He's blond, blue-eyed, and very well hung: Sexy magazines, steamy novels, books of erotic photographs - all portraying men. Do female desires now have a place on the top shelf?

If male friends were disgusted, my female friends were openly envious. It's not often you get to spend a day watching a gorgeous man take his clothes off at a photo-shoot for the soft-porn magazine For Women.

I had no idea what to expect. Sexy and exciting? Sordid and sinister? At least it would be educational. I began to appreciate how complicated and painful glamour modelling can be as soon as the model, Danny, arrived at the shoot in Stoke Newington, north London.

At first sight Danny was intimidatingly attractive; the kind of man who leaves women speechless in his wake. He was 26, tall, blond-haired, blue-eyed, dimples and angled features all in the right places and with a magnificently flat stomach. His tight jeans, high leather boots and a skimpy vest cried out to be removed. With just the right balance between glamour and grunge, he was everything a woman could dream of . . . and more. All that was needed was the masterful voice, the brooding intellect, the dark and dangerous past.

If only he had kept his mouth shut. He turned out to be a likeable hairdresser from Preston, excited about getting into glamour modelling and proud of his resemblance to Brad from Neighbours.

'Something terrible's happened,' said Danny, pulling up his shirt to reveal a tanned, hairless chest. In the middle of his tummy was a nasty welt, surrounded by a painful-looking rash. It ruined the otherwise perfectly Mills & Boon torso.

The photographer, Jess Esposito, squealed: 'What the hell happened?'

'I tried cream, but this scratchy stubble grew back and my girlfriend complained,' Danny said, pain shining from his eyes. 'Please don't tell me I've got to go all the way back to Preston.'

Chest hair spoils the flow of rippling muscle, so glamour models have to get rid of it. Danny had waxed his entire torso, and pulled off a lump of skin. Beauty, it seemed, came at a price.

Jess got to work with foundation cream, smoothing it into his skin. Then she put a black pop sock over her camera - 'to soften the image and wipe out the scars'.

Well, if we couldn't have the romance, there was still the sex. He was going to take his clothes off, right?

It's a tricky business, glamour modelling. You have to take it slowly, get the right mood. And this was Danny's first time. Jess didn't want to rush him.

She kept things relaxed, chatting to Danny throughout the shoot, but keeping him at a slight distance, almost treating him like a younger brother.

'Most of the models are thick,' she said. 'And some are really arrogant and incredibly vain. I think they must practise for hours in front of the mirror. But Danny's quite cute.'

She started with shots of Danny sitting against a wall, wearing jeans and boots and playing cards. He didn't know how to and she had to show him.

The lighting was tricky as he wasn't as muscley as her usual models and she had to arrange the lights to give his torso more definition. Jess directs quite tightly - after a year in the business she knows exactly what she wants - but there was no 'look sexy for the camera'. The most she said to encourage him was 'How sweet,' as he glanced at her through blond lashes.

After two rolls of Danny looking towards the camera, the wall, the cards, the window, he was still wearing most of his clothes. When were we going to get to the glamour?

At last, the third set of pictures was taken with Danny standing by a door. Jess made him undo a fly button or two and look casually down at his crotch.

Then the time had come. 'Get your kit off,' ordered Jess, softening the uncompromising command with a giggled. 'I love saying that.'

She had already asked him if he was well-endowed. 'Not that it makes any difference to me,' she said. 'It's just that it might be embarrassing for the model, appearing in a magazine read by thousands of women if he's not.'

As everybody knows, your average macho hero is naturally well-endowed with an erection to order, but because of the Obscene Publications Act, magazines do not show pictures of erect penises.

But, as Jess said, you don't want a picture of a slug. So the For Women pictures show penises in that twilight zone between slug and erection; swollen but not standing. Danny was ordered to the bathroom to de-slug himself.

This was apparently not an easy thing to do. Danny battled with a reluctant slug for the rest of the day, without success. Lighting could work wonders on puny muscles, but it would not work on Danny's flaccid penis. The readers of For Women would have to be satisfied with a slug after all.

Jess said that experienced models tie an elastic band around the base of the penis to stop blood flowing out. But if it is done too tightly, or left on too long, it can make a blood vessel burst. My last illusions about glamour modelling slipped away.

Jess took up glamour photography after she left college and started taking her portfolio to employers. 'They said my pictures, which were mostly of naked men, were too rude. So I took them to For Women and they said they weren't rude enough]'

She does not take pictures of nude women. 'That's exploitative because of what they're used for,' she said. 'The porn industry for men is a lot more seedy and the reason is that the pictures are wank material. These pictures are just beautiful men enjoying women admiring their bodies.'

Is it exploitation? It seemed to me that the day had been a process of pain, humiliation and boredom: the classic elements of pornography. In seven hours Danny made pounds 200: good money compared with hairdressing but he has signed away control over what happens to the pictures. Once For Women has used them, they will be sold overseas, and over their lifetime could make Jess up to pounds 11,000.

Glamour models have to be obsessive about their bodies. This can sometimes work out to be expensive. 'I really need to get my balls done,' Danny told Jess. He said he needed plastic surgery to tuck up flaps of loose skin, the male model's equivalent of a facelift.

By the end of the day I was still wondering where the glamour came in.