Help! I’m confused. For years women have been obsessed with their bottoms.

For decades we have stood in front of mirrors and spun our necks around Exorcist-style to see how our rear ends look in various types of trouser: jeans, Oxford bags, pedal pushers, bell-bottoms, even shell suits - you name it, we wanted our bottoms to look small and neat in it.

Shorts too had to look good from behind or there was no way we would ever go out in them.

The question “Does my bum look big in this?” has been so widely used across all continents that it has been adopted as an international catchphrase uttered by females everywhere.

Yet now, it appears, women actually want their bottoms to look big. Big bums are very much in, so much so that some women attend specially engineered workout classes to sculpt their behinds to resemble those of Jennifer Lopez or Kim Kardashian, both famed and admired for their large rears which they accentuate in skin-tight clobber.

To my way of thinking, this doesn’t seem necessary: a few nights on the sofa with an enormous fry-up and as many doughnuts as you can eat would do the trick, and be a heck of a lot more enjoyable.

I’ve read about people actually having injections of silicone or fat from another part of their bodies to make their bottoms larger. They’re paying good money to have huge backsides, not to mention the cash they will have to splash out when their size ten jeans no longer fit and they need some new slacks with elasticated waists to cover their moon-like buttocks.

And what about all this ‘twerking’, sticking your bum out and twisting it around. Why would anyone want to do this, I don't know, yet there are exercise classes for twerking too.

Surely this big bum fascination is nonsense; maybe on April Fool’s Day it will all be revealed as one massive, long-running, mass-marketing, brainwashing joke.

I think this may be about to happen, particularly as large bums are back in the news with the revelation that modern man’s preferences for women with a curvy backside has been traced back to prehistoric influences. Research found the 'optimal angle of lumbar curvature,' is a 45.5 degree curve from back to buttocks. This allowed primitive women to have better support, provide for, and carry out multiple pregnancies.

I shouldn’t grumble: my bottom isn’t the tiniest, so it's nice to know it's in vogue. If it really is true and big bums are ultra-desirable all I have to do is wait until frizzy red hair, flabby stomachs, short legs and cellulite are also trending, and I might get recruited by a talent scout.