Heaven help women who commit the sin of cellulite

There are more important things in life than Cate Blanchett's breasts, but not many. All the Australian film star had to do was turn up at the premiere of her new movie last week, wearing a revealing dress, and the column inches filled up as if by magic.

Admittedly Blanchett was wearing a nice frock, unlike most of the models who took part in London Fashion Week – skin jewellery and a bearded lady were two of this year's highlights – but a photograph of her cupping her breasts was enough to prompt fevered speculation. Had Blanchett dropped a cup size, so to speak, as a result of pregnancy? The film's producers must have been delighted, as their star effortlessly extended the free publicity they had already received. The contemporary fascination with women's bodies is a gift to anyone who has something to sell.

At the same time, it is a strange feature of a culture that could reasonably be described as obsessed with breasts that we seem to know very little about them. I have not had children myself but even I know that childbirth produces physiological changes. So do the contraceptive pill and getting older, which explains why the female population is buying bras in larger cup sizes than it did 20 years ago. Yet Blanchett's appearance in a low-cut dress prompted trawls though picture libraries for "before" and "after" photographs, as well as confessions from other famous mothers who had experienced this alteration. It may be that, in an era when women's breasts swell and shrink on the tables of cosmetic surgeons, we have forgotten that changes in breast size are a natural phenomenon.

To be fair, almost as much excitement was generated last week by Kylie Minogue's bottom, which was on show in a fetching mini-dress at the Brit Awards. In recent weeks, columnists have been wheeled out to explain why we like Kylie so much more than Britney Spears; she has even been hailed as a symbol of everything the Taliban hated about the modern world. This is quite a weight for Minogue's diminutive frame to bear and it suggests that the more women's bodies are on display, the more they need explaining and decoding. Of course this is something to do with the fact that most women don't look like Blanchett or Minogue, and tend to be in a state of permanent anxiety about their appearance. We no longer know what "natural" women look like, but movie stars and models are no more representative than the ordinary women who are involved in a daily struggle to control their weight.

In that sense, even the most perfect female body has become a plethora of signs, pregnant with the prospect of its own disintegration; famous women in their twenties are studied minutely for signs of cosmetic surgery, anorexia, weight gain or an unannounced pregnancy. The inspection is clinical enough when the women are young – Blanchett is 32 and gave birth to her first child in December – but positively lethal when they get older.

Spotting the signs of ageing has become a spectator sport: Princess Diana was only 36 when she died but royal watchers had already detected dimpled thighs, while Nicole Kidman and Jerry Hall were both accused of committing the sin of cellulite last year. What is so unpleasant about all this is the atmosphere of blame in which it is carried out, as though getting older is a lifestyle choice made by lazy women rather than a natural process. Kylie may have a perfect bottom at 33 but she won't in 15 years' time, as any number of fashion writers, showbiz reporters and columnists will delight in telling her.

What the novelist said to the vicar's wife

Recent research about the sex lives of "older" people – that is anyone over the age of 40 in our youth- obsessed culture – prompted a spirited debate last week. A novelist and a vicar's wife were among the pundits who declared that sex gets better after 40, appearing to confirm findings that people in this age group have almost as much sex as their younger counterparts. Almost 60 per cent of them make love once a week, according to the Pfizer Global Study of Sexual Attitudes and Behaviours, and three-quarters said sex was an important part of their lives.

Whether they were telling the truth is another matter, although that's a problem with sex surveys generally. The most revealing thing about this one, and previous studies with similar findings, is that they make headlines at all. Only an incorrigibly ageist society would be surprised by the idea of 45-year-olds making love, and it is perfectly clear that some adults continue to enjoy sex into their eighties. But the most interesting comment came from Marcelle d'Argy Smith, the former editor of Cosmopolitan, who is in her fifties and unmarried. "If you stay single," she declared, "you either have great sex or no sex – but at least you never have unwanted sex." This is certainly the experience of my 40- and 50-something friends, and may just be one of the great unspoken truths about the way we live now.

The weight of freedom

Honestly, the things people complain about. Supporters of the so-called metric martyrs, who lost their case at the High Court last week, have tried to portray the transition to metric weights as a blow to our historic freedoms. No doubt they also want to keep sterling, and foam at the mouth at the thought of the Christian abbreviations AD (Anno Domini) and BC (Before Christ) being replaced by the neutral terms Common Era and Before Common Era. Our history and heritage are supposedly being destroyed by the evil entity known in Eurosceptic circles as "Brussels", which endlessly imposes changes to our traditional way of life while the rest of the world continues to operate under Old Testament or indeed Koranic conditions.

Come off it. In the 1920s, the Turkish government abandoned the Islamic calendar, so that the year 1342 suddenly became 1926. If you find converting ounces to grams confusing, think of having a parent who was born in 1310 and died in 1952. If millions of Turks were able to cope with 600-year-old fathers, I think we might just bring ourselves to acknowledge that writing CE instead of AD does not signal the end of civilisation as we know it.

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The Daily Mail is horrified by announcements from cabinet ministers, including Tony Blair, that taxes will have to rise to pay for improvements in the health service. "Labour promises a world-class NHS but, guess what, it's Middle England who'll pick up the bill," the paper thundered. Since they are the people who are going to use it, I can't see why this is so outrageous; the Government would have to be pretty ingenious to persuade French farmers or Peruvian peasants to pick up the bill for British hip replacements. But the real reason behind all this outrage is the prospect that comfortably off Mail readers will have to pay higher taxes to ensure that the poor get decent medical treatment. Well done, Tony – why didn't you think of it before?