IF SOMEONE had told the 19-year-old Charlotte Church not to pose in fishnets and frilly underwear to promote her music do you think she would have said a) Oh thank you very much? Or, b) told the speaker where to stick their advice?

I think it may have been the latter.

Just as I’m sure that the recent appeals from Annie Lennox and Sinead O’Connor about ‘overtly sexualised performances’ will fall on the deaf ears of Miley Cyrus and Rihanna, who currently earn their crust from singing and appearing in ever-sleazier videos.

All the time the cash rolls in and they mistake notoriety for solid achievement why should they care that at the other end of the drainpipe, young girls are feeling ever-more pressured into sending images of themselves with no clothes on to complete and utter strangers?

A survey by ChildLine of 500 teenagers reveals that six in ten of them have felt pressured into sexting; sending explicit images of themselves to other people via their mobiles.

ChildLine believes that many of these images will end up in the hands of strangers, to be viewed, hoarded and, presumably, slavered over, at their leisure.

How did we even arrive here? When did it become accepted behaviour for young girls to emulate porn stars in their normal, daily lives?

And how come they are so clueless that they have absolutely no idea of where it’s all going to lead?

Because it does lead somewhere. Charlotte’s told us that.

“Now I find it difficult to promote my music in the places where it would be best suited because of my history,” she says.

When you consider that all she did was pose in relatively decent underwear and accept a Rear of the Year Award when she was a teen, that is truly worrying.

More worrying is the current ordeal of Gloria de Piero, MP, Shadow Equalities Minister, respected former journalist and now desperately pleading with news outlets to stop searching for the topless pictures she posed for when she was 15.

“No one should have to worry that something they did when they were young might prevent them from getting involved in politics at a national or local level,” she says.

Indeed. But that’s not the way it works as she’s just discovered. Better by far to hammer home the message that while Miley and RiRi may be able to retire to a mansion in the Hollywood Hills on the proceeds of their sleaze-fest, most women who tread this path end up cheated, exploited, and, at the very least, a laughing stock at a time in their life when they least want or expect it.