No doubt the Tories meant well when they fingered lads' mags such as Zoo and Nuts for fuelling feckless fatherhood and encouraging young men to see women as little more than an arrangement of Abi Titmuss body parts.

I certainly wouldn't pick a fight with the view that the world could do with fewer men who call breasts “fun bags” and circulate sub-Jim Davidson internet jokes defining the ideal woman as “a deaf and dumb blonde nymphomaniac with a flat head on which you can rest a pint” (oh, my splitting sides). As Michael Gove, the Shadow Schools Secretary, says, the lads culture reinforces “a very narrow conception of beauty and a shallow approach towards women”.

Ah but here's the news, Conservatives. The worst culprits for treating females like pieces of meat are not lads' mags. They are women's mags. Or specifically, certain weekly celebrity-filled glossies which think it seismically important that a teenage soap actress has a love handle or a pop singer a dimpled thigh. If it's misogyny you're after you can find it in handbag-size every week in the Closers, the Nows, the Heats, etc, of the magazine world where each starlet's weight pattern is ruthlessly charted, every crow's foot seized upon with Schadenfreude. Heat highlights celebrities' merest imperfections in a regular, whooping feature called the Circle of Shame! Woe betide the female photographed with a stray leg hair or a sweat patch. In one of my all-time favourites, the actress Vanessa Williams was once circled and mocked for - are you ready? - having a bumpy tongue.

Here's a round-up of this week's offerings: Lily Allen is “back on track” (translation: “thin again”) after being photographed earlier looking “dishevelled and with chunky thighs” (she looked completely normal). There are “fears for scarily skinny Sarah Harding”, while “insecure” Cheryl Tweedy is “starving to get attention” and Katie Price is “too stressed to eat and living on Diet Coke, crushed ice and apples”. Now illustrates a piece about actress Nathalie Cassidy's alleged distress over her “new body crisis” (translation: she's put on a few pounds) with a snatched photo of her shopping for food. “Nathalie looks to have piled on at least 20lb” reads the faux sisterly copy. “She'd slimmed from a size 16 to an 8, lost two and a half stone and was exercising up to two hours a day, but sadly she couldn't sustain her regime.” Does anyone have a ducking stool?

Women need no help from men when it comes to belittling their bodies: they do an excellent job of it all by themselves. We cannot entirely blame these magazines - often written and edited by women but which effectively torment the female form at every turn - because they are overwhelmingly bought by women who gorge on the details like famished dogs on a bone. Thinness is obsessed over, signs of ageing celebrated, and cellulite on a famous babe's backside is a better lifter than Seroxat.

Newspapers often do female-baiting too of course, perhaps roping in a cosmetic surgery expert to comment on how the old banger could improve herself or debating whether she's had Botox. This week the Daily Mail dropped the bombshell that Lulu, 59, has wrinkly knees. “Knees that shout out Lulu's real age”, said the headline. I'd be willing to bet it was one of the best-read pieces in the paper.

Because women are conditioned to be masochists. Whether fat, thin, happy, sad, clever or thick, few females are totally impervious to a self-loathing fest. A conversation between a group of friends might go like this:

Friend A: “Look at my legs at the top. They rub together. They're disgusting. I'm so fat.”

Friend B: “You're fat? Have you seen my backside? You could park two quad bikes on it.”

Friend C: “Don't tell anyone but I'm getting a gastric band. I need to give up carbs but I'm such a gluttonous bitch I had a piece of toast this morning.”

Sad, yes, boring - definitely but this is a precis of an actual conversation I was privy to recently. None of these women were fat. But publicly expressing dissatisfaction with at least one part of your body is now the default position for the average female. Hell, it is the only acceptable position. Declaring yourself totally happy with your looks and figure just isn't done. It means you are smug. Or deluded. Or possibly mad. A recent survey indicated that 98 per cent of women “hate” their bodies. Of course they do! Negativity is irresistable. The pernicious trend is to invite criticism. Why do you think Trinny and Susannah are so rich?

Men simply don't sign up for such self- punishment. If they buy a meal in a restaurant they tend to eat it, not get into a farcical game of competitive undereating to see who can be tricked into ordering a pudding (not every woman, I know, but quite a few).

Magazines didn't create this mindset: they're tapping into and exploiting what was already there. One small thing to be said for lads' mags is that at least they admire the female body at a fairly healthy weight, unlike many women themselves do. I've yet to meet a man who honestly finds a severely skinny woman attractive.

If we want to get to the bottom of why men leave thousands of young females holding the baby, we should start by asking why so many girls have such low self-esteem that that they collude in their own flagellation. To the point where they actually crave the sting of anxiety.Now, please excuse me while I go and tighten my cilice.

Let's be grateful

Because I'm feeling queasy this morning I won't dwell for long on Martin Bashir who expressed his enthusiasm for a group of beautiful Asian American women by telling them in a speech at a banquet: “I'm mightily relieved the podium covers me from the waist downwards. I've been having trouble all evening.” Let's move on, but be eternally grateful that his cosy interview with Diana, Princess of Wales, was filmed from the waist upwards.

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