I'm hated because I'm pretty!

I LOVE Tim Dowling!

Well yes, but Brick is the one who bought into the bollocks in the first place by insisting that it was her "beauty" that brought her all these advantages. And perhaps if she truly had been "beautiful" she would have been right. Which is part of the non-equality bollocks. But she's not. So - why does she get all these advantages? Because she makes a play for them. She is very damaging to any feminist ideal - she uses her "feminine wiles" to get what she wants from men.

I don't think criticising her looks is missing the point - I think it is part of the "how deluded is she - can't she understand that it's not the way she looks, it's the way she acts that brings her all this attention, positive and negative" feeling.

I agree with sian

"If we had equality, true equality, then women would be valued for who we are, what we do, what we say. Not because men want to fuck us. If we had equality, we wouldn?t be ignored, undermined or silenced by being told men don?t want to fuck us."

Clanger, how could anyone as apparently smart and worldly-wise be duped by the DM? We all know what it's like. I can only assume she knew exactly the kind of shit-storm she would whip up.

Clarkson caused a similar uproar a few weeks ago with remarks about taking someone outside and shooting them - was it nurses? - in front of their family. Yes, he gets called an arse, but people think 'oh, its only HIM at it again'. Perhaps with Brick we are guilty of thinking 'she shouldn't do this 'cos she's a woman, and women don't do this sort of thing'. Actually, yes they do. And isn't it possible that there is some truth in the experiences she relates?

She was on the TV this morning. She is all over the web. If this raises her profile and gets her a bigger pay-cheque next time, then maybe she has achieved her own personal objectives. She might even get herself a job on Top Gear!

"Petty journalism" or "pretty journalism"?

But she hasn't got one over on anyone, Sanjeev, she's just been allowed/encouraged to make a complete fool of herself.

Whoever mentioned Hadley Freeman - Hadley is one of my favourite journos and has a sensible, feminist viewpoint, even on fashion.

Looking at her own website www.samanthabrick.com/biography.htm, she has worked in major cities all over the world. She is no uneducated, naive, shy wallflower. She is a successful, worldly-wise businesswoman, and ran her own international TV production company.

Could it not be the case that a smart, sassy female journalist has out-trolled the Mail? She may just be using this bastion of petty journalism to raise her profile and advance her career (and earnings). She is playing them at their own game, and winning. Clarkson et al do this kind of stuff all the time. Why are women in particular giving her a hard time for doing (successfully, it seems), what male journos do all the time? (And yes I am a man - I always feel the need to point that out on MN. Please tell me if it isn't necessary).

Posters on here are always emphasising how the male illuminati/patriarchy manipulates women. I think this is a woman who has got one over on them.

"LemonTurd Wed 04-Apr-12 21:18:52

I want to scream at all the people critising SB's looks - YOU'RE MISSING THE POINT!"

Absolutely nail-on-head. I think your analysis and Hadley Freeman's in the Guardian (mini's link) are spot on. It's not about whether her assessment of her looks is correct or not, it's about the patriarchy (the Daily Male-iarchy in this case) constructing a world in which women are ranked according to their looks and women are manipulated into colluding with this ranking system, rather than getting the chance to turn round and say "but looks are a bit irrelevant, aren't they? What about my talent/brains/athletic ability/musical skill/character traits/strength in adversity... you know, all the stuff you use to assess men?"

www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/apr/04/samantha-brick-thrown-to-wolves This is interesting, this morning in the guardian. The DM hates women, is making victims of it's readers, it's female writers and celebs that they insist on belittling over fat thighs or spots. Funny that so many women read this paper, it's pitched itself in such a way that it now relies on sales/on line hits mainly to women but seems to abuse them like a bullying husband.

Maybe Samantha Brick has a point, the mail has a higher percentage of female writers but is becoming increasingly female un-friendly. Maybe women really don't like other women, which would of course give some weight to her view. (although I still think she must have been mad to set herself up)

Very interesting article by Anna Blundy (who, incidentally, looks far better for her age than SB.)
And yes, I think the jezebel site has a good point, so I shall stop "biting" now.

I suspect she is an attention seeker, who is seeking attention because she feels unloved in childhood. She probably actually needs some help with issues.

This is my favourite comment on the SamBrick article so far: <a class="break-all" href="http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?um=1&hl=en&client=firefox-a&sa=N&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&biw=1280&bih=707&tbm=isch&tbnid=ri6fTdrFq7VBEM:&imgrefurl=www.mailwatch.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php%3Ff%3D10%26t%3D4853&docid=Pa5HFVH6nIe2xM&imgurl=twitpic.com/show/iphone/9527bx&w=600&h=346&ei=I8V8T6-1Lciq8QP4yq28DQ&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=186&vpy=342&dur=726&hovh=159&hovw=277&tx=135&ty=118&sig=110693219849305884223&page=3&tbnh=122&tbnw=212&start=36&ndsp=22&ved=1t:429,r:12,s:36,i:254" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Stunna

Seriously though, it's nice to be attractive, but brilliant to be intelligent, wise, deep, funny, strong, confident etc etc. If you're focusing more on your looks than anything else you're probably going to score pretty low on those more attractive personality characteristics.

I have never met a man who bangs on about his looks. Do you think men don't view themselves that way? Or that they just keep schtum because it's unseemly for a bloke to brag about his appearance?

Also I have never met a woman who bangs on about how stunning she believes herself to be, who was not also deeply, deeply insecure about most aspects of their identities - much more so than my other friends. I doubt that Bricky is the exception.

Teenstrop, that's the one.

was this the one SGB?

jezebel.com/5898848/yes-samantha-brick-is-obnoxious-but-the-daily-mail-is-trolling-us-all

Lemonturd you are spot on! The Daily Mail loves this stuff and the sad thing is that so do the millions on women who buy that newspaper! You've got to hand it to them - they know their audience!

I want to scream at all the people critising SB's looks - YOU'RE MISSING THE POINT!

If we're going to get angry, let's get angry at a powerful newspaper that churns out this women-pitted-against-other-women shite every fucking day.

Let's get angry at a society where women are expected to be dissatisfied with their own, and others, appearance.

As much as I dislike the articles she's written (and, inevitably, how the DM would've meddled with them) why isn't it OK for a woman to write a self-congratulatory article?

Why can't a woman say, in effect, "I'm fan-fucking-tastic" and not be shot down in flames?

I may be going slightly OT, but I've been pondering this all day while I'm supposed to be writing essays

In the follow up she writes "I'm the first to give out compliments when someone I know looks good or has made an effort. I don't understand why other women don't do the same"

Maybe they do but they do not compliment her, maybe we compliment people who need a pick me up, a confidence boost. I think it might be in her DNA to expect it. Which probably says quite a lot about the difference between what she projects and how she feels on the inside, which I would guess is actually rather less confident. After all a person who needs to make such a great effort with their appearance sometimes lacks confidence in themselves.

She should have been advised not to write this from a personal perspective, she would have been better to have interviewed others who are "pretty" and then put forward the argument.

Lemon: that';s a great article, I've just shared it on FB, know exactly how she feels.

very interesting article LemonTurd.I do think the DM is losing its way.And it is becoming like women's magazines became, with all that celebrity stuff.
Trouble is, are we in the minority?The world is constantly changing.No generation is ever like the next one.

Can't fine the link but there was a post on Jezebel about how it's the Daily Mail editorial team who are the real villains here. They've encouraged this woman to post a silly self-obsessed rant about how much better she is than other people and how howwid they are to her because of her superiority and they've almost certainly edited her piece to make her sound more deluded and spiteful than she actually is. But the point of it is to shout loudly 'Look, women are all cunts. They're arrogant cunts or jealous spiteful cunts, and they all hate each other.' And also to rub it in that if you are a woman, what you look like matters more than anything else in the world and yet it's not up to you to define your own appearance. It's reinforcing the fact that for women, when it comes to presenting yourself to the world you can't win.

Saw this article on Twitter this morning. The DM has sunk even further in my estimation, if that's at all possible.

SeaHouses your mum sounds like a very wise person

My mum read the article about this woman and commented that we all seem to be one step away from taking a tour of Bedlam and pointing and laughing at the inmates.

I read the follow up article where Samantha Brick says how upset she is by thousands of nasty comments on the web about her. Maybe she knew what she is getting herself into and it is just a job to write this article, or maybe she was set up and encouraged to believe what she has written, the way they encourage average people to believe they are amazing singers on the X Factor and then push them out in from of a panel to be mocked.

Either way, I can believe the response is out of proportion to any harm she has caused by writing the original article, and it is sad that we enjoy being so cruel about people in general and other women in particular.

I've noticed alot of 'pretty' women have an arrogance given to them people brownosing every chance they get, so they probably get have problems due to their arrogance rather than 'beauty'

because IME alot of pretty women are very popular within cliques.

generally good looking people get a head start in life and get away with more.