ALEXANDRA SHULMAN: Emotionally battered, physically scarred... and I've put on weight. But I'm still in my bikini at 68, and this is why you should follow my lead

The sky today is a magnificent cloudless blue, mirrored by the Aegean Sea outside the house where, nine years ago, in 2017, I took a photograph, and then posted it on Instagram.This careless snap developed into a public furore known by my family, and some others, as Bikini-gate.To recap: I was in the bedroom I was sharing with David – my then boyfriend, now husband – staying with friends in Greece. I had run upstairs to grab a book and some suntan lotion for an afternoon boat trip.I was in a wonderfully happy mood. We were planning to swim in the beautiful bays you can reach only by sea, and was loving being with friends in such a gorgeous spot.On a whim, I took a snap of myself wearing a Boden bikini in front of our bedroom mirror.Since I had just come in from the bright sun, my eyes were not completely adjusted to the light so I didn’t examine the picture forensically to see how I looked. On the whole I didn’t do that anyway. I was, I suppose, just wanting to capture a moment of pleasure and fun.Whoosh – I posted it to Instagram.A few hours later we returned from the boat trip and David checked his mobile phone. He looked up from it and said: ‘Alex, Sebastian [a friend then working on this newspaper] says your picture is news. What picture is he talking about?’ 2017: The original 'bikini-gate' shot 2026: Back in the same room at 68I had no idea and went to check my own phone, where I was greeted with a cascade of emails from newspaper editors wanting me to write about the image of me in the Boden swimwear.Crazy as it seemed then – and still does now – the unthinking and completely unfiltered picture of myself with a podgy tummy, several mosquito bites and messy hair was being interpreted as a statement of some kind.However, not of pleasure, as I had seen it, but of being unshackled from the chains of a world that set and perpetuated unrealistic ideals of beauty.Just two months previously I had left my job as editor-in-chief of Vogue. This was what made my posting of such an unguarded image, which some also thought distinctly unflattering, worthy of comment – and not just a single mention.As the days passed, it snowballed. There was a slew of articles about the way older women are portrayed in the media. Many debated the issue of a 59-year-old woman like me wearing a bikini at all.The original Instagram post garnered thousands of likes and hundreds of comments. All that for what I had thought was an innocent holiday snap. But the fact is, it was innocent – or rather I was.Looking back to that afternoon, apart from the unexpected fuss, what I am most aware of now is how I had no idea what the following nine years would contain. How they would be crammed with more momentous personal events than all of the previous 25 years in my editor’s seat combined.Apart from a first marriage and the all-important event of giving birth to my son, that quarter century mostly just rumbled on. Time frequently seemed endless. This past decade has felt different.For this year’s holiday I have packed three bikinis – two from a Portuguese brand and one I picked up a few weeks ago in Italy – and two one-pieces, an emerald from Eres and a tawny brown from Arket.I still love to wear bikinis and each morning put one on immediately to bask in the sun. But the body this swimwear is housing is a very different body to the one in that bikini of 2017.Four years after I took that picture, a cancerous tumour was found under my left breast.I was fortunate to be able to have it removed by keyhole surgery and then be treated by radiotherapy and hormone therapy. But the surgery has left a long scar and a deep dent in that bosom which now hangs lower than the other.Then, three years later, in 2024, just as I had begun to forget about the breast cancer, a completely different cancer was discovered, this one in my colon. That too was removed by a brilliant robot, but has left my torso marked by several short scars.I don’t mind these scars in the slightest and am fortunately blessed with some strange but helpful blind spot which means I don’t experience the lack of confidence so many women express when living in a body that looks so far from the ideal.Nor do my scars make me question my bikini habit. I exposed a far from taut tummy for years, and remain quite nonchalant now it’s laced with scars too, in the same way that I am perfectly happy wearing sleeveless clothes, even though my arms could never be described as finely toned.But the psychological effect of those two cancer diagnoses remains. For some reason, cancer is especially pernicious at leaving you with a deeply penetrating sense of vulnerability. Alexandra at the beach in 1978 Before the cancers, I had regarded myself as being someone fortunately in possession of a strong body and generally good health. That has now changed and I am constantly primed for that same body letting me down.For once you have faced a serious illness, the absurdity of living as though time is limitless suddenly hits you. That blithe expectation of constant good health is replaced by the darker knowledge of your body’s fragility.When I left Vogue all those years ago, I jumped into a completely uncertain future, convinced that leaving was the right thing to do.I had debated with myself for months over this decision but became sure that, in order to have an interesting future, not just a high-profile past, it was time to make the move. I had seen Vogue through the high point of its 100th anniversary and I wasn’t sure what more I could add.Although I didn’t know it at the time, the magazine industry was about to change dramatically, with print sales falling and a greater emphasis on digital content.I had no idea what I would do for work or how I would fill my days but I knew it was time to find out.What I hadn’t seen when attempting to look into the crystal ball was the illness that was to come, and the sense of vulnerability it would bring in its wake. And not just my illness.David, who is 78 and who I’d been with for 13 years by the time I left Vogue, was also diagnosed with a cancer – first three years ago and then again last year.Like me, he is currently in the clear but the way we live our lives has been shaped by an awareness of the fleetingness of it all, and the need to enjoy ourselves while we can. There is no bucket list exactly, but a gentle refrain of ‘if not now, then when?’When I took that photograph in the Boden swimsuit, I was on my first holiday since leaving Vogue.It was a wonderful few months feeling unchained from the obligations of editorship.Although I had used an Instagram account for a few years, I was far less aware than I am now of the way people use it to position themselves in a certain way, to show a carefully curated version of how they wish to be seen and what they wish themselves to be known for.I had mainly used mine to photograph fashion shows, or post pictures of myself with designers and the odd celebrity, along with the occasional domestic content.The furore over Bikini-gate made me see social media differently and understand how information shared on it can be misinterpreted.I still use Instagram as a public photograph album, and I don’t regret anything I have ever posted, but sometimes, clicking through past years’ pictures, there is a melancholy as I see the smiling versions of me with no idea of the onslaught to come. And that doesn’t only apply to illness.This year my mother died.It wasn’t remotely unexpected, but I see the posts about her when she was alive, put up by the family, and the extraordinary woman she was, so full of interest and opinions.I look at the dates and comments and think of how we didn’t know how long we had with her.She died just a few days short of her 99th birthday and had been unwell for several years, but until the very last weeks, she was almost entirely compos mentis. Knowing that she was fading and couldn’t be around for much longer, I spent as many hours as I could with her in the last months, sitting by her bed or chair and filling her in with stories of my days and my family.She may have been diminished but her voice was strong and so was her personality. And now she isn’t here.This holiday is the first I have had without her being alive; without the feeling of concern over leaving her to go abroad and being on high alert about whether she would take a turn for the worse and I would need to rush back. But also knowing that as soon as I landed, I wouldn’t be able to call her to tell her about what we had done, who and what we had seen; without being able to send her the postcard I always wrote from wherever I was.Recently, clearing out her belongings, I discovered she had kept every single one.So that is what the decade had in store for me after my blithe snap in the bedroom I now stand in again: several cancers and a parental death. But also moments of joy, such as marrying David in April, by then my partner of 22 years.He is here with me in Greece and shortly we will once again be going out on the boat.I probably won’t wear a bikini this afternoon.Five years of the hormone treatment I am on for the breast cancer has made me put on weight and, although I don’t mind in the slightest lying around the pool or on the beach in a bikini, I feel a bit less comfortable clambering on and off a boat among a large group – hence the one-pieces in the suitcase.I still love to be on holiday in the sun. I’m writing with a cup of coffee, gazing out over the still sea with no more knowledge of what’s coming down the line than I did back then.But I do know more acutely than I ever did that our days are numbered and that, as they tick on by, we have to make the most of every minute we have.