MY friend says it's her arms that hurt the most.

She's convinced that no matter how hard she works out, the skin that covers her taut biceps is growing daily more slack and wrinkly.

In fact, to listen to her, you would think the flesh hung from her shoulders like swags from a curtain rail.

Add to that the knowledge that she is on a permanent quest for sweaters to hide her "'middle-aged spread", and slim slacks that lengthen her "stumpy little legs"... well, you would be just longing to meet her.

The truth is, my friend is a petite size 10, a number that has long since ceased to grace the labels on the insides of my clothes.

While she may not be in the first flush of youth, she is hardly an unsightly wreck, and the faults she highlights about her body loom large to no one except her.

Of course, she's far from being alone. Like every woman I know, I have a list of bodily eyesores as long as your average wrinkled arm.

So I reckon the last thing we all need is a helpful magazine spread such as the one I saw this weekend when I got home from a day comparing complexes with my friend.

The article featured women from their teens to their sixties, detailing which fashion pleasures they were cramming in while they still could, and which delights they were about to renounce as they hurtled towards senility and the grave.

Dress your age, the article exhorted, and while the writer went on to say there were no longer any rules, the models were brooding over issues such as when a perky little miniskirt became mutton dressed as lamb.

The older women were bravely opting more for 'classics', and choosing 'style' over 'fashion'. How depressing.

Imagine if men spent all their time in the pub agonising over whether or not it was time to dump their 'decorating trousers' in favour of something a little more stylish, perhaps with non-perished elastic. ("Yeah, the road-works were a pain but I checked out the Sat Nav, cut round the B8765, and saved five minutes' drinking time! But never mind all that, mate. Just tell me straight - does my bum look big in this?")

I must admit it's a while since I cast an eye over Loaded, FHM, or indeed any kind of bloke magazine.

But I doubt they devote much space to discussing where you can buy the new range of cleverly-cut sweatshirts that hide your swelling beer-gut.

And it's just got worse.

Apparently, after the Hollywood, and the Brazilian, the latest eye-watering craze is to have your nostrils waxed.

It is women that are ripping out the unwanted fuzz, not the men, of course.

Soon females the world over will be leaning back and squinting in the bathroom mirror to check their noses for re-growth.

So what's going on?

Are women simply more vain than men?

Do females somehow get pleasure out of physical and psychological anguish? Or has it just not occurred to the male sex that they may not be irresistible in their plain, unvarnished form?

Perhaps women should just take a leaf out of their partners' books and chuck away their inhibitions, their full-length mirrors and their bathroom scales, and go out wearing whatever the hell they like.

I'm all for it...

Just as soon as the diet kicks in and I've shifted the weight that crept up on me this winter.

Updated: 11:07 Wednesday, April 07, 2004