Two headlines this week caught my eye, mainly because they were sitting awkwardly side by side on the page.

The first story declared – almost happily – that cases of cancer will continue to rise over the coming decades. According to the World Health Organisation, cases are likely to soar 70 per cent to nearly 25 million a year over the next 20 years. The second story declared that cosmetic surgery is on the up, too. People apparently can’t get enough of nipping, tucking and changing themselves. While some of us spend our lives avoiding carcinogenic substances in a desperate bid to avoid surgery or hospital appointments in all forms, it seems that others gleefully rush off to hospital, willingly sliding under the knife.

Why is cancer on the rise? The WHO (not the band) have decided it’s probably a lot to do with our lifestyle choices. The usual suspects – obesity, alcohol, smoking and high sugar consumption – are the bad guys. Come to think of it, the band could’ve probably guessed as much too because we hear this sort of thing all the time.

Nobody can pinpoint in quite the same way exactly what is sending people in droves to the cosmetic surgeon. Magazine covers have been blamed by some quarters. Beautiful women, by others. So magazine covers of beautiful women probably have much to answer for.

The British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons said that there was a 17 per cent rise in cosmetic surgery in 2013, a figure they expect to rise. The most common procedure was breast augmentation, reported the Association, whose acronym (I kid you not) is Baaps. Oh, how I wish their full name were, the British Association of Proud Plastic Surgeons… I’m a woman: I get it.

I understand the crippling insecurities many of us face each day when we look in the mirror – particularly if that mirror has good lighting and a bad angle. Indeed, the most evil mirrors are the ones at home: I can look in them before a big night out, feeling mildly ok with the view as I saunter out the door. Then I leave the house, casually stroll by a shop window and realise what I look like. So the evil house mirror lies, every day of its miserable life, a life made infinitely more miserable by having to look at me each day.

So although I do understand, it is staggeringly surreal that we invest so much time and stress in avoiding or fearing life-threatening diseases, because we want to avoid life-threatening or dangerous surgery, while at the same time we stand naked in the mirror seriously considering having half our bodies either sucked out or lopped off. Next time I feel a pull towards the evil mirror, and hear whisperings from the beautiful magazine women, I’m going to remember that plenty of people would just be ecstatic with a working body that didn’t need any surgery at all.