Moi? Breast obsessed?

We've all seen her, that confident young woman in tight jeans or even tighter skirts whose bust - and you don't need a tape measure to check - seems to be double her hips.

It used to be quite a rare sight, a cause for racing male hormones and green-eyed jealousy from women who cared about that sort of thing. Why should she be so lucky? Why did nature favour her with that most unusual combination, a slim body and large breasts?

But things have changed and being born lucky isn't the biggest factor any more. Lately, when I get on the bus and sit opposite a big-bosomed, slimfigured beauty, I ask myself meanly: 'Wonderbra or surgical enhancement?'

This week there was the announcement of another alternative, a bra with a suction device which, worn for ten hours daily for ten weeks, encourages the breasts to move up a cup size.

Does that sound tempting? Not to me. But I've no doubt that the same kind of woman - or, more likely, girl - who is spending her earnings on extra special projectile style bras or throwing even more money around to go under the surgeon's knife, will find it very interesting indeed.

In the U.S., two million women have opted for 'breast augmentation' - twice as many as get face-lifts - and where America proceeds, we follow.

So what's going on here? Why can't we be happy with the bosom Nature dealt us?

Let's start with basics. Breasts are designed to feed babies - or so I always believed until recently when an eminent scientist pointed out that the rest of the ape family do very nicely in this area without protruding, balloonshaped feeding bottles.

There is a counter argument that since human babies don't have flat noses like apes they might suffocate without a bit of air around the edges. But, frankly, with young women putting off having babies later and later, the breast-feeding argument for a bigger bust looks flimsy.

That leaves us with the reason most people believe: men prefer big breasts, the bigger the better. It's open for discussion whether this preference is because they're soft and squidgy and change shape when touched like some toy or because most men are really only grownup babies anyway.

It doesn't seem to matter, the thinking seems to go - if that's what men want, then let's give it to them.

After World War II, Japanese women who were keen to attract GI boyfriends pioneered the breast implant fashion, with dangerous and often unsuccessful results. That was money speaking, a nasty form of male Western imperialism which might be best forgotten.

But is it the clue to what is happening here now? Do young, wage-earning, generally goodlooking, reasonably well-endowed women feel so miserable if their bust measurement falls below the Dolly Parton level that they're willing to pay any price, financial or physical, for a deeper cleavage?

If that's true, the desire for a 40C may not have as much to do with men as at first seemed obvious. Most certainly it is about a lack of confidence and low self-esteem.

It seems extraordinary that today's young women who have been raised on a culture of independence and 'girl power' - the first generation, in fact, to have grown up with feminism - should, underneath their apparently confident exteriors, be so chronically insecure that they are obsessed with having perfect breasts.

They see a simple equation of 'big breasts equals happiness', not stopping to think that perhaps if they were secure in themselves, happiness would follow - without their having to risk their health on implants or suffer the discomfort of 'Hello Boys' bras.

It seems that the primitive sexual forces that persuade women to do everything in their power to attract a mate are, at least in some cases, still stronger than the feminist ideology that preaches that women's lives should no longer revolve around pleasing men.

It is also a strange irony that the scourge of young modern women, anorexia, which hits shy girls and beautiful princesses alike, quickly wastes the bosom to nothing.

And yet, in both cases, I feel certain the root of the behaviour is the same: I want to be beautiful, I want to be perfect. And I want to be beautiful in the way that fashion decrees: narrow (not very good for child-bearing) hips and large male-attracting breasts.

So are real men so stuck on the bigger the better when it comes to real women? A recent survey of undergraduates shown naked breasts produced a surprise result: the women all opted for a C cup and the men for a B cup.

This leads us to the question of quality or quantity. For the truth is that a smaller breast is more likely to bounce merrily in perky invitation than its larger cousin on whom gravity has a greater affect. In other words, it sags.

In my experience, this has always been a consolation for the smaller breasted who pass the pencil test - when placed under the bosom, it immediately falls to the ground - while the more generously endowed could wear the pencil for a day without noticing it.

One of the oddest assumptions in the great breast debate is that a women has the same size breasts throughout her life. Anyone who has reached my age has passed through enough different sizes to fill their cupboards with once used bras that might come in useful once again.

The size fluctuates, often quite radically, according to weight loss and gain, of course, but also due to youth, marriage, the Pill, pregnancy, illness and HRT. It's probably linked to happiness and unhappiness, too. Breasts are very sensitive bits of the bodies.

So can fashion be persuaded to leave them alone? Probably not. Not for a while anyway.

History might provide a lesson. From the Renaissance until the end of the 19th century, give or take a ruff or a kerchief, women's breasts were a major part of their sex appeal.

The Marquise de Montespan, the favourite mistress of Louis XIV, the Sun King, was painted famously with her gorgeous white breasts almost hanging over the top of her bodice. In portraits of other women, they popped right over.

There was nothing like the sight of a peeping nipple to arouse the royal libido.

But the Marquise de Montespan and most other women of that era were pregnant constantly. She had nine babies in not many more years and everyone knows what pregnancy does to the bosom - particularly when there's a wet nurse to do the feeding and stop the sagging. A big bosom was the easiest asset to acquire.

The truth is that most women are funny shapes and very few are perfect all over. But most women have something that is perfect.

When I go to the Turkish baths, I'm amazed at the differences in women's shapes.

Big round busts like something off a Southern India temple carving sit next to little pointy ones. Large, sloping hips are side by side with angular, bony ones. Long legs, fat legs like noble tree trunks, short legs, thin legs, broad shoulders, narrow shoulders, big prominent bottoms, little flat ones.

The mix is unending. None is quite like the popular ideal female, but they all have their own character.

It would be sad if this desire for physical perfection, this obsession of young women with having Playboy breasts, leads to such differences being eradicated.

How much better if young women learned to have the confidence to celebrate their bodies, whatever the size and shape of their breasts. Independence should at least have taught them that.