But why? What is it that makes us covet beauty? Any woman who has been loved knows how little her face matters.

Any woman of sense knows that her mind, even her body chemistry, her aura, or whatever draws people together in love, lust, or friendship, count more than her shape.

Everyone knows that standards of female beauty are as ephemeral as female beauty is itself transient; that Twiggy couldn't have competed with Lily Langtry nor Lily Langtry compete today with Twiggy.

We see that the fairest skin is most liable to wrinkle early, the softest little figure to run to fat. Every blessed truism about beauty is, in our own experience, demonstrably true.

But no plain little girl, no vain little girl, ever believed such exhortations. Little heads sunning over with curls were patted. Rats' tails were not.

I think a woman has to be at least middle-aged before she sees in the faces of her contemporaries that the ones whose beauty is increasing, not declining, are the handsome of heart.

So we spend our hundreds of millions on cosmetics. We endanger our health with tight-lacing in one generation, with bust developers in another. Now more than in any age, perhaps, we get on the treadmill of Keeping Up Appearances in our early teens and do not dare to get off it until we are too old to care.

But wait a moment. Girls nowadays don't want to be pretty. They get into a sort of uniform that is sometimes comical to their elders. Their faces and lips may be chalk white. The most admired hair is straight. They can look as outragous as they like.

What gives them confidence is not that they are beautiful but that their appearance is approved by their peers.

And boys are going half way to meet them. They comb their hair incessantly, and publicly rather than be caught looking shaggy. They dress up.

Exchanging one slavery for another, more crippling conformity to the group? Perhaps - but at least it is a group whose mores are more nearly common to both sexes. There's something rather comforting about that.

And what about the Beautiful People? If I get the idea right, they are busy thinking beautiful thoughts. I wish there had been Beautiful People when I was a ugly duckling who never turned into a swan. I should have liked it.