We live in a fashion-obsessed world. The media adds to this obsession by giving much more coverage to fashion and the private lives of models, than to more serious issues. The advertising industry too adds to this frenzy by using only models and film stars to endorse everything from Ayurvedic medicines to invertors.

As a result, women are increasingly influenced by the images of the anorexic models they see on TV, on billboards, in magazines, etc. They begin to think that female beauty means lanky, tall, stick-like figures without any curves whatsoever.

But is this real female beauty? Renee Zellweger had to put on 28 pounds to play the part of Bridget Jones in the hit movie Bridget Jones' Diary and can anyone deny that she looked absolutely gorgeous? Similarly, women who are plump - who don't look as if they came from a famine-stricken area are often ravishing.

Kate Winslet is another example of a curvy woman who looks good both in and out of clothes. Can anyone forget how wonderful she looked in Titanic?

People may have different ideas about which women they consider beautiful, but Kate Winslet is sure to be on everyone's list. And Kate's shape is closer to the shape of the average woman than to that of a ramp model. Elfin and cute Kylie Minogue, who wins fans not just with her singing but also with her personality, is another one sure to win votes. Tall and strong stars like Lucy Lawless may seem less feminine in the traditional sense, but she too has her admirers.

DESIRE TO BE THIN

But, in spite of having these role models, most women still yearn to be thin. What they do not realise that thin is not beautiful as far as men are concerned. Are there any flat-chested, pole-thin women in Playboy, for instance?

Geri Halliwell, a member of the Spice Girls singing group, was fantastic till she brought out her first solo album. But soon afterwards, she lost weight and began to look far too thin and gaunt. She lost her great looks and many of her admirers.

Men like women who have a sexy body. They are repulsed by thin, bony, assertive women with small breasts who smoke and exercise obsessively to keep their shape. Of course, the slim look attracts too but only when it is natural in a young woman. Self-made wrecks don't attract!

But teenage girls and young women don't always understand this. They are totally influenced by the pictures of the models that they see and by the views that men in the arts, music and fashion industries, who are often gay, express in interviews.

What does the fact that these men are gay have to do with it? Everything! Gay men do not find women sexually attractive and the models these men choose reveal this. Their models hardly look like women. They are androgynous.

They are women but they look like men - they are tall and have just token breasts and this is why gay men find them attractive.

By constantly praising such models, calling them truly beautiful and using only this androgynous look in fashion and advertising, the gay men in the world of arts, music and fashion are brainwashing women to think the same way.

Men want to be thought to be cool and so they want to have women that other men want. Since the image of the perfect woman is one who is thin to the point of looking anorexic and who is as flat as a pancake, the men then begin to want stick-thin trophy wives/lovers that other men find beautiful, on their arms.

As a result, they too end up disliking curves. So, the image created and sustained by the gay men and bitter older women (the fags and hags) who run the fashion world gets reinforced and accepted.

THE CONSEQUENCE

This often has sad results for the models who try to bring this image to life. Take, for example, Kate Moss, a famous British model. As she tried to live an artificial life in which putting on weight meant the end of her career, she took to drugs. Another fallout of the unnatural and oppressive demand being made on women to remain young and beautiful all their lives, is the demand for cosmetic surgery. Pamela Anderson became a star after she got silicone implants in her breasts. Hers is the very antithesis of the skinny look and men love her. These are men who are robustly heterosexual and don't care a hoot about models or high fashion.

What women should realise is that inner beauty is more important than being in line with whatever the fashion industry has decided is the look to be considered beautiful.

Currently the gay men in the fashion industry have decreed that the angular, thin, disdainful, self-absorbed and terminally shallow look is in. But this decree need not be accepted.

There is no one definition of beauty. No one can decree that this is beauty and nothing else is. My genes have made me tall, model-thin and flatchested, but I don't feel beautiful.

As female photographer Leslie Delano has said, all women are beautiful. As for women with curves, at least you can roll over in bed with them without worrying that you will cut yourself on their hips or shoulder blades.