A woman's body never good enough

Yesterday was an annoying kind of day: the heat, the smog, the crack-ofdawn appointment with my dentist. But it was during a sticky bus ride home that my blood pressure hit extravagant new levels. I opened a newspaper, and there it was: yet another Hollywood actress droning on - and on - about how truly horrible she thinks she looks.

"I have cellulite," says Reese Witherspoon, star of Legally Blonde. "I have stretch marks. My breasts are not what they were before I breast-fed two children. It makes me nervous when I see a woman with her midriff showing. I would never do that on purpose, and if it happened by accident I'd be mortified. If I ever have to do a bikini scene, it will become a kaftan scene."

Beside these words was a photograph of Witherspoon, swathed in about eight million miles of pewter silk. How did she look? Good enough to eat, actually.

There is nothing in the world more irritating than listening to a gorgeous woman listing her many physical deficiencies - faults that, to anyone other than her, are invisible, not to say nonexistent. Then again, there cannot be a woman alive who has never been guilty of the same sin.

There are two reasons for this. First, because most of us really do believe that we look awful - or at the very least that our backsides are too big - no matter how many times we are told otherwise (Ms Witherspoon is, after all, gracing the cover of the new issue of Vanity Fair - which is hardly a job for any old moose).

Second, because nice girls - well-brought up girls - do not boast or even, alas, exude more confidence than is strictly polite. The sad truth is that the only thing more irritating than someone great-looking putting themselves-down is someone greatlooking bigging themselves up.

I am definitely not great looking but, in a certain light - candlelight - I sort of look okay (see, the self-deprecation has kicked in already). What's more, I have always believed that a girl should take as much pride in her accomplishments - her education, her career, her friends - as in what she sees in the mirror every morning. So, mostly, I tootle about feeling perfectly content with my lot.

Okay, my stout northern knees do not - and will never - look at their best peeking out from beneath a denim miniskirt. But in a longer length, or in trousers, I look, well, fine. I catch sight of myself in a shop window and, while I don't exactly tremble with admiration (unlike some men I can think of, who are forever casting longing glances at their own reflections), neither do I howl with pain. It could be worse - and even if it couldn't, only the kind of girls I despise are too busy starving themselves to get on and enjoy life.

And yet, when I am having a bad-self day, I can be as ridiculous-about my body as any Hollywood star.

Oh, where to begin? At the top, I guess. My nose, as my brother is forever reminding me, is distinctly beaky. ("What's for supper?" I used to ask my mother as a teenager. "Cuttlefish for you!" my brother would shout.) My chin, inherited from my father, is so weak as to be almost nonexistent.

Moving down to the midriff area, I think I'm with Reese on this one, in spite of all the sit-ups I do in the park: my pot-belly, for this is what lurks beneath my T-shirt, is to be revealed only to those I love, and who love me back. I have already mentioned my legs. And last, but certainly not least: my bottom. In the words of a man close to me, my backside has "a certain grandeur". He insists that he is not using this word in a pejorative sense, but I am not so sure. It looks pretty damn big to me.

There is, however, one major difference between Reese and I. At least I know when to shut up. Worrying about your saggy breasts in the privacy of your own bathroom is one thing. Boring everyone else with the details is quite another.

Of course it pains me to know how lacking in selfesteem most women are. But, unlike the majority of glossy magazine editors, I do not think there is much solace to be had in the knowledge that even the very beautiful among us are similarly afflicted. Witherspoon is supremely talented; for her performance in Election alone, she'll always have a place in my affections.

But her words, even if born of genuine feeling, serve only to perpetuate the whole miserable cycle - that, in this society, a woman's body is never good enough, and that even if it is (even if a dozen studio bosses think it is), it is her sisterly duty not to admit as much.