Dustin Hoffman just wanted to be pretty
EVERY now and then an internet video goes viral and it's just happened to an interview with the wonderful actor Dustin Hoffman, talking about his role in the film Tootsie, in which he played a man who had to pretend to be a woman to get work.
Before filming the make-up people did their bit to transform him, to make sure he looked like a real female and not a man in drag.
This they did but Dustin was dismayed to find out that posttransformation he was not a beautiful woman but a dowdy one.
This in turn led him to realise that if he'd met his character in person he would not have approached her - for we are all so conditioned to respond to beauty that we don't always see the truly interesting and inspirational people under our nose.
Well, out of the mouths of babes and Hollywood actors: the unpalatable truth.
Men and women alike are obsessed with female physical perfection: men not noticing the plain Jane with the personality and women spending a fortune on improving what nature provided.
More than ever this attitude dictates our lives.
We hear about young girls with eating disorders and others barely out of their teens resorting to Botox, which when used too young actually has the effect of piling on the years.
Buffing, spray tanning, exfoliating, the rest of it - we've never been a more shallow society, totally focused on the superficial and ignoring what is really important.
The oddest thing is that this has happened 40 years after the feminist revolution when women were finally going to be judged on their abilities and not just on whether they look good in a bikini.
That all rings a bit hollow now.
Dustin has done us a service for raising the issue and who would you rather be trapped on a desert island with: Tootsie or one of the Kardashians?
Real beauty runs deep. The shallow stuff is meaningless. We are all obsessed with the trivial now.