Rebecca Armstrong: I'll leave the laser porn obsession to Jen, thanks

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There are many things I'm grateful for each day. There's the never-ever-take-for-granted triumvirate of health, family and job, then there's the fact that I don't live under a regime for whom acquiring fondue sets online is more important than not massacring innocent citizens.

I often think about how glad I am that, so far, touch wood, I've never woken up in another period in history by way of some Freaky Friday-style cosmic mishap where my inability to explain how electricity works to 16th-century hard nuts would see me burnt at the stake. (In other esoteric-frets-based-on-Eighties-movies news, I'm also deeply relieved that I've never come round from a bout of amnesia to have signed up for a tour of military duty. As if I were a hybrid of Goldie Hawn in both Private Benjamin AND Overboard).

There's also seldom a week that goes by when I'm not thrilled that my ability to do my job isn't inescapably linked to what I look like. I don't have to starve myself in order to complete assignments like the poor teenage would-be models who were the subject of the recent Girl Model documentary about the dark side of catwalking. I don't have to worry about being pap-shot ready when I leave the house à la Madonna or Beyoncé to prove I haven't lost my musical mojo due to advancing years/sprog creation.

And, thank the lord, I don't have to have my face peeled once a month at great expense (and, I'd hazard, at least medium-grade discomfort) in the manner of Jennifer Aniston, to keep me box-office fresh. In an interview on US TV, the actress 'fessed up to being "obsessed" with "laser porn", which consists of "zapping sun spots" to make her skin look younger with the help of a doctor wielding a laser. She explained that "it's extremely intense – you don't realise you look like a battered burn victim". This age-defying, skin-frying procedure costs £1,000 a pop (zap?), which presumably she can claim on expenses, as her job depends on her looking fresh-faced – once the crispy old bits of skin have dropped off, mind – and youthful.

I might not earn tens of millions of dollars a year (actually, there's no might about it. See my straining overdraft for details) or have my own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, but I can go about my business un-lasered without worrying about being sacked. And that, for me, is one hell of a reason to be cheerful.

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