This is going to sound really schmaltzy and make loads of people hate me. It's OK. I don't mind. I hate myself a bit for it too, mainly because it's so cheesy that I can almost smell the Primula radiating from my pores as I type it, but here we go: I think all women are beautiful.
Vaginas scare me, so it's not that I want to sleep with them. I just think they're amazing. I'm proud that I am one. I see a picture of Adriana Lima and I'm like WOW! WE COEXIST! WE'RE THE SAME SPECIES! And it makes me really happy.
Obviously, we're not all a bunch of Adriana Limas. Although that might be the one exception to Groove Armada's rule. If we all looked like her, I don't think we'd get tired of looking at each other. Far from it. I'd probably get a rear view mirror attached to my forehead so I could look at myself all day. But anyway. I do think all women are beautiful in their own way. Where has this come from? Well, I'll tell you. It involves another spectacular confession. If you didn't already hate me, JUST WAIT FOR THIS ONE.
I read DailyMail.co.uk every day.
I'm SORRY.
It's true.
I love it. I love it that someone else thinks it's as important as I do that we all know when Kim Kardashian has poured her curves into a new Hervé Léger bandage dress. I love it that someone else cares that Demi Moore has poured her not-curves into $8,000 a week rehab. I love it that when Paris Hilton wears suspender print tights, someone else in the world thinks its massive, groundbreaking news.
Luckily, I live with another DMopath. We dedicate our mornings (and sometimes noons and nights) to reading about Lindsay Lohan's botched botox and Kelly Brook's itsy bitsy new bikini. So just imagine my excitement when, this morning, just as I finished work, I got the following text from my housemate:
'ELLIE. YOU NEED TO READ 'Why Women Hate Me For Being Beautiful' on DM. I AM FLABBERGASTED.'
I nearly ran home. From Highgate. Five miles. Sweaty doesn't begin to cover it.
When I got there, it was the first thing I did. It turned out to be the best thing I did. Ever. In my life.
On the screen was this woman. This normal looking lady, wearing a bit too much makeup, looking a bit like she'd popped six valium before the photoshoot, lounging on a sofa with dead eyes and a dazed smile. She was fine. I don't mean fine as in, DAMN, you're FINE, I mean fine as in the adjective you use when you ask for Louboutins for your birthday and your boyfriend buys you a tube of KY Jelly. 'I only heard lube,' he says plaintively. 'It's fine,' you say, through gritted teeth. She was that kind of fine.
I know I said I think all women are beautiful, and I honestly do. Until they prove me otherwise. You see, my parents tried not to trade on looks, fully aware that if ever their children were blessed with good ones, they could be sure to lose them one day. So rather than telling me I was pretty, my parents focussed on making me use my brain. And above all else, they always, always taught me to be kind. They actually used that age old cliché, and I actually believed them, and still do: Beauty comes from within.
Just as well, really, because in my life, my looks have got me precisely nowhere, and nor did I expect them to. Like Samantha Brick, I'm probably an average 5 out of 10. I didn't get a good degree result because I batted my eyelashes or stroked my tutor's knee. Not how I roll. Nor do I allow men I don't know to buy me drinks. I don't trade vodka for sex with strangers. And hasn't this crazy woman ever heard of Rohypnol?
I also believe that I have the most beautiful friends in the world, and even though they are plenty pretty, that's not the reason they're my friends. It's because they look out for me, and they're kind to me, and over a period of years and years, they have shown me I can trust them. They are beautiful on the inside, and that is why I love them, and always will.
And here we have Samantha Brick, putting the thorns on the English rose for the world to see. 'Most poignantly of all, not one girlfriend has ever asked me to be her bridesmaid,' she moans. Poignant? Because you're so beautiful, right? I think not. Seldom have I read more self indulgent crap on the Internet, and I have read Kim Kardashian's Twitter feed. On the most important day of her life, when your 'girlfriend' wants the world to revolve around her, the last thing she wants is you checking yourself out in the stained glass windows and 'accidentally' lifting up her train, revealing her wedding lingerie to her in-laws.
The final nail that Brick happily hammered into her own coffin was the idea that '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.'
Where do I start? I can't even begin to describe the frustration that I feel about her having this idea that women hate her because she's beautiful. If women dislike her, it is because it's hard to like people without an understanding of the concept of humility. They dislike her because she gives our entire sex a bad name. She makes us look vain, airheaded and vile. Perhaps they dislike her because they're unaware of the difficult affliction that is bodily dysmorphia, which must be the only way that a woman, who was described today by a 'baffled' man from Sunderland as 'a 5 pinter, maybe 4 if I was desperate,' could acknowledge that she is 'welcoming the decline' of her looks.
Whatever the reason, it certainly isn't just women that are offended by her comments. Men, too, have taken to Twitter to disgrace Brick for her vanity, and she has become an international laughingstock in a matter of hours. Some people have taken it even further than just a little tweet, like, for example, the guy who wrote this fantastic Vice article.
I wonder whether she'll ever live this down. In our internet media fuelled world, today's news could easily be forgotten tomorrow, if Angelina gets her one weird leg out again, or Katie Holmes announces a shock pregnancy and Suri kills her six nannies in a crazed rage. Give it a week, and we might not even remember who this Brick woman is. But I'd love to see how she's treated in her tiny French hometown when the locals, those who apparently shun her for her stunning beauty and great physique, get wind of this. Samantha, you're OK looking, but next time babes, ferme ta grande bouche.