I’ve fallen down another hole on Instagram. I’ve been learning how to get dressed.

I’m aware some of you have seen me wearing clothes before. I do know how to get dressed, though, to be fair, it was fairly recent that I learned the label in your knickers goes on the left, meaning you never spend the day with your knickers on backwards. (You know the rule. It’s bad luck to change your pants around if you put them on wrong! Luckily, with my giant you-don’t-have-to-wear-a-vest-just-pull-your-knickers-up-to-your-chin style of lingerie, even backwards, I have it covered.)

Where was I? Oh Instagram.

I’ve been watching these ‘dress with me’ reels, where women, and it is mostly women, jump up and down, and their clothes magically appear, leaving them looking stylish and apparently ‘fresh’. I’ve been jumping up and down for about six weeks now, and all I have to show for it is a black eye, so maybe it doesn’t work in Wales.

I’ve learned that I should always tuck a t-shirt in.  The same with a shirt or blouse, only then just tuck one side, leaving a flap floating in the wind. Or go for a French tuck, as immortalised on Queer Eye. Or tie a knot. Or use an elastic band. Heels will make my legs longer, cropped trousers cut me off at the knee. I should always wear a belt, and sometimes match it with my bag. Big sunglasses should be worn with everything.

I need to focus on my shoulders, my waist, my hips and torso. I should not forget about my legs. I should not wear all black, unless I’m dressing it up with a cute pump. (Not, I learned, the black rubber-soled ones we used to wear in school.) The pump may or may not match my belt.  

It seems I’ve been wearing clothes all wrong. Most of my clothes are wrong. I don’t own enough belts, and I need a statement vest.  

The pursuit to be dressed is not simply vanity (well, it is a bit), but for professional reasons, I’m having a photoshoot.

You know those pictures of the author in the back of the book, where they’re looking off into the distance, thinking writerly thoughts. I’m getting one of them done.

I’ve written before about my horror of having a photo taken. How I’m invisible in my own family history because I deleted every pic of me, before anyone else could see. A photoshoot is a big deal.

I don’t want to look too posh. They always look posh, don’t they, those author photos. Why, when we think of professional and put together, do we automatically think middle-class?  Seriously, look at the photos, the way they are constructed, the setting, the story that is being told. That image says what a writer should look like. And none of them look like me.

I googled ‘plus-size photography’ to get ideas on how I might want the photo to look. What I found was hundreds of articles on how to make plus-size women look smaller.  How to pose them and style them so that they don’t take up too much space on the screen. I should stand with one leg sticking out, or be scrunched up on a chair or on the floor. My back should be arched, my belly sucked in.  My clothes should not draw attention to ‘problem areas’. I should not smile. I should not be old. I should not look directly at the camera – chins, darling, chins! I should think about scale and texture, using props and backgrounds that will shrink me in my skin.

Make myself small. Make myself posh. Contort myself into someone else’s image. I’m sorry, what now?

To misquote Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard, ‘I am big, it’s the pictures that got small.’

I’ve never been good with being told what to do. Instinctively, I flex for the opposite with a steely-eyed grin.  

In my Crone years I’ve reinforced my ‘Fuck that shit’ gene, and armoured with the new-found skill of getting dressed I intended to take up all the space, with or without my t-shirt tucked in.

I’m fucking fabulous, me. I am ready to be seen.  

All right, Mr DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up.