A brilliant author and artist recently opened my eyes to the wonderland of jaw exercise videos. Smiling women in pastel-coloured vest tops chew the air, stretch their lips and tilt their tongues towards their perfectly formed noses. Angry men in blue polo shirts push tennis balls into their chests. People in medical scrubs try to lick their nostrils. Women with perms pinch at their jowls as if they are trying to crimp a pasty. It’s wild out there.
Now, I worked in consumer media and advertising long enough (for more than 30 seconds) to know that pretty much anything that says it can change your face, or life, or relationship, will do nothing of the sort. In my heart, I recognise that my face is my face, a slowly collapsing combination of genetics and expressions that has changed very little since I was about three. Look at my first nursery portrait – in which I am sitting in a pink nylon jumper in front of a marble-effect backdrop – and you can see 39-year-old Nell smiling back at you. Yet the promise of a new, sharp, Hepburn-esque jawline, created from nothing more than a five-minute routine at my desk, is so tantalising – so deeply penetrates a lifelong desire to look like someone else – that I am struggling to resist.
So, when everyone is out of the house, I sit at my table, in front of my computer, and do my Les Dawson impression. I tilt my neck, push out my lips and hope to God the postman doesn’t turn up. The quest for a new jawline has turned me into one of those 16th-century alchemists, desperately trying to turn iron into gold using spit, weeds and pig urine, all the while knowing deep down that all I am making is a lump of piss-smelling iron covered in nettles. Has it worked? Absolutely not. Does my face still look like a partially melted church candle? You bet. But am I ready to give up? Not quite.