Yesterday, during the delivery of our body image and self-esteem workshop to a group of year 10 girls, I decided to ask about the Channel 4 programme ‘The ugly face of beauty’  (last Friday's blog).

One of the girls had seen it, so I asked her if she agreed or disagreed with the programme's pupils who'd preferred the appearance of very obvious fake breast to large natural ones.

The reason given in the programme was that fake breasts allowed you to walk down the beach and not be embarrassed by your body. The fake breasts they insisted looked a lot perkier. One of the boys said he found them “more beautiful”.

If fake is better, then the pressure to undergo surgery will only increase. It is therefore not surprising that our largest cosmetic surgery clinic carried out 160 breast augmentation surgeries on teenagers last year.

I digress, back to my classroom conversation. Her reply to my “is fake better” question was disappointing to say the very least. She said that fake breasts were better because they didn’t sag. “Its all about what boys like”, she clarified helpfully.

“Don’t you think”, I asked “that girls should value themselves by who they are rather than what boys think they should be? “
“Yes”, she admitted soberly, “but that’s the way it is”.

I looked at her and the group in front of me and was suddenly filled with motherly compassion. They were great kids, very polite and it was disconcerting to realise that boys had taken on such importance, so early in their lives.