Why do so many women quest after the perfect body at the expense of a good meal? Julia Watson thinks we should all stop moaning about calories and get a life

Women don’t seem to like being women any more. From years of Androgyny Waif, all boy buttocks and flat chest, we’ve gone to Construction Site Girl – rippling hardbody with muscle-buttressed boobs.

Who is it for? Bridget Jones may have spent most of her time and diary focused on her excess calories, but the resulting shape didn’t seem to put off either the Hugh Grant cad-and-bounder or the Colin Firth pill of a hero. It was that cow of a pencil-shaped publisher from New York, not one of her two suitors, who cattily observed Bridget Jones was fat.

Madonna went voluntarily from Marilyn Monroe siren to civic-realism statue, all sinew and brute force, devoting as many hours to refining her body each day as the rest of us spend earning our livings. Now Liz Hurley, who once gave herself curves by sticking loo rolls in her back pockets, has gone brutal on us. And whatever happened to bouncy bunny, Geri Halliwell? And why?

Let’s all struggle to keep thin. What fun. Let’s not sit over a glass of wine (70 calories) setting the world to rights. Let’s spend our free time at the gym sweating into Schwarznaggerettes. And if we haven’t got the time or the money, we can just stop eating altogether. It’s empowering. As sexy as a pair of Christian Louboutin red-soled, studded-heel stilettos.

But for whom? What man wants to cuddle up to someone whose body leaves blisters on his hands? Or who could toss him over the back of the sofa with a single armlift?

The gloriously female Nigella Lawson recently commented, ‘Women are only intimidated by thinness.’ So it’s likely this is about that delicate bitchy balance in female relationships: if you’re up, I’m down. Thinness is about control.

Left at our proper genetic weight, we clearly don’t seem to like ourselves. It doesn’t say much for collective self-esteem when the shape we aspire to, a shape promoted by magazines and celebrities, is not a womanly one.

Why does eating make women feel guilty? What is wrong with giving your body the pleasure of food? Those Caesar-Salad-no-cheese-no-croutons ladies-who-lunch make deadly companions. What is their message? ‘I can deprive myself more zealously than you can?’ They can’t be much fun on a date either. If you were a man, who would you prefer to spend the rest of the evening with? A woman who shunts leaves around her plate, or one who digs in with relish, rolling her tongue around her lips to catch the last squidge of sauce?

Thin women develop a bizarre approach to food. Stick insect Tara Palmer Tomkinson eats nothing. But when she does lift a fork, she’s known to tuck into Eggs Benedict and Banoffee Pie at Chelsea’s chic 24-hour caff, Vingt-Quatre.

And the thin girl’s favourite telly entertainment? The food programmes. Cooking is safe to watch, not do – just look at what might happen. Flour-milk-and-butter is as likely to transform her into nannyish Delia Smith as turn into béchamel. Chopping chillies will have her geyser-gushing like Nancy Lam. And don’t even think about the Two Fat Ladies. At least the title was upfront.

Role models for the modern woman? I don’t think so. And why are male telly chefs totally tasty, slim and normal (red dwarf Anthony Worral Thompson excepted)? Think of Jamie Oliver, Peter Gordon, Gary Rhodes, Gordon Ramsey… They cook, they eat.

Learning to cook, a skill which body robots apparently reject, demystifies the eating process, clarifying not just what to eat, but how to eat. Eating with enjoyment doesn’t have to make you fat. It’s not as if your body wouldn’t naturally balk at restaurant-style meals every day of the week.

Try to come up with any book, painting, statue or movie that suggests thinness is sexy. In the classic film of Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones, Albert Finney sits at a table with a lusty, busty wench and for minutes on end, they shovel and guzzle dish after dish, grunting with excitement and greed. Babette’s Feast, Like Water for Chocolate, Chocolat were all about the power of food to stimulate passion.

Thin women know food can be comforting and sedating. That’s why it’s dangerous. They like soft-bodied women. They’re not threatening and can be viewed with a smidgin of contempt: ‘Whatever happened to her willpower?’

Conversations about calorie content and fats are the most boring in the universe. They’re a terrible self-indulgence, a celebration of the thinny’s tiresome introspection, designed to leave them feeling brittle and triumphant and full of smoke and coffee.

Rational, well-balanced choice won’t make you fat, and eating with visible pleasure makes you good company. And content.

The thing about food is it’s known to keep you alive. But perhaps that isn’t what women want. Because then they’ll grow old.

Do you think diet bores should get a life? Or is the writer being unfair? Tell us what you think!