Samantha Brick is a british journalist, she's mostly known for her article in the daily mail called "Why women hate me for being beautiful". It infuriated me so much that I decided to take out this anger in the form of a letter.
Dear Ms Samantha Brick,
I would like to begin by saying that your article, “There are downsides to being this pretty: Why women hate me for being beautiful” actually disgusts me. I cannot understand why you believe that you are so superior to other females in the looks department. You, my friend, need to take a long hard look in the mirror (metaphorically of course, I don’t want you to get distracted) and try and see what we all see, a half decent yet shallow human being who needs to seriously rethink her perspective on life. Have you ever considered that the reason “countless friends” have dropped you is due to your huge ego and not because they feel threatened by your looks?
The “jealous wives” and “insecure female bosses” you discuss so unkindly, are perhaps just repulsed by your obnoxious personality. Your childish anecdotes about friends who have ignored you, or as you so dramatically put it: ‘blatantly blanked’ you, do not make people sympathise with you at all, which seemed to be the purpose of your ‘article’. To be brutally honest, much of it made me laugh. If your supposed “friends” are making sarcastic and mean comments maybe you need to rethink who you choose to interact with and you wouldn’t have the constant worry of people talking about you behind your back. Your friends are just as bad as you. Also, I can’t help but notice you labelled the people who give you gifts “donors”; they are giving you chocolates and wine, not kidneys! Which, may I add; you said you “rarely succumb to”. Why accept such gifts if you don’t want them?
The article has drawn a lot of attention to you and yet you say that this is not what you want. You must have known that you wouldn’t get a supportive response from the public; or you’re just plain stupid? You say that you “work on your appearance” but I don’t understand why, if you don’t enjoy being ‘pretty’. Besides, isn’t beauty supposed to be about what’s on the inside rather than the outside?
One aspect of your article which I feel I really must comment upon is your attempt to gain sympathy by admitting you have never been asked to be a bridesmaid for a friend but on a woman’s wedding day she really shouldn’t care about whether her bridesmaid is going to distract her groom because she wouldn’t be marrying him if that was the case! It’s all about trust, and your friends probably trust their partners, it’s you they don’t trust. You are after all, a ‘flirt’ and seem to have a desire to be the centre of attention. You say you’re “no flirt” but yet you admit to flirting with bosses to get ahead in work! In addition, you also state that you do not drink but you were “a couple of glasses of wine into the night”. What an absolute joke. Contradictory statements like these do little to create the sense that you are a writer we can trust.
I would like to mention the free gifts your “beauty” has apparently generated. May I ask, when the “well-dressed chap” bought your train ticket, how did he know where you were going, you were behind him in the queue? Was he a mind-reader? I imagine that there are very simple explanations for many of your gifts. For example, in Paris, when your taxi was paid for by a stranger maybe he just wanted the cab and couldn’t be bothered to wait for you to fiddle around with your credit card! He probably would have sold his own mother if he was in a hurry. An additional “gift” was the champagne from the pilot when you boarded the plane; I really can’t imagine the pilot was looking at you before the plane set off. He’s a pilot of a long-haul flight; he’s going to have other things on his mind, like FLYING A PLANE!
People do get judged on their looks, more so than ever in the celebrity obsessed world and women get judged on their looks more than men, undoubtedly, but not to the extremes that you seem to think, don’t be so pessimistic. You don’t mention your personality at all in the article so I just have to assume that the shallow woman you portray is who you really are. Maybe people would have reacted more sympathetically to your article if you commented on personality and explored how people so often overlook that. Maybe if you had taken a different approach to the whole subject there would not be so much uproar and anger.
I would like to think that underneath all of the arrogance and narcissism you display in this, you could actually be a genuinely nice person. There is little to build such optimism on though as throughout the article you seem as though you are bragging about yourself or trying to depict yourself as some sort of health guru when you exercise “even when” you “don’t feel like it”. If you don’t want to be beautiful because it is so “exhausting” why do you take so much pride in your appearance and intentionally attempt and make yourself more beautiful? I just cannot seem to get my head around it. I am drowning in a sea of confusion.
In reality, your contrary statements and huge ego do not help air the subject that beautiful people find friendships hard. I would confidently state though that many women find nothing more annoying than a woman who arrogantly believes she is the most beautiful girl in the room.
My advice to you is to learn the skill of subtlety, there is nothing wrong with having high self-esteem and confidence but do not go shouting about your beauty from the rooftops to everyone (or in your case, writing an article) because such big headedness from one who really is no Elle McPherson you only win you derision. It is not the way to get the response that you want or a proper discussion about the effects of beauty in society and friendships. Furthermore, take responsibility for your own actions and mistakes.
Yours Sincerely,
Elise Charlotte Nichol.
