Is being beautiful A CURSE?

Fran Sawyer reveals why women hate her for looking so good at 57

- NATALIE CLARKE

The moment I walk into any room, the reaction is always the same - women stiffen, glance me up and down, then swivel away, while the men openly gawp.

Why? Because I'm too good-looking. Too glamorous. And some people really can't handle it. My looks - which, apart from some injectables, are entirely natural - blind almost everyone, and sometimes, it really feels like a curse. Women hate me and men see me as a sex object.

I'm not in a relationship and my only friends are gay men, as they admire my flamboyance and don't judge me. What people don't realise is that I've got brains as well. I've invented a breakthrough medical tool and have raised £100,000 for charity. But no one can see further than my curvy size 12 figure and 24-inch waist, or my age-defying, line-free face.

It's not just my beauty that's a problem, either. I'm constantly judged because I'm not afraid to be glamorous. At a cousin's wedding recently, the other women didn't want to know me. When I attempted to talk to them, they looked me up and down disdainfully and turned their backs. Yes, I was wearing a hot fuchsia pink sleeveless dress and matching fuchsia lipstick - what of it? The men, meanwhile, were with their wives, so they were simply too frightened to talk to me. You'd think, as a 57-year-old divorced mum to two grownup children, that things might have become easier with time. But it's actually getting worse.