Well, you have to say this for Samantha Brick, she's got nerve. The British journalist is getting the gears (and jeers) for a don't-hate-me-because-I'm-beautiful essay she penned for the Daily Mail.
In it, she details how an airline pilot sent back a courtesy glass of Champagne, presumably for her sheer cuteness. She describes how besotted men have paid her no end of attention, while her presumably jealous female neighbours have given her the cold shoulder, guarding their partners from her ravishing good looks. In fact, being good-looking, she writes, has caused all manner of trouble: female bosses have passed her over for promotion and "not one girlfriend" has ever her asked to be a bridesmaid. (Could there be another explanation for this?) In one of her more humble moments, she writes: "So now I'm 41 and probably one of very few women entering her fifth decade welcoming the decline of my looks. I can't wait for the wrinkles and the grey hair that will help me blend into the background."
The essay, needless to say, has gone viral (prompting even this hilarious quiz).
The main point most people seem to like making is that Ms. Brick may be perky and blond (and certainly not short on confidence). But she isn't really all that ravishing.
Of course, the tweets don't put it quite so politely. Some people have been downright nasty – hurling insults like verbal spitballs. Others have wondered if this isn't all a joke. One imagines that Ms. Brick has a thick skin to match her big ego.
The main point of her essay has a ring of truth to it – as research has shown, women can be the toughest critics of good-looking members of their own sex. (Otherwise, we wouldn't have all those celebrity cellulite spottings in magazines.) One Canadian experiment has demonstrated, for instance, that women will even snipe with strangers if a woman is dressed too provocatively in their presence – something that will come as no surprise to most women.
But the bigger question the essay raises is this: What does the reaction say about us? At best, Ms. Brick looks in the mirror and sees something fabulous – and good on her, though perhaps she was unwise to share that view so baldly with the world. At worst, she's just conceited. But do the rest of us need to be so ugly, as The Telegraph sagely observed.
Writing the Telegraph piece, Brendan O'Neill asks, "Which is sadder: a woman who thinks she is beautiful even though she is actually average-looking, possibly even plain, or the swarming together of thousands and thousands of people to ridicule and heap bile upon said silly woman? Yep, it's the latter."
As he points out, it's not Ms. Brick's essay that should make us take notice, it's all those people on Twitter pouncing with such ferocious delight to attack her.
It's not pretty, to say the least.
What do you think of the reaction to Ms. Brick's essay? And what does it say about us?
Erin Anderssen