When Segolene Royal, the French presidential candidate, was campaigning last year, she had a tooth straightened. There was a furore in the French press. What a very low-rent thing to do, they said. How awfully un-French.

And so it is. Segolene Royal may be drop-dead gorgeous but the French prefer their noses left alone, and their teeth left alone. They prefer a face more individual. They have a sense that what makes a woman sexy is precisely that individuality, and that if nature presents you with a fault, the best thing to do is embrace it. It's how come you get stars that look as different as Charlotte Gainsbourg and Lou Doillon, Sandrine Bonnaire and Arletty. A fine figure (ie: thin as a whippet), good posture and a sense of herself is what a French woman requires - it simply isn't DONE to muck yourself about too much. They consider it naff.

But not so the Americans. Because you CAN, the sense seems to be, you SHOULD. Fuelled by a vastly wealthy plastic surgery industry, the pressure is on for face lifts, brow lifts, boob jobs, blepheroplasty, teeth whitening... The cheek implants on CNN presenters are starting to get positively distracting these days - all the women are turning simian. And re teeth, I don't know which freaks me out more - the picture-perfect Osmond-like smile (which to me betokens complete insincerity) or the Pamela Anderson type of proudly fake boobs.

Americans make jokes about British teeth but in the UK, the Queen Mother was always celebrated to have kept her own knashers rather than switch to false ones. A bit grey and raggedy so they were, but at least they were real. Meanwhile a French woman who's born flat-chested stays that way and feels all the more feminine for it - no need to stick a pair of silicon hooters on the front just to prove she's female. Nor would she opt for a full Brazilian wax (a pederast's delight, IMHO - I would run ten miles from any man who asked for one). When it comes to the muff, the French just do a bit of a trim and leave it at that.

Perhaps I am getting a skewed impression, but I notice this US/Euro difference constantly when reviewing books. The American tips for a daily makeup are SO much heavier than a European would wear: only a drag queen would wear this much slap over here, even for a special occasion. Nude panty hose are apparently SO last year and since you simply must go bare-legged you owe it to yourself to have sclerotherapy on your varicose veins (or what, exactly? Do your legs drop off? What the hell's wrong with tights?). It's suggested you spend 45 minutes styling your hair every morning. I mean, get a life for Christ's sake - I doubt I spend that much time a month: I just tip my head upside down and waggle a hairdryer about for a bit.

Maybe I am just lazy (actually, there's no maybe about that). Or maybe I am just too old and cynical. But so much of it strikes me as cobblers.

"There's nothing I won't put on my face in the name of beauty," said one American writer proudly in a book I just read. Well that ain't me. First I want to know it's not harmful. And then I want to know it's not tested on animals. And then I want to know how the company treats its workers, and is it guilty of polluting the environment. And then I want to know I'm getting value for money. And then - doh - I want to know how exactly it's going to make a difference. Frankly there's a host of things I won't put on my face in the name of beauty. No wonder my makeup drawer is so pathetic...

From what I understand, about two thirds of marriages suffer an infidelity on someone's part. Infidelity is something men and women have been weathering in one another since the dawn of time and only about half of those marriages collapse as a result. Many people pick up the pieces and move on. A lot depends on people's private attitudes to fidelity and marriage in the first place as to whether or not they feel betrayed.

It's all-American, this furore, of course. The French wouldn't bat an eyelid . One of Chirac's mistresses had an apartment in the Elysee Palace, and generally speaking, sexual matters, along with contraception and pregnancy are simply thought of as a private matter.

After all, it's not as if human beings are designed to be monogamous. Monogamy may be desirable from the point of view of organised society that benefits from stable environments for children to be raised to adulthood, but biologically speaking, human beings are inherently promiscuous. While men's genes benefit from mating with every available female they encounter, women's genes too benefit from variety - many psychologists believe it's the reason for the three-year itch, as if a man sticks around for three years, the child is out of the danger zone, and the woman can (biologically speaking) move on and find a new partner to father the next offspring. Better to have a different father for each child and then your genes have more of a fighting chance.

None of this is very much help to Silda Wall Spitzer, of course. Her husband has been caught in flagrante in a particularly humiliating manner - not shagging his 35-year-old secretary on the side, but paying for (possibly unsafe) sex with a hooker easily young enough to be his daughter, and probably doing it with public funds. It is the kind of thing that makes everyone wince - dirty old man combines with unfaithful spouse combines with prostitute's client combines with bent public official. A quadruple whammy. No wonder Wall looked like a beaten dog at the conference where she was wheeled out to support her erring husband like so many British Tory wives were back in the 90s.

Oh well, it is a private tragedy, but it would be a big thing to end a 26-year relationship, even if she does decide to stop working with her husband, in whose building she has an office. With her children getting older, perhaps Ms Wall would find a boost to her self-esteem in going back to her old job as a crackerjack corporate lawyer, or in continuing to run her charity Children for Children, which aims to involve young people in community service. Or running for President in a few years time.

She is only 50 and has a hell of a lot going for her. There's more to women like this than just the weasels they marry, and success is the best revenge...

I can't believe the crap this woman has to put up with. It's not enough for her to be intelligent, experienced, competent, committed and ambitious (not generally considered a fault in the male of the species), she has to field bloody silly questions like: "How do you feel about people not liking you?"

Well, big whoop. Do they really expect her to care? I loved her reply of: "Well, that hurts my feelings," said with a slight smile that will doubtless incense the banjo-pickin' God-botherers of the flyover states.

I loathed Thatcher, but I can't imagine anyone asking that old battleaxe such a mind-numbingly patronising question. To start with, no-one would have dared. Nor Angela Merkel. Nor Indira Ghandi. Americans prefer their female politicians more cuddly and fluffy than this and it looks like Hill's surge in popularity may well be due to a well-timed tear in the eye when talking about the future of the country. Gee, you mean, she has feelings too?

When Bill Clinton was campaigning to be president, Hillary got inveigled into baking cookies on prime-time telly just to prove she was really a woman under it all. Under what all? She certainly has a womb and ovaries, unless she gestated Chelsea in a box - in my book the possession of a double-x chromosome is pretty good qualifying criteria for femalehood. So why is the concept of her also being one of THE most successful lawyers in the US such a threat? We all know she's wealthy enough to buy store-bought cookies, so why does anyone feel the need to pretend that she really knows where the kitchen is? Do Americans really have nothing better to worry about than this?

The whole of the US political process is a crock of shit, with the evangelicals hijacking entire caucuses and people who should be on the same side - not even natural adversaries in a normal world - being forced to compete as if they were the worst of enemies. The victory usually belongs to those with the biggest wallets. Luckily, Hill's is bigger than most.

Ye gods.

Anyway, let's hope she can keep her act together and become the first female president of the United States. If that benighted country finally takes its head out of its backside, it might finally end up with - y'know - stuff that we've had in Europe for 50 years: like a national health service, and a functioning social security system, and a judicial process that doesn't execute its own citizens.