Kim shining as Timotei’s golden oldie

Forget the skinny blonde thing frolicking in a waterfall, curvy Kim Wilde is the latest incarnation of the Timotei girl. Eluned Bowen reports

Remember the goddess-like Timotei girl of the 1980s? She was a young, nymph-like creature who washed her long, blonde locks in an exotic waterfall. How things have changed. Roll on a couple of decades, and you’ll find the new girl advertising the herbal shampoo’s soapy suds is much less sylph-like – and also twice the age of the original. Eighties pop star Kim Wilde is the new face and body of Timotei, she’s swopped the rainforest fountain for a metal shower in the back garden.

How times have moved on and how much more down to earth we have become. Kim is probably pretty much how the model from 20 years ago looks now. She too has probably piled on a few pounds and is spending hours in the bathroom making sure each silver hair is restored back to a honey shade before anyone notices. Kim, who has nowadays turned her attention to being a gardening expert, is still looking good for her age. The 44-year-old Kids In America songstress may not be as hip as she once was. And she’s certainly not such a blonde sexbomb. But she’s natural looking, she’s a mum, and she likes everything to do with nature.

Kim is described as the modern incarnation of the blonde 80s Timotei girl we all remember fondly. In fact, she is the real-life vintage version. She is the Eighties girl who has grown up, settled down and traded in boozy nightclubs for a night in her slippers in front of the telly. The Timotei advert marks a trend in advertising aimed at women. While commercials for the boys take a U-turn away from the politically correct and applaud impossibly slim but busty types, adverts for women are focussed firmly on normal people with cellulite and wobbly bits. Dove beauty products are now advertised by “ordinary” women who are not just tall and skinny models. Women who are mums or even grannies, who have jobs or are housewives. Women who are more than a size six.

They don’t conform to the boring stereotypes of what is attractive and have more important things to worry about than the amount of calories in lettuce. OK, so we’re never going to find real women gracing the pages of lads mags or on the catwalks of Paris. But at least we can be reminded that it isn’t these plastic self-obsessed people who are out shopping in the supermarket every day, and finally advertisers have started to notice.