No cleavage? Try the Wonderbra. Huge boobs? Try the minimizing bra. Saggy boobs? Try the push-up bra. Perfectly normal boobs? Try getting a ‘fitting’ done to make them look even better because Pamela Anderson’s are the most admired boobs, Eva Longoria has been the recurrent flavour of the season and Lara Croft can tomb raid without jiggling hers. Or try a lace bra that ‘showcases’ them.

Apparently all this is about some sense of you go gurl. If you go by the amount of breast-related discussion that happens, you’d realize that happiness has never been about a state of mind—it’s a state of breast. Sometimes happiness is also the state of your muffin top or your thunder thighs or how your left nostril is bigger than your right one.

If you’re a woman, there is always something wrong with your body.

It’s exactly how those innumerable fashion magazines, the various self-help books and umpteen makeover shows want you to think. After all there’s that uplifting bra, the secret to success and the 5-day-15-kilo-fat-loss diet they want to sell to you.

And they all want you to have the perfect body—be yourself!—so that you can then aspire for that perfect relationship/marriage—where the hearts are full of love, all meals are candlelit dinners, the kids are well-behaved and the sex is fucking awesome and happens every night.

Such. Utter. Bullshit.

The perfect marriage, like the perfect body, is mythical.

I’ve never met a woman who’s said she has the perfect marriage or the perfect body. I personally have neither. There’s always something lacking.

I have regular candlelit meals but I don’t have any kids. I’m sure there’s no heart and no love, but there’s a lot of sex. Sometimes it’s awesome and sometimes I wonder if he’s fucking me or if he’s fantasizing about someone else.

Actually, sometimes I’m pretty sure he doesn’t care if it’s me or someone imaginary. You see, he never looks at my face. Mostly he’s looking at my bottom and if at all I’m facing him, his eyes are closed. Oh I orgasm all right, but that’s usually after he’s finished.

Once upon a time he used to be interested in my pleasure. Now he either doesn’t give a fuck (hah) or assumes I like whatever he’s doing. And this is the situation of my marriage/sex life despite me getting a Brazilian, wearing stilettos, talking dirty and giving ‘a darned good blow job baby’.

Wait a minute. Haven’t I written before that those very things—the waxing, the heels, the dirty talk, etc.—will salvage your marriage? That if you do those things, give your husband a whole lot of sex, he will give you a whole lot of love?

Well, turns out I lied to you, dear reader.