Originally published by The Clifton Courier, October 2, 2019

The other day I had the chance to be a super cool power woman in a fashion magazine and I blew it.

For years – decades even – I have longed to be featured on the glossy pages of a magazine that tells people what fabrics to swaddle their bodies in and what musical recordings are worth listening to. I have always wanted to appear next to an ad for an overpriced watch or delightfully unnecessary face ointment.

I just love magazines. Perhaps it’s my background in print journalism, childhood love affair with scrapbooking or my eternal allegiance to capitalism and consumerism, but I love everything about them. The over-the-top photo shoots. The strategic font choices. The artful arrangement of products. The sound the page makes when you rub it between your fingers.

All of it.

And one of my favourite pastimes is reading a magazine interview and pretending that I am the one being interviewed. If you’re new to this column – yes, I AM extremely self-obsessed, still suffering from middle child syndrome and somewhat delusional. You’re bang on. But for those of you who had to endure the church readings/historical drama performances/general show pony antics I forced upon people lucky enough to be around me as I blossomed into adulthood, this is the kind of behaviour you should be used to by now.

I was walking through Southbank the other day when I was approached by a stylish-looking young woman who asked me to be in the street style section of the Brisbane-based magazine she was interning for.

For those of you whole don’t covet women’s magazines, street style sections are the pages where impossibly fashionable everyday people are featured in a collage of style and sass. They’re stopped on the streets – hence the name – photographed and admired for their fashion choices. It’s a pretty big deal.

I’d just washed my hair the night before. l’d also somehow managed to put myself to bed at a reasonable hour the night before, thus getting enough sleep. And I wasn’t wearing my office socks with my sandals out of the office. As far as I go, I was glowing.

Did this intern pick me because it was a Friday afternoon and she wanted to get the job over and done with as she had somewhere fabulous to be? It’s best not to think about that.

The fact is that she took my photo and my name and interviewed me about my fashion choices.

But, holy heck, did I blow it.

When I’m the one asking the questions, I’m generally in control (unless those questions are directed at Daryl Braithwaite). But on the other side of the notebook, it turns out I’m a little awkward and flustery.

She asked me what I look for when I buy clothes and I was honest in quite an uncool way. I’m paraphrasing myself here because I repressed the exact events of that interview to protect myself from reliving the shame but I said something along the lines of “Geez I don’t know… I shop at op shops at lot, so I’d go with price, to be honest”.

There were many “umms” and “ehhhs” and the kind of sounds you make when you’re sick and want people to know you’re sick but don’t have the energy to form complete words.

When she took my photo, I went into complete deadfish mode. It’s like when someone is taking your photo and you don’t know what to do with your hands, but that applies to your entire body. I looked, I imagine, like I was trying to supress the violent release of gas from my multiple orifices.

It was not the effortlessly cool look I had always dreamed I would pull off.

But with a bit of prompting from the intern who definitely should have been paid for the amount of work she had to do in this five-minute interview alone, I think we got winning shot. She assured me it was cute, took my name, contact details and said she’d be in touch. I haven’t heard anything yet which makes me think the editor rightfully decided not to lower the good name of their publication with my presence.

However, even if I didn’t make it to the street style pages, no one can take away the fact that I was approached as a style icon. Which is extremely unfortunate, because this is going to haunt me forever.

Look out for next week’s edition, when I present my How I Should Have Responded to the Cool Fashion Intern to try to make myself feel cooler.