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Style and beauty

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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:
OrmIrian · 03/10/2009 09:01

What a nasty mean-minded little piece of writing.

What purpose does it serve? Is it really going to make British women (as we are all just as he described) see the light and become Parisienly stylish?

So it is just for the sake of releasing his pointless and needless ire like pus from a boil.

Frrrightattendant · 03/10/2009 09:04

Hugs Orm.

ilovemydogandmrobama · 03/10/2009 09:04

I read once that he doesn't actually write his articles, but rather speaks into a recorder and someone else transcribes it. Apparently he has such learning difficulties, this is the only way he can do it.

But if you read his articles, it does have 'stream of consciousness' theme, quite aside from the content, which is just schoolboy, 'I'm just so cheeky...'

Yawn.

cocolepew · 03/10/2009 09:05

"broken veins, dripping noses,badly shuffled teeth, evil clown's make-up, predatory breasts , farmyard aggression..." Scared of women much?

He's a prick, is this really what he see's when he looks around him? Where does he live, in a travelling freak show?

foxinsocks · 03/10/2009 09:05

yy he's dyslexic

OrmIrian · 03/10/2009 09:06

Waddya mean hugs, fright .....

Now I'm scared....

MmeGoblindt · 03/10/2009 09:06

I do like AA Gill. He is very provocotive.

Sorry to say, I agree with Belgo. After living abroad for some time, I am always a bit at British women.

I find that here the women dress in clothes that suit them not clothes that everyone is wearing.

LOL at "Predatory breasts, like pink water bombs"

Frrrightattendant · 03/10/2009 09:07

LOL Orm. (hun)]

I forgot to add the so it was a verb rather than a - erm - noun type thing

mwff · 03/10/2009 09:08

just a bit of good old misogyny really innit [shrug]

Frrrightattendant · 03/10/2009 09:09

I do laugh at his food critic stuff, that's Ok, it's food not people. He's just so wrong in this article - of course there can be found elements of what he describes, but it isn't as ubiquitous as he seems to be saying.
Not by any means.

FlappyTheBat · 03/10/2009 09:09

He obviously doesn't have a mirror that reflects a true image, not exactly a style icon himself!

Frrrightattendant · 03/10/2009 09:09

Has he done one about British men?

MarshaBrady · 03/10/2009 09:09

It would be just as easy to write a diatribe about British men.

Throw in some chinless wonders, receding hairlines, mixed bags.

IIt would be a fictional piece of writing too.

I like the words he uses. It doesn't upset me cos I know it's not always true.

FlappyTheBat · 03/10/2009 09:11

giving up with links I think

Frrrightattendant · 03/10/2009 09:13

Flappy
Marsha, I can see that but to me it still wouldn't come across as remotely funny, or amusing, or interesting - some people look crap - so what? I am not getting it at all. I already know some people look crap.

Prunerz · 03/10/2009 09:17

I do think he's a misogynist
I don't like his vitriol

But the fact is, we do as a nation - so of course a massive generalisation - dress badly compared to other nations.
It varies according to where you live. I am in Scotland and there is a huge difference between here and say London. (Not in our favour, I might add.)

OTOH I would rather wear the same shell suit and hoop earrings daily than be subjected to the endemic misogyny that your average French woman deals with, so meh, really.

Prunerz · 03/10/2009 09:20

The food critic stuff - welllllllllllllll
Someone started a restaurant in Oxford and asked a friend of a friend to get AA Gill to review it.
Friend duly did this.
AA Gill wrote a coruscating piece on the place, just beyond vile and unpleasant (it wasn't a bad restaurant!). It shut down. He is widely held to be responsible, and seemingly did it because he was miffed at having been pimped out by his friend.
He's a nasty piece of work.

BloodshotEyeballs · 03/10/2009 09:21

What a prick. It's a nasty, smug, vicious pile of junk. There are some people that dress badly, there are some people that dress beautifully. How dare he dismiss 50% of the nation in one swoop. Oh, is he trying to be clever and provocative? Riiiight. Arsehole.

Frrrightattendant · 03/10/2009 09:27

Prunerz when I wrote that I wondered how it felt to be a chef and have your food unnecessarily trashed by him. That's awful.

Ok, he is an utter prick.

Romanarama · 03/10/2009 09:56

He's being provocative and nasty, but having lived abroad for a long time, I pretty much agree with him.

tinkerbellesmuse · 03/10/2009 10:09

Another one who lives abroad here and always thinks could do better when I return to heathrow. There is something very peculiar about what a large number of british woman think is appropriate to wear once the sun comes out.

Romanarama · 03/10/2009 10:48

Not only when the sun comes out though, nor only when they're 'tarted up'. There are loads of people who post things on here like 'if you're worrying about what you wear when you go to pick up the kids then you've got too much time on your hands.'

The upside is that there's something very creative about the way stylish British women dress that's refreshing after the homogeneity of some other European capitals.

Quattrocento · 03/10/2009 10:52

I think he was just getting carried away

English men aren't oil paintings though are they? Why focus on women like this?

Romanarama · 03/10/2009 10:56

Quattro, that's true. What's with all those shapeless t-shirts British men wear? And the shorts and flipflops with yucky feet. They should all go to Italy for training imo.

piscesmoon · 03/10/2009 11:00

I have found the original article and it isn't that bad if you read it all. It would be very easy to write similar on British men!