Being average-looking has made me happier in life and love

My looks don't stop traffic. Nor do they light up a room. It would be more accurate to say they have the impact of a one-bar gas heater in an ice-cool lounge; slightly insipid yet perfectly effective.

I can sidle up to my son's football match with little more than a nod from the other parents, the swish of my shoulder-length brown hair going unnoticed by the referee. Only my sharp observations and witty put-downs during the game turn heads.

This is what I love about being a self-affirmed plain Jane; the ability to be seen not for the symmetry of my face – which, frankly, has everything to do with good genes and little else – but for wit, character and intellect.

You only have to look at the A-list to see I'm on to something. Elisabeth Moss was hardly off our screens this summer, starring in the critically acclaimed The Handmaid's Tale (which earned her an Emmy)  and Top of the Lake: China Girl, yet she's hardly your stereotypically beautiful Hollywood star.

The same  goes for Girls actress and creator Lena Dunham,  Joanne Froggatt, of ITV's recent hit drama Liar, and Catastrophe's Sharon Horgan.  Unlike the Angelina Jolies or Gwyneth Paltrows  of the world, these actresses have a normalcy to their looks that gives them an air of relatability we, the viewers, can't get enough of.

On the catwalks, too,  there is a trend towards jolie laide models – a delightful French expression, literally 'beautiful ugly', to describe a woman who has what many would consider unattractive features.

Lily McMenamy, who's walked  for everyone from Chanel to Fendi to Emilio Pucci,  is the perfect example with her sticky-out ears and teeth, as is the alien-like Molly Bair, who's modelled  for Dior, Moschino and Vera Wang.

While it heartens me now – aged 46 – to hear of the traditional aesthetic of beauty finally being challenged, it doesn't help the teenage me, who pined to be beautiful at a time when a cute button nose, straight teeth and poker-straight hair were the only attributes that mattered. (FYI: I only had the button nose.)

Boys didn't seem to care I was one of the cleverest in the class or that my politics essays were distributed by teachers as examples of excellent work. Who cared about excellent work when excellent bone structure was the sole gateway to social nirvana?

I remember having an insane crush on a tall Greek boy called Pedro in sixth form (cue nightly fantasies of our elopement to Kos and a barefoot wedding ceremony under a white-hot sun), only to have him utter these soul-crushing words: 'Do you think you could put a word in for me with your mate Shelley? She's dead fit.'

My heart twinges even now when I think of it; my tear-streaked face in the bathroom mirror, my mother whispering useless words of comfort as she attempted to run her fingers through the frizz that was my hair.  I eyed my pretty friends with envy and thought all my problems would disappear if only I had better skin, hair, teeth, lips, eyes, cheekbones…

After a lengthy period of wound-licking, I resolved  to stay away from shallow boys (which ruled out most, it turned out). Then hope arrived, somewhat ironically, in the form of lithe heart-throb Patrick Swayze. 'Nobody puts Baby in the corner' was his seminal line to Jennifer Grey in Dirty Dancing, before lifting her triumphantly over his head, championing plain girls with talents hidden under bushels everywhere.

I started to see the advantages of blossoming away from the spotlight; the greatest being not having your looks speak for you.  By my early 20s I had filled a bookshelf in my London flat with dog-eared second-hand books I had devoured and could happily critique with anyone, while my beautiful flatmate simply went to Waterstones one day and came home with an armful of 30 books, wanting a shelf that looked as interesting as mine.

It was as if she was trying to prove she had substance as well as looks.  It took her years to marry and settle down. I don't think she ever knew who she was; only how she looked to others. I, on the other hand, found love relatively easily in my early 30s, got married and had two gorgeous boys.

Sadly, two years ago, we split after a decade together; and although I didn't lift my head up for the following year, I met my current partner soon after that. (He was my third date back out there.) Being beautiful, I learned, only took you so far and everyone around me at the beginning of the noughties seemed to agree.