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?

Yes I agree with anniemac. Though I also agree with the poster below who wishes she had a friend to act as go-between her and the features desk at the DM.

I read Liz Jones's column every week, it makes me feel better about my own life.

I really think she's sad, lonely and acheingly insecure. I do feel sorry for her but for all the bad things that have happened to her (shitty husband) she's had a lot of lucky breaks, lots of money, interesting jobs etc that I, personally, think she's wasted and not appreciated.

Go help me if she's reading this, I may end up in her column next week

They can understand her life though - they've been motherless. It's not true what she says, parents do remember their pre-children days. Clear as day.

I mean childless.

I think vitriol is unpleasant too. I don't think the childless should have to defend their choices at all.

I actually think she has quite a lot of serious mental health issues, and as such shouldn't be given the opportunity to put herself on display in the national media. It's no different to Big Brother producers picking the most mentally unstable people to go on their show every year imo. She doesn't need a column, she needs industrial strength therapy.

Your friends presumably have not spent a lot of their adult life spreading their private life out over the national newspapers though?

I don't think it makes her sad - as in what a down and out person, or anything inferior - of course not.

I think she sounds a bit sad at what she has missed, why not - her article is a show of the ambivalence between wanting an independent and successful life/ career and wanting to experience motherhood.

The ambivalence is interesting, and not many 50 year old women have the chance to express it. The papers are so full of 'weekend dads' or 'how do I cope mothers'.

I also have childless friends who are very keen to change this fast (mid to late 30's), if they don't get to they will have regret. It doesn't make them sad people, but I would feel some sadness for them.

I didn't read it that way though Marsha. It was more mixed-up than that. It swerved from how others envy her, to appalling stomachs to stereotypes of awful parents to her relationship with animals. It didn't express ambivalence in an interesting way, or even with much humanity. It was defensive, then briefly sad, then defensive again.

My sister is childless. Being childless doesn't mean you can't have empathy with and for children and parents.

My sis is a total child-pleaser and an important part of my children's lives. I think the sad thing about people like LJ isn't that they're not mothers, but that they don't seem to connect with children in any way. Our society is a pretty sad and poor one in the way it hives people off into little groups - separating the old from the young, the childless from parents. It's not supposed to be that way. It's not healthy for children or for adults.

EH?
'Just as she doesnt understand the life of a mother, a mother cant understand her life and choices either.'
Well that was exactly what I was saying Cyradis, that she doesn't understand the life of a mother. But she thinks she does when she says she gives buys her dog a nice bed and a million toys and doesn't kick them out at eighteen. So therefore she is unaware. When I say I think it is sad, I think it is sad that she obviously regrets having children and uses her pets as substitute children.

I have childless friends who are very happy with their decision. I totally respect their decision. Bit baffled by your argument really.

Bitter and jealous

I used to read Liz Jones wedding planning column in the Grauniad just to see if it would irritate me more than the Burchill column, every saturday, usually it was neck and neck.

Liz Jones if she is as she presents herself in print is a very insubstantial and self-centred personality so her ill considered opinions do not particularly concern me. I do feel sorry she gets paid for her drivel but people read it and it generates debate so she will continue to get employed.

Irritating columnists are par for the course now, we all love to get all outraged at something in our comfortable little lives. I just wish I could rise above it rather than let the steam escape me ears, always end up feeling all grubby and used!

I am still gritting my teeth remembering this in the paper a few weeks ago. Which is ridiculous. In this case it was the depiction of an idyllic 'domestic bliss' which involved floating around baking bread etc. as a sahm and then returning to 'reality' in work. I find being sahm such bloody hard work that i couldn't help feeling like a total failure after reading it! as i said ridiculous - I hate feeling manipulated.

Blimey
And why is she still wearing her wedding ring? Has she taken the love of her cats to the next logical step??

what a bitter woman. I don't feel sorry for her as I save that for people that aren't snide bitches.

I'm guessing it's just her way of thinking (alot) about things.

Anorexia was mentioned below, her reaction to motherly bodies would I suppose come from this. No it's not great, but somewhat understandable, anorexics can have this repulsion. So I just see that as part of a past illness rather than any real comment on motherhood. (maybe I don't know much about her, other than this article).

Ambivalence, maybe not so much, because it was just how her life took her on a path which didn't result in children. The wrong husband etc etc.

She's past the chance where she gets to make the choice now, so grasps at this stuff. I found the pets/ bodies etc defensiveness superficial enough to be masking the real problem underneath.

That is, perhaps having children would have made her happier, but she's not sure.

It's rambling because when a woman is in the quagmire or wanting children and not having a clear way to have them can be mind-bendingly confusing. Her clarity of views and certainty probably could come from having 5 to 10 years to accept it.

All supposition of course, I don't know her.

Also I know I reading alot into a woman I don't know, but I find it interesting (plus I feel very close to some friends in confusing situations).

No I agree with all of that, it's just that I sort of feel we reach these insights because we read between the lines of her article. I kinda think they are not insights she has, or is actually able to write on the lines.

i don't mean to say I find it all a bit sad to be patronizing though. I certainly don't think childlessness is sad per se. It's the levels of self-justification, and I guess lack of insight and as others have said, her variable mental health that make the columns rather erm, touching reading.

Are there? Where? There's a lot of mileage in the media, I agree with the poster below about columnists in general.

Polly Vernon wrote about why she didn't want children - as if it were a calling to a cause in the Observer women's mag, and then Rachel Cooke followed a few pages later, sort of saying how awful society obsessed with babies is - true - but then expressed consternation that the mother of children she was talking to wasn't sufficiently interested in the Yemen.

of the women I know who don't have children - we're not like that. We manage to understand each other's experiences, without any hostility or defensiveness. I don't see it in RL that much. I see it in columns an awful lot.

you don't need to have children to be 'smug' anniemac - i think our culture is irritatingly self-centred and consumerist but as most people have children at some point in their lives this is manifest in how some parent competitively (and the resulting conspicuous consumption).

Have to say though ,cant wait for the rescue puppy to arrive and eat all her luxury goods /designer clothes etc whilst spurning its homeopathic and organic dog food .