Dear Gossard: Your Ultrabra commercials may have upset the PC brigade, but thery are uplifting news for me, writes a woman with D cups

Oh dear, you really have got people hot under the collar, haven't you? Not to mention in various other places. Your TV ads for the ultimate cleavage (now that would be a fine thing) depicting women taking control of their own lives and their sexuality I particularly like the one where the hunky man is fixing breakfast, and the woman, Ultrabra'd to the nines, carries him back off to bed have provoked cries of Sexist], Derogatory], Offensive]. Mark Jones bleated in a New Mannish way about predatory women on Radio 4 last Sunday, and in the Daily Mail Louise Atkinson declared that the overriding message is . . . Men like a massive cleavage. (Er, well, they do, actually. They also like small breasts, and football.) She also says that women are intimidated by these powerful, cleavage-wielding women. Really? As a woman with more than a handful, I think they're wonderful.

It was about time you got your act together, though, wasn't it? About five years ago I was mortified to discover that I'd gone up a whole cup size. And we're not talking from A to B here; I went from C to D, and in that instant my underwear-buying habits changed. Many styles stopped at C; suddenly there were high street shops I couldn't go to even good old M & S seemed to reserve its most horrid, Forth Bridge-like styles for anything larger than average. I remember going to John Lewis, pointing to something pretty and wispy and asking Do you have this in a D-cup?. It was like an H M Bateman cartoon. The saleswoman went all stern. No, she said, leading me to a rack of constructions more soutien-gorge than brassire, they don't have enough support. Oh yeah? Even you, Gossard, failed me there. Your old Wonderbra sizing stopped at C, and I slunk away feeling like a freak.

Since then, though, I've come to accept my shape. I'm a girl, after all, and I have these bits that go in, and those bits that go out, and they're quite nice really. Fun, even. It's quite a laugh at a party to watch men try to make intelligent conversation with their eyes fixed on your chest. I'm supposed to find this insulting, but there are better things to worry about: unemployment, decent child care and housing, for instance.

So I get a bit fed up when, amid saturation coverage of waify anorexics we are confronted with images of normal, curvy women (the average bra size is 36C, but some women buy smaller sizes out of embarrassment) and the PC brigade shouts Foul]. I think these ads are amusing and far more empowering than Kate Moss wearing a grungey vest in a council flat.

But maybe that's it. Society will only accept powerful women on its own terms. Were not allowed to be attractive and sexy as well all feminists are butch lesbians and a beautiful woman must be stupid. There's a lot more to this issue than underwiring. Still, you've got my support.

PS. Where do I get the sexy man wholl make me breakfast?

(Photograph omitted)