Why you won’t find love in a supermarket

Dearest readers, I’ve been feverishly prodding you in a forward direction along that big dating parade of the post40s age group, helping you dodge the rookie mistakes, drawing on the quirky unanticipated learnings from the experiences of our local celebs and generally doing my level best to help you #findlove despite how vociferously every core of your being might protest the prospect.

But every now and then I need to go on the defensive and declare a certain area the no-go-zone, the Chernobyl-two-headed-fish of dating, the veritable Fu-Ku-Shima of coupledom.

And here I declare of one the prime DMZs of the dating world….

The supermarket

The supermarket is NOT a place where you will meet your #notebook Ryan Gosling, find a chance to press your fevered forehead against a protruding Hemsworth forearm vein, or frenetically swap sustainable recipe ideas with that delightful hipster chap from River Cottage Australia.

Here’s why…

Bad lighting

Just as you are never going to look your best in rehab, you are never going to look your best in a supermarket (and when it comes to deprivation and despair, these institutions are on par)

No one shines bright like a diamond under the industrial lighting appliances that our supermarket chains buy in bulk (their purchase order must read: ‘150 x the Lets Make You Look Like A Long Term Inhabitant Of Guantanamo’)

Unlike the skinny mirrors in the department store change rooms designed to stop you crying over swimwear, or the soft focus lighting of cosmetics counters, supermarket electricals are hard-core. Believe me, until Instagram launches a #supermarketfilter, there’s not even a remote Kardashian third cousin that will post a gluten-free-aisle selfie to the world.

It’s not designed to make YOU look good. The supermarket gods pick a carefully-patented hue that makes the mystery-meat in Chorizo appear caramel smooth and thrice frozen prawns dredged from Thailand look like freshly-deceased local crustacea.

You? You will look like every downtrodden before-pic of any one of the #realhousewivesofanywhere without the costly attention of a cosmetic-surgeon-on-retainer.

 

Judgement abounds

You thought you were scared of gymnasium mirrors or Eastern suburbs kindy drop-off fashion faux-pas?

In your local supermarket, there is judgement everywhere:

•  Paleo Guy is staring down at your basket, looking for an errant grain. A non grass-fed protein. a fish item with a loosely defined heritage
• Hot Vegan is scanning your purchases, searching for non-soy dairy.
• Fructose Intolerant Dude is turned off by your melons
• Average Aussie Bloke is deterred by your lack of burger mince or party pies and is quizzically eyeing your over-indulgence in greens
• The guy toting the Maggie Beer Quince paste only has potential to be your gay bf

 If they are in there, they won’t be for long.

Available men are about as likely to venture into a supermarket with any level of enthusiasm as 40schick is likely to spend quality time in either Bunnings or Baby Bunting.

If there is an available man in a supermarket he will whip in and out of there quicker than you can squeeze an out-of-season avocado (given you WILL spend time evaluating whether paying more for an avocado than a double shot expresso is worthwhile)

Blink and you’ll miss one of them checking out their big-serve Lean Cuisine and 1kg bag of grated cheese (the only thing that makes Lean Cuisine bearable) – even if they are slowish by virtue of being rank self-checkout amateurs.

97% of men are there under duress and not actually available

Most of these are easy enough to identify

•  They are toting sanitary products
• They are toting an infant in a sling

Your only shot?

Your only hope is to snag a hipster who hasn’t had time to tram it in to Mediterranean Wholesalers and who tried to sneak anonymously into Woolies. In this case your strategy is…Go Random

Stock up with any combo of the following

• Pearl Cous Cous
• 2 x cans imported lentils
• Wasabi in a tube
• Bassets Liquorice Allsorts
• Pocky

Or…. Just Go Kale. You will snag any well-researched male who is trying to Nutri Bullet his way beyond his 20s obsession with Alpine lights, forgive his early-apprenticeship ignorance of asbestos or thinks greenery will help restore a Jim-Beam-rotted liver.

It’s your only shot.

Just. Go. Kale.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Single @ The High School Reunion

I’m here to tell you friends, that you WILL encounter many pitfalls in navigating through the process of being single in your 40s. The early stages, the rookie mistakes and the perilous mid 40s makeover.

But you will prevail. I promise. Onwards and upwards.

However there are a few things that can set you right back, hurtling you back into the vodka-as-a-food-group mindset of the newly bereft.

A stellar example would be your ex getting re-married. This will no doubt have you scuttling to Adele and trilling ‘I heard that your dreeeeams came true” Often. Emotionally. In the shower (which is like space – where no one can hear you scream)

Not quite up there, but certainly unsettling….

Being Single At Your High School Re-Union.

Odds are, that at the moment that you finally congratulate yourself at having achieved a level of stability, the demon incarnate that is Facebook will poke you with a stab as pointy as the shiv of the incarcerated with a little prompter about your upcoming High School Reunion.

But like the wingwoman that I am, I’m here to tell you….

….you’ve got this.

Here’s the 40schick guide to surviving the high school reunion as a singleton.

One – its not the 80s anymore

Take a moment to revisit the horrors of fashions past. You are not going out in public garbed in:

• The horrors of taffeta
• The insanity of lace gloves (amped up exponentially if they were fingerless)
• A slick of blue crème eyeshadow that gummed up your eyelids like an intense case of conjunctivitis

Instead you are quite likely to rock a skinny jean with a slinky top, a pair of Milanese suede boots that cost about half of your 1975 first-car-Torana and no doubt an improvement in hairstyle.

Single or not, you are going to feel way better about yourself than you did when rocking a bad 80s home perm.

Two – the hot guy has probably deteriorated

When you were the geekster with glasses and an embarrassing ability to analyse Shakespeare, you no-doubt had a teenage yearning for the football jock who grew tall, filled out and sauntered through the school with all the model-bagging confidence of a young Leonardo DeCaprio.

Shortly after arrival at said reunion, you will be doing an internal happy dance to realise that he’s experienced an early onset pattern baldness and an Achilles injury that has curtailed a potential career and has had his beer carbs redirected to his belly.

Three – the cool girls have plateaued

The girls that smoked brazenly in the girls toilets? The girls that had the ability to crook a Cutex-home-manicured finger and reel in the top-percenter guys in class? They’ve become an unwitting poster girl for the effects of smoking for thirty years, are experiencing the logistical challenge of navigating the child-support arrangements that result from the spawn of multiple partners and somehow their life seems a little more complicated than yours. (if that is possible)

Four – you can count the bullets you escaped

Oh yes, you could be married at this point.

You could be married to the moody musician that became a life-long stoner.

In some alternate universe you could have had your crush on the Phys Ed teacher turn into reality – in which universe you would now be married to someone 60plus that was now well instituted into the wearing of polyester tracksuits.

Five – there is alcohol

…and unlike the late 80s, where your access to alcohol relied on:

• swiping swigs of your beer-drinking Dad’s unloved Christmas-present-bottle of Johnny Walker
• that manipulated birth certificate, artfully mocked up on your Olivetti then bathed in a wash of blue food dye (80s kids know precisely what I mean)

this time round, its perfectly legit, and this time round you are unlikely to end up in the school sick bay after the year 12 social, claiming migraine-induced projectile vomiting.

Just sayin…..

 

If you are taking your online dating a little more seriously than this blog, check out this website for fabulously simple online dating advice.

George Has Left The Building

It was less than 12 months ago.

I was in a veritable Magic Faraway Tree of topsy turvy worlds.

Why?

George Clooney had been ditched by his girlfriend

#stilldontgetit

This week, the media is awash with tales of how the seemingly-eternal bachelor has been nabbed/tamed/snagged by an uber-savvy brunette who has already earned the moniker of HRH (Human Rights Hottie) and at every opportunity is flashing dark locks and some seriously chiselled cheekbones

Amal Allamuddin

All the while:

•  single women the world over, regardless of the likelihood that they would have ever crossed paths with GC, let alone done any snaring), and

• every gay man who believed George’s procession of girlfriends was a carefully choreographed ruse

sighed…. just a little.

Let’s just put aside our feelings that WE might have been that ONE, and consider here what it would have taken to snare the world’s most eligible bachelor.

The Good News

1.  You don’t need to be blonde. Since 40s chick has a long history of the relentless pursuit of blonde in an ongoing battle with my genetic predisposition to mousey, and to the detriment of my credit card balance, this is cold, cold consolation.
2. You can have a major shoe shortcoming.       This will include inappropriate combining of short boots and beige stockings, (who does peep toes with stockings?)

.

 

and a very clashy approach to flats

The Bad News

1.  You need to be Oxford educated and speak three languages (and the Braille/lala-speak that comes out of you after 1.5 bottles of Veuve does not count as one of these)
2. You need to have clients that include Kofi Annan and Julian Assange, you need to have a role advising the UN and you might also need to be the legal adviser to the King of Bahrain. Being an occasional letter-writer to the Herald-Sun and a protester to the local council on the topic of inappropriate suburban medium-density housing (hello, City Of Boroondara!) may not count.
3. At the tender age of 36, when 40s chick was still trying (and failiing) to nail that pivotal decision point where you walk away from Tequila shots, you need to be capable of representing the interests of the entire population of the Ukraine.

Which only goes to prove, that instead of George being the one who got nabbed, it might just have been the reverse, that Amal was the uber-catch of the singleton world and that it is GC that is counting his lucky stars that he planted an ethically-mined sparkler on someone with slightly more ambitious life goals than a blonde lady-wrestler.

Just sayin….

If you are taking your online dating a little more seriously than this blog, check out this website for fabulously simple online dating advice.

 

The 40s Chick Guide to Footy Dads

If you are still in the depths of despair or trapped in one of the four stages of breakup grief, be supremely confident of this fact.

You. Will. Date. Again.

It WILL happen.

From the combined knowledge of a Glo-Mesh clutch of 40s chicks (now there’s a collective noun if ever I’ve coined one) I’m told that a 40s chick rite of passage is to date one of the following:

•   A Hipster

• A footy dad

If it’s the latter, and this is new territory for you, there are a few tips for the uninitiated.

The kiddies ALL look the same

 Even if you have navigated the first six months of dating a dad, just as in ten years you are not going to pick that kid out of a juvenile delinquent line-up, you have zero chance of cheering on the right kidlet in a game of under-9s.

They all look the same. Scruffy. Muddy. Unidentifiable.

40s chick tip: ask what number the kid plays under so you have some chance of ‘Whoohoo’ing at the right moment.

Write it on your hand if you must #highschoolthrowback

Sunday Morning Coming Down

Kids’ footy involves Sunday mornings. Yes. Sunday Mornings. Google them if it’s been a while since you’ve seen your last one.

Your previous life: you’d be shaking off a hangover and checking facebook to fill in the gaps about what went down the night before.

New life: you will be squinting into lacklustre autumn sunlight trying to feign interest in a small kid running round after a footy.

40s chick tip? Everyone carries a travel mug or takeaway coffee cup. Good? Maybe a Gwyneth-esque lemongrass and ginger tea in your travel mug. Better? A Bloody Mary with a little extra vodka to mute the impact of 36 humans yelling (and that’s just the parents).

The Chicks Frock Up

This is incomprehensible.

In an environment which screams you best layer up, snuggle a scarf and slide into Skechers, the chicks are rocking Sass and Bide, cashmere-merino blends and suede boots.

Suede boots, I ask you!?

Dust. Mud. The likelihood that a red-Gatorade-fuelled kiddie will step on you and imprint footy studs on your suede. None of these are a place where you parade a light-coloured suede item of footwear.   A lamb has donated its life and the underside of its skin for your footwear and you take it to a local football field, subjecting it to unpaved paths and random spatter?

If there was a PETA equivalent for the protection of animal by-products once they have left the animal, they’d be ALL OVER these chicks.

There is no logic, as far as I can see, in frocking up for kids footy.   It’s a desperate attempt to have a WAG moment, with nary a Brownlow Medal red carpet nor Beckham in sight.

Yet still they do.

Canteen food

There’s a chance that you have not yet shed your 40s chick lifestyle and there is indeed a Bloody Mary in your travel mug. This is the ONLY scenario that would see you appreciative of footy canteen food.

On the upside, you can get a hot dog, a bucket of chips and a drink for less than the lunchtime CBD prices of a ham and cheese toastie. The downside? You will have to wait behind a couple of 8 year olds who ONLY want a red/green giant snake, causing Meg from the canteen to madly sort the blue/green, orange/yellow and blue/purple gelatinous rejects with grudging precision to get to the coveted red/green ones.

During this time one of two things will happen:

• You’ll have moved on to a craving for a banana fritter which will have you sneaking off to the local suburban chinese restaurant

• You’ll be devouring the reject snakes

Either way, your BMI will not thank you tomorrow.

It never ends

Whilst you think your obligation is over by midday, you will have only bought yourself time for lunch and a nanna nap, as you’ll be right back there at 5pm for a curious phenomenon.

‘Match Report’

Yes. This is a thing. One where the under-9s coach, fuelled by an unrequited desire to be the next Mick Malthouse, will be silencing the room with a look, then imparting the benefit of his decades of football knowledge via the match report.

There are a lot of other things that you could be doing at 5pm on a Sunday. I know this as I realised long ago that this is the witching hour of the weekend, the border between weekend happiness and despair as the Pre-Monday blues set in. I’ve developed many a technique to stave off the malaise of 5pm Sundays. It used to be the window for ironing work shirts until I realised that this just brings on the malaise with a furious potency (I also discovered that the application of a hair straightener to the visible shirt elements – lapels and collar – was much quicker and just as effective)

Far more joie de vivre can be obtained from a glass of something chilled and an episode of Postcards.

Nothing joyous to be found in observing an under 9s coach relishing his 15 minutes of suburban fame.

40schick tip? Go all 50s housewife and offer to stay at home and tend to dinner. Whack something into the oven and give yourself the Postcards treatment.

Above all? Don’t worry. You’ve smashed glass ceilings, negotiated major contracts and nailed public speaking. You’ll be fiiiine. You’ll know this once you find yourself applying business transformation techniques to the operation of the sausage sizzle.

You’ve got this.

If you are taking your online dating a little more seriously than this blog, check out this website for fabulously simple online dating advice.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tinder. No. Just no.

So.  I have this friend who feels like her early 40s single life has hit rock bottom.  Why does she believe this? Not because her dates comprise men with the looks of Sheldon Cooper, the intelligence of Joey from Friends and the relationship longevity of John Mayer.

No. She thinks she has bottomed out because she is trawling for love on RSVP.

But I have tremendous news.  It’s on a par with the glad tidings of comfort and joy that we celebrate at Christmas (and who doesn’t love a festive free pass for unlimited alcoholic beverage intake and a day-long calorific binge, punctuated by naps?)

It’s a short message. It’s going to be ineptly expressed. It’s scientifically and statistically unproven, but I am here to tell her that I have executed an experiment that proves that she has not in fact hit the true dumpster-diving low of online dating.

My dear friend, you have not hit rock bottom.  Why?

Because you are not yet on Tinder.

I can’t discount the fact that Tinder News linked to one of my previous posts,
which makes this one the equivalent of:

•  Kicking Zuckerberg  in the head in the playground then hoping Facebook ads will make me millions
• Holding out on Steve Jobs until the 4s in 2012 and then going all i
• Dissing James Packer , and therefore never getting even an entry level job in his media emprire.

But I do believe firmly in there being something a teensy bit more involved in finding true love than playing a version of ‘Snap’ online.

If RSVP is the equivalent of a fairly harmless one-too-many Sunday afternoon Sauv Blancs or a dabble into the lightest of recreational drug habits, Tinder is the moment that you look sideways at crystal meth and think that ‘heyyy…… that sparkly stuff ain’t all bad’

Why?  There are many perils my friend.

 One – its entirely about photos, not words.

I get the ‘picture tells a thousand words’, but I’d like at least, MAYBE, the 25 words or less that it takes to win a supermarket cat food competition in order to snag me. Tinder makes this entirely optional. In fact, in your haste to sign up, you can just throw in any old selection from your facebook pics and need not say a word about yourself.

So instead of scanning a written profile for your top 5 danger words?  You’ve got nothing.

You have, instead, a hastily, app-generated concoction of photos.

What will this mean?

In many of these photos, you’ll be unable to discern who the chap of choice actually is.  Is he that hot guy in the middle of the three? Or one of the two very average blokes serving as bookends? Although slightly more likely to be successful than Tatts, it’s still not the kind of odds that would have you dashing to the TAB.

 Two – he’s local

 If you don’t pay due attention, your Tinder settings mean you sign away your location rights as blithely as your Friday night check-in at Ponyfish Island.  So anyone you swipe in the affirmative knows the approximate location of your abode with all the potential menace of that regrettable fling that is now the subject of an intervention order.

So if you haven’t taken pains to only post on Tinder your Masquerade ball pics or the brunette moment you had in July last year, you may very well be recognised at the local Safeway.

 Three – There’s no ‘I take that back’ button

The tinder universe is a minefield, just waiting for a rookie mistake,

You have to be on your guard and have military-sniper-like concentration to avoid pulling the trigger prematurely on the Heckler and Koch and SWIPING RIGHT ON THE WRONG GUY.

If you do this, please understand that if you fire without due consideration, there is no going back.

I now understand, that if your focus was momentarily distracted by a Sunday afternoon re-play of The Blacklist, or a lunch where carbohydrates were outweighed by Cab Sauv that your Tinder hotlist now comprises of a guy:

• in full Gene Simmons Kiss makeup
• wearing a beanie with bear ears
• who has no visual identity and has chosen to portray himself as a cute Whippet

If you do this, be aware that the Tinder gods give you no ‘Undo’ button to allow you to STEP AWAY from the consequences of your inattention.  Gene Simmonds guy is now going to pursue you to the ends of the earth.

At first glance, there is no unfriend button on Tinder

 Four – Shared Friends

 In some ways this might be good, in that the guy where you squint your eyes, look sideways and take into consideration the cuteness of his whippet makes you think that he’s worth consideriing…then heyyyyy… he knows someone you know!

Instantly there is an avenue where you can validate his single status, his lack-of-stalker-ism and his level of prior baggage.

Alas, this is only useful if your friend in common is someone with whom you are in recent contact as opposed to someone you might have shared a West Coast Cooler in the 80s whose opinion was only valid when it came to the social validity of white-ankle-boots in high school.

But there’s upside………….

But hey, there is always an upside! You can revert to semi-content-rich RSVP, or the attraction-algorithmically charged e-Harmony at any time.  And if you are feeling down about yourself?

Just swipe LEFT at will and plaster a big fat NOPE on all of them until you feel better. You aren’t at rock bottom if you are dispensing rejection at will…..

If you are taking your online dating a little more seriously than this blog, check out this website for fabulously simple online dating advice.

Why You Won’t Find Love On A Plane

No one wants to gain all of life’s single-girl learnings through personal trial and error, so we owe it to the sisterhood to share life’s hard-won lessons.

Here’s two

One – Don’t date John Mayer.  Granted, probably not a stumble we are all likely to make, but bear in mind that girls more famous than us fell into this trap. Rebound guy, professional heart-breaker and kiss’n’teller,  Mr Mayer is only useful as short-term breakup-recovery fodder.

Bet Katy Perry wished she knew this before releasing that cringeworthy duet with him. (just google it, I am not going to legitimise it by posting it here)

Two – You won’t meet the man of your dreams on a plane. 

Logically, if your airline travel takes you to grown-up capital cities frequented by savvy business travellers, you would think that you’d be more likely to meet an intelligent eligible male with prospects than in a random bar because:

• you are not travelling Garuda Airlines with hordes of ‘end of footy season’ lads clad in Bintang singlets, headed for Bali.

• If you are mingling with the frequent flyers you are likely to encounter the ‘been married but too many airmiles put paid to that’ set who hopefully have no more baggage than that carry-on-limit-flouting mini-tank that they are trying to wedge into the overhead compartment.

ie …its just not to going to happen.

The reason why a long haul flight won’t magically matchmake you with a compatible co-traveller?  That co-traveller will be this guy:

 One – Mr Chatty

Before you even set butt on seat, Mr Chatty is eyeing off your magazine collection, your paperback, your hand luggage brand and has his head cocked to one side to take in the scent you are wearing.  Why?  He knows them all.  Not in a creepy ‘has stalked you since check-in’ kinda way but because he just knows everything. Period.

Your paperback, only released two weeks ago?  He’s read it and he’s going to talk you through it in excruciating detail (ncluding spoilers) before you are even through the safety briefing.

He knows your destination.  How? He’s read it upside down from the boarding pass clenched in your teeth as you awkwardly tried to stow your cabin baggage to avoid exposing your midriff (you regrettably wore a T-shirt a touch too short for airline travel).

Re: that destination, he’s preparing to tell you every immunisation you should have had before this journey if your work schedule had only permitted a window to consult with the travel doctor.

There’s no escaping Mr Chatty.  You can pull on your fab, noise-cancelling headphones (Note: his are better) and try to watch your fave chick flick where you already know the ending so he can’t spoil it.  He’ll still tap you on the arm and tell you the 10 things no one knew about Julia Roberts before the movie Pretty Woman.

Unless you have a large dose of the celebrity-snooze-aid Stillnox, you aren’t going to be able to pass the time easily.

 Two – Mr Quirky

This guy is slightly less annoying than Mr Chatty, but will subject you to a long-haul parade of random.

He’s a faith healer that sensed ‘a distortion in your aura’ from the minute you sat down. In reality?  That distortion in your aura was the speed-wobbles caused by descending the aerobridge in heels after three sneaky Sauv Blancs in the airline lounge.

He’s a life coach that can sense that you are not in fact on a journey that will fulfil your life’s purpose. (anyone could guess that from the fact that you are carrying a copy of Gourmet Traveller and you are headed to Townsville)

He’s got a fear of travelling that will cause him to grip the armrests, go rigid, and rummage in your seat-pocket for an extra sick bag at the slightest hint of turbulence.

None of these seem to immediately resonate with you.

Three – a colleague

Much as we may enjoy the daytime company of our colleagues and even chit chat over a 5pm beer, no one ever really wants to fly, eat, sleep next to, and wake up drooling beside a colleague on a long-haul flight.   There are precious few in the world that I would share that level of intimacy with and none of them are on the same payroll as I am.

No one wants to hear office rumours come back about the weird ‘phhhhrruuugh’ sound that you make whilst sleeping.

I have been known to take extreme evasive action to avoid being seated with a colleague on a long haul flight including (but not limited to)

•  Hiding in the Ladies upon seeing a colleague in departures so that they don’t beckon me to join them in a shared check in
• Declining the opportunity to car pool which would again imply joint check-in by suggesting that I was coming not from home but from a non-existent bayside holiday house
• Choosing to travel Melbourne to Singapore via Perth

Do these things.  No one wants to find an unauthorised photo of themselves slack-jawed and dribbling on the office gossip’s instagram.  (that was so #lastyearsxmasparty)

 Four – an eligible version of George Clooney

This all sounds good, and you may have to paper-cut-slice-yourself with the corner of the infight magazine to make sure you aren’t dreaming, but be aware that all you have here is some mocking at the hands of the airline gods.

Why?  Pretty as HE may be, these are not going to be YOUR finest hours.  You might start all freshly made up, clothing neatly ironed and with the sparkle that is the combination of some bronzer-testing in duty free and a Bollinger in the first class lounge, but its all going to go downhill from here.

You won’t be wearing the skinny jeans that have a spanx-like effect on your thighs, simply because the last time you did this on a long-haul you felt like you gave yourself an entire-lower-body case of deep vein thrombosis.  Therefore your thighs will spread horizontally, taking all available real-estate with the zeal of Lindsay Fox reclaming some Portsea foreshore.

Instead, you’ll be wearing a cargo pant.  In a stretch this means you have something in common with the off-duty supermodel but only if paired with high heels. You know you won’t do that as you’ve already learned that trying to stuff fluid-engorged feet into stilettos has all the grace and finesse of  trying to get a sleeping bag back into its little sack.

No one can do this.

About mid-way during the flight your facial skin, perfectly prepared for the journey with hydration that would green the Nullabor and a raw food vegan diet that would have Gwyneth genuflecting, will FAIL in its ability to wake up with acceptable plane-face.  You will look like you put your face into a 90 minute industrial tumble dry cycle on hot.  Every hour of plane travel ages you a year.  I know this.

So your Clooney-like neighbour will dismiss you from contention whilst ogling your trash-mag to see if there is a Di Caprio cast-off he can snag *

(*men do not suffer the aircraft ageing process)

But don’t despair.  Just regard your likelihood of meeting a new partner on a plane as low as snagging an unexpected upgrade from economy to first class, and you won’t be disappointed.

Valentines Day – Step away from the Selfie

And it’s rolled on by again.

The yearly ritual of Valentine’s Day.

Someone coined the alternate phrase ‘Singles Awareness Day’, which earns itself an unfortunate acronym and succeeds in making it sound like some kind of disease for which we should all raise money.

There’s nothing like Valentines Day to bring out the insecurities in the single woman. Despite career achievements, physical accomplishments, travel adventures and cultural intelligence there’s just that teeny feeling inside that you’d just like Simon from the mailroom to call and say there’s been a delivery for you.

In the feelgood blog of the V.DAY weekend, I’m here to point to the ‘have-it-all’ celebrity women who are twice as insecure as you are. We know this not by tell-all interviews or heart-wrenching blogs. How do we know this?

By their selfies.

These selfies are on a scale from the most innocuous to those that scream shrilly for likes like a fishwife screams at a deadbeat husband.

The everygirl selfie

This is the selfie that aims to demonstrate that the celeb is tremendously normal, dateable, quirky and loveable. Relatively harmless, it will see the celeb posing with an everyday prop, undertaking regular-world activities or being, well, just normal.

Take Taylor Swift for example. Being photographed with a donut is really like being photographed with a bestie isn’t it? Every single chick surely has a carbohydrate of choice right?

I’m yet to front up on instagram posing with a plate of Spaghetti Amatriciana, but I can kinda see where she’s headed. Love me, love my carbs / refined sugars?

The ‘Clayton’s’ Selfie

For the non-Aussies in my readership, Clayton’s was a non-alcoholic beverage that tried to pretend it was as good as booze. The catchphrase was ‘the drink you have when you are not having a drink.’

For those 40s chicks who find that anachronistic, bear in mind that it was hip in the 70s and 80s and now has faded into inevitable insecurity.  We have no time for fake booze.

So the Clayton’s Selfie is the Selfie you have when you are not having a Selfie.

It’s the celeb selfie where you are pretending its about something else other than you. Case in point was the recent Kylie Minogue pic. Artfully disguised in a series that illustrated her ah-mazing shoe collection, she posted this.

40schick was totally sucked in.

I saw those red soles, thought: Louboutin.

I saw those coloured sparkles, thought: Arnotts 100s and 1000s biscuits.

Every man in the world, thought: Kylie still has hotpants-butt at age 45.

I’m fairly sure, with her heart still suffering its recent puncturing at the hands of Andres Veloncoso, that she was aiming for the latter.

The Ralphie

Ralph is a fairly icky Men’s magazine. Hence the Ralphie is the Selfie where you’d like to think you are just a moment away from featuring on the front cover.

It’s the selfie where you apply the best instagram filter you can find, where you secretly sneak your pic off to photoshop to lop off some arm fat, fill in some stomach creases and apply an all over tan that even your fave tanning salon can’t nail. You do your best work in a bikini, find a great background and then post it for all the world to see.

If you are Miranda Kerr, there’s no need for this fakery: you get the real deal.

If you are the Kardashian matriarch, this is what you get.

Honestly. If this is what Gran is up to, I fear for North West.

The Kardashelfie

Shorthand for the Kardashian selfie, everything about this reeks of the need for validation. Even in your darkest Valentines Day, vodka-infused, chick-flick watching despair you are by no means as desperate as this. This is a posting that is all about likes, about going viral on the interwebs, about being talked about: good or bad.

In Kim’s case? I want to try to explain it but I just can’t.

Nope. Just can’t.

Its potentially post-partum hormones gone wrong (of which I have no experience) or the need to keep Kanye on his toes (of which I have no experience)

Demi Moore has been guilty of similar.

In Demi’s case, I guess its just “Damn, I paid a lot of money for this body and I may as well post it”

The moral of the story? By this time next year we need to come up with some kind of singles ribbon badge to proclaim singleness with pride and join forces with the other ribbon-wearers.  Over cocktails and war stories about Tinder.

Anything to keep us all off Instagram.

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