, rather piously, I ask Mum how her health is. Even I find myself irritating.

Tuesday 5 May

Send help. The entire media appears to be analysing last night’s Met Gala while every journalist friend seems obsessed with dissecting Lauren Sánchez’s bosomy cleavage.

Meanwhile, I’ve fallen down an entirely different rabbit hole: watching updates from French astronaut Sophie Adenot aboard the International Space Station (ISS).

A former helicopter test pilot with the French Air and Space Force, Adenot is glamorous in an entirely different way — floating around in zero gravity while conducting mind-bending scientific experiments hundreds of miles above Earth.

While everyone else is poring over red-carpet bodies, I realise I’ve developed a crush on female competence in space.

I wonder if Adenot checks out her reflection each time she pulls back the internal shutters of the ISS’s seven-window observation deck to look at Earth.

Wednesday 6 May

I am not going to lie, it has been strange not to know what my face looks like or what my hair is up to. In my twenties and thirties, I’d easily notch up hours every week obsessing over my reflection. That isn’t my world any more yet it still feels odd not to have that daily confirmation from the mirror that, yes from the front and behind, I’m looking good.

My only secret weapon in this experiment is Pascal. For I know if I do resemble something that would frighten the horses, he’d be quick to tell me.

A female friend pops over for coffee and, honestly, I know within seconds this encounter is going to test every ounce of my willpower.

For the first ten minutes she talks nonstop about: the weight she’s gained; how disgusting she feels; wine calories; ageing; and her GP warning her about fatty liver disease.

As she metaphorically beats herself up, I sit there squirming. I am chewing wasps trying not to engage.

Every time we meet, the conversation circles back to her body. Normally I’d jump in reassuringly with harmless platitudes such as, ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ or ‘You’ve got a great figure.’

But this time I realise something rather bleak. None of my reassurance over the years has actually changed how she feels about herself. Whatever I say, she will come back to this anxiety over and over again.

Friday 8 May

I pack for an impromptu weekend in Normandy with my sister-in-law’s family.

One of my husband’s many pet hates is that I normally take hours to pack because I spend most of the time trying to work out which separates ‘go together’.

This time? Double denim. Spare undies. Trainers. Done. I finish packing in 20 minutes flat. My husband is silently stunned. I am unbearably smug.

Saturday 9 May

Breakfast with my husband’s niece and her two children: Margot, three, and Paul, ten months. I consciously avoid saying: ‘You look pretty today, Margot!’ and instead focus on the elaborate imaginary game she’s created. Paul is just as sweet but I realise I would not have commented so automatically on his appearance.

Mercifully my sister-in-law couldn’t care less about fashion. She is vastly more interested in showing me her fig tree, introducing me to her last remaining chicken — ‘Poulette’ — and tempting me to taste aged balsamic vinegar as we enjoy the Normandy sunshine.

I’ve left my phone untouched in my handbag for most of the day. And without social media constantly feeding me women’s bodies, faces, clothes and ‘transformations’, my brain feels quieter. I can almost feel my neural pathways lengthening and relaxing. It feels like I’ve stepped out of the matrix.

Sunday 10 May

I accept that completely breaking up with social media is futile, so instead I start curating my feeds differently. I linger on posts about books and dog psychology, for example, and soon become engrossed in novelist Joanna Cannon’s daily book recommendations. It doesn’t take long before I am genuinely excited by literature again rather than whatever jab half of Hollywood is currently denying the use of.

The algorithms adapt and transform. Turns out even social media can be retrained if you stop feeding it feminine insecurity.

Monday 11 May

An early doctor’s appointment. I make the mistake of casually asking our GP’s wife — who also works as his secretary — how she is.

Within seconds she is lamenting ageing, exhaustion and how much less she can physically do now. Usually I’d automatically jump in with some empty but kind reassurances.

Instead I gently steer the conversation elsewhere and ask whether she has planted her veggie patch yet. Almost immediately her face lights up. She starts (affectionately) moaning and groaning about the weather and where to get the best strawberries this season.

It strikes me that women often don’t actually want to discuss their looks or bodies. We’ve simply been culturally trained to use self-criticism as social bonding.

Tuesday 12 May

Weekly physio for the lower back injury I sustained in a traffic accident 30 years ago.

The clinic gym is full of floor-to-ceiling mirrors. Normally I’d check myself out between exercises. This time I catch myself halfway through glancing at my reflection — and stop. My first genuine wobble.

I close my eyes and focus purely on what my body can do – squats, bridges and leg curls – rather than how I look doing it. Oddly, I end up feeling stronger afterwards.

Thursday 14 May

Pascal and I drive an hour to visit elderly friends. Jean, now in her mid-eighties, is one of my favourite women.

A child evacuee from London, she was moved from pillar to post during World War II. She has zero interest in beauty culture. Not once does she mention ageing. Nor does she apologise for her appearance. As usual when I leave she says, ‘don’t forget to enjoy your life, Sam.’

Friday 16 May

Morning Zoom yoga. The theme of the class is peace.

And fittingly, after two weeks of deliberately disengaging from female appearance culture, I realise something rather unexpected: when it comes to the sisterhood, I feel a bit of an outsider now.

I’ve become detached – in the best way – from a conversation most women seem permanently trapped inside.

Because once you step away, you suddenly notice how much female interaction revolves around bodies, diets, ageing, weight, clothes, skin, hair and ‘work done’.

And the truth is, it all suddenly starts to feel like a spectacular misuse of female brainpower. Like we’re all under collective hypnosis.

These two weeks are an eye-opener. Women typically act as emotional fluffers for one another — soothing, reassuring and validating through appearance. But the comfort we offer each other is also part of the spell.

It has made me realise just how much time, money, emotion and intellect women burn on appearance — while juggling jobs, children, ageing parents, relationships and modern life.

Of course looking nice is pleasurable. I’m the last woman to pretend otherwise. I like my jeans to make my bum look good and flattering yoga leggings as much as the next woman.

But somewhere along the way, many of us stopped treating beauty as decoration and started treating it as purpose. And that, mes soeurs, is the real trap.

If we’re lucky enough to have bodies that basically work and health that broadly holds, maybe that should be enough.

After this experiment, I’m planning on focussing my energy on what truly matters: the people I love, expanding my mind and building a life that feels substantial rather than showily shallow.

For the first time in years, my brain feels quieter. And this feels far more attractive than a social media ‘like’ on what I’m wearing ever could.

And it honestly felt like I had given myself a break to forget about my reflection. Most people don’t see what I do in the mirror. Not once has anyone said anything negative about how I look. And to think I’d spend hours in the past pouring over every imaginary line or wrinkle!

While we urge one another to ‘keep jabbing, girl!’ and obsess over collagen supplements, calorie restriction and clever lighting, men continue dominating governments, building wealth, war mongering and shaping power structures that are inevitably not to our benefit.

Yes, I’m the woman who famously wrote in 2012 that women hate me for my beauty.

The uncomfortable truth is that what I really was is this: a casualty of history.

Because imagine if I’d been born a man – I’d doubtless be running the country by now.