Looking one's best

"When she lives independently of Bill, she forgets how much time she has to spend pretending to be better or prettier or nicer than she really is. She had waxed her legs, shaved her armpits, tweezered her face, and is now so stiff with foundation, powder, blusher and lipstick she feels that if she smiles too much half her face may fall off. Polly, whose normal appearance is that of a small woman who has had an unfortunate encounter with a tornado, has even had her hair done, and is also wearing the kind of reinforced underpants that women who have had babies tend to resort to." (Amanda Craig, Hearts and Minds)

Of course if you ask a man, he'll say he's quite happy with his partner as she is, and actually it's other women she's trying to impress, not him. To which the woman will reply that he may say that but he thinks differently. In reality he wants her to be slimmer and sexier than all the other women he meets and he'll go off her pretty fast if she isn't.

I think there are both types of men, some more accepting of women as they really are than others. Hopefully I fall into the first camp and I don't expect women to go to those ridiculous lengths to fit some artificial glossy stereotype.

Mind you, it works the other way round as well. Some women don't mind men in the raw, men who make no effort at all to be what women want them to be. But other women recoil from such selfishness and want their guy to be attractive, emotionally sensitive, solvent, domesticated, sociable and generous. They can be equally critical of men who don't meet their exacting high standards.

If that means expecting men to be civilised and considerate and act like mature human beings, fair enough. If it means expecting them to be supermen who'll rescue them from every disaster and cater for their every need, that's asking the impossible. Nobody's that perfect.