Not that their aims are bogus: there's no doubt Britain is a bit chunky. But, following the annual festive binge, women are easy to manipulate. As Naomi Wolf showed in The Beauty Myth, the winners in (and creators of) the fabricated battle against imperfection are the diet, cosmetics, surgery and fashion industries, whose goal is to remind a woman that she is nothing more than a piece of meat, and a vile one at that.

If any woman buys that line, she's an idiot. One minute spent appraising oneself as an object, whether the conclusion is positive or damning, is a minute wasted. But it seems that there are lots of idiots out there. News that the cosmetic surgery industry is now worth billions, with breast implants being the most popular operation, is evidence of women's thraldom to the porno ideal of big chest; thin everywhere else. In a scenario that could be a treatment for a future Eli Roth film, a woman crawls to a man she barely knows, begs him to cut her up, pays him for it and crawls home in pain to recover, thanking her lucky stars for this transformative experience. To the man, the woman is just another paying chump on the chopping block; to the woman, the man is a saviour.

Women's real mental emancipation is still far away if they have so little actual pride, and such a high degree of self-objectification, that they are assiduously doing patriarchy's job for it. They're voluntarily turning themselves into pornography. How submissive can you get? And how twisted? With the false addition of two saline-filled bags, the woman feels "complete", "real", forgetting that the efficiency and natural dignity of the human body are already miraculous; its speed of recovery after such a brutal invasion is a testament to that.

If neither slicing'n'dicing or bran flakes can get you the perfect figure, there's always the Wags Workout DVD to bop along to: perfect for aspiring geishas and concubines everywhere. The goal is to get so toned and bouncy that you do literally begin to resemble the rubber sex doll you're already being used as.

There's a time limit to all this, however: whichever method they use, women should ideally get themselves in order by February, when fashion week begins. Then we can all do an about-turn, forget fatness and fret instead about skinny models and the taint of vomit behind the fabulosity, while men of both overly fat and anorexically thin proportions continue free of any scrutiny or sniping.

To be serious, I feel conflicted about the body debate because, like most art-inclined people, I have a hypocritical, ancient Greek-style bias in favour of beauty. And frankly I see so many whey-faced, ill-kempt humanoids pass by my window that looking through the pages of Vogue is nothing short of a gorgeous, blessed relief. But then, I don't have any body issues. For those who do, I'd recommend putting down that scalpel, going for a walk and remembering that the only way to get some self-esteem is to get some self-esteem, not make a date with Hugh Hefner.

· Bidisha is a novelist and critic

bidisha@hotmail.com