Deborah Hill Cone: Sign up here, frizzy-haired sisters

Deborah Hill Cone's well-groomed selfies form a new era of her portraits.

Nothing particularly tragic happened to me in the past week. (Recap: previous week my dog died, week before that my dad died.)

The worst thing was I spent half an hour talking to a psychologist at a party about her eyelash extensions. Ooh, they're so long! Flutter flutter. I can feel the draught from here! They're positively giraffe-like! "And you never have to wear mascara!" May I repeat: this was a qualified psychologist.

Why were we not discussing trauma bonding ("Like P for the soul") or Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing Therapy? And I'm just as bad: I think I even shared a hair-styling anecdote, yet I have a degree in philosophy and could have discoursed on Wittgenstein and Schopenhauer.

What is happening to our enlightened culture when even so-called intellectuals are preoccupied with pursuing Kardashian-level grooming? I looked at some old family photos of my family and me as a kid and was shocked. We looked as though we were Amish (frizzy hair, thick glasses, homespun jerseys) but then I realised we were just normal. We only looked weird in comparison to how frighteningly well-groomed people are these days. (Before you all climb into me: I am referring solely to middle-class, bourgeois people with FWP -- Friends With Privilege.)

Something has changed. My family were ostensibly brainy and that meant you could be let off having to look glamorous as well: two PhDs, no nail varnish. That's gone by the wayside. Even swots are expected to look like a Playmate of the Month now. Have you seen how many grown-up people have teeth braces these days?

Perhaps we should not lose sight of the fact that in another era, or another culture, this self-obsession might be seen as shallow, vain and a waste of brainwattage. I've been puzzled by this because for various reasons this year I suffered some harsh blows to my self-concept, pardon the jargon.

My response to this sense of annihilation has been to exercise more, lose weight -- the misery diet works, although I don't recommend it -- get a fancy haircut from Paul Huege de Serville, have my eyebrows waxed, all that fancy stuff I used to scoff at, on the proviso that if I take more flattering selfies, then I will feel I do exist. Didn't work.

Newsflash: a size 8 Prada leather miniskirt doesn't fix one's existential crisis. (Although I can't deny that I'm grateful Body Jam instructor Gandalf last week taught us how to do a routine like a "grimy $2 lapdance". Needed that.) Some human beings, including me, will go to great lengths to avoid dealing with the difficulties of the real world, and obsessing over whether to wear Ruby Woo or Lady Danger is much more comforting than obsessing about frailty, old age and death. Spending hours curating all your black Zambesi sacks that look just like all your other black Zambesi sacks is a wonderful escape from reality. Only problem is that spa treatments do not heal trauma.

Deborah Hill Cone's well-groomed selfies form a new era of her portraits:

And all that grooming is actually quite hard work. This oppressive cultural pressure to process oneself into a more acceptable physical object is not exactly helped by programmes like upcoming TV3 reality show The Bachelor. Catchphrase: "Men are still led by instinct before they are regulated by knowledge."

I know the producer of this show and she is one of the brainiest people I have ever met. And yet. And yet! She is making a show where commodified young women have a catfight over a man.

Boy, we need help. But don't look to other intellectuals. In his book The Chemistry Between Us neuroscientist Larry Young says we like to believe we're not driven by our basic instincts, because we have so little mastery over them, but despite bulging frontal lobes, we are all just randy prairie voles.

Oh, stuff it. I am officially going back to being a bluestocking. I just can't be bothered any more. I have let my hair return to its natural jungle-like state. I have put my -8.5 diopter glasses on again. I am going to start a Bitter Women's Book Club. Any bone-tired, disillusioned, frizzy-haired sisters want to join me?

Why no typing option

It is exam season. The muscles in my hand are aching just thinking about all that writing. Why are students not able to sit their exams by writing on a keyboard rather than by longhand? Who writes in longhand these days anyway?

Knowing some young people who have dyslexia and other learning disabilities, it seems that exams demanding long essay-type answers written out in longhand are measuring something other than whether the candidate truly understands the material.

This time last year, I sat a psychology exam and bought a fountain pen so I could write faster, yet I can type 120 words a minute.

It would be perfectly feasible to set up lecture theatres with laptops that are "clean" and not connected to the internet. It certainly should be an option for students who have dyslexia.