Skinniness is for puritans

The latest edition of Glamour (the poor woman's Elle) is full of photos from that magazine's recent awards night. They include shots of Teri Hatcher of Desperate Housewives fame, looking haggard and gaunt.

Elsewhere, the cover of a new news magazine aimed at women, First, showed a picture of Victoria Beckham and the claim that she's a dress size six.

This month, she was voted the best dressed and most iconic woman for women in a poll by More magazine, whilst, according to Wikipedia, another poll saw her selected as the second most desirable body in the world.

Now this isn't a 'get at Victoria/Teri' article – the problem is that they are not unique – but are concentration camp victims going to be the next pin-ups?

Is it any wonder that girls as young as seven are worrying about their bodies and as young as nine are dieting?

Not only is it unattractive, it's also unhealthy. A doctor, interviewed on a recent documentary about extreme thinness, said of Beckham that, if she carried on like this, she'd be dead by 55.

So where on earth did this obscene idea of beauty come from?

It brings to mind a piece of feminist theory that has often seemed to be on the fringes of feminism: that the ultra-skinny woman is a physical realisation of the desire of (male-dominated) society for women to waste as little space as possible.

But here's another thought: a few years ago, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Dr James Watson concluded that, assuming they were generally happy and confident, bigger women had better sex lives.

The reason was down to chemistry. Endorphins, those lovely hormones that are released during sex, are produced by body fat. Ergo, the more fat you have, the more endorphins you get.

Are sexually confident women such a threat to a male-dominated society? Does female sexuality have to be quashed?

Are extremely skinny women – who often appear androgynous and/or childlike – therefore less sexually threatening in a world where we (theoretically) have sex equality?

The mainstream media is full of sex, but this is essentially hetero male-oriented; generally, the idea of the available (to a man) woman is used to sell things, not the sexually confident and assertive woman. Indeed, when Sophie Dahl, at size 16, posed nude and in an assertive pose for a perfume advert, it caused such a row that the posters had to be withdrawn.

Some of the objections were also clearly from other women, possibly feeling threatened themselves by such imagery: possibly even feeling that respectable women don't 'do' sex – a hangover from the days of the asexual 'English Rose'.

But who else would such benefit from the idea that skinny=beautiful? The diet, beauty, fitness and fashion industries for a start.

Never mind 'keep 'em lean, keep 'em mean', it's a case of keeping them lean and keeping them vulnerable and under-confident and constantly guilty and fretting about their figures. And spending accordingly. And in the jungle frenzy that this creates, in the battle to look like a stick insect, women can be meanest of all to each other.

But putting all that aside, how sexy would it be to take a woman on a date to a restaurant and then watch her pick at a salad? That doesn't exactly scream out that she's going to a sensual sensation in other departments. Such reluctance to eat and to be seen to enjoy eating might fill your average, joyless puritan with a warm glow, but normal, healthy people shouldn't be scared of sensual pleasure.

Sod the unsensual, unsexy calorie-counted, puritanical tyranny of dieting; bring on a plate of excellent seafood and aïoli, with seriously chilled white wine and a crème brûlée to follow.

And let the endorphins flow.