Looking good doesn't come naturally

Not only is it a stupid argument, it is patently false. Which English woman, as she ages into her forties and beyond, does not want to wear sexy La Perla underwear and flit seductively around the bedroom like she did as a teenager?

Do you think that years of climbing the corporate ladder, or supporting a husband while he does, means that you shouldn't spend the earnings on looking after yourself and that you don't deserve the designer clothes you can finally afford?

Now is surely the time to understand, as you climb into your silk Yves St Laurent, that the point of power-dressing is to give yourself, well, power.

Of course you do. You only have to read British fashion magazines, obsessed with the latest laser and Botox treatments and best plastic surgeons, to see how looks-obsessed British culture is.

The British media is, in fact, crueller than its US counterparts to women who don't look perfect, all the while decrying the horror of the presumed starvation that goes with a size-zero figure like Keira Knightley's. You can't have it both ways.

According to a recent survey the English, Germans and Italians annually spend more on clothes than any other country - spending per capita almost double what the Americans do.

So, I say to all of you who criticise us here in the land of straight teeth, plumped-up skin and unfurrowed brows: be more honest with yourself. Get yourself to the gym and dentist and dermatologist. Stop feeling so guilty and puritanical about the time and the money spent there. Men like the results - whatever my British opponents on this matter like to believe.

It's time clever women stopped with this regressive pretence that their sexuality is distracting or an embarrassing encumbrance. Condoleezza Rice always looks fabulous. Ditto Oprah Winfrey, probably the world's most successful businesswoman. Nobody has ever suggested that either of them is stupid or vain. And I can promise you that, just like the rest of us, they're as busy maintaining their looks as they are doing their worthwhile jobs.