I find myself every so often buying a copy of Cosmopolitan. An irony, as I am the antithesis of the cosmopolitan woman. Sometimes I just want to peer in and voyeuristically flick through the pages of that world.

So it was I settled down yesterday to read the March edition. With the front cover shouting the following how could I fail to get excited;

Love your body fashion updates – I did wonder whether I could perhaps learn a few pointers from these pages. I have to confess my criteria for clothing tends to be comfort first and foremost. Occasionally I do wonder if the other half would like to see me dressed in a slinky little number and prancing around in high heels, as opposed to my smock top and timberland boots. Testing the waters on potential suitable attire, I passed the magazine over to him, open on a fashion page bearing a very leggy blonde wearing a denim shorted jumpsuit. From his 5 minutes of hysterical laughter I gathered he thought that perhaps this was not my look.

As he kindly put it: “We’re not built like this,” obviously including himself in the generalisation designed to water down the blow.

To give him credit, having seen the crestfallen look on my face he overcame his choking and sudden nervousness to continue an explanation: “You see,” he said pointing at her lean brown thighs, “her legs don’t touch at all, they’re just long and don’t even meet at the top, they are joined by that little bridging region.”

I for one have no idea what ‘bridging region’ means anatomically speaking. He continued, starting to feel brave: “Our legs join slightly below the bridging region so these sort of shorts just ride up and look rubbish.”

At this point, realising the truth in his wisdom, I realised that it was perhaps time to move on. Though making a mental note to find out whether “bridging region” was some recognised euphemism I was unfamiliar with.

Hottest sex moves ever – Admittedly I did spend a few moments on these pages. But when mouthfuls of whiskey were mentioned along with flaccid members I flicked over – the closest thing I had to this was whiskey marmalade and somehow I didn’t think it would be a suitable substitute for what they had in mind.

35 real men get naked – This actually did little to get me excited. I am a nurse and spend my days up to my armpits in naked men of the real variety. Seeing the male member day in day out bathed in the soft disinfected luminance of the hospital lighting disengages any such desire.

There had been momentary excitement when I turned a page to find some of my favourite beauty products carefully arranged alongside a three page article, but this was short lived when I realised it was referring to products of the last century.

So it was that 20 minutes later I had reached the end of the magazine feeling no more enlightened than I had previously. Cosmopolitan remains as much of an enigma as ever and to be honest, I’m grateful for the fact that my personality cannot be moulded and defined by 232 pages of a glossy magazine.