I'd like to have been a fly on the wall at the planning meeting for Newsnight on 7 February. "We're doing a studio discussion, Mr Paxman. Oh, and by the way it'll be 15 women who've received PIP breast implants; the health minister; Naomi Wolf. And Katie Price (you know… Jordan?) You'll be the only man so you might want to turn the aggression down a couple of notches. It'll be GREAT!"

Well, it was certainly interesting. Paxman was appropriately sympathetic in tone; Anne Milton – ineffectual and blustering; Naomi Wolf – sparky and well informed. And then there was Katie Price – dull, but at the same time fascinating, in the way a woman manufactured almost entirely from plastic derivatives would be. So flawless you wonder if she takes her skin off at night and puts it back on again, freshly pressed and vinyl smooth, each morning. What really interested me were the 15 "ordinary" women, all of whom had had PIP implants. They spoke eloquently about their concerns, some knew their implants had already begun leaking, there were lists of distressing symptoms and they questioned why the health service wouldn't help. (In the UK, women who received the French-made implants on the NHS will have them removed and replaced for free. Those who received them privately will only be able to have them removed, not replaced, on the NHS). I began to feel very sad, and as I looked between Price on one side of the studio and them corralled on the other, I began to feel very, very angry. The french manicured acrylic nails, the straightened hair, the Botox, the filler, the silicon… Who made this the globally accepted form of female beauty, the yardstick against which we measure our physical appearance? The standard we should all strive to achieve with every sinew and hard-earned quid? What happened to individuality?

A defective silicone gel breast implant manufactured by French company Poly Implant Prothese (PIP). Photograph: Reuters

It's a bit of a no-brainer really, isn't it? Look around yourself on the train, in the coffee shop or canteen and count how many "celebrity magazines" you see – all peddling the impossible myth of eternally youthful chemically enhanced "beauty". Look at almost any red carpet event and the subsequent reporting about who looks "tired", who's "struggling to contain her curves" and whose décolletage is not quite as perky as "they" think it should be. You wear gloves (Madonna) – it's because your hands "give you away". You wear a scarf (sensible in January) – it's because your neck is "crepey". No perma-tan? Then you're emotionally and physically exhausted and your relationship is probably on the rocks as well. Is it a big stretch to imagine a nation of Fembots with perfect tans, teeth and silicon breasts all tottering into the salon for a Brazilian in their 70s?

Rehab is strewn with casualties from the war on ageing – Demi Moore being just the latest. The natural process of ageing, our personal physical insecurities, have somehow been bigged up into the eighth deadly sin and turned into a multibillion-pound business. Remember the super-cool gang in the school playground? The girls who could wreck your acne-ridden life with a cruel flick of mascara'd lash? To me, that's what the ideal of feminine beauty seems to have become. You either conform or you're out.

I'm not for a minute suggesting that all implants are bad, or that you'd be mad to consider cosmetic surgery. What I'm saying is that you can't make yourself into another person, it won't necessarily make you happy and you can't wind back the clock – life is finite and so are your looks. Get used to it. Your face and body will change and that won't make you a lesser person but it might make you a more interesting one. Nor does it make you less feminine or attractive, just differently so. I'm sick to death of talking to women with more man-made uplift than a Harrier jump jet and I'm bored witless by women who can't express emotion with anything other than a blank-eyed stare. Why can't we be allowed just to be ourselves?

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