He is going through the awkward age where his teeth look kind of Bugs Bunny-like and he told me the other day he thinks he looks like a chipmunk. Thinking he was having a moment of low self-esteem, I tried to comfort him but he added: "It's okay. Chipmunks are cute."

So there you go. I don't think Ethan is particularly narcissistic. He is your average little boy coping with Year Two but he is a well-loved child and so feels pretty secure about who he is.

I think if we look back at each and every one of our childhoods, we all had that at one time or other. But things change when you become aware of a certain inequality of treatment based on looks.

I remember very early on being conscious of being tall. Or to be more precise, taller than everybody else. At a time when you simply want to fit in, this is not a good thing. But being tall wasn't something I could change so I just had to deal with it.

What I am trying to say is there are two types of body and self-esteem issues we all have to deal with: external input and more importantly, internal input - what we ourselves think about the way we look.

I remember a particularly painful example of the former. When I first started work, I didn't have much money so I had a limited wardrobe. A particularly obnoxious colleague asked me loudly one day why I always wore the same clothes.

I felt humiliated but my editor, who overheard the whole drama, said to me: "You tell him to look in the mirror the next time he talks about the way you look."

That comment made me laugh because the guy had ugly teeth. Although I never ever had to use those words on him, I carried them inside me like a talisman till I grew confident enough to not care about what people said about me or what I looked like.

Fast-forward 20 years and I am editor of an international fashion magazine. Fashion events can be particularly intimidating as everyone - including the members of the media - is either wearing or carrying something by some designer.

Well, I did neither. I didn't particularly care what people thought of what I wore as long as I was appropriately dressed. I was there to work after all. But, of course, I was wrong. We were on display. For each other.

It was at one of those events that this woman I barely knew came up to me and commented that I had an interesting style. She wasn't being complimentary. Although she was smiling when she said it, the comment was as hurtful as that of my colleague's all those years ago.

This time, though, I had my own comeback: a smile and a quick "thank you". And then I moved on. Both literally and figuratively. After all, it is pretty sad to equate your sense of worth to what you wear. Don't you think so?

But back to that mirror. Women tend to be particularly vulnerable to the whole ageing thing. At a certain age, they look in the mirror and see what they no longer are: young.

So each time they look in the mirror, they are looking for something to confirm this: grey hair, new lines around the eyes, skin not so firm any more, whatever. The thing is when you look for imperfection, you are bound to see it.

I learned recently that this is not something that only afflicts women: a very good friend - a guy - recently announced over dinner he was going for some laser procedure to get rid of a freckle!

Yes, you read correctly. A freckle. The thing is he has beautiful skin and none of us ever noticed the said offensive freckle but that did not matter. When he looked in the mirror, that was all he saw.

And then there is this other friend - also a guy - who hates mirrors. He avoids looking at them as much as he can; restaurants with mirrors? He sits with his back to them. Why? He thinks he is too thin and simply does not like the way he looks.

So yes, this whole body image thing is not gender-specific. I guess we all have our own issues with the way we look.

Nora Ephron wrote this fantastic essay about how she hated the way her neck looked as she aged.

I don't have neck issues but lately I have become obsessed with my hands. I don't see my face that often throughout the day but my hands... well. They look older and I confess hand creams have been on my mind a lot lately.

My face? Well, I am pretty comfortable with it. After all, I have lived with it all these years and have come to be familiar with its shape and contours. And what do I see when I look in the mirror?

I see myself.