I fear that the war on obesity is lost, or has even, as is fashionable, ceased to exist, for fear of upsetting people into an early grave. Nike Inc, the multinational company named after the Greek goddess of victory, has introduced plus-sized mannequins to its flagship store in London to “celebrate the diversity and inclusivity of sport”. They wear the famous Nike tick, which says: welcome to the mainstream.

Yet the new Nike mannequin is not size 12, which is healthy, or even 16 – a hefty weight, yes, but not one to kill a woman. She is immense, gargantuan, vast. She heaves with fat.

She is, in every measure, obese, and she is not readying herself for a run in her shiny Nike gear. She cannot run. She is, more likely, pre-diabetic and on her way to a hip replacement. What terrible cynicism is this on the part of Nike?

Advertising has always bullied women, but this is something more insidious. I have watched the spindly, starved creature – the child ballet dancer – who was, for many years, the accepted ideal, walking down the Paris runways in so much make-up you could miss the signs of malnutrition. It was an ideal designed to induce enough self-hatred that women would shop to be rid of it.