Want to get lean? You need to train this specific body part

First, a toast: to Dolly Parton. What a magnificent life she led. How lucky are we, to have her songs, to have basked in her subversive femininity, to have benefitted from her fathomless, fundamental decency.

To Dolly, whom we will always love.

But now: to facelifts - and good bodies.

Ever since Kris Jenner turned up looking more like Kim Kardashian, than Kim Kardashian does, following a frankly miraculous deep plane facelift, the discourse around both aesthetics and feminism has been dominated by the idea of the Forever 35 Face - women with faces surgically adjusted to look 35, even if they, themselves, are twice that (which Jenner is) - or more.

Nicole Kidman (59) and her brand new Vogue cover have given the conversation second wind.

I mean, LOOK AT HER.

It’s all very potent and divisive, of course.

People are either furious that women in the public eye are, apparently, no longer allowed to age (cos where does that leave the rest of us? What messages does it send?) OR desperate to have a Forever 35 Face themselves, only, they can’t afford it/ are too scared OR, most confusingly of all:

They feel both these things at once, with equal passion'; currently have no clue which will win out.

Me? Ah. I’m afraid that, despite absolutely understanding and respecting all the ideological objections, I rather do want a lift… But only a really good one, and I’m not going to pay the £40k they seem to cost in London RN (mostly because I haven’t got it). I’d sort of love to be able to go to Brazil and do it there, where the surgeons and techniques are incredible, (as good, if not - better), yet somehow cost a tenth of London prices; meaning a flight to Rio, facelift, and 10 days or so in a nice hotel to recuperate before coming back, would probably leave me with change from £10k… BUT I think I’d go crazy with anxiety, all on my own, so far from home. All that thinking time! Nothing to do but stare at my swollen mush and wonder if it’ll ever settle, and have I made a horrific mistake, and is that ache in my knee actually DVT?

Et cetera.

The good news, is don’t have to worry about my body. Because it doesn’t look like it did when I was 35.

It looks better than that.

I appreciate this is one of the most annoying things a woman my age can say
”OMG I’VE GOT THE BEST BODY OF MY LIFE! 35 YEAR OLD ME WISHES SHE HAD THIS BODY! LOOK AT MY GUNS! FEEL MY ROCK HARD ABS! I COULD CRUSH A MAN’S SKULL BETWEEN THESE QUADS!” et cetera

But - that doesn’t seem to stop me.

Also?

Here’s another bikini selfie.

But look, beneath the bragging and the boring-on, I hope I’m making a couple of important points. One of them is, I thought I hated physical activity for most of my adult life. Felt useless at it at school, never thought I’d lose that ick. Discovering - aged what? 41, 42? - that I, in fact, totally loved it, was passably OK at (some of) it, was definitely capable of getting (much much) better, the more I did, was extraordinary. This is not just because I GOT THE BEST BODY OF MY LIFE, but also because it made me understand that the world is just f**king filled with things, with which, I could fall hopelessly in love at any minute - I just don’t know it yet. Coming to love exercise has left me in this permanent giddy state of: What else, what else, what next, what else?

My other point is, I so badly want other women to feel this, too. I do not care about being a good role model or a good influence in almost all other respects. Babe! Do you! Be happy! But where exercise is concerned… I just would really really like other women to feel the same joy in moving, the same love for their own bodies; the same giddiness of endorphin hit, the confidence high of doing something you thought you couldn’t, the power of a body which just keeps getting stronger all the time…

Lately, I’ve become pretty convinced that one body part, rules them all. Serves as a kind of foundation on the rest. Dictates how good the whole of your body looks, and how well it moves. If you focus on it, the rest will fall into place around it, almost, because that is how fundamental it is, and how much power it has.

What is it?

It’s your