Deborah Ross: The sisters love my plainness (the bitches!)

If you ask me, and in the light of the Samantha "I'm so beautiful" Brick story – a woman is happy with herself! ridiculous! – I would like to tell you my story: a story about what it is like to be plain, and how this has also presented certain difficulties.

Throughout my life, for example, no passing gentleman has ever offered to pay my fare when I've stepped out of a cab in Paris, even though I have loitered in the hope one would do so, and shown the top of my pop sock (provocatively, I thought) and no man has spontaneously wished to take my photograph as I wandered down Portobello Road, unless it is with a little monkey on my shoulder, at the cost of £15.

And whenever I have asked what I've done to deserve such treatment, they all say the same thing. It is either: "Pay up, love, then clear off." Or: "Your fare is your own business. Now, let me pass."

And the sisterhood? How cruel and bitchy they are! Other women, for instance, are always taking me up simply because of my plainness, and because I also happen to dress badly and am a bit fat, so will always make them look better.

I am constantly asked to be a bridesmaid, and even shoved to the front of all wedding photographs because there is no way the bride is going to come off worse in comparison. I am also constantly invited to social gatherings so every other woman can be sure she isn't going to be the biggest loser in the room.

Unfortunately, women find nothing more comforting than someone else being less attractive. Take last week. I was out walking the dog when a neighbour passed by in her car. I waved, she waved, and she even wound the window down for a chat. I asked someone else why she had proved so friendly and was told that, because I am older, heavier, drink, smoke, don't work out and have surrendered not just to the pop sock but also the fleece, furry Crocs and, on occasion, yesterday's pants dropping out of a trouser leg, I represented no threat to her or her marriage.

I felt hurt, humiliated, used. And it seems the only crime I've committed is not leaving the house with a paper bag over my head.

And now? Now, I hope that this newspaper doesn't throw me to the wolves and Twitter, by printing photographs of me showing I am, in fact, not plain but ravishingly beautiful, and so must be severely deluded and a nutter.

This would be horrendously spiteful. This would expose me to ridicule. Picture editor, tempting as it may be, please resist, I beg you.