I don’t really care what people tell children - when you believe in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy, one more fib won’t hurt. But I am infuriated by the growing notion, posited in some touchy-feely quarters, that all women are, or can be, beautiful.

Burchill contrasts harmless childhood myths with what she sees as a more consequential adult “fib”: the reassurance, often framed as empowerment, that beauty is universal or universally attainable. The first clause signals a provocative tolerance for minor untruths told to children; the second pivots to anger at a cultural shift she attributes to “touchy-feely” thinking—sentimentality, therapeutic language, and egalitarian affirmations. The quote’s force lies in its rejection of beauty as a democratic category: she implies that insisting everyone is (or can be) beautiful dilutes meaning, pressures women into appearance-based validation, and replaces frankness with consoling ideology. It exemplifies her polemical style—using blunt binaries and cultural icons to attack what she views as fashionable pieties.