If you think your passport is a shocker, you should see mine | Rebecca Whitfield-Baker

Don’t like your passport photo? Suck it up, writes Rebecca Whitfield-Baker, after learning the hard way that things can always get worse.

To borrow some words from the fabulous Jane Austen “it is a truth universally acknowledged” that no one looks good in a passport photo.

But there are degrees of not looking good, from an unflattering, unsmiling snapshot to, well, an absolute shocker.

Mine firmly falls in the latter with the response of family and friends to it ranging from politely-constrained comments of “Oh dear”, and “That doesn’t look like you” to laugh out louds, “Geez, that really is nasty” – and “You really need to get another one”.

The reality is, it looks like I’ve had Hard Day’s Night – and then some – but the intimidating lodging lady at the passport-accredited Post Office wasn’t about to let me pose for a second.

Let’s be frank; a great beauty I am not, nor have I ever been.

Sure, my dear late Dad always maintained I was a “picture perfect” baby but then I did arrive 18 months after my poor older brother, born with an elongated, battered and bruised head after a difficult birth. And I’ll admit to being pretty adorable as a chubby, blonde-haired toddler.

These days, as a middle-aged mum who could afford to lose more than a few kilos and undergo a little nip, tuck – and lift – I’ve reached a point in life where I am mostly not too fazed by how I look; more concerned with the health and happiness of my teenage sons and treasuring time spent with true friends, preferably sharing a bubbles or two.

Still, an ill-placed moment of vanity has left me living in a rising state of panic for several weeks, causing me to wake with middle-of-the night heart palpitations.

To celebrate the end of the school years’ era, I booked a trip to Vietnam, to be our family’s first-ever overseas getaway, fitted between work commitments and the boys’ cricket season and footy pre-season training seasons.

A travel agent was sought, a destination decided on and airfares and accommodation paid for.

I can’t remember looking forward to a holiday more, nor the chance to celebrate the kids’ achievements so far and raise a glass to their futures.

The Baker family is planning a trip to the Vietnamese island of Phu Quoc, to celebrate the end of school years. Photo: iStock

That is, until I hit a significant snag. As advised by the travel agent, we’d applied for our visas a month out from our departure date.

The boys’ were approved within days. Mine, however, was denied.

Here comes the red-faced – “you can’t be serious, Mum?” – part. The application process required a “portrait” image to be uploaded alongside a landscape passport shot.

Given it didn’t specifically specify my passport one be used, I attached, well, a more flattering vertical shot – surely they’d be a little more willing to welcome me to their country if I looked a little more mum-next-door than down-and-out dope peddler?

Wrong. The application was promptly returned – and rejected; in my bout of self-absorbed air-headedness, alongside the rogue portrait picture I’d also managed to attach the wrong passport page.

(OK, it amazes me too at times that I have muddled through motherhood – not to mention adulthood – and raised two pretty decent humans along the way.)

Whitfield-Baker in a recent work “headshot” shoot. Picture: Keryn Stevens

The passport photo shocker ... less ‘mum-next-door than down-and-out dope peddler’.

Suitably chastened and humbled, I immediately uploaded the correct imagery and waited for my visa to be processed – then waited some more.

While it did move from “amending” to “in processing”, that is where it stubbornly stayed, like the spinning “wheel of death” despite many, many attempts to reach the travel destination’s immigration department through a support email and phone hotline.

I even tried reaching out to the relevant consular services, also to no avail. Nada. Nothing. Duck’s egg.

Whitfield-Baker with laid-back son Harry, 17, ahead of his year 12 formal earlier this year ... the trip away marks the family’s end-of-school era. Picture: supplied

As the weeks passed and the days to our planned departure neared, my blood pressure shot up.

What would it mean if I couldn’t actually go on our family holiday with my family?

It has to be said my 19-year-old didn’t see the holiday-without-mum scenario as so problematic while my laid-back 17-year-old urged, “Chill, Mum,” sharing his life philosophy that “stressing doesn’t do anything but cause you stress”.

Finally, I sheepishly called my travel agent and was advised to start the visa application process … from the beginning.

This week, just days from our planned departure, an official email related to my second application landed in my inbox.

Hyperventilating I had a dear colleague – my office bemused by my brought-upon-myself predicament – check its ruling.

It seems the good people of Vietnam have deemed it OK for me to come for a visit – my attractiveness, or not – clearly beside the point.