Do you ever look at Angelina Jolie and just hate her? Or Kate Winslet? Or when someone new starts at your office, if she’s a little plain, not too funny and average at her job, isn’t it easier to like her than the gorgeous blonde with the perfect rack and hilarious banter who got promoted within six months? Despite having spent several years bordering on some quite serious feminism, believing we women should rise up out of biologically and historically enforced subservience and take over the world, I still find myself sometimes unable to like the ones who actually get up and do it.

When I look around at my boyfriend, his friends and my male friends things become a little clearer. The way they all view successful males seems to be “good on him, I’d like to do that too, maybe I will”, rather than “Did you see the state of her hair extensions? She’s obviously had surgery. She looks cheap.” Women seem unable to handle the competition.

I’ve come to the conclusion that this basically boils down to insecurity. It’s a difficult time to be a woman in today’s world. Maybe you have a job you love, a boyfriend who’s great and a packed social life, but at the back of it all there’s always that biological clock there tick-tick-ticking away. At some point in between working out childhood issues, giving up cigarettes, finally learning how to stop binge-eating, buying a house, getting promoted and turning 40, you’re going to have to fit in a child. And the perfect wedding. To the perfect man. Who you will have to have managed to find, date, sustain a relationship with and keep interested through a variety of hurdles possibly including an alcohol problem, unplanned pregnancy, low self esteem, depression, body issues and lack of funds for weekly bikini waxes. Ok so this is worst-case scenario in a fairly typical life, but still, it’s not easy.

If you’re male, on the other hand, you’ve probably learned how to use the gym properly and kicked the cigarettes but the rest of the maturing process has been a gentle progression through any number of jobs and women, making them work out if you feel like it but never really feeling driven by anything other than your own instincts and perhaps a desire to retire at 40. At which point you could still pick up a nubile 22 year old and have a country manorful of children.

I’m aware that this is drastically over simplifying the issue but I can’t help wondering whether the constant pressure on women to be so 360 degree perfect. We have to be wife/slut/mother/career woman and emotionally stable despite surges of hormones. Is this contributing to not being able to be happy for the ones who are apparently getting it right?

Picture the scene. A trendy bar. You’re standing next to a slim, attractive 35 year old with a successful PR job, dandling a beautiful little son on one hip and keeping at bay the amorous attentions of a Brad Pitt-alike husband on the other you may find it a little hard to like her. Especially If you’re wearing ill-fitting leather leggings, trying to hide your dolphin tattoos, dreading another day in the battery farm that is your office and wishing your boyfriend would bring you your drink instead of guffawing with his mates in the corner. At this moment it’s unlikely you’re the greatest fan of the Yummy Mummy. Maybe you want to bury her head in the ice bucket. But why? Probably because she is everything society thinks a woman should be and everything you’re not.

Women have always been taught that we have much more to lose. Men never suffer from the total personality change once a month that can be PMT. Very few get inexplicable stretch marks, suffer the regular humiliation of having someone stare directly into their soft bits whilst tearing all the hair off and not many are informed they are officially on the shelf if they are single when the clock turns midnight on their 29th birthday. And I’m beginning to think it’s this fear of loss, loneliness, failure and rejection, inevitabilities that we have all been trained to expect if we don’t get it all right within the timetable, that causes us all to be so critical of ourselves and, in turn, of each other. Equally, of course, all women are completely different and for some this may never have been an issue. In which case you are probably one of the women that everyone else secretly hates!

Personally, I’m finally beginning to realise I don’t give a shit anymore about whether I can fit into size 10 jeans as long as I feel comfortable. Sometimes I will be hormonally evil, tearful or just plain rude and there will be days where I will resemble a fashion car crash or a bag lady, but that’s just life. And actually what we don’t realise and what we never tell each other is that despite the airbrushing and the awards no one is actually filling the ‘perfect’ mould. If you spent a week with Angelina, Kate or the blonde in accounts you’d be guaranteed to see some spilled soup, a matrimonial spat, a moment of total confidence loss or the demolition of a whole packet of biscuits. At least.

The difference between women and men, as far as I can see, is that men accept each other’s imperfections, as well as their own, and just get on with life, rather than analysing, criticising, hating and then self-hating. A lot of what keeps women down are the ties, traps and barriers we impose on ourselves. Whilst the female of the species has come so far in competing with men – in boardrooms, bars and bedrooms – the one place we’ve never really given ourselves a chance is inside our own heads. Although I hate to say it maybe the answer lies in aping a male quality that normally drives most of us mad: stop talking about it. If we stopped thinking so hard about being happy, maybe we actually would be. If we were happy about ourselves maybe we could be happy for other women (even the really skinny ones). And just think how many expensive hairdos could be saved from ice buckets if we managed that.