Mr Muscle and his makers need spot of reality

You could be forgiven for thinking all women are obsessive-compulsive frizzy-haired lunatics with an unhealthy love of cleaning.

Who could blame you? Every day we see images of women wreaking havoc in their homes in a desperate attempt to keep them spick and span.

These days you can be a working mum or even a stay at home dad. Times might be changing but cleaning ads aren't.

Despite changing family roles, cleaning product makers aren't taking any notice. I can't remember ever seeing a man in a cleaning advert. Only neurotic women, who seem to enjoy cleaning more than spending time with their children.

Even desperate calls for attention from their young ones won't coax them from their task. After all, no matter how attention-deprived your children may be, it's okay, as long as your house is immaculate.

A generation of lost children are being bred, whose mothers were off battling "tough grime". Expect these children to become unstable adults, with their parents' tendencies for spraying blue chemicals on any visible surface.

Look no further than an Ajax ad. A phone call from this girl's visiting mother sends her into a cleaning frenzy. We all know Mum is far more interested in spotlessness than her daughter's company. Obviously these two have some communication issues, because they then spend the remainder of the visit ogling the shiny surfaces.

No women I know value cleaning more than their children. And none enjoy cleaning. By the time their children can walk, most mums have given up on the spotless house dream in exchange for a vaguely habitable one.

But these days it appears women are judged on how pristine their home is. They can't afford to have a relatively tidy house, it has to be perfect.

The psychopathic TV ad mothers tell us: clean house equals happiness.

For example, another ad: mother-of-the-bride gets a phone call. The wedding party will be arriving at her house at any moment. Stress, screaming and frantic running. In the end, it all turns out okay - because her house is clean. She even gets a kiss on the cheek from a couple of fire-fighters for her efforts.

All these women do is clean. They spend hours washing, their futile attempts at scrubbing doing nothing to improve the appearance of their kitchen, which looks like it's been the scene of a teenage food fight.

Gone are the days when a woman was judged on her character or natural beauty. Nowadays if your house isn't impeccable, you're a failure.

Although these women constantly clean, they still can't achieve the perfect home on their own.

The pathetic women in these ads, often shown during programmes such as Desperate Housewives (a coincidence, I think not), will more often than not collapse, exhausted and helpless, on a mountain of cleaning products.

Obviously, today's women are just too weak for this job. Their pathological need to clean is counteracted by their inability to figure out which product will give their stove the most sparkle. Who can these poor women, their sanity in the balance, turn to?

Why, Mr Muscle! When the call for help goes up, an orange-clad young man bounds through the door, a courageous knight arriving to save the desperate damsel from the horrors of cleaning. If you ask me, Mrs Muscle would do a much better job - and look way better in lycra than her husband.

It's time cleaning product makers took a look at the real world. Where mothers actually spend time with their children. Where a few crumbs on the floor is not the end of the world. And where some men actually know what a mop is.

Ashleigh Kendall, Year 12, St Cuthbert's College