Aspiring to beauty — or elegance, its more democratic twin — is a punishable offence in Britain. Enviously, we look to France, whose politicians, male and female, go about their business dressed in couture, with hairdressers on call, ready to blow-dry their hair at a moment’s notice.

The women — such as Rachida Dati, with her midnight-blue evening dress made for her by Dior, or Ségolène Royal, with her choice of more modest but ultra-chic designers like Paule Ka and Irène Van Ryb — are not ashamed to strive for beauty. Nor are the men. Nicolas Sarkozy, to whom nature has not shown undue favour, feels confident that moving from Lanvin to Dior for his suits has improved his looks, and indeed it has.

We all know that France is a culture of appearances and that the French shamelessly worship beauty. But from the drooling that went on in the British press during Carla Sarkozy’s last visit and the obsessive chatter about her wardrobe, it’s clear that we, too, venerate it; only ours is a guilty and shameful adoration, which our Protestant heritage will not allow us to enjoy.

Protestantism has always associated beauty with superficiality, even deception. To early Protestants, the intoxicating splendour of the Catholic mass numbed the senses and barred the direct path to God. But did we Protestants, in shunning beauty with the hocus-pocus of the mass, throw the baby out with the bath water? Is it not possible to admire external allure, inherent or acquired, natural or artificial, and still be a decent human being?

It is strange to think that the French might, at one point, have given in to the austere values of Calvinist Protestantism. By the mid-16th century, a significant branch of the country’s aristocracy had been won over to the new faith, including Henry IV, the king. But our nations’ paths diverged for ever when he, to preserve the status quo, took the decision to abjure his faith. In keeping the monarchy Catholic, he would define France’s moral universe and leave the love of beauty at the heart of it.

France has never — the revolution notwithstanding — tried to mess with the cult of beauty. The French have never claimed, as we do in Britain, that it’s not what you look like that matters, but who you are. In France both matter, because beauty is a value in itself; just as duty and sacrifice are to the British.

Crucially, though, for the French, you do not have to be born beautiful. Rachida Dati (former justice minister) or Valérie Pécresse (minister of higher education and research) are no more naturally beautiful than Caroline Flint or Ruth Kelly. It is simply that the first two behave as if they actually enjoy what is widely perceived in France to be the beauty inherent in their femininity, while their British sisters seem to endure theirs.

Indeed, Caroline Flint’s tortuous relationship with her own beauty and the mixed messages she has chosen to send out via the media are, more than anything, a reflection of the inability of her own culture to accept beauty as just another source of pleasure. Simultaneously flaunting her looks, while begging the viewer to look behind them “to the other things I hope to contribute”, she stands as a perfect symbol of our view that beauty is a bar to those virtues we hold most dear: equity, truth and wisdom.

In their culture, Rachida and Valérie are permitted to care what they look like. In ours, Ruth and Caroline are not.

There is an unholy partnership between feminism and Protestantism when it comes to the witch-hunt against beauty. Consider the cruelty with which the old-guard feminist Germaine Greer recently attacked Mariella Frostrup. No matter what Greer says in her defence, her scorn was really for Frostrup’s beauty, not her mind. Thanks to the puritan tendencies inherent in both feminism and Protestantism, both men and woman in Britain — despite the low-level gender war that rages in this country — frequently unite in their scorn for pretty women.

There are, of course, exceptions to this rule. Certain British women have carved out for themselves the right to be beautiful. Joanna Lumley is an admirable example of those rare birds who manage to ignore the censorious gaze.

For Ruth, or Caroline, or Sarah, or Cherie, however, I fear that it is no use finding them a new stylist, some clothes that fit their bodies and some decent accessories, and hope that their self-confidence miraculously improves. It’s no good flooding our TV screens with programmes about makeovers to cater to the underground beauty cult that flourishes in this country. What needs to change is our attitude to our femininity and to the beauty inherent within it.

British women suffer from a kind of self-loathing, a renunciation of their femininity that does not afflict French women. On the idea of being compared to Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, Sarah Brown said: “I didn’t stand a chance, did I?” But why not? Because French women stand proud. They do not walk a little hunched over to hide their breasts, or stand with their hands clasped in a posture of mortal shame in front of their sex.

It’s time to reinstate beauty and femininity as legitimate sources of pleasure.

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