Marginal note

IS Gary Stevens correct that editors “marginalise women” by publishing “scantily clad” pictures even on business pages (Letters, 12 June) or is it some, though certainly not all, of the fair sex themselves who increasingly consider it normal to “flaunt it” in public, anywhere and any time, with dresses slit up to their hips and down to their navels?

Susanna Reid of BBC’s Breakfast said recently: “People seem to be shocked that women have breasts.”

Not so, but while not objecting to such décolletage distraction from our morning muesli, some of us mere men do wonder at the alacrity with which many women need to prove their womanhood and are then surprised or even complain at our appreciation.

No-one forced her to reveal so much cleavage and thigh on TV, or Princess Mary of Denmark recently ogled by the Finnish president’s husband at a state banquet, or Katherine Jenkins at Epsom last week who came within millimetres of a wardrobe malfunction! Most males do not dress like ballet or Strictly dancers; why females?

John Birkett

Horseleys Park

St Andrews

Fife