Meet the Other Phone. Child-safe in minutes.

Meet the Other Phone.
Child-safe in minutes.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Style and beauty

Looking for style advice? Chat all about it here. For the latest discounts on fashion and beauty, sign up for Mumsnet Moneysaver emails.

AA Gill has writtena really charming piece about British Womens appearence

155 replies

CybilLiberty · 03/10/2009 07:52

When I fly back to England, I know that I will notice two things: the old place will look surprisingly and miraculously green, and the girls will look like recycling bin bags full of windfalls, with a relentless, stroppy, obstinate and defiant plainness.

When everything is wet and cold, English girls glower beneath their frizzy split ends, with their baggy pink eyes, defensively regarding the world over broken veins and puce, dripping noses, pursing their thin lips over badly shuffled teeth.

The summer is when those bodies, long held in supine, chip-rich darkness of shapeless unisex comfort clobber, are set free like blind, hairless, albino moles; the grey adipose flesh slops over waistbands and shoulder straps; bunioned and varicosed feet shimmy in shower slippers; arses are sliced by cheese-wire thongs; wobbling, pocked thighs flap and chafe like drunken mates.

But nothing could be worse than English girls when they make an effort, dressed up for a night out: it?s then that they reach the heights of precipitous frightfulness. The clacking cankles. The tortured hair. The evil clown?s make-up. Predatory breasts, like pink water bombs. Flapping arms and glistening chins, and second-division mouths. The farmyard aggression and the zoo sex.

It?s not just a class thing; it?s not only chavvy ladettes in the provinces. Look at the state of the totty tumbling out of Boujis, or waving chipped-nailed fingers at Glastonbury.

Go to any £1,000-a-head charity ball and see the English memsahib, 3st above her fighting weight, swagged in a gypsy?s shower curtain, with a barnet that might have been spun in a sugary centrifuge. The granny jewellery and the blue eye shadow, the unhumpable hell of them all.
.... and so it goes on.

He does later say beauty is not the be all and end all...but did he have to be quite SOO full of vitriol?

OP posts:
Frrrightattendant · 03/10/2009 07:55

He sounds like a right bastard.

belgo · 03/10/2009 07:56

He's right though.

Cluckyagain · 03/10/2009 07:57

Funny though! I know what he means about the 'centrifuge hair'.

Podrick · 03/10/2009 08:00

His girlfriend is a model

perdu · 03/10/2009 08:01

I always quite like AA Gill and come on you can see his point on the night out clobber....can't you?

I'll go now.....

PuppyMonkey · 03/10/2009 08:01

Yeah and he's such a dish himself.

Frrrightattendant · 03/10/2009 08:07

he's right?

so we are all like he describes?

I know some people are but not everyone. That's what bothers me - he's saying all English women are repulsive, which isn't true at all, and so what anyway - what about the blokes?

It's just a load of rubbish.

belgo · 03/10/2009 08:13

No not all english women (certainly not you flight), but it's very noticeable coming back to england from another country how badly dressed english women are.

The problem is mainly that so many english women follow fashion, even though it doesn't suit most of them.

Frrrightattendant · 03/10/2009 08:16

Cheers Belgo

Any tips though?
What should British women be wearing?

I have to say that most of the women at school look amazing. Obviously some people don't, but I wonder whether they rightly put less emphasis on clothes as really, they are not the be all and end all.

belgo · 03/10/2009 08:19

Clothes that fit for a start that's the biggest problem.

Forget about getting a tan - this summer I saw so much red/white stripy flesh on show - it looked awful. Just stay white.

Uggs and crocs and skinny jeans should be outlawed unless you are a size ten 16 year old!

perdu · 03/10/2009 08:23

well he has certainly got you lot riled!

It's journalism - you would complain if he were too bland....surely?

belgo · 03/10/2009 08:24

I'm not sure I'd call it journalism - it's hardly news worthy even if he is right

belgo · 03/10/2009 08:30

And what on earth are jeggings? I'm going to want to ban them too aren't I?

piscesmoon · 03/10/2009 08:33

I have read similar articles by him in the past. I don't think he is a very nice person.
I remember one years ago where he was objecting to sitting next to overweight women in flowered dresses who were fairly shy, he wanted to sit next to a sophisticated, thin woman in the little black dress and not have to make any effort himself! He misses the point that, if he persevered, he may find that the former is a much more interesting person-he will never know if he can't be bothered to go deeper than appearances.
I gave up reading him when he said that evening classes and self improvement were for sad losers.
I don't think it will be any loss for British women if he keeps well away!

Prunerz · 03/10/2009 08:39
  1. It's AA Gill, this is what he does.
  2. He is, by and large, right. Whether it needs saying in print is another matter, but he's right.
CybilLiberty · 03/10/2009 08:41

I know journalism is by and large madde up of HUUGE generalisations, but he's just being so mean! And lots of the things are mentions are not down to slovenliness, just genetics

OP posts:
foxinsocks · 03/10/2009 08:43

lol belgo, you have made me chuckle

piscesmoon · 03/10/2009 08:45

I don't think that a journalist needs to be mean and nasty, whatever his private feelings.
He isn't someone that I would ever want to meet.I don't think he is very nice, as a person.
A great journalist should be someone that you would want to meet, because they would be interesting and knowledgeable.

tattycoram · 03/10/2009 08:46

Oh yeah, just a provocative piece of journalism.

Ripe for inclusion women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/article6849600.ecehere "Somewhere in the free-market driven moral relativism of the past decade, we have lost the ability to say, without fear of being called uptight or fun-sucking, that selling sex on the high street, raunchy outfits for toddlers or scabrous attacks on female public figures based upon their looks just ain?t right."

I think she is absolutely right.

Hassled · 03/10/2009 08:51

Gill does have a nice turn of phrase though - I especially like "Predatory breasts, like pink water bombs."

cocolepew · 03/10/2009 08:54

Prick.

MarshaBrady · 03/10/2009 08:58

It's just a bit of writing, I quite like it.

Frrrightattendant · 03/10/2009 08:59

Makes me really depressed that so many of you lot think he is right.

We've been told off for how we dress for so long it has actually convinced even clever women that all women are/look crap.

MarshaBrady · 03/10/2009 09:01

Although I don't think it applies to the women I know.. of course.

Frrrightattendant · 03/10/2009 09:01

I think he sounds really disturbed.