Think of some prominent Northern women. The President, Mrs McAleese. The DUP's Iris Robinson. Journalist Nell McCafferty. Insecure? Hardly. They are powerful role models for younger women, high achievers who aren't the types to spend valuable time in front of their bedroom mirrors fretting and comparing themselves to Andrea Corr, Angelina Jolie or Jennifer Lopez.
When we think of Northern Irish women, we think of firebrands who inspired a generation of women and made international headlines. But these women are the exceptions. The average Northern Irish woman is more likely to be self-effacing. A new poll bears this out: only 15 per cent of women in Northern Ireland are happy with the way they look compared to 36 per cent in Scotland.
The Northern Ireland figures are well below the 20 per cent average for England, Scotland and Wales, according to a body image survey conducted by iVillage UK, the online women's community. And we're not just talking minor gripes about a few extra pounds here and there. Over half of Northern women who participated used words such as "disgusting" to describe their bodies.
Dr Myrtle Hill, director of the Centre for Women's Studies at Queen's University Belfast, says she isn't surprised. "You can point to individual women who have become prominent but the results of polls like these just indicate that, in the most intimate and yet most important areas, there's still such a long way to go," she says.
"Body image is the bottom line. We might talk in a bland way about women collectively making progress, but when it comes down to talking about individual women's relationship with their own bodies, the distance still to be travelled is very large." Dr Hill is currently researching a history of women in 20th-century Ireland, and reports that women in the North have consistently lagged behind their counterparts in the UK and, in later years, the Republic as well.
"So I find it not surprising, although terribly depressing, that even the younger generation still find themselves lacking in confidence," she says.
Belfast-based image consultant Billy Dixon, who has revamped the appearance of politicians and business people on both sides of the border, says Northern women lack the confidence of their counterparts in the Republic. "It's a confidence thing," he says. "Northern Ireland women are inclined to undersell themselves and think they are inferior.
"It's a lot to do with the economy. If you'd looked at Irish women in the Republic 15 years ago, you wouldn't have seen the same confidence. But now you're dealing with a younger age group, for a start, who have that increased confidence coming through because of the economy." South of the Border, the boom has given birth to high-maintenance woman.
But in less prosperous Northern Ireland, women can experience feelings of guilt when they "indulge themselves" too much, Billy says.
"There's this thrifty approach to life, that spending money on clothes and looking good is almost sinful," he explains. "They've lived for too long in the shadow of men. This has been a male-dominated society for a long, long time."
Northern women should emulate their Italian sisters, who devote more than a third of their income to maintaining their appearance, Billy says.
In fact, women throughout Ireland have more in common with Italian women than they do with a lot of other nationalities, he continues.
"Their body shape is curvy. And, in general, they have good taste. Yet a lot of clothes brought into Northern Ireland don't actually cater for their shape. Northern Ireland women have lovely curvy bodies and they should be showing them off instead of trying to hide them." But Northern women simply aren't used to showing off their bodies, says Bernie McConnell, a development worker with cross-community and cross-border women's groups in the Short Strand area of east Belfast.
She says many of the women she works with have only encountered English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish counterparts when on holidays abroad. Often, they have found these encounters intimidating. "You'd see them, topless sunbathing. Now, women from the North wouldn't be at that. We weren't reared that way! You'd never think of it," she says.
At the risk of stating the obvious, women in Northern Ireland have had more important things to worry about over the years than working on their body image, she says.
"Women here have had an awful lot of stress and I suppose that takes its toll. In the North people had other things to worry about, the Troubles and things like that. Those things aren't settled yet, and are maybe a long way off being settled. But it's only now issues like the importance of body image for women are coming to light."
Kate Campbell of the Northern Ireland Voluntary Trust, currently researching the impact of the women's sector on the North, says reticence is a "Northern Ireland trait. There's often a feeling that people 'over there' \in Britain are better. People here are very modest and wouldn't like to talk confidently about themselves," she says.
Of the 14,093 women who participated in the UK-wide body image poll, approximately 4,300 were from Northern Ireland.
The editor of the poll, Tina Gaudoin, has no explanation for why Northern Ireland women were less able to withstand a bombardment of media images of perfection than women in Britain.
"Geri Halliwell in a tiny bikini, Posh Spice in a basque and Liz Hurley in little more than her knickers. Never mind that these women couldn't run the UN - and probably won't even have had the nous to vote - we regard them as newsworthy, and therefore important, because they look a certain way," she says.
Women's Coalition Assembly member Jane Morrice said the poll indicated a very real and serious lack of confidence among women in Northern Ireland.
"It's a pity, but not a surprise. Self-worth is something which isn't promoted in the 'put down' mentality of the Northern Ireland psyche," she says.
That people from Northern Ireland would tend to score low in such surveys is because it is not in their nature to promote themselves, she adds. "It's something we need to get to grips with in Northern Ireland, and let women know that image is much more about self-confidence and ability than lipstick and cellulite."