Blind with mascara, dumb with lipstick

I AM at a photo shoot in London for a big media feature on my book, which is out this week.

The shoot is in a fancy studio — downstairs, there are pop stars that I am too old to have heard of. Upstairs, it’s me, the photographer, several assistants, a picture editor, and a make-up artist. And several tons of make-up.

The make-up artist is young and beautiful, and daubs me in so much slap I look like a drag queen. This is so I don’t look bleached under the studio lights, she tells me, as she brushes on more layers, tweezes on false eyelash extensions and paints my nails so the dirt doesn’t show. I have done photo-shoots before, but never with such intense attention to detail. It is an odd feeling, having your feet professionally made up. Yes, feet.

The photographer has work hanging in the National Portrait Gallery in London and has done portraits of people like Al Gore and Margaret Thatcher. Look natural, he tells me, as the make-up artist darts in every few seconds, to tweak my hair and blast me with hairspray. Turn your shoulder an inch to the right, lower your chin, wait, your hair isn’t symmetrical, quick, sort it out, can we have some tape to get the bump out of her jacket lapel, no no no, I can still see it, hang on, that back light needs adjusting, okay, no, move your left foot forward a fraction — too much — back a bit, okay let’s try it again. Amazingly, I do not look terribly natural.

The photographer tells me to imagine that when I am looking into the lens, I am really looking into the faces of my children. I immediately tense up, my brows furrowing, shoulders hunched. Scrap that idea, he says. Think of something more relaxing. So I imagine being alone somewhere without anyone squirting hairspray at me, sprawled out in a tracksuit, staring into space.

“No no no,” he says. “You’ve gone glazed. Let’s take a break.” Over lunch, there are all kinds of delicious indiscretions about obnoxious famous people that the photographer and the make-up artist have worked with, and which I would love to repeat but would get sued. Instead I make sure to be as nice as possible.

The shoot lasts four hours. That’s four hours of not clenching my jaw, my ass, or my eyebrows, of trying not to blink while remembering chest out, stomach in — and not the other way around — and doing assorted ballerina poses with my feet. And not smiling — it’s a serious piece — but not looking too grim, either. Pensive, maybe, or thoughtful, but not enraged or psychotic.

In the end I am, like Quentin Crisp, blind with mascara and dumb with lipstick, as well as high from hairspray. I begin to understand why models get paid so much for standing still. The photographer is frowning. Has he got his shot? “Don’t worry,” he says at last. “I can photoshop you.”