An email from a friend: did you know you were in this month's Glamour, talking about being a selfish, sterilised child hater? I did not. Have they used a dreadful, dough-faced picture of me in a Seventies carpet-patterned dress trying and failing to arrange my features in a semblance of comfortableness in front of the camera? Yes, she says. I make a faint noise of distress. And have they said things like "As I sat watching my friend's children play happily I realised my choice meant I would never know the fundamental joy of motherhood, never know unconditional love as she did" when what I really said was "I never thought twice about it"? Yes, she says, shall I get you a copy? But even though I am interested to discover just how much glutinous pathos, heart-rending sentiment and false emotional detail they saw fit to ascribe to a decision I never suffered the slightest amount of internal wrangling over, I find I cannot bear the idea of adding to the circulation of even one women's self-hate monthly. She asks why I did it. For the cash, I say, wide eyed and incredulous.

That I would be comically misrepresented was obvious when I agreed to the interview; such magazines have a certain style after all and the acceptable face of childless women doesn't mirror mine in any way. They want gentle, unthreatening women, ones who work hard in a caring job and love other people's children but have, with long, drawn out agonizing, decided not to have their own. Those who are, please note carefully, not selfish, pleasure-seeking or otherwise uppity in any fashion and certainly not those who will make their vast childbearing readership in the slightest bit uncomfortable about their own choices. I, sterilised at twenty, openly hostile to the cult of motherhood and prone to wet myself with primal fear whenever I find myself in the pregnancy test aisle of Boots must have my sharp corners rounded, must be sweetened for general consumption. This does not surprise me. But nine years after I was first interviewed about this I do still find myself amused that anyone is still interested in our existence, yet there are stories about this strange new way of life in the media every week.

Heren Mirren in yesterday's Daily Mail revealed, to most unladylike whoops of approval from me, that she finds the whole concept of childbirth revolting and always knew that she would never become a mother. This isn't newsworthy to anyone but the Mail of course but the comments agreeing with her are unusually heartening, the only negative responses restricted to the odd few who think she is bitter, shallow and, slightly puzzling, has unpleasant breasts. Presumably these are the same people for whom the winning of Oscars pales in comparison to the breathtaking triumph and ultimate female self-realisation of electing to become another one of the half a million women each year who decide to focus their talent and efforts into getting knocked up instead.

A response to this revelation comes from Zoe Williams in The Guardian, who in recent weeks appears to have stopped talking about politics, feminism, culture and the media in favour of the infinitely more important pregnancy, babies, pregnancy and babies. Williams believes that the focus of Mirren's horror is simply the pain of childbirth, rather than the eminently more reasonable distaste for spending the best part of a day screaming while your muff tears seven ways to Sunday only to find out, most discouragingly, that at the end of all that considerable time and effort you haven't even squeezed out a winning lottery ticket but something that you can't so much as send out to work for you without everybody becoming unreasonably agitated.

Christ. It's almost as bad as waking up one day and finding yourself forever immortalised in nationwide print with hair like someone from Coronation Street and looking, in fact, like someone's mother.