A woman's body is never good enough

YESTERDAY was an annoying kind of day: the heat, the smog, the crack-of dawn 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 breastfed 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 potbelly, 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.

And how us vain men suffer, too

BY SIMON MILLS

I AM very vain, but not in the way you might think. You see, I am vain in the kind of self-loathing way that means I hardly ever look in the mirror, because I find my own reflection such a constantly deteriorating disappointment.

I studiously avoid photos of myself wherever I go. Come to our house and you'll find hardly a single picture of me anywhere; it is as if Stalin has doctored our family albums and erased me from the records.

Three or four times a day, I force myself to have a peek in the mirror, just so I don't embarrass myself or others by my shambolic appearance, but otherwise I treat mirrors as others treat stray pit bulls.

Like a lot of men, I have this wildly over-ambitious, deluded image in my mind of what I look like. In my head, I look a bit like a young Robert Redford or Jeff Bridges in The Last Picture Show. I am physically taut, lean, wind-tanned and roguishly groomed.

It is only when I catch myself in a shop window, or see a picture of myself that the illusion is shattered and I have to face the ugly truth.

Then, and only then, do I start looking at myself critically. I see a stocky build that could easily run to fat, an ugly lantern jaw, threadbare hair, rugby player's legs, calves like hams, "English" teeth in need of a fortune's worth of dental work, a shovel-load of arse, dinner-lady hips, feet like calloused galoshes.

How I wish my twisted vanity was as uncomplicated as, say Reese Witherspoon's.

Now, I would never suggest that women should let their imperfections reduce them to neurotic obsessives, but I believe that women like young Reese are not whiny and compliment-fishing when they moan on about their saggy arms and undersized breasts, but just much more honest than men.

There is a beautiful, pragmatic bravery in female vanity and British men could do a lot worse than to copy it.

Yet when it comes to being body-conscious, British men have a convenient get-out clause because excessive male vanity is considered a sign of weakness in our country.

HOWEVER, now that I have long since passed the age of 32, which Alan Bennett once pinpointed as the time when a man's body, "whether it embarrasses you or not, begins to embarrass other people", I find myself becoming more conscious of not "letting myself go". I will cycle around instead of using cabs, I will go on walking holidays, avoid puddings and excessive pints of calorific lager.

A man's body, left to its own devices, is a lummoxy, ungainly, socially awkward piece of work at the best of times - hairy in all the wrong places and beset with comical protrusions.

If it has to be tolerated by others it should be, if at all possible, slim(ish), flatstomached and, God willing, fully- operational. Every modern man's duty is to keep himself looking presentable - before he becomes an embarrassment to himself and others.

SO WHAT DO THE CELEBRITIES

"Even now I look in the mirror and hate the way I look."

VICTORIA BECKHAM

"I have cellulite. I have stretch marks. My breasts are not what they were" REESE WITHERSPOON

"My God, there are so many parts of my body that I don't like. I have body issues just like every other woman. I'm insecure. I never think I'm thin enough or my breasts are big enough."

GWYNETH PALTROW

(c)2004. Associated Newspapers Ltd.. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.