British women don't dress to please a man

Back in the summer, one of those surveys cunningly designed to look like a bit of responsible social research, but which in reality is a quiet plea for SOME PUBLICITY for a beauty brand, claimed that British women are the least likely in the world to dress to please a man. Frustratingly – or refreshingly, since practically every other survey into British women seems intent on framing us as drunken hoydens with murder in our hearts and cellulite and Cheerios in our veins – the survey seemed none too clear about whether this was a good or bad thing. But then it probably depends where you’re from.

In Russia (top of the league with 77 per cent of those polled claiming to give a fig what their men think of their topless corsets), Pleasing A Man is presumably pretty universally condoned. Things are more complicated in lands still jaded by the rape and pillage of the Vikings (contrary to popular myth, the average Swede does not prance around snowy Stockholm in suspenders and stockings but is more likely to swaddle herself in several kilos of parka and Uggs).

I’m all for a bit of ambiguity at times, but as we hurtle into winter ’07, a season which, on the face of it, is replete with supremely non man-pleasing trends, you have to wonder whether fashion is wholly or partially responsible for the British woman’s current nonchalance in the face of male opinion. Read on >>