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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:
prettyponies · 03/10/2009 13:46

Twat. i read an article of his once where his metaphore for an unattractive woman was one who had 'breastfed triplets'.

BloodshotEyeballs · 03/10/2009 13:58

I really don't get how some of you find it oh so amusing. He's being a twat, not clever or ironic, just a twat.

Quattrocento · 03/10/2009 14:31

He can write though, he can write.

"chip-rich darkness of shapeless unisex comfort clobber"

But you know, so can many writers. It's their trade. Doesn't necessarily stop them from being physically or spiritually undesirable ...

Penthesileia · 03/10/2009 14:49

I disagree, Quattro. Overwritten hyperbole is not good writing. It can be good satire, but as Orm has already noted, his target is not exactly "worthy" of such treatment.

All the piling-up of adjectives looks a bit like someone who has been reading their thesaurus too much. William Faulkner he decidedly ain't.

Thing is, when I read this kind of thing, I generally think that the person writing it better be damned sure they are God's gift to beauty.

Plus, despite his protest at the end, this does read as rather "classist" and not terribly original. The chattering classes can't get enough of deriding the less well-off for being overweight and unstylish.

Moreover, as a piece about the unstylish nature of English women compared to their continental counterparts, well, plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. People have - since fashion began - always said this about the English. Again, hardly original.

So, all in all, to my mind, AA Gill is beginning to look a bit of an unoriginal, stylistically hampered idiot.

Prunerz · 03/10/2009 14:59

Yeah but he's a columnist - they are rarely great at writing. Their forté is the trite observation turned into 300 words in a couple of hours, if that. It does show.

bishboschone · 03/10/2009 15:09

I have to agree with him ..sorry but I do. I am 34 and went out the other Saturday in our very Conservative town and the youth are all dressed in the way he describes.

bronze · 03/10/2009 15:11

but were you?

UnquietDad · 03/10/2009 15:31

It's a bit more overblown and colourful than my own style, but I did admire his turn of phrase in places!

MmeGoblindt · 03/10/2009 15:31

I do think that it is unfair to compare the average British woman (or man for that matter) with a resident of Paris or Milan.

I live near Geneva where the women are scarily well put together. The school run is terrifying.

Nip over the border into provincial France, then you are more likely to find women like AA Gill describes.

SausageRocket · 03/10/2009 15:36

He's a sunday paper journo, he makes a living from (often inaccurate) sweeping generalisations to get middle England in a froth.

paisleyleaf · 03/10/2009 16:08

I usually find AA Gill unpleasant. (Him and Jeremy Clarkson).

MrsMerryHenry · 03/10/2009 16:12

He is right, and wittily so, the old bastard , but did he say anything about men? If so, I wouldn't mind. But I sincerely doubt that he did.

TheCrackFox · 03/10/2009 16:28

I have just googled him and he is 5 years younger than my Dad. I couldn't give a stuff what anyone of that generation thinks about me.

pofacedandproud · 03/10/2009 16:28

His metaphors are brilliant. 'badly shuffled' teeth, women looking like 'recycling bin bags full of windfalls'. He has great metaphors.

MrsMerryHenry · 03/10/2009 16:46

TheCrackFox - why not? What a curious statement.

OrmIrian · 03/10/2009 16:50

His metaphors aren't that clever and I don't think he is witty. Wit requires something more than mere verbal acrobatics.

I suspect he's an inadequate with a dictionary.

Why is it clever to be unkind?

OrmIrian · 03/10/2009 16:50

His metaphors aren't that clever and I don't think he is witty. Wit requires something more than mere verbal acrobatics.

I suspect he's an inadequate with a dictionary.

Why is it clever to be unkind?

TheCrackFox · 03/10/2009 16:55

I can't get passed the "same age as my dad". I don't care if that age group fancy me or not.

MrsMerryHenry · 03/10/2009 16:57

I don't get what fancying has to do with it, nor why you'd disregard someone's opinion simply because of their age. Do you and your dad not get on, or something?

TheCrackFox · 03/10/2009 16:59

I don't disregard someone of any age but he is writing from the aspect of whether we are fanciable. I am not the least bit interested in his opinion regarding this matter. I do like his restaurant reviews, though.

MrsMerryHenry · 03/10/2009 16:59

Orm - it's a British thing, isn't it - part of our acerbic humour. Most Americans, for example (meaning US natives, not the others) probably wouldn't get the humour in such nastiness, but Brits, Aussies, Dutch, Germans? Possibly French as well - I think that kind of observation would generally go down well in all of those countries.

OrmIrian · 03/10/2009 17:01

Is it? I guess so. I think that must be one of the few areas where I am not typically British then. Unlike my unkempt, fat, ugly appearance And I am not even to allowed to be so in peace without some charmer making vicious observations.

MrsMerryHenry · 03/10/2009 17:03

Fanciable? I didn't get that at all from this piece. Maybe I've missed something. Does he mention it in the section that Cybill didn't post? I naughtily skipped from page 1 to page 4 of this thread so didn't find out where this article was printed.

And not wanting to sound picky, but you did say: "I couldn't give a stuff what anyone of that generation thinks about me."

TheCrackFox · 03/10/2009 17:05

Sorry, I worded it badly. I don't care what a man of my Dad's age group may think about my appearance.

Megglevache · 03/10/2009 17:17

LOL.

I think it's very funny.