Victoria Pendleton

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.

I agree! We keep invoking the example of the Victorians - but they had a huge pornography industry underneath all that prudery, and something like one in 1000 houses in London was a brothel. So I don't think repression is the answer. I DO think that a much more liberal approach would help. In fact, I already have a very detailed masterplan for how sex education will work in schools, when I finally take over the world.

Have a nice cup of tea. And treat yourself to a chocolate hobnob or two.

I agree with this too! :-D

attractive naked bodies are actually natural, very nice to look at, and we'd all live in a healthier society if we were a whole lot less uptight about showing them and allowed ourselves to appreciate our humanity a bit more.

But I agree with this slightly less. I mean, I do think naked bodies are wonderful and beautiful, and I love hanging out in places like Hampstead Ladies Pond and seeing them in all their glory. But the attractive naked bodies we most often see aren't natural. They're in films, on billboards, and all over the print media. A significant proportion have been airbrushed (even the 'real beauty' Dove ads), and those that haven't have usually been selected for their svelteness or flawlessness.

I've never seen any body remotely like mine in a magazine, advert or film. I'm very fit, but I still have visible stretchmarks and cellulite, a very flabby tummy, saddlebags, saggy breasts, and hair in places where girls aren't supposed to have hair. None of these 'flaws' is really a problem to me (except in occasional moments of paranoia), but the fact that people aren't used to seeing them means that they're shocked when they do, and consider them ugly or freakish.

Back in the days when I used to act, I observed that when an older, or larger woman takes her clothes off onstage, she somehow looks a lot more naked than a young, slender, pretty one would. We're used to seeing 'pretty' nudity - but exposing the kind of body that's normally kept hidden and private strikes us as shocking and even faintly obscene (and much more artistically interesting, but that's another story...).

Now I'm not a man comfortable with my own body image. I'm overweight, I'm losing my hair, what there is left is too ginger, I'm too pale, I'm too short, I hate my nose and I have no neck. Nevertheless I don't think that any of the depictions of (male) perfection that you see in adverts and editorials are the cause of these feelings.

That's good - and I hope it stays that way. I've read a few things lately about eating disorders and exercise addiction increasing in men, and on the odd occasions when I flick through Men's Health et al, I'm really disheartened by how much they seem to be going down the route of women's magazines in promising 'a new you!' every single month, and churning forth endless diets and exercise regimes.

But I've come across loads of women who are explicitly aiming to make themselves as thin as a specific celebrity, or who will point to some airbrushed fashion shot and say 'that's what I want to look like'.

To give just one example (and then I'll shut up - I know I'm going on and on), I once walked in when my landlady was watching I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here, and couldn't help but comment on how ridiculous one of the contestants looked - she had massive bosoms, but then rest of her was very small, and her legs! They were really skinny, absolutely straight up and down (no curves whatsoever), and about four inches apart, so she looked kind of bandy-legged. But my landlady said 'are you kidding? I'd LOVE legs like that!'. And yes, she's on a permanent diet. She's very pretty, and a perfectly reasonable size, and has loads of suitors, but she'd much rather weigh about three stone less, and have no body fat whatsoever. It makes me sad.