Four days ago, France-based Mail reported Samantha Brick penned what many people were hoping was a late April Fool joke. The 41-year-old woman wrote
an article detailing how difficult her life is because she's so beautiful, that other women hate her and men are intimidated by her (or constantly give her free stuff, which totally isn't contradictory or anything) based solely on how she looks. That she's lost friends and been 'forced' to leave jobs because of female jealousy because, again, Mrs Brick is so gorgeous it inspires hatred in other people.
You can't really get a good feel for just how utterly, jaw-droppingly self-absorbed and appallingly arrogant this woman sounds unless you actually read the article itself--which is, not incidentally, accompanied by about half a dozen photos showing a tall bleach-blonde moderately okay-looking woman whose only outstanding feature is that she just looks so ordinary. But here's a sample:
While I’m no Elle Macpherson, I’m tall, slim, blonde and, so I’m often told, a good-looking woman. I know how lucky I am. But there are downsides to being pretty — the main one being that other women hate me for no other reason than my lovely looks.
If you’re a woman reading this, I’d hazard that you’ve already formed your own opinion about me — and it won’t be very flattering. For while many doors have been opened (literally) as a result of my looks, just as many have been metaphorically slammed in my face — and usually by my own sex.
The article received over
5000 comments online before the Mail closed commenting. Almost all of those comments that I can see (I admit, I haven't read all of them) seem to be pointing out that it probably isn't jealousy based on her supposed beauty that is driving people away from Samantha Brick--it's the outright ARROGANCE that comes across in the article. Which was prompted, it's worth pointing out, by a single incident: a woman she knew socially was driving past while she was walking her dogs, and when Brick waved at the woman the woman did not wave back. Speaking personally, I tend not to look too much at pedestrians when I'm driving unless they are actually IN THE ROAD at the time because I have other things to worry about while controlling my two-ton motorized metal death machine than whether or not a self-absorbed woman gets her feelings hurt or not.
But Mrs Brick doesn't get it. She saw the negative comments as merely proof-positive that she is right, that women in the UK (she clarifies later that she means in the UK) are jealous of more attractive women and penned
a second article a few days later insisting that the negative backlash online and off proves her point and that women hate her because she's beautiful. She had here an opportunity the clarify or possibly even apologize for the way she came off in the first article but instead it seems to just confirm the conclusions most people drew to begin with: that Samantha Brick is just an arrogant woman who occasionally gets treats from men for being a mildly good-looking woman. She isn't ugly, but she isn't double-take-on-the-street attractive, though she's in good shape for her age, and I feel comfortable saying this because the second article is accompanied by yet another set of photos.
The final nail in her coffin came yesterday, when she appeared on 'This Morning' to be interviewed with a professional psychologist who points out that, actually, all the literature suggests that attractive people have it much, much easier than everyone else because people are naturally drawn to attractive people.
Yet this woman still. Doesn't. Get it. She interrupts everyone trying to point out the same thing: it isn't her appearance, it's her personality.
...
Okay. Here's the thing. I have no doubt that at least once or twice in Mrs Brick's life, she has indeed come by some poor treatment from other women based on the fact that other women were jealous or saw her as a threat. This does happen, very occasionally, and you needn't be an Amazonian blonde bombshell for it to happen. It has happened to me, and I am short and have been overweight most of my adult life. My best friend's girlfriend sees me as a threat and one of my managers at work occasionally seems to want me vaporized. BUT. I accept that the problem in these cases is NOT that I am so gorgeous they hate me, but that the women in question are insecure and would feel this way about me even if I looked like Walter Matthau with breasts. And yes, sometimes people give me free stuff because I flirt with them--I do this at my regular haunts every now and then because sometimes I get free stuff for it like cookies. (I will hit on anybody for free cookies.) And again, I think they would probably do this if my behaviour didn't change at all (I'm friendly and flirtatious and as nice as I can be) but I looked like William Howard Taft wearing false lashes. It has fuck-all to do with how you look and everything to do with how you come across and if I came across as being a complete cow, I would get a very different reaction.
I am a reasonably good-looking woman. Other women do not hate me because of this. I do not hate other women because they're better-looking than I am and have less thigh fat. I dislike other people when they are self-centred, arrogant, and thick--the very traits that come across in the original article and the subsequent writings AND interviews in which Samantha Brick tries to defend herself and fails horribly.
The psychologist in the televised interview says what I thought to begin with: the common denominator in Mrs Brick's failed relationships is herself. When she consistently gets the same put-off reaction from people, she should consider that it might be something ABOUT HER (and not this 'I'M SO PRETTY!' rubbish) that puts people off. You can only say, "Well they must have issues..." so many times before it should occur to you that actually the answer may lie elsewhere. I know this, and I'm slightly more than half her age. The difference is, I don't have the gobsmacking level of narcissism going on.
Beauty is skin deep. Jean Kerr once said that that was deep enough, because what the hell else do you want--an adorable pancreas? Samantha might have been a real looker in her youth but she doesn't stand out now. I'm not going to attack her based on her appearance and say she's ugly or fat or has shitty dress sense because she isn't ugly, or fat, even though I don't like her clothes very much. She's okay, at least as far as appearances go, and it seems like the 'good' things that have happened to her--men giving her drinks or freebies from afar--are based on nothing but the visual, whereas the negatives--people cutting her out of their lives and co-workers or bosses not liking her--come from the people who are in a position to know her a bit better than skin-deep.
They know your dirty secret, Mrs Brick, and now the world does too. You can't hide that kind of ugly with a powder-puff.