Why DO celebrities pretend to hate their perfect bodies?

Look at Scarlett Johansson. Just drink her in, like a big glass of honey-scented cream garnished with frosted rose petals and gossamer dewdrops.

The 30-year-old actress (below) is a noted beauty — one of the most gorgeous women in the world. A stunning confection of flawless complexion, pillowy lips and dreamy curves. In film after film, fans lust afresh over her appearance, her irresistible pulchritude.

Readers of esquire magazine voted her the sexiest woman alive in 2006 — and they liked her so much they did it again in 2013. To millions, she is a pin-up, a goddess, a muse.

everywhere she goes, she is envied by women and desired by men — and sometimes the other way around. She is the kind of blonde to make a good man kick a hole in a stained-glass window, and a bad man just kick himself.

What must it be like to look like Scarlett? To hold men in thrall and feel that kind of womanly power? one imagines that she wakes every morning thinking: ‘Wowee, lucky me!’ That she practically purrs when she passes a mirror. That she loves the love that comes her lovely way.

yet this is not the case. While everyone else praises and admires her physical splendour, Scarlett is not happy with the way she looks. not happy at all!

She has several major areas of concern. ‘I am not particularly remarkable,’ she insisted this week, despite all evidence to the contrary. ‘I have an ok body. I don’t like my thighs or my mid-section.’

dodgy mid-section? She makes herself sound like a plane with a wing on fire. And she had a baby this year, so she shouldn’t be hard on herself anyway.

during the interview broadcast on American Tv, Johansson also said she didn’t want to moan about her lot in life. however, she does have form in the complaints department. She’s certainly danced at the ugly bug ball before, despairing of her ‘short legs’ and ‘chubby face’ and generally talking down her mega-watt glamour.

Which is really rather annoying.

Why do so many beautiful women feel the need to downplay their attractiveness in this clumsy way? especially when the truth is there for all to see — as plain as the perfect nose on their exquisite faces.

There is a suspicion that they do it as a means to curry favour with other women. To reassure the monstrous regiment of Plain Janes and Awful Annies that, hey, guess what? They’re just like us after all.

ok, they may have endless legs, an apple- sized bottom and razor- sharp cheekbones, but they also have a pimple on the back of their left knee and, yes, an imperfect mid-section. Which makes t hem human and flawed. Just like us.

of course, being a beautiful movie star or pop icon is no barrier to having the kind of body hang-ups that ordinary women have.

And women all over the world are under enormous pressure to exude physical perfection from every pore. The heat is on, whether you are a celebrity or not.

yet sometimes you have to wonder who is kidding who here. For women aren’t stupid. The vast majority of us can rate our attractiveness, or lack of it, pretty damn accurately. We know exactly where we are on the sliding scale of prettiest, prettier, or just plain pretty. If you’re a Jessica Rabbit of pulsating curves or an Igglepiggle of shapeless protoplasm, you know. you just do. And if we know, so do they.

That’s why it gets mighty exasperating when some of the most stunning women on the planet humblebrag about their physical ‘failings’. In this, Scarlett is far from alone. The beautiful keira knightley, for instance, doesn’t like her bottom, but hasn’t specified exactly why.

And Jennifer lawrence has complained that her breasts are ‘uneven’. That must be why she wears all those deep-plunge gowns, so we can check out the disparity for ourselves.

There are many more celebrity-transgressors, too…