By Natasha Walter
The feminine ideal? Big Brother winner Sophie Reade (centre) and former Playboy model Louise Glover
Aspiring night in the Mayhem nightclub in Southend. About a dozen girls, all in tiny hotpants and towering wedge heels, with dark fake tans and shiny, straightened hair, made their way over to a group of men who were standing by a large, empty bed.
The men's job was to choose who should enter a Babes On The Bed competition.
Of the hundreds of women selected to pose on beds in nightclubs all over Britain for this contest, one would be given a modelling contract with Nuts magazine.
In this context, modelling means glamour modelling, the coy words for posing almost naked for men's magazines. 'I want to do it to make my mum proud,' said one young woman, Lauren, in denim hotpants and tight, yellow crop top.
The girls got on the bed one by one, as Cara Brett, an established glamour model, took the microphone and began to direct them into more and more suggestive poses.
'Why not on all fours? Let's get those off,' she urged impatiently. 'If you're going to be a winner, you've got to show some skin.'
A plump young woman in mauve bra and knickers was one of the first to slip off her bra and jiggle her breasts at the cameras. As the display became more sexual, the underwear unpeeling from the smooth skin of teenage women, the men in the club began to chant, heavily and fast, and to press nearer and nearer to the stage.
The men were using their phones to video and photograph the girls as they took off their clothes. One girl, who was a bit too fleshy around the middle and not fleshy enough around the chest, came in for boos rather than cheers. She looked tearful as she went back into the line.
Role model: Young women today are increasingly looking up to figures such as Jodie Marsh
The shortlisting was done at top speed - only women who flashed their breasts or their thongs for the crowd were called back for the final four.
'Come on,' said Cara impatiently, 'let's show some skin, girls. Let me help you out of these.' She dragged the hotpants off one girl, showing her sequined thong. The crowd erupted, and that girl was judged the winner.
As I saw for myself that evening in the Mayhem nightclub, and as one can see any night of the week in clubs up and down the UK, images that a previous generation often saw as degrading for women have now been taken up as playful and even aspirational.
For more than 200 years, feminists have been criticising the way that artificial images of feminine beauty are held up as the ideal to which women should aspire.
From Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication Of The Rights Of Woman in 1792, to Naomi Wolf's The Beauty Myth in 1991, brilliant and angry women have demanded a change in these ideals.
Yet far from fading away, these ideals have become more powerful than ever. What's more, throughout much of our society, the image of female perfection to which women are encouraged to aspire has become more and more defined by sexual allure.
Of course, wanting to be sexually attractive has always been and will always be a natural desire for men and women. But in this generation, a certain view of female sexuality has become celebrated, and it's one defined by the terms of the sex industry.
The narrowing of what it means to be sexy - slender with large breasts on show - arises from the way that the sex industry has moved from the margins to the mainstream of our society.
Jordan: A 2006 survey carried out among teenage girls suggested that more than half of them would consider being glamour models
source: dailymail
The feminine ideal? Big Brother winner Sophie Reade (centre) and former Playboy model Louise Glover 
Role model: Young women today are increasingly looking up to figures such as Jodie Marsh
Jordan: A 2006 survey carried out among teenage girls suggested that more than half of them would consider being glamour models 
