Dear Sir/Madam,

In response to 'Why won't Hollywood give us work?' moan the over-40 actresses in yesterday's Sunday Telegraph.

That many Hollywood actresses find it difficult getting work once they start to lose their youthful charms is not just because of film producers' well-documented taste for girls and young women, but also because it is what the "market" demands. Who wants to look at middle-aged women on the screen - apart, perhaps, from other middle-aged women? Most people want actors who are sexually attractive; the more attractive the better, usually; and the age-attractiveness curves for human males and females are very different.  

Many female actors are in a similar situation - for very similar reasons - to prostitutes (whores), who are either unable to find work as they age, or have to sell themselves at a reduced price. Personally, I do not have a lot of sympathy with them. They earn more money (some of them a lot more) from the sale of their sexual charms in a few years than someone doing a honest day's work (a nurse, for example) will in a whole lifetime, or do they really think that they are paid all that money just for their acting skills?

The above does not apply to all actresses, of course, but I am sure it does to many (at least to a degree), and certainly to the majority of those who work for Hollywood. It is a disgusting situation, but who are the more contemptible: the whores or those who pay for their services?

Having just watched the first part of a documentary, "The unveiling of Islam" by Channel 4 news presenter, Samira Ahmed, I was very impressed with the criticism made by a number of young British Muslim women of how Western women flout their sexuality. It seems to me that in the West we have gone to one unwholesome extreme (driven and corrupted in no small degree by commercial interests and the fact that "sex sells"), while Islamic fundamentalists maintain another extreme by trying to suppress any show female sexuality.

What we need is a healthy balance and compromise between these two extremes. Finding it is one of today's most important personal and social challenges.