By LIZ JONES

Last updated at 00:24 02 January 2008

There was a moment during 2007 when I suddenly thought, no, this is wrong, it has to stop.

It was during New York Fashion Week in September, I was sitting front row at the Calvin Klein show, and I could see Joanna Coles, the very clever, mature and by no means lowbrow British-born editor-in-chief of American Marie Claire (the thinking woman's magazine, remember), scurrying along, positively bowing and scraping, in the wake of an Olsen twin.

I didn't know or care whether the blonde, diminutive pseudo-celebrity was Mary-Kate or Ashley (in case you have lived in a remote Mongolian retreat with no broadband these past 12 months and don't know who these particular young American women are, they are former child stars who now "design" a ludicrously expensive range of clothing called Row).

But what I did care quite deeply about was the fact that a grown and quite powerful woman was being so ingratiating in the presence of someone who is merely famous for being famous.

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Joanna Coles was obviously trying to get this young (and I won't say "star;" let's just call her a ball of gas) into the pages of her publication.

And then it dawned on me: 2007 was the year of the airhead, a 12-month period when no bit of female fluff was too fatuous to be brought to our attention.

Want some proof that we women have finally abandoned all pretence to having any sort of gravitas, or moral responsibility, or intellectual debate? How about the fact that Nicole Richie, who, as far as I can tell, is famous for being unable to tip the scales above 75 pounds, graced the cover of British Marie Claire.

Or the mass hysteria that was engendered by the fact that Kate Moss had been given an obscene amount of money to put her name to a whole load of tat for Topshop.

Incidentally, the woman even brought out her own scent last year; I wonder what the dominant bouquet is: fags, alcohol or cocaine?

Or how about the antics of Paris Hilton, or Jordan, or Penny Lancaster, or Jade Goody, who kicked off 2007 by wearing her ignorance like a badge in the Celebrity Big Brother house.

Or the ubiquitous Kerry Katona, who for some reason has been chosen as an iconic mother figure in order to promote a supermarket brand.

Even the good-natured Jonathan Ross seemed puzzled to be devoting a large segment of his television chat show to her new "novel," a book she admitted she had not only not written, but which she couldn't even remember the title of.

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And, of course, there was the queen of all the airheads, straddling 2007 like a Twiglet-limbed colossus: good old Victoria Beckham. It was the year she attempted to export her particular brand of banality to Los Angeles, a

case of taking coals to Newcastle if ever there was one (and, by the way, given the recent BBC "documentary" on the Spice Girls, surely the Corporation's claim to a licence fee is, finally, dead and buried).

To cap it all, towards the end of the year we had Gordon Brown, no less, holding up footballers' wives and girlfriends as suitable role models for our impressionable teens because they have a few GCSEs between them and, gasp, even a smattering of A-levels. My goodness, how commendable.

The drip-drip effect of all these empty-heads being paraded before us as beacons of success is that, among women of all ages, even those of us in our 40s who should know better, it is now no longer seen as ironic to be interested in whether or not Kylie has had a face lift, or Lindsay Lohan has or has not checked out of rehab, or totalled her car while drink driving. Or Sienna Miller has said yes or no to Rhys Ifans, or Jennifer Lopez has piled on the pregnancy pounds.

Thanks to last year's bombardment of the banal, to know and care about these people is now seen as normal.

Why do all the glossy weeklies and monthlies make such a meal of these women? Well, first of all, they are easy game. They are rampant self-publicists and therefore easy to persuade to disrobe, or pose pregnant, or divulge their addictions.

The airhead is a needy creature with more money than sense, and she will therefore shore up her self-esteem by going shopping, and wearing the latest ridiculous fashion trend.

Which in turn prompts us, the voyeurs, to want to copy her, and so we buy ever more Louis Vuitton traveller luggage and Marc Jacobs Stam bags (Stam, as in supermodel Jessica Stam; please keep up) and endless bottles of perfume.

And while on the subject, we shouldn't delude ourselves that the upcoming film of Sex And The City is art, or even entertainment: it is a monument to product placement, the luxury goods showcased in the movie guaranteed to ensure that credit card debt among women remains sky-high well into the next decade.

All these images might be lucrative for those who peddle and perpetuate them. Newspapers are not immune to this process; even though I was deeply sceptical and damning last year about Kate Moss, Victoria Beckham et al, I admit I, too, stoked the fires of their mediocrity by adding to their column inches.

But the women who insatiably consume this tat - and that, I admit, occasionally includes me - are deeply diminished by the process. And here's a point: this obsession with airheads (which is, by and large, a female thing - at least when men indulge in poring over idiots, they do so for mild amusement, they don't emulate these creatures or want to marry them) is not just depressing, it is deeply dangerous.

I can only think the young women who were lured to a party in the Great John Street Hotel to "meet" the Manchester United players had been seduced not just into wearing the sparkly spaghetti-strapped tops and the skinny jeans and the platform shoes that is the uniform of the airhead, but into believing that they too could live "celebrity" lives, however vacuous and demeaning that is in reality.

We have become so used to seeing young women doing stupid things in public - Britney Spears shaving off all her hair, Cerys Matthews snogging someone else's boyfriend, Amy Winehouse reduced by drugs to walking the streets of East London dressed only in a bra and a pair of jeans - that we think we can behave that way, too, and get away with it.

That the evening in Manchester ended with one woman being shared among five men, and another allegedly being raped, shows the nasty subcurrent of the airhead culture. She has no respect for herself, and so commands none.

I particularly became aware of the vacuity of this culture when I was researching an essay for a book celebrating 25 years of Channel 4. My topic was how the past quarter century has changed women's magazines, and women's perceptions of themselves.

Twenty-five years ago, the magazines were full of art criticism, and short stories, and debate about everything from orientalism to surrealism.

Last year, the principal debate seemed to be about whether Big Brother's Chantelle was still with her boyfriend or not.

I think part of the reason we have become so fascinated is that lots of us have found, to our cost, that being too smart and clever, and "banging on," as my ex-husband so eloquently used to put it, about our careers and having it all, has alienated us from men.

They, the poor dears, became scared of us, and so ten years ago we started watching Sex And The City as a sort of ironic antidote to being serious career women, where all was fluffy and we were interested in such inconsequential things as expensive shoes.

The trouble is, we then became hooked on all this superficial rubbish, and it started to take over not just our shopping habits but our personalities and our relationships.

I am tired of these women's antics cluttering up my brain. But who on earth should we have been reading about and admiring last year? Hmm, it becomes really difficult to compile a list of women who have been doing something meaningful rather than flashing their knickers (or lack of them) while climbing out of a limo.

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But I nominate sportswomen Nicole Cooke, who won the French cycling tour, and show jumper Ellen Whitaker, who is likely to represent Britain at the Beijing Olympics.

Clare Smyth, Gordon Ramsay's new head chef at Hospital Road, who manages to cook superbly without either swearing or making a TV programme.

Natalie Portman, not just for her work as an actress but for the documentaries she is making with children in the developing world.

Novelists Alice Sebold, for her brave account of what it is like to care for an elderly parent, and Sophie Kinsella, who as well as being an Oxford graduate and multi-million selling author, manages to bring up three small children without moaning.

Woman's Hour's redoubtable Jenni Murray, for not making a fuss about having breast cancer, and the new voice of that programme, Jane Garvey.

And finally and most commendably the American news anchor Mika Brzezinski, for shredding her script in anger at being ordered to lead a bulletin with yet another Paris Hilton story - a liberating act tantamount to burning her bra, surely?

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THE FLUFF LEAGUE

PARIS HILTON

The ultimate vacuous celebrity, Paris Hilton, 26, is famous primarily for being a party-loving heiress, but last month that came tumbling down when

Barron Hilton, head of the hotel dynasty, announced he was leaving 97 per cent of his fortune to charity.

Paris famously spent 22 days of last year in LA County jail after numerous driving offences. She lists her talents as singer, model, actress, author and TV personality but is most famous for partying with fellow celebs in tiny dresses.

AIRHEAD RATING 10/10

CHANTELLE

Twenty-four-year-old Chantelle Houghton - former topless model and Burger King worker - was divorced in 2007 from husband Samuel Preston of pop group The Ordinary Boys after an exhausting year-long marriage.

The couple met when Chantelle was the only non-celebrity on Celebrity Big Brother. Her autobiography Living The Dream shifted just five thousand copies. But she's still said to have made more money (about £1 million) than her singer ex-husband.

AIRHEAD RATING 9/10

KERRY KATONA

Still only 27 (but doesn't it seem longer). Former drug addict Kerry famously won I'm A Celebrity and since then not a weekend has passed without more tabloid revelations about her various addictions.

The former singer with Atomic Kitten was once an exotic dancer, and in 2004 married singer Brian McFadden, with whom she has two daughters, Molly and Lilly-Sue.

Last year she had another daughter, Heidi, with new husband, taxi driver Mark Croft, and in a breathless year was held hostage, fought Brian for custody of her girls and was admitted to the Priory suffering from the increasingly glamorous "bipolar disorder."

AIRHEAD RATING 9/10

JADE GOODY

Big Brother "star" Jade also saw her career hit potential meltdown as she appeared in Celebrity Big Brother last year and was vilified for making "racist" remarks about Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty, calling her "Shilpa Poppadom."

Her celebrity fitness DVD was shown to be less than truthful when it was revealed she'd had liposuction. Famous for simply appearing on reality television, calling East Anglia "East Angular" and asking if Saddam Hussein was a boxer, she's often portrayed as the unacceptable face of British talentless celebrity.

AIRHEAD RATING 8/10

COLEEN McLOUGHLIN

The 21-year-old daughter of a bricklayer and a cleaner from Liverpool has carved an entire six-million-pound career out of being engaged to a footballer with a face like a potato.

The rights to "the wedding of 2008" have already been sold for mega money - Wayne Rooney proposed on a BP forecourt. Coleen is raking in the dough without having any discernible talent.

AIRHEAD RATING 8/10

BRITNEY SPEARS

2007 was meltdown year for singer Britney. The former Mickey Mouse Club actress and singer of Hit Me Baby One More Time lost custody of her two sons to ex-husband Kevin Federline.

She famously shaved off all her hair earlier in the year, was frequently photographed drunk and was also arrested for drink driving.

AIRHEAD RATING 7/10

LINDSAY LOHAN

The once-successful 21-year-old child actress has made a name for herself last year primarily by being drunk, crashing cars, getting arrested and ending up in either rehab or hospital. Her wild sexual ways have also drawn attention, and last year she was arrested after cocaine was found in her car.

She has been in rehab twice and a Hollywood insider said that her acting career is now all but finished.

AIRHEAD RATING 6/10

JORDAN

JORDAN, aka Katie Price, is now, depressingly, one of Britain's richest women with a fortune of £30 million. Last year she made even more money through publishing, as well as revealing literally everything in Katie And Peter: Unleashed on ITV2.

The couple have even been photographed on the toilet. There seems to be nothing deemed too tasteless for them to do in order to make yet more money.

AIRHEAD RATING 5/10

SIENNA MILLER

Shot to fame as the girlfriend of actor Jude Law after he split from his wife Sadie Frost. Educated at Heathfield School in Ascot, she's rather blurred her "posh" credentials lately by taking up with wild Welsh actor Rhys Ifans, and was photographed wearing an extraordinary pair of big black pants.

She also posed topless for the magazine Vanity Fair and seems to be leading an increasingly wild lifestyle. Starred in Stardust with Michelle Pfeiffer, to very mixed reviews.

AIRHEAD RATING 5/10

HEATHER MILLS McCARTNEY

2007 was not a good year for Heather, to put it mildly. Public opinion over her divorce from Paul McCartney swung wildly in his favour after she appeared ranting in television in October.

The 39-year-old former glamour model who lost her leg in a car accident is looking increasingly less likely to win a substantial settlement from Sir Paul, with whom she has a four-year-old daughter, Beatrice. She's also being sued for alleged non-payment of fees to her former divorce lawyers.

AIRHEAD RATING 4/10

VICTORIA BECKHAM

Thirty-three-year-old Posh Spice is currently on tour with the other Spice Girls, milking their former celebrity for all it is worth. Last year she appeared in Victoria Beckham: Coming To America, as her husband David joined an American football club. It was, to say the least, greeted with little enthusiasm by the critics.

The mother of three sons, she's perhaps most famous for turning one of Britain's most talented footballers into something of a joke, reduced to posing for an advert in skimpy underpants. Can you imagine Bobby Charlton doing that? You can't imagine they need the money with an estimated fortune of £112 million.

AIRHEAD RATING 3/10

KATE MOSS

Her on/off romance with hopeless pop singer Pete Doherty bored the nation senseless in 2007 but they have thankfully now split. The waif-like supermodel from Croydon (who has just one C in her GCSEs) was famously photographed snorting cocaine which caused her modelling contracts to nosedive - but she has fought back and last year was Britain's 99th richest woman with a fortune of £45 million.

Notorious for her wild party lifestyle, she's more often photographed falling out of a club than spending time with her five-year-old daughter Lila Grace by

Dazed And Confused editor Jefferson Hack. She now lives in North

London and is dating The Kills guitarist Jamie Hince. Next year she'll be the face of Donna Karan and YSL.

AIRHEAD RATING 2/10