Sometimes, it’s hard to be a woman, especially when you’re going out for the evening. How often are you halfway to a dinner party when you remember you wore the very same velvet number to the carol concert? Who hasn’t experienced that sinking feeling when the zip won’t do up, but the Uber’s outside? Frankly, there are days when it’s all you can do to remember to put your shirt on.

Now, handily, there’s an impeccable style precedent to comfort you if you don’t. For who would not wish to emulate the dash cut by Susan Sarandon at the recent Screen Actors Guild awards?

Resplendent in white Max Mara jacket, buttoned low to expose nothing but a black bra beneath, she took to the stage to introduce the in memoriam segment, ushering in tributes to stars including David Bowie, Omar Sharif, Alan Rickman and Maureen O’Hara.

The combination of breasts and death was not to everyone’s taste, most notably irking Piers Morgan, who briefly broke off lambasting Arsenal to call Sarandon’s appearance “horribly inappropriate”, “tacky” and lacking in decorum. Would she attend a funeral in such a get-up? he asked. She would not.

Because this spat took place on Twitter, things escalated speedily. In turn, Sarandon took a quick time-out from her social media support for Bernie Sanders to send Piers a snap of herself, from a while back, in a bra, regarding a naked classical statue.

Cue a cavalcade of women – and some men – sending cleavage selfies to Sarandon and Morgan, both of whom retweeted them in abundance and apparent vindication of their position. In short, it was wall-to-wall boobs. Confusing: after a while, you didn’t know whether all these boobs were a good thing or a very bad one.

What I do know, however, is that Morgan quickly got “feminist hypocrisy” in his cross-hairs, almost as fast as he slid into Carry On mode, joshing about how tough the “punishment” of having to look at a lot of breasts was. It was, he wrote, “the day feminism ate itself”. Ah: that time of the week again.

Despite not being an habitué of the world of showbusiness, I also know that an awards ceremony is not a funeral, nor even a memorial service.

I know that female celebrities are routinely required to dress for such events in outfits of varying degrees of opulence, discomfort and absurdity and then parade before the flashbulbs, so that representations of them may appear the following day with big ticks and crosses next to them. Often, funnily enough, “looks” deemed to have “failed” are termed “fashion boobs”.

I do not know, but strongly suspect, that many deceased people might prefer to be sent on their way with sass rather than solemnity. Respect for the dead proceeds from conscience, not clothes. We are no longer Victorians.

I now know more about the variety of bras – the colours! The shapes! The stitching! – than I ever expected to.

And one last thing I know, from my little Arsenal heart, still bravely beating beneath my undergarments. When Piers is banging on about bras, he isn’t banging on about the back four. There is an upside to everything.