To actually feel a little SORRY for Liz Jones

[LibrasBiscuitsOfFortune]

Here:
www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1202314/Liz-Jones-I-loathe-smug-modern-mums--I-want-one.html

she gets linked to quite a lot on Mumsnet (which is why I end up reading her drivel, that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it).

She just seems so UNHAPPY. I think she doth protest too much about not wanting children, I think she may have the body of a skinny 17 r old but she has the personality of medusa, she has this irrational NEED to slag off and denigrate anyone who doesn't have her lifestyle. I am surprise she HAS any friends if this is the way she talks about them in the media, part of me wonders if before every column she emails them and says "don't worry about what I am going to say about you this week it's only so I can afford more designer handbags - love you really".
However I am in a forgiving mood this morning, so instead of thinking all of this is because she is not a nice person, I am going to put it down to the fact she must be dreadfully unhappy with her life.

So AIBU to feel sorry for Liz Jones or is she really just a harriden?

What a mess of an article it is though. I agree with bumpsoon. It's incoherent. There are some points in there - when I was single I used to get irritated with politicians banging on about hard-working families - as though I, who had paid nothing but tax and never claimed a single benefit in my life, was somehow less of a contributor to society. That sentiment is in there but it's mixed up with peculiar references to women's stomachs and the colour of their luggage and the fact that their children like to run about into some kind of awful mis-mash of bitterness.

I do feel sorry for her as well. But not because she doesn't have children - because she comes across as so bitter in this article and evidently can't see it.

Oh - and here's hoping she doesn't want any more houseguests, because she's unlikely to get many!

• mish-mash even

I really think the whole think is made up.

If not she must have some sort of trauma in her childhood to be so insecure.

This must be made up to cause maximum fuss and attention.

If not - I feel really sorry for her. She sounds so lonely.

Insecure as well.

squeaver I don't think it's just children she seems bitter and unhappy with her whole life.

Crikey I do feel sorry for her. Nothing else really, poor woman I think she would have loved to have children and knows it deep down.

The rest is just a reaction to parallel lives that seem alien to her. Of course I wouldn't want her to criticize me as a mother.

But the rest is quite sad.

oh, God if only we all had a platform to witter on about our unedited regrets and thoughts. Trouble is, I get a bit pissed, ring my mate, and it goes no further. Poor old Liz finds her twatty, vile waffle printed in the Mail. She is just an idiot who has messed her life up and doesn't know when to shut up. That Natalie Portman lookalike could easily have been me - if I'm going out I spend hours caking make up on, doing my hair etc etc but I'm currently in a dressing gown with old lady hair. Silly old Liz.

I don't think you need to feel sorry for Liz Jones. She just has a totally different mindset to the majority of women and I suppose she can't really identify with people who want children. She just wants something different out of life, although I am not quite sure what that might be.

Personally, I really wanted children above anything else. I told DH this way before we were married and he wanted the same thing so it was fine. If he hadn't wanted children, we would not have got married. I didn't have children to keep DH (!), I had children because I had a desperate biological desire to do so and I grew up in a big family and I love children.

Think it's a bit mean of her referring to her friends having "muffin stomachs" and "congealed porridge" stomachs, I do find myself itching to make some comment about her bingo wings - see photo of her with new border collie.

How strange that you are all so knowledgeable - what with NONE of you reading the Daily Mail ever (or so you claim.)

yes i also think lots of people who don't have children secretly feel the same way. This bit is genuinely sad though:

'I get quite cross when people say I can't compare the love I have for my cats, my border collie, my rescued horses, my rescued lambs, to the love mums have for their children.
I would never shout at my animals, or make them leave home when they are 18.
I am picking up a rescued border collie pup tomorrow. Her name is Gracie. I have bought her millions of colourful toys and a bed with ducks on.
I suppose what I'm trying to say is that just because I don't have human babies doesn't mean I don't have love to give, or that I'm incapable of nurturing. I'm just a different kind of mum.

That level of unawareness and self deception says a lot really.

Nancy66 we all go to the hairdresser/dentist/doctor a lot and it's the only thing left on the table to read cough honest...

When did I claim I don't read the DM Nancy? I often look at it online.

Weird thing to say.

girlsareloud - there are always threads about the DM and how evil it is and everyone saying they wouldn't have it in the house. There was one last week with somebody suggesting they should all write to the editor saying why nobody on MN reads the paper blah blah....yet well over half the links I see on MN are to the DM. Just pointing out the irony that's all.

Miss Havisham
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Miss Havisham is a significant character in the Charles Dickens novel Great Expectations (1861). She is a wealthy spinster, who lives in her ruined mansion with her adopted Collie, Gracie, while she herself is described as looking like "the witch of the place."
...tries to spread her cynicism and malaise to everyone she touches...it is also indicated that her long life away from the sunlight has in itself aged her, and she is said to look like a cross between a waxwork and a skeleton, with moving eyes.

Oh right, so you took what some have said and extrapolated it to apply to every mumsnetter. I see.

"I might look young on the outside, still wear platforms and pigtails and ride ponies, but I know I have missed my chance to experience something that could have been wonderful."

I would have believed that she was writing her true thoughts if it had not been for this quote.

I am sure loads of folk are perfectly happy without kids but she is not one of them.

girlsareloud - loosen the knicker elastic my dear it was a wry observation.

No Cyradis, it's not a refusal to understand. It's totally understanding what she's saying, I think, that means you'd think it sad.

It's like talking to a woman who tells you the names of her five cats and all the funny things they do, and how one will only eat out the blue bowl, and how one is naughty and how one has all his little funny quirks.

And these are significant relationships to this woman, and she probably says at some point 'they're like my children really' and you nod and smile, and she says, 'I'm like their mum' and you smile and nod again.

but really, honestly, you KNOW - if you've had children - that pouring your love and devotion into cats is nothing like having children. They are cats. She loves her cats. They are not children. You know, with ABSOLUTE UNDERSTANDING what she is saying, and more importantly why. And it is a bit sad.

That's true skybright.

at wearing pigtails.

I think all the need for self-justification is a bit sad. In anyone. Being childless can be a decision, and as often as not an extremely good one and it can be an accident, in which case I guess you just get on with it.

But having to hate children, or to imagine envy in others, or to be physically repulsed by the marks of motherhood on other women's bodies or to have to write a book about why your life is superior makes a person seem unhappy to my mind.

Every 6 weeks Liz Jones writes something offensive about her friends and mothers in general.

She has turned into a parody of herself.