If you have been struggling to read the Daily Telegraph lately, it's not because it's a frothing rightwing rag that really believes William Hague would make a good prime minister, it's because your arms are too short.
Yes, it's official. Telegraph chiefs are concerned that their paper is just too big for women to handle. Chief executive Dan Colson said: "Smaller papers are viewed as more user-friendly, especially by women whose arms aren't as long."
Ever keen to embrace women's issues at the highest level, the long-armed, pinstriped males plan to shave 4cm off the width of their paper. This, they claim, will make it more attractive to female readers.
Who has been advising them, I wonder? I live in Gloucestershire, so much the natural home of Telegraph readers that our newsagent has a special counter for it. As I timidly view the queue of horsey women in quilted Barbours and field boots, it occurs to me that any of them has arms long enough to read two Telegraphs Sellotaped together.
So what's behind all this? As every woman knows, size matters. There have been efforts in the past decade to catch female cash by designing products, other than make-up and sanitary towels, with women in mind. Adjustable car seats and lighter tools recognise that women are built differently from men. Women prefer electronic equipment that does the job without enough programmes to blast the washing into space.
This is all well and good. Difference is valuable and desirable. I suspect, though, that we are still not very far away from the masculine as standard, feminine as deviation mentality that has stamped western thought since Aristotle.
If the male is standard, a woman will more or less have to fit round him. This happens in sex, it happens with working hours and it happens with copies of the Telegraph. Board the first class of the 7.41am from Charlbury to Paddington and you will see no faces, only beautiful cufflinks notched round a wall of Telegraphs. Then you will notice that while most of these Telegraphs hardly twitch, a few are contorted into a ceaseless rustling origami.
Closer inspection reveals that the men have filled all the air space and the table in front of them. Arms outstretched like the crucified Christ, they read their broadsheets in comfort, while the unfortunate woman squashed beside them either plasters her paper against the window or hangs it over the aisle. His or her arm length is not the problem. It's his dick that gets in the way.
Women are encouraged to take up less space than men. Observe the body language in any public place and you will find that while men are expansive, women are contained. Do I mean restrained? Physical space is an extension of psychic space. If you feel like a nobody, you don't need much room.
Self-confidence should not be a gender issue. Boys are not born more confident than girls. Society makes them so because it traditionally values their skills and aptitudes above those of women. Women have responded by demanding a place in the male world of money and power, and we have seen enormous changes. What we haven't seen is a change to working hours or a significant shift in the structure of the family. Women have had to adapt to a system that suits men much better than it suits women. We are still the variant, not the standard.
Let me tell you a secret. The type of man who runs the world never worries that his arms are too short or his bottom is too big. He gets his suits made at the tailor's. At the tailor's, even a baboon is god. While women are being cut down to size by a Naomi Campbell- cloned shop assistant who assures you that this style suits everybody -strange that it makes you look like a fat dwarf - men are being measured in a mahogany fitting room, by an oozing tailor who calls them Sir. Or Madam, in my case, because that's where I learnt this secret. Wearing clothes that fit you perfectly makes you feel that the rest of the world will fit you perfectly, too.
It's quite different from feeling glamorous or beautiful. It's not about being on show. It's saying: "I'm worth it." Women who believe they are worth it will not be intimidated by the size of their paper or by the size (or not) of any other type they run into of a morning.
If the Telegraph wants to attract more women readers, it should hire more women journalists and try to sound less like a Biggles comic. Women need more media representation, but we don't need smaller newspapers. Thanks - we can hold our own.
This column appears fortnightly. www.jeanettewinterson.com
