This should be Sarah Jessica Parker’s time, no question. The actress-stroke-producer is happily married to Hollywood heart-throb Matthew Broderick and has a cute-as-a-button five-year-old son who, most unusually, she squeezed out of her own teeny-tiny bod. She has squillions in the bank and a number of interesting movies – including the indie flick Smart People – to her credit. She even has her own fragrance, Lovely, which has, as you would expect, musky topnotes of apple martini.

In fact, the multi-award-winning fashion icon is so successful in so many ways that she is known to millions only by her initials, SJP, and her Sex and the City series – the feature film of which was released last week – is known all over Planet Earth by the acronym SATC.

However, the men of the UK seem to have ganged up to be vile about her. Why? Oh, that’s easy. For the same reasons that women are celebrating her – for daring to be unconventionally pretty and over 40.

If you consider what women men find sexy, it appears that the same old clichés still apply. After all, the brilliant new Bond book, written by Sebastian Faulks, with its quota of leggy girls with upper lips that stiffen into pouts, with its nude in the throes of ecstasy silhouetted on the cover, has been flying off the shelves.

And then I started thinking: what kind of men do men find attractive – in a non-homosexual sense? Easy, really: the kind of men they admire are sexually experienced, witty, usually the wrong side of 40 and with features that have little in common with the average shop-window dummy.

Think of George Clooney, Cary Grant, Paul Newman, Clint Eastwood; think of Lee Marvin, Sean Connery, Steve McQueen. They’re all still hot. Definitely hot. In fact, we all tend to agree, whether gay or straight, male or female. Indeed, these mature, “retrosexual”, flawed males are, on the whole, much more appealing to grown-up women than girlie men packaged for the boy-band market (Pete Doherty, Orlando Bloom, Leonardo DiCaprio).

So why is it that, for a man, a universally appetising female has to be nubile, super-pretty and in possession of a perfect figure (maybe I’ll just say the name Eva Longoria and leave it there)? Otherwise, of course, she will come in for pitiless censure.

Here’s a random but representative sample of reaction to the SJP’s outing in the SATC movie to prove my point. Parker is a “skeletal transvestite” who is “getting on a bit”, according to The Daily Telegraph’s film critic. She is the world’s “unsexiest woman”, says the lad mag Maxim. The Sun rants: “The main character is horse-faced skeleton Carrie, played by Sarah Jessica Parker.” And on it goes. Outrageous.

Meanwhile, over in the pinker, fluffier recesses of the papers, hard-bitten columnists d’un certain age have, to a woman, melted. They have raved over SJP’s nuanced performance and expressive face; they have leapt to the defence of her tiny eyes, scrawny limbs and huge hooter. Some have even spoken up for her feet, deformed by bunions after years of stalking the streets of Manhattan in Manolos.

“She is a fascinating presence,” one reviewer says in the London Evening Standard. In The Spectator, Deborah Ross describes SJP as “amazing” and, in the Daily Mail, Liz Jones admits: “I could go on about how the four characters look so much older, but in fact it’s a refreshing change to see women so obviously in their forties writ large on screen.”

Yes, in SATC, a female co-lead even celebrates her 50th birthday because, guess what: women age, too. I know that in the golden age of Hollywood, movie stars were 30 and looked 50, but now it is de rigueur that they look 30 even though they are in fact 50. So the SATC franchise represents a heroic assault on gender stereotyping and the culture of sexist ageism that we can only pray catches on elsewhere – and fast.

I applaud the women who have come out and declared their real as opposed to their celebrity ages in print, or who have decided they are glad to be grey. Speaking as a middle-aged woman (I’m what Kim Cattrall might call “forty f****** two” and proud of it), I think that we are perhaps seeing a breakthrough of sorts. We have women sticking up for women at last, rather than wielding the stiletto.

But let’s not go overboard. Male desire remains locked onto the latest bland, hot young thing. It’s nice to see mature women having sex in the city, but we all know the score. When it comes to casting the role of the newest Bond girl – supple, elegant Scarlett Papava – the casting directors are unlikely to be giving Sarah Jessica Parker a call.

Every time the family settles down in front of Britain’s Got Talent, our dog takes to her basket in a huff. Two words explain Coco’s sour mood: canine freestyle. We love Faryl Smith, the 12-year-old Maria Callas, the batty dance act by Sikh duo Signature – and my daughter is going to marry George Sampson (“Witness the fitness,” she sighs over YouTube). But it’s the animal acts that get to her, particularly Gin.

“Gin’s soooo clever,” we cry, dashing tears from our eyes as the border collie slinks through its girl owner’s legs, rolls, slithers and leaps to the beat, while an enraptured audience leaps to its feet. Meanwhile, the judges have sensibly yielded to the British preference for pets over people and waved both Gin and Kate Nicholas (a 16-year-old who won the nation’s heart when she said of her dog, “She’s, like, my best friend”) through to the final, which concluded last night.

At the time of writing I don’t know who won – but I know that Coco hopes it wasn’t Gin and Kate. All her life we’ve thought that Coco, who spends her days lying in a plush basket in front of the Aga, was the cleverest doggie in the world and have told her so. She could fetch sticks. She could catch balls in her own mouth. She could greet burglars with a waggy tail and gobble her dinner in record time, mostly to wild applause.

Of course, where we live on Exmoor we have to shield her from the distressing sight of sheepdogs herding sheep on windswept hillsides or hounds who course through the yard in search of prey. We don’t want her to know that some dogs have jobs – in case that makes her feel insecure.

Now, however, since Britain’s Got Talent has shown us that the best performers have four legs, not two, the gig is up for Coco and all the other pampered pooches like her. Forget Hollywood moms. It’s dog owners who are daring to dream now.

rachel.johnson@sunday-times.co.uk

Times Recommends

• There's no future for prophets of doom
• New Labour family seethes with hatred
• Shallow, fake... Palin's beyond parody