With many women, it's all about the hair. Pampering and preening, flicking and swishing, waving those straight or curly locks with attitude.

That's why female hair loss can be so hard to cope with. A woman's hair is a huge part of her identity. Lose that, and she loses herself. When my sister's hair dropped out one year, she was distraught and tried massage, oil treatments, shaving and starting again - anything that would ultimately restore her hair to its former glory. Something must have worked, though she'll never know what, because she now has a full head of hair, though much shorter than before.

Now, I've never had that problem. I have the opposite issue - too much hair. The hair on my head grows really quickly. As for the rest, which I won't mention, suffice it to say that when I was pregnant the resulting hormone surge made my leg hair grow and it's never quite gone back to its former state of quiescence.

Are you hairless or hairy - and do you like it?