Food for thought: Offering lip service.

I looked like this the other day.

Which is a problem on a normal day – but it’s even worse when you think you look like this.

In really good lighting, with the right airbrush and surgeon and beautician and personal trainer and...you get it. Nobody said I couldn't dream. 

Now put Gerard Butler or Ryan Gosling next to you, when you think you look like Kim Kardashian but look more like Kristen Wiig in the picture above and multiply your humiliation by a thousand, add a bit of trauma, subtract your ego, divide your pride, and you’re left with nothing. No date, no mutual attraction, no dignity.

….That must be why Victoria Beckham never smiles

Clever girl.

This was the situation I was faced with weeks ago. I was out at dinner with a new bunch of people.

Naturally, I turned on the charm. Naturally, my mouth didn’t agree with me.

On a normal day, I look like this.

Cute huh! They get so red, they could stop traffic when I smile. 

Thankfully, the good people around me always let me know. It’s either too much chit chat or too much smiling. Either way less talk, more action is what's required. 

 I’m yet to work out how to avoid a lipstick on teeth situation and yes, I’ve tried Oprah’s suggestion without success (it’s the first time Oprah’s failed me). I was mortified too!

(For those less fanatical that involves putting your index finger into your mouth and pulling it out to get the lipstick from inside your mouth, off. It's way less erotic than that sounds. It's messy and ineffective). There are a stack of videos dedicated to reteaching this method. Beware of false prophets. 

Seek had a competition going online a few days ago for jobs you wish you could create. That would be mine. I’d create a personal teeth checker who could walk around with me all day and remind me to check my teeth between conversations, between meals, between lipstick application, between checking….basically, all the time.

I’m not feeling very philosophical. I have no existential catastrophe’s in my life at the moment (yet)– I just have an issue with etiquette this week.

Everyone would rather know when they look like a clown, before they turn into the joke of the dinner table.

I can do many things but I can’t always keep lipstick off my teeth or food from getting in them so PLEASE for the love of aesthetics tell me when my teeth are sabotaging my face.

Tell us all. Spare us the humiliation. Don’t be a contributing factor to our diminishing egos by waiting for us to get to the car and check in our car mirrors only to be mortified at the end of what we thought was a good night.

Of course be kind. Indicate first. Lick your own teeth if you're embarrassed to tell us. Most of us will mimick whatever you’re doing as a natural reaction to our attraction to you. I read somewhere that our body language mirrors the person in front of us if we have the hots for them. A google search told me. So it must be true. Test the theory. It can become a fun game of puppetry. You scratch your nose, she’ll scratch hers. You clean your teeth, she’ll clean hers. If you're a bird, she'a a bird (thank you Notebook) - True story and a necessary truth to be shared.

We may be embarrassed for a second if you tell us but at least the shame will dissipate when we’ve combatted the problem, there and then.

When this happened to me, I had actually gone to the bathroom but the lights were dim so I couldn’t tell for sure. Screwed from the start.

I went to the car at the end of a great group dinner only to realise the person looking at me was looking at my teeth. They did not look to my mouth for any other reason – contrary to what Cosmo taught me when I was sixteen.

I know there are worse things that could happen in the world but few things embarrass me. This did and always will. 

I know you're all humanitarian and are looking to do your bit for the community of women out there so I've made it easy and created a new rule of thumb for next time boys (and girls):

Don’t let the food in a girl’s mouth lurk,

Be honest and tell her she needs dental work 

(see below).