Women make women hate their bodies. Men? Well we would love the opportunity to love your body! Women bad! Men good!

But just how skinny is Victoria Beckham? How would it feel if she sat on your lap? Would she be heavier than a kitten? If you hugged her would she break? We do know that she wears jeans with a minuscule 23-inch waist - the size, apparently, of a seven-year-old child (it is also, as it happens, the precise circumference of my head).

VB is not alone, of course, but merely the leading exponent of a New Look which has come to dominate our lives. Other exemplars include Lindsay Lohan, Mischa Barton, Nicole Richie, Kate Bosworth, Amy Winehouse - women relatively new on the celebrity radar who skitter across the pages of magazines, coat hangers furnished with tennis-ball boobs and expensive shoes, not a shred of fat to share among them. You might not give a tossed salad how much these bony birds weigh. You might even agree with Kate Hudson (who recently won a libel action against the UK National Enquirer magazine for implying she had an eating disorder) that it is none of our business. But it is. It matters because hyper-thin has somehow become today's celebrity standard and, as a result - almost without us noticing - the goalposts have moved for us all.

By the way, I find none of the above mentioned women attractive. They are horribly underweight and they look like they would break if I touched them. That is definitely not a turn on! (Look at poor little Mischa she needs a sandwich stat!)

When a man loves a women he loves all of her. We love you when you are pregnant. We love you when you are wrinkled. We love you when you are sick. We love you, not just the body that houses you.

When I have been in love, that love has never been altered by a woman's physical changes. Now personality changes are a different matter. I think that relationships are damaged far more from the exchanging of words with sharp edges then the losing or gaining of weight. Sometimes the hurt that we inflict to win an argument is the pain that makes our heart lose its feeling.

Yes, sticks and stones do break my bones, but words can break my heart.