Mark Daniels: Sexism ain't dead - it's just become a survey

Us men, we each have this wonderful image in our heads of what women should be like. Whilst we undoubtedly have different desires over what is a good shape for a woman, personal views on the roundness of J. Lo's bottom and engage in the eternal debate on blonde, red or brunette I'd bet that, at the end of the day, deep in every man's psyche, we all share a very similar image of what we think women should be like.

And it's something like this: she should have the girl-next-door looks of Jennifer Aniston, the coquettishness of Abi Titmuss, the brains of Carol Vorderman and the culinary skills of Nigella Lawson. Out with friends she should be capable of holding a conversation with J.K. Rowling and at home, in private, she should be possessed of a mind muckier than Xaviera Hollander.

In the pub, however, there is an edict that says she should sit demurely - legs together, preferably crossed - sipping from a half-pint or wine glass.

So it's not surprising, then, that we're all slapping our foreheads in horror as more and more surveys report that drink-driving, violent crime and general loutishness amongst women is on the increase.

We're even more aghast at surveys showing this week that one in three women likes a bit of slap & tickle and a few more than that like to indulge in dirty talk. Women, it suddenly seems, are becoming more sexually and socially aggressive and it just doesn't fit our medieval stereotype of what a woman should be like.

But I think that we've been burying our heads in the sands of sexism for a very long time because, for as long as I can remember, women have been able to party harder than most men, one or two have shown me a duvet-trick I've not thought of before and my wife can sink a pint quicker than I, or most of my regulars, can. I wonder if we haven't picked up on the number of women doing these things before because we just couldn't bear to think of our mothers, sisters and daughters doing it.

As a fourteen-year-old, I can remember sitting on the school bus wondering why the girls on the back seat were giggling over a banana that made the same sound as my mother's Moulinex and one of my first girlfriends had a penchant for pinching my step-dad's whisky. That was over twenty years ago.

And as a publican I know that, at the end of a busy night, the ladies' toilet is going to be in much more of a mess than the men's.

Each time we open a copy of 'Heat' magazine we're faced with pictures of Paris Hilton, Lindsey Lohan and Britney Spears all in trouble after heavy nights on the town. Britain's own celebrity royalty get the same treatment, with the likes of Lily Allen, Kerry Katona and Jade Goody often photographed falling out of cars, wearing no underwear or lying face down in the gutter. And the less said about Amy Winehouse, probably the better.

But let's not think this is exclusive to modern women: Judy Garland and Marilyn Monroe were hardly known for their priggish approach to life.

The point I'm making is that women, despite protestations of inequality, lower salaries and chains holding them to the kitchen sink, have actually been having as much fun - if not more - as men for a very long time now, and programmes like 'Ibiza Uncovered' were graphically detailing this a long time before somebody decided to do a survey on it.

Most of the girls I know enjoy a good drink, can hold their own in an argument and are familiar with a few naughty words that make even the farmers and truckers blush. They can also be decorous when the circumstances dictate. And bully for them, I say; it doesn't make them bad people and neither does it make them the scourge of the country.

Yet suddenly, thanks to the surveyists, if they don't get right back to their glass of wine/fruit-based drink pronto, they face being as ostracised as a modern-day smoker.