Who says British women are ugly?

LIZ Hurley and Catherine Zeta Jones grace the covers of magazines around the world. Their faces and figures are held up as ideals of female beauty yet, according to new research, British women are among the ugliest on the planet.

FHM magazine used its website to canvas opinions from across the globe and, according the 59,000 people who voted online, British women are downright ugly. Only Afghan women fared worse although surely it's difficult to tell behind their burkas.

Beauty stereotypes are nothing new. French women are renowned for their sense of style and chic while Americans are famous for their perfect grooming. But is it fair to make such sweeping generalisations on national lines?

Tanya Walton, who owns The Beauty Spot beauty salon in Durham City, says not. "Everyone looks different and it's absolutely impossible to say whether people from a particular country are ugly or beautiful. I've been in business a long time and I'm seeing a lot more women coming in for treatments. I don't think that's because they think they're ugly, it's because they want to look their best and they have a different lifestyle that allows them to do that.

"Even 20 years ago, it was only rich people who could afford beauty treatments but with more women working, they can afford it. They are bothered about how they look, they want to look after themselves.

"It's quite ridiculous to generalise. I think the readers of FHM magazine should open their eyes."

On the streets of Darlington, the feeling is the same. Martin Price, a 54-year-old computer technician, says: "There are lots of ugly women all over the world but there are lots of beautiful women too. It all depends what you think is beautiful.

"In America, everyone has plastic surgery and they all have their teeth done but because people don't do that over here, they assume British women are ugly. They're not, they're just different."

John Phelps, a 33-year-old plasterer from Ferryhill, adds: "You're always going to see some girls who are a bit ugly. Some are hideous but I actually think we have some of the most beautiful women in the world here. My girlfriend's stunning. She's got a great face, a great body and she dresses really well. I don't think she's the only one either. You just have to walk down the street to see there are beautiful women everywhere." So why do so many FHM readers feel British women are unattractive? It may have something to do with the idealised images of beauty we are constantly presented with in magazines, on television and in the cinema. In a recent magazine interview, British ER actress Alex Kingston said she felt ugly when she first moved to the US. With her strong features and tumbling curls, the star of the hit medical drama is extremely striking but because she didn't conform to the Hollywood beauty stereotype, she says she felt out of place. Other British actresses have transformed themselves in order to make it big in the movies. Catherine Zeta Jones has gone for old Hollywood-style glamour. She is never seen out without full make-up and is reported to have had plastic surgery on her eyelids. Minnie Driver lost weight, toned up her body and had her curls blow-dried straight but it is impossible for ordinary women to spend so much time and money on their looks. "I don't think these people are necessarily any more beautiful," says Louise Smith, a 44-year-old mother of two from Darlington. "A lot of it is about how you dress or how you do your hair. If you have the time to it, that's fine but most of us just can't fit it in. I put on a bit of foundation and lipstick before I go out, and I brush my hair, but that's it. "Anyway, who can say what's beautiful and what's not? In some cultures, women put hoops round their necks to stretch them or plates in their lips. To us, that's not beautiful, but to them it is." Louise's opinions reflect the famous adage, 'Beauty is in the eye of the beholder' and, of course, everyone has a different idea of what or who is attractive. Beauty fashions change just as regularly as clothes. In the early part of the 20th Century, everyone wanted pale skin but then Coco Chanel went on holiday and got a tan and suddenly, everyone wanted to be brown. In the 1950s, Marilyn Monroe's pout and curvaceous figure epitomised female beauty but now everyone wants to look like Kate Moss or Gwyneth Paltrow. There is, however, a flip side to the coin and, all over the world, there are faces that people agree are beautiful. In 1993, anthropologists Douglas Jones and Kim Hill visited two isolated tribes in Paraguay and Venezuela to test the phenomenon. The tribes had seen very few people outside their own culture but Jones and Hill showed them a range of photos of women from various cultures and asked them to rate their beauty. These were compared with ratings from Russia, Brazil and the United States and, remarkably, people in all five countries were attracted to women with delicate jaws and chins and large eyes. Other cross-cultural studies have confirmed that women are regarded as beautiful if they have smooth skin, big eyes and plump lips.

So where does that leave British women who fared so badly in the poll? "You have to take a survey like that with a big pinch of salt," says Marie Cooper, of Darlington. "People make assumptions about what British women look like because of things they've heard. Some of the people who replied to the survey have probably never even met a British women so they can't possibly know. What's beautiful to one person might not be to someone else but if you're happy with what you look like, that's all that matters."