IT’S all Kim Kardashian’s fault, I’m sure of it.

There I was, pottering about on Saturday morning, when another piece of junk mail flew through my letterbox.

As I bent to pick it up and introduce it to the recycling bin, something caught my eye.

It was a leaflet for a new beauty salon opening in town and, having tutted at the typos, I happened to glance at the reverse.

The price list for threading and waxing included the usual suspects of eyebrows and lip – but also for just £2 for threading or £4 for waxing, you can have your forehead waxed.

Your forehead? Really?

Wanting to check whether this was a common problem among the fairer sex, I did a spot of Googling.

There was some stuff about newborn babies, which didn’t surprise me. Family legend has it my sister was really furry when she was born.

Then there was the intriguing ‘hairy forehead syndrome’, which turns out to be hypertrichosis, which is an abnormal amount of hair growth over the body.

It’s sometimes known as werewolf syndrome and is the condition behind the famous Victorian bearded lady circus performers.

So far so educational.

But the most popular result was: Kim Kardashian Opens Up About Her Once Hairy Forehead.

She told People magazine: “If you Google 2008 or 2007, I had the craziest, hairiest hairline, so I did laser it. Everyone would just Photoshop it every time I did a photo shoot. I didn’t really change the shape, I just got rid of all the baby hairs.”

Oh, Kimmy. That’s not a hairy forehead, that’s your hair.

And really? Magazines are Photoshopping people’s hairlines if they’re not perfectly straight.

So now young girls will grow up thinking they must be thin, beautiful and have totally straight hairlines.

Just something else for the poor bewildered teenager to fret over.

Which set me wondering how many girls and women actually need to get their foreheads waxed and how many are simply following yet another crazy celebrity trend.

A straw poll of my girlfriends revealed hairy toes are indeed a baffling and persistent problem but no one was owning up to a furry forehead.

While women who genuinely do have a problem with their forehead hair have my utmost sympathy, I can’t help wondering where this kind of nonsense will end The pressure on young women to remove all traces of body hair, tattoo on their eyebrows, and plump up their lips to some kind of human Barbie doll level of perfection is enormous.

And no wonder, because the beauty business is big business.

In my mother’s day it was all drawing lines on the back of your legs and dying your hair with tea. Nowadays you can fake it all, from boobs, to fingernails, to the colour of your skin, to how many eyelashes you have.

There’s nothing wrong with a bit of razzle dazzle to brighten up the way you look. But there’s a generation of girls growing up thinking it’s essential, or that they won’t be accepted if they don’t follow the beauty rules.

Let’s hope some of them turn to more constructive role models, such as Jessica Ennis-Hill or Malala Yousifazi, and leave Kim Kardashian to worry about her forehead by herself.

Only don’t wrinkle it, though, Kim, or it’s back to the beauty parlour with you for some Botox. Tsk.

  • I WATCHED a curious show on Channel 4 the other night called Secret Life of the Human Pups.

Yep, you heard. That’s people (from watching the show I gather it’s mainly men) who dress as puppies. And act like them. And have a handler to boss them about.

It all sounds like a bizarrely kinky sex game, but apparently not. According to one enthusiast, it’s a release from the stresses and strains of modern day life.

Ok, so I can admit to being mildly envious of my dog friend (he really is an actual dog, honest), who spends his days lazing around in the comfiest spot in the house and then goes bounding enthusiastically o’er vales and hills when it’s time for walkies.

He doesn’t worry about the mortgage, the shopping, the housework, delayed trains, Christmas shopping or workplace stress.

Having just reached his teenage phase, he spends most of his time investigating his nether regions and dreaming of girls. Still, it’s better than sulking in your room and shouting ‘I hate you’ a lot like real teenagers.

Even so, I still don’t actually want to be a dog. I think I’d find it rather disconcerting if every time I went to the loo somebody started hovering nearby with a black plastic bag, or if someone popped a treat into my mouth whenever I sat down or shook hands.

But what I find even more difficult to understand is the role of the so-called handlers. Why would you choose a human pup over a real one? They’d be rubbish at going for walks, terrible at fetching and no matter how good the costume, nothing beats stroking a real dog’s velvety ears. If you prefer a grown man dressed up in a latex spotty dog suit, you must be barking.

  • WE’VE been able to pay with plastic in lieu of paper money for years now, but now at last paper money is going to become plastic.

Which means whichever way you look at it, in future you will have to pay either with plastic or plastic.

I write, of course, of the new five pound note, revealed last week and due to go into circulation in September. Made from polymer, a thin, flexible plastic, it features Sir Winston Churchill.

Unfortunately, old Winnie is pictured without his famous, ever-present cigar, presumably because the note would have to carry a sentence warning spenders that smoking is bad for you.