One of the funniest – and in my opinion, falsest – things women have long said is ‘I’m doing it for myself – not for men’ about improving the way they look. Men have rarely said the same about women, which reflects that men have never been principally valued for their looks, historically, as they generally earned far more money than women. Women had to look as pretty as possible in order for a man to pick them and support them financially, thus my brilliant line ‘Men are judged as the sum of their parts; women are judged as some of their parts.’ 

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Women said it about small things, like refusing to let their grey hair grow out, and big things, like full-on and extremely painful surgical face-lifts. They said it lots about cosmetic facial adjustments over the past couple of decades, but we all knew it was a lie. A decade ago, I knew a 60-year-old woman who had a bunch of ‘tweakments’ done ‘for me’ but when drunk confessed to me her intent of finding a rich man to fund her unutterably lazy lifestyle. I had to tell her – it would have been cruel not to (and no fun) – that rich men tend not to want sexagenarians on benefits, but rather young trophy girlfriends with jobs and status. Our friendship did not survive what I saw as my healthy level of candour and she’s still looking. 

However, things have changed somewhat since then. Over the past few years, the sexes have separated to an unforeseen degree; not just in the West (so the usual bitter male suspects can’t blame whiny white women) but to an even greater extent in countries like Japan, where traditional sex roles have been maintained to a far greater extent for far longer. And where did it get them? 30 per cent of men and nearly 45 per cent of women aged 16-24 ‘not........

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