What does your kitchen say about you? At this moment mine would say that I’m an idle slattern who needs reintroducing to Cif. Which is not ideal, because kitchens are apparently the new form of self expression.

According to the The Economist, the kitchen market in America is worth five times that of the country’s film industry. In 2006 the average budget for a kitchen makeover was £26,000. Poggenpohl kitchens are selling well in Dubai, Shanghai, Istanbul and Nairobi. A Belgian photographer working in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, found that the background people most wanted to be photographed against was a yellow and blue European-style kitchen. And judging by the latest MFI TV ads in which someone caresses a kitchen unit as if it were the milky thigh of a Swedish supermodel, kitchen porn has definitely arrived. “People want to express themselves through their kitchens,” says an IKEA spokesman. “Today, the dream of an open living kitchen designed for social use is universal.”

This is all very well but does this Formica fetishism merely represent another form of enslavement? As The Economist says, after decades of trying to escape the kitchen, women are once more in its thrall, not only expected to be career women but “domestic divas” with a perfect granite surface too. Men, already enticed by Gordon, Jamie and Rick, are also in the kitchen-makers’ sights. Designs with a cool, harder-edged look to appeal to masculine taste are on their way. Poggenpohl is introducing a new model in aluminium, dark gloss and glass with an inbuilt audio-visual system.

So after all those centuries of struggle we have made kitchens the new sex. Probably best to bear this in mind the next time someone asks you round to check out their faucet fixtures.

Times recommends

• Second homes: credit crunch casualty or money-spinner?
• How I built my own sliding house
• Top 10 incentives for house buyers