How I became an invisible woman: I used to turn heads, says EVE POLLARD. This is what happened to my looks decade by decade... and it's led to to a stunning realisation

When I was 71, I wrote about a poignant moment for women, up there with their first kiss and heartbreak: the moment the wolf whistles stop. While many regard the hackneyed catcalls from building sites as an anachronistic bore, many more admit to a moment of sadness when the silence finally and gradually sets in. As one of the UK’s first women newspaper editors and a proud feminist, I lamented the moment I knew I wasn’t turning heads any more.

Ten years on, however, my perspective has shifted again. Here is my chart of my slide into invisibility... and how I feel about it now. Aged 25. I always swear this is the year my chest grew and heads started turning. Here I am, aged 25, newly married and working as assistant to the fashion editor on a teen magazine. I always swear this is the year my chest grew and heads started turning. I never thought that my body was all that special. There was far less you could do with yourself back then.

My hair was still brown, my make-up, unless the beauty department gave me some, was from Woolworths. I even borrowed my clothes from the magazine’s fashion cupboard – which was a possibility in the Sixties as many teenage models were not nearly as thin and flat-chested as they are now. Size 10 was normal. Did I want to turn heads? No, I just wanted to be fashionable and have fun!. Aged 32. Wearing a Biba dress and knee-length boots before interviewing the author Harold Robbins.

It’s 1978 and I’m 32, and the mother of a little girl, now the TV presenter Claudia Winkleman. There was no statutory policy in place for having a baby so I returned to work when she was six weeks old. I remember I felt very unfit, unsexy and truly unattractive. Other women bloom in pregnancy – not me. But I was now truly entrenched in a man’s world. Testosterone-filled newsrooms made me feel I had to get back into shape and look attractive.

While I knew it was my ideas and energy that would keep me in my job, as a rare woman, working alongside men, I knew I could not afford to look unattractive or unkempt. I couldn’t be invisible. They wore their uniform, smart suits and ties. I had to don mine. There was only one thing for it. The bottle. The blonde bottle. But as you can see, this was when subtle highlights and smooth shiny hair were much harder to achieve than now.

But I did have my fantastic, close-fitting Biba dress and knee-length purple boots. The uniform worked (I’m pictured here about to interview the author Harold Robbins). I look fashionable and confident and am discovering the power of clothes. Aged 35. At an exclusive star-studded dinner, for which I’d bought a long pregnancy evening gown. I am in my mid-30s and very happy. Yes, my cleavage is huge, but what you don’t see is an even larger bulge hidden under the table: I am pregnant with my son Oliver some 18 months after my second marriage to newspaper editor Nicholas Lloyd.

The event was an exclusive star-studded dinner, for which I’d bought a long pregnancy evening gown – it looked like a tent Pocahontas might have lived in. As I left the bedroom I took one look at me in the tent and decided no, I didn’t want to be invisible. So I poured myself into an old, low-cut dress. As I arrived, I was introduced to the late, great Larry Hagman, at the height of his fame as JR in Dallas. When my husband arrived, he was ushered to the other end of the long dining table next to the no doubt long-suffering Mrs Hagman.

My triumphant feeling may have been immature, boastful and completely shallow, but being pregnant and not invisible, for just one evening, was great. Aged 39. Dressed up to the nines with Sir Nicholas Lloyd at a black-tie dinner in 1984. Togged up for a black-tie event in 1984, the old-fashioned mullet-type hairstyle and make-up make me look older than my 39 years. Dressed up to the nines I should have, as it were, carried all before me.

But the picture does not lie. A heavy workload, husband, children and a widowed father left me exhausted. Like a lot of young women, I may not have been invisible, but I was to myself. Yes, I look like I have got more front than Brighton – all of it garlanded with sequins – but at that stage I was working so hard, I would have given up any male attention in the world for a full night’s sleep.

Aged 46. Long fair hair is trendy at the time of this photo, but should really be worn by a younger face. With hindsight there is a slight desperation in the very blonde look. And I fear, now well into my 40s, I may have crossed the line into invisibility. Long fair hair is trendy, but should really be worn by a younger face, and here I’m not as slim as I once was. Older chaps who are still interested in women will be complimentary, but I am aware that there is an army of fresh young women out there.