Mirror, mirror, on the wall

Who has the most cellulite of them all?

Me, if Sunday's sojourn in the Virgin Revivals lounge at Heathrow is anything to go by.

We staggered off the overnight, turbulence-heavy flight -- exhausted, fingers stiff from clenching the armrests in fear, and eyes red-rimmed from incipient hysteria -- and made our way over to the lounge. The showers? Were fantastic, but that cannot be said for the overly bright lighting and huge mirrors, which combined to reveal that my upper thighs were not only bruised from pulling my wheelie case along miles of Heathrow corridors, but had acquired the texture of boiling porridge -- spongy, grey, and lumpy. Why? Why would anyone design a lighting system that reveals all your flaws when you are at your most vulnerable? Lumpy thighs, wrinkles like the San Andreas Fault, and undereye shadows worse than anything seen on the local junkies. My mirror at home casts a far more flattering picture, thanks in large part to the thick layer of dust that coats it. And the clever folks at the gym have used very soft, nay dark, lights in the changing rooms and minimized the number of mirrors, meaning that you can only see other people's flab and not your own -- a far more satisfying prospect.

Coincidentally, that morning's Sunday Times contained an article that touched on this very subject -- the evil that store designers do with lighting and mirrors in their changing rooms. This article stuck a chord, reminding me of one of my worst shopping experiences in recent years (if you're a woman, you'll know that shopping trauma is frequent, ongoing, and inevitable). I went to the Bijenkorf, the only department store in Amsterdam, to buy a bikini prior to a trip to the delightful resort of Sitges. Big mistake. They stocked nothing in a cup size larger than a B, and the changing rooms were white, dusty, and had a single flourescent strip light overhead. The result? Not only the dreaded (and dreadful) quadraboob, but my chest looked like a map of the Rhine and it's tributaries -- bright blue veins showing through pallid winter skin to terrifying effect. After weeping into my mobile to the poor boyfriend who was out shopping in Doncaster and could do nothing but offer comforting words, I headed over to my favorite Japanese shop on the Zeedijk to buy crockery -- that always fits. You'd think that stores would want to make their changing rooms as flattering as possible so that women would buy clothes rather than leaving suicidal, but no; designers have rejected the option of installing candles or faux candlelight in the store, preferring the unforgiving blue-white strip light.

So, two thumbs up to Virgin for the showers; a thumbs down for the lights -- and a plea that they install dimmer switches so that other women need not suffer in the same way. And a hearty recommendation NEVER to go shopping for bikinis in Amsterdam: It's burkhas on the beach for me from now on.