Quick hit: Masculinity to join feminity as an Olympic sport?

From the Herald a while back (sorry I thought I had posted this at the time but hit the wrong button):

The Independent's Liz Hoggard on the pressures facing Hollywood's new-look male stars...

A friend has just had dental surgery. They put her on morphine.

"What does it make you feel like?" I ask.

"Normal," she tells me brutally.

"For the first time ever, my body didn't feel out of control. I didn't worry about my stomach, my legs didn't feel like giant Alice in Wonderland limbs."

So excuse me if I don't worry too much about the crisis in male beauty. Women have been feeling alienated from their bodies for centuries. No wonder we have to be medicated to feel normal.

At the weekend, the story broke that male actors were suffering. The rugged look is out as Hollywood signs up young pretty-boys (Twilight's Rob Pattinson, baby-faced Ed Westwick and cherub-cheeked Chace Crawford in Gossip Girl).

...It gets worse: movie directors admit that these boys with the faces of adolescent girls are perfect fodder - they can replace one with another with barely a pause for thought.

I had to laugh out loud when I read that one. As women we've lived through decades of identikit blonde women. I hate the fact that there are 14-year-old girls pretending to be 30 on my magazine covers - who weigh less than my hanging rail.

Because increasingly, femininity is a performance art. It's not enough any more just to brush your hair and wear a nice frock, there's a whole new bag of tricks.

Click through for the whole thing. Because it's worth it.