Victoria Pendleton

It is the inevitable consequence of a free, liberal, tolerant democratic society (and of the sexual revolution in the 60s) and we just have to live with it.

Maybe I think this because I wasn't actually there, but my understanding of the '60s was that any liberalisation was a result of social action, whereas the sexualisation we're experiencing today is mainly driven by commercial interests. Maybe that's a gross simplification - especially as a lot of advertising from that era was based on the 'buy this and women will fall at your feet' model, but still, I can't help but feel that the reason why sex is so visible these days is because of advertising.

I wouldn't advocate a return to Victorian values, but my experience of other cultures (Canada and the Netherlands in particular) is that they have a much healthier approach to sex and nudity, and while we do have some very visible sexualisation in the media in this country, it still feels very forced and uncomfortable to me. The problem is that the very reason those countries appear to be doing so well is because they have such a liberal approach to sex in the first place - such as sex education in schools from an early age. 'We' as a nation would be rioting in the streets, bemoaning the end of moral values and teenage pregnancies.

I look at it in a similar way to alcohol - in most other countries where you'd expect there to be more alcohol abuse because young people are given more access to it, you actually find much healthier attitudes. Take France - lots of children are given wine and water with their food, and grow up not to abuse alcohol when they're legally able to buy and consume alcohol. For us we never see the stuff until we're in a position to abuse it - the result being a binge-drinking culture.

I'm sure I haven't put my points across at all well, but I think what I'm getting at is that we're still too controlled - and we certainly don't have the liberal society that BlueQuinn speaks of.