ONCE UPON a time, glamorous movie stars were celebrated for their ample curves. Can you imagine Marilyn Monroe without her pointy breasts, Jayne Mansfield without her pre-Jordan bustline, or Mae West without her hourglass figure? When I was a teenager I had a chest like a washboard and was all too familiar with the shame of the gaping, padded Wonderbra — once hailed as the answer to a flat-chested girl’s dreams.

Despite having a figure akin to Twiggy’s, I thought you simply couldn’t be beautiful unless you filled a 36B Playtex lift-and-separate bra and had a clinched-in waist.

But I was wrong, dammit, just when I was getting close.

Today the kind of glamour associated with big breasts means being a D-list celebrity with a DD cup who gets her kit off for the lads, while the dimensions of our real screen and style goddesses have shrunk. Slim is sexy and desirable, and it’s not only fashion models who aim for the slender, breastless body. At the box-office, — when it comes to breasts, less is more.

Nicole Kidman is virtually flat, likewise Meg Ryan and Kate Blanchett. No one could call Julia Roberts stacked, except at the bank, while bee-sting Gwyneth Paltrow dressed convincingly as a boy for Shakespeare in Love.

Following in their flat footsteps, formerly well-upholstered stars such as Christina Ricci, Kate Winslet and our own Geri Halliwell have all reduced their curves. Madonna, once famous for the take-your-eye-out Galtieri bra, has a chest like a prizefighter.

Similarly, since she lost weight, “Hello Boys” Wonderbra model Eva Herzigova has also gone bust. Her wondrous cleavage has shrunk to a mere fraction of its former glory. Well, though she might have gone a tad overboard on the Slim-Fast, who can blame her? An underwear model might be many a man’s ultimate fantasy but, at the end of the day, who wants to be famous for being a pair of boobs in a bra?

Sex nowadays is much less obvious. Big boobs have always marked you out as being brassy, blowsy and borderline retarded. If you want to be taken seriously, you can’t have a cleavage. Why else do we get former Page Three girl Melinda Messenger appearing in Celebrity Big Brother to convince us that she has a brain — not that putting yourself under 24- hour surveillance in a house with five self-seeking strangers is an obvious marker of intelligence. Being a busty blonde who bares it all in a daily newspaper does not take you far in the credibility stakes — and neither does having a couple of kilos of silicone surgically implanted in your chest.

It’s a paradox that while a large proportion of women are dieting like demons and exercising to achieve a prepubescent, boy-like body, there is another lot inflating themselves into grotesque sexual parodies with the help of plastic surgery and a lot of silicone. From Melinda, who now regrets her implants, to the pneumatic Pam Anderson, who had hers reduced, to the extremes of Jordan and Alicia Duvall — apart from the tabloid interest, it’s hard to see the attraction of being, literally, sex on legs. But then I don’t entirely get the perpetual adolescent look either. Why do you have to look underfed to be überchic?

It’s tempting to wonder if some women are so terrified of ageing that they have to retreat behind the safety of their training bras to the fantasy of everlasting youth. Maybe they just don’t want to look like their mothers? Big breasts are matronly and comforting as well as being a bit of a joke. With no hips or bust you can wear skimpy clothes and, with so little to reveal, look sexy in an unformed, almost adolescent way without being too obvious and in-your-face.

Unless she fancies a career in daytime television like Vanessa, Judy or Fern, a slim, toned, muscular woman will be taken more seriously than her large, pillowy sister — even if only as a person who devotes hours a day to the distinctly non-intellectual activity of exercising.

You don’t get upper arms like Madonna from lounging on the couch all day eating bonbons, and Geri Halliwell didn’t get out of that Union Jack bra just by sitting on her butt chanting. The androgynous physique is hard- won. It gives you a masculine edge — an air of toughness.

You can certainly kick ass. But when you build up the chest, you lose the bust. The first body fat you lose (and gain) is on the breasts, and you can be left looking like an ironing board with nipples. However, while it may be empowering to take charge of your body and exercise until you’re breastless, you are not exactly apeing the Amazons, who lopped off one of their breasts to improve their aim. Ironically, some women again opt for silicone implants — albeit of the small, pert variety — to restore the right amount of barely-there bustline.

And this makes you feel clever? Ah, give me the Kleenex-stuffed Wonderbra any day.

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