[Medellin, Colombia; December 7. Image via Getty]

An actress performs during the 'Myths and Legends' Festival on December 7, 2009, in Medellin, Antioquia Department, Colombia. AFP PHOTO/Raul ARBOLEDA (Photo credit should read RAUL ARBOLEDA/AFP/Getty Images)

I had exactly this reaction when I started Casper Walsh's tell-all in the Independent. Great, I thought. Another laddish tale of conquests and self-indulgence played off with Duchovny-esque excuses and crocodile tears. As women, we've grown cynical about what often seems a very convenient disorder. (Maybe not just women - when I raised the subject with my boyfriend, his response was "bullshit. That's just code for infidelity.") And, yes, the author initially comes off like your typical "I'm honest, that's all that matters" type so common in the world of the first person.

I'm sensitive; to people, places, sounds, everything. Discovering how to use this sensitivity to my advantage was key to getting what I wanted with women. I'd walk up to the best-looking woman in the street and nervously start talking. I'd be exactly how I felt: fundamentally shy, sweet and honest. The threat of humiliation and rejection was intoxicating. What truly disturbed me was my ability to use my honesty to get so many women into bed under the guise that I was interested in them long term. Back then it was never going to be anything other than sex...I got blamed for my behavior. Blacklisted as a "typical bloke". "You're all the bloody same." I was confronted, shouted at, slapped, punched, threatened with a shotgun, a handgun and an oversized knife. All it did was make the hit of success that much sweeter. I was always clear at the beginning of each encounter: "I'm not available for a relationship, I like you, think you're gorgeous, smart and I want to sleep with you." It never ceased to amaze me how often this worked.

We hear about the author's many conquests, his unhealthy relationships and dead-end affairs. I was getting irritated, and then I came to this: "I objectified women in bed, in magazines and on the screen. There was a lurking sense of the absence of morality and human decency in my behavior but as long as I kept a constant stream of women in my life, the potentials, actuals and the fantasies, I could keep the creeping demons of guilt and shame at bay." That sentence stopped me cold - it seemed, in those lines, that Walsh had stumbled onto something fundamental - not just about sexual addiction, but about our society.

You can read his journey for yourself; suffice it to say, reality comes to roost and he realizes he has A Problem. He begins the truly agonizing process of recovery - and if, like me, you continue to harbor skepticism about the condition's validity, this may help lay it to rest. It may not be Trainspotting, but the struggles Walsh recounts are very real, very painful, and very deep-seeded.

I carried on going to the support groups; made friends with people I would normally cross the road to avoid and began to look deeper into why I'd been running so hard for so long. My addiction to sex was, in part, my way of dealing with the abuse I experienced when I was 12 by a man old enough to be my father when my real father was in prison. I'd buried this under the sincere belief that because I was consenting I had no justifiable complaint – another barrier of denial. I contacted the police and went through excruciating interviews in a bid to track down my abuser. We never found him. The process was enough to lay the ghost to rest. ...Today, I put as much energy into my recovery as I did my addictive sexual behaviour. I go to my recovery meetings weekly. I attend a men's group, have mentors and mentor others. I work with sex offenders and help lead the recovery meetings that, in a nutshell, saved my life. It is still very hard work at times. But most of the time, I love it.

He ends the piece happily married and stable, even volunteering with sex offenders. It's a triumphant story, albeit a sobering one. As he says, "sex was a separate, dark and destructive part of me, set up as a child to keep me safe and separate from a world I saw as dangerous. At last, I'm integrating my sexuality into my life in a way that is boundaried, healthy and genuinely loving." This is no wink-wink tale of "what's a guy to do?" but rather an indication of the way abuse can scar. I know I'll give the subject more thought - and judge more harshly when people try to confuse this with mere self-indulgence.

Sex Addict: Confessions Of A Toxic Bachelor [Independent]

Was Marilyn Monroe a plus-sized beauty? An average dame? A svelte sphinx who's been a posthumous victim of vanity size deflation? Like the Bible and the Nazis, she's become a rhetorical gambit that can seemingly be twisted to support any argument. The argument has been further confused by various celebrities' authoritative pronouncements. Liz Hurley made perhaps her most lasting contribution to the cultural lexicon when she notoriously declared to Allure, "I've always thought Marilyn Monroe looked fabulous, but I'd kill myself if I was that fat...I went to see her clothes in the exhibition, and I wanted to take a tape measure and measure what her hips were. (laughter) She was very big." Roseanne, for her part, stated in '96 that, "I'm more sexy than Pamela Lee or whoever else they've got out there these days. Marilyn Monroe was a size 16. That says it all."

Okay, first of all, when folks toss around the "Size 16" thing, yes, that's a British 16, by which they mean a U.S. Size 12. (Although it should be said that some have made the claim for the U.S. 16, too.) Then too, this doesn't even make a lot of sense, because most of Marilyn's clothes, and certainly her costumes, like those of any star of the era, would have been custom-made. And as anyone who's seen her films knows, her weight shifted a lot, so any "Marilyn Monroe was X size" statement is, stopped clock-style, probably going to be accurate at some point.

But if people demand numbers? They're certainly out there. According to measurements from Marilyn Monroe's dressmaker:
Height: 5 feet, 5½ inches
Weight: 118-140 pounds
Bust: 35-37 inches
Waist: 22-23 inches
Hips: 35-36 inches
Bra size: 36D

In other words, whatever her size, her figure was an unusually dramatic hour-glass, which makes it kind of strange for women to compare themselves to her anyway. When a collector displayed a bunch of her most famous costumes in London recently, "they had to get a special mold made for the corset and swimwear dummies in the exhibition because Monroe was such an extreme hourglass shape that no off-the-peg dummies existed in those measurements."

So, what size was she? Well, like most women, she wasn't one size everywhere. When British journalist Sara Buys had a chance to try on some of Marilyn's clothes earlier this year, she reported:

After all these years, mystery and conspiracy theories still surround her death, but when it comes to her physical attributes, I can put a few facts straight. Contrary to received wisdom, she was not a voluptuous size 16 – quite the opposite. While she was undeniably voluptuous – in possession of an ample bosom and a bottom that would look at home gyrating in a J-Lo video – for most of the early part of her career, she was a size 8 and even in her plumper stages, was no more than a 10. I can tell you this from experience because a few weeks ago, I tried to try on her clothes.

Okay, now we have to translate British sizes. (HuffPo, adding to the confusion, neglected to do this in their link headline from April.) Depending on the designer, a British 10 might translate as an 8, a 6, or even a 4. And vintage clothes of that era were cut slim, intended to be worn with serious girdles, so take this into account. The answer? There's no "exact" number. All we can know for sure is that Marilyn Monroe was a gorgeous, dramatically curvaceous woman with a physique heavier and curvier than that which is en vogue now.

The better question is, why do we care? To show the evolution of our aesthetic, certainly. And obviously, curvier women were the ideal - and whatever the verdict on Marilyn, stars like Jane Russell and Esther Williams were more voluptuous, larger-framed and more athletic than almost any we see on the screen today. But stars were always thin and urged by the studios to be thinner (see: Judy Garland.) Maybe part of the Marilyn fixation is what Buys gets at: with a figure so enigmatic, we want to pin down as many facts as we can. And what we're really talking about is not Marilyn Monroe's dress size: it's her sexiness. Marilyn Monroe was an icon, not of fashion, but of sexiness: a combination of her beauty, her obvious comfort with her physicality, her intelligence, and her vulnerability. Her dress size does not explain this, or give us a clue: she is iconic because she was unique, and no amount of arguing is going to change that.

It's not about proving whether Marilyn Monroe was "plus-sized" or not; obviously, plus-sized women can be beautiful and sexy, whether Marilyn belongs to the sorority or no. Can we make a resolution, please? Let's leave Marilyn Monroe out of the discussion from now on. She was a beautiful woman with an iconic body of work and a fanatical following, but her dress size - which fluctuated and had very little relation to the clothes and styles we wear today - has nothing to do with your size, my size, or that of anyone in Hollywood today. Comparing oneself to anyone is counterproductive, and in this case it's futile. Marilyn was someone who was comfortable with her body, and it's this that comes through. So let's follow her example - and leave the woman in peace.

Was Marilyn Monroe Really A Size 16? [Huffington Post]
Was Marilyn Monroe A Size 16? [London Times]
Downsizing Figures [Chicago Sun-Times]
With Respect to Roseanne [The New Yorker]
Marilyn Monroe Facts [Marilyn Monroe Pages]

Says DVF, "It has been a unique phenomenon...What was new about my wrap dress was that I did it in jersey and therefore it molded the body and it was very flattering to the body." She told the Huffington Post in January,

The wrap dress is the most traditional form of dressing: It's like a robe, it's like a kimono, it's like a toga. It doesn't have buttons or zippers. What made it different was that it was jersey; therefore, it was close to the body and it was a print. And the first one was animal print so it made every woman look like a feline.

Adds a fan, "They make me feel not only sexy, but successful, sophisticated and timeless."

Well, that's great. And I know that's certainly the party line on the wrap, but while I've been dutifully adhering to the doctrine for years — primarily in knockoff form, but in a few second-hand cases, for reals — I'm not sure how true it is. While the wrap is certainly good for traveling — it's compact and doesn't wrinkle —- more often than not when I wear one I'm left feeling lumpy and exposed, and rather than striding around with liberating 1970s confidence, I find myself self-consciously tugging and adjusting the low neckline and skimpy skirt, and find that sitting down is an ordeal. Where, yes, a wrap works with curves, it also slides between breasts in a conspicuous fashion and the belt can cut in a way that's less than flattering to anyone with any flesh at all. What's more, a cami can spoil the line — not to mention show under the unforgiving jersey — and I've often been at the mercy of fashion tape, safety pins and even last-minute tacking. Theoretically wraps are adjustable and the jersey stretchy, but I find the typical dress dilemma —- if it fits in one place it's too small on top, or vice versa — to only be magnified in a wrap, where I've experienced both dangerously loose bodices and frumpily bagging skirts, both of which kind of defeat the alleged "easy sexiness" of the design.

The thing is, I love the cut of DVF's clothes (well, in dressing rooms, anyway) and her colorful textiles and she looks absolutely stunning in her creation. In theory, I still love it, and I've tried for years. But easy and flattering? Not in my experience. A-lines are easy. Structure is flattering. Wrap dresses, save for a lucky few, are an optimistic myth that we all love too much to give up, not least cause we've been told for so long that it was The Answer. What say you?

*Update: Someone v fashionable just sent me this possibly-invaluable tip: "The girls at DVF told me to wear it backwards - so you have a boatneck in front and a plunging v in the back. Way sexy and great for girls with boobs."

Dear DVF fans: What is it about that dress? [CNN]
Diane von Furstenberg On Wrap Dresses And The Joys Of Aging Gracefully [Huffington Post]

[Image via Huffington Post]