Samantha Brick weighs heavy on beauty debate

UNTIL last week, Samantha Brick was an unremarkable expat living in a Dordogne farmhouse. A TV producer-turned-writer, she suggested an idea to the Daily Mail. Her pitch went: “Why do the sisterhood hate attractive women?” By the time it reached the page this had become “Why do women hate me for being beautiful”, and was illustrated by photos of Brick in a lilac frock.

Within hours she was the subject of a global debate on beauty, bitchiness and feminism. More than 1.5 million people read the story online, earning the paper an estimated £100,000. Thousands commented, blogged and Tweeted. Celebrities and comedians – Derren Brown, Lauren Laverne, Dara O’Briain – pitched in their tuppence-worth of acid comment. Brick appeared on ITV’s This Morning, defiantly telling Eamonn Holmes that every man at a dinner party would fancy her.

Since Tuesday, Brick has been described as “misguided and ridiculous”; a “humble-bragger” whose looks are “freakishly average”; “a witless puppet for a male hegemony” and “a shameless publicity-seeker who is loving every second of this”. Many commentators have described her as an “internet troll”: someone who deliberately posts outrageous opinions to stir up a furious response.

If that was her intention, it has worked. But Brick is not a Holocaust denier. She did not support child pornography, defend Peter Tobin or torture a kitten. What so offended the nation was her bold assertion that: “there are downsides to being pretty – the main one being that other women hate me for no other reason than my lovely looks.”

Brick goes on to list the advantages her genetic goodies have brought: free champagne on a flight to New York, a gallant Frenchman paying her taxi fare, an impromptu bouquet presented in the street in the style of the Impulse advert. The disadvantages, however, get a good deal more space. Women take an instant dislike to her. Female friends keep her away from their husbands and relegate her to the Siberian edge of photographs. Jealous bosses block her chances of promotion. She has never been a bridesmaid.

The accompanying pictures show an unremarkable woman in a nice dress who had been brushed up before having her photograph taken.

Brick describes herself as “no Elle McPherson”. Other commentators have not been so generous. Using the pictures, wrote Lindy West on feminist blog Jezebel, “begs women to go all mean-girl on her (every woman I spoke to succumbed to the temptation immediately). It encourages both sexes to eviscerate, body-shame and judge Brick with impunity.”

While Brick describes this experience as “soul-destroying”, it’s hard to believe that she did not have some idea of what she was letting herself in for. Her background in reality TV – she was director of the lurid Ibiza Uncovered – suggests that she knows fine well how these things work. She has previously written about how she uses her sex appeal to get ahead at work and why she lets her husband choose her clothes. Hardly the actions of a media ingenue.

So why the commentsplosion? Women in the UK are not meant to think they are all that pretty. (Unlike the US, where Brick claims “you’re expected to look good and you’re rightly applauded for it. There just isn’t the same level of female jealously, snippiness and rivalry that there is the UK.”) It is not the done thing to look in the mirror and sigh contentedly, never mind sit down in front of the laptop and bash out a thousand words about what a hot piece of ass you are. Modesty, self-deprecation, the charming batting away of a compliment. This is the British way. Telling the world that you’re too bodacious to be a bridesmaid is not.

It is her smug superiority complex, combined with the poor-me attitude and delusional pictures, that got Brick trending on Twitter. For this, feminist blogger Kate Harris points out, women are judged more harshly than men: “On shows like The Apprentice, men can get away with an extraordinary level of arrogance. Sometimes they’re derided but often they’re just seen as “cheeky”. In this society, arrogance is unforgivable when it comes from a woman.”

One possible explanation for Brick’s certainty about her attractiveness was revealed yesterday when her husband – a luxuriously moustachioed Frenchman called Pascal Rubenat – was quoted as saying: “She is the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. She is beautiful physically and beautiful in the mind. I am lucky indeed to have her.” Affirmation like that from your nearest and dearest is bound to bolster your self-belief.

But where does self-esteem – generally agreed to be a good thing – end, and conceit begin? If Brick had written an article claiming that women hated her because she so was fantastically good at calculus, no one would have believed her. If she was Sammy-no-chums because she was too rich, too successful, too happy, too good a cook, too wonderful a mother, then she would have been given a fair hearing. It is the vexed question of beauty that causes so many women to crumple. Even supermodels own up to hideous insecurities and debilitating bad days. (As Cindy Crawford once said: “I don’t wake up looking like Cindy Crawford.”) How dare someone who is not going to land a Revlon contract any time soon dare to say that, actually, she thinks she’s got the full package?

Has Brick made – albeit in a gauche, self-pitying way – an important point? In a society where women are judged by their looks is every one a Wicked Queen in waiting, staring anxiously in the mirror, waiting for another chance to ruin some poor Snow White’s life?

Cathy Owen doesn’t think so. A former model herself, she now runs Model Team Scotland and spends her working life surrounded by sumptuous girls. Discussing Brick’s article in the office there was, she says, some guarded agreement with a few of her points. “We did think that women can be suspicious of each other. If someone is very beautiful, or a high achiever, other women can get jealous. Men tend to celebrate their friends’ achievements more.”

There are, she says, catty comments. Leaving a bar with one of her models recently, a female smoker outside shouted after them: “Go and get a Burger King, hen.” “This girl was upset,” Owen recalls. “She would not shout at this woman, go and get some lettuce.”

Yet she struggled to recall any more serious instances of her own good looks holding her back at work, or of her models complaining of a lack of friends, or a ban on talking to their husbands and boyfriends. Owen has never been pushed to the back of a group photo. She is about to be a bridesmaid for the first time.

“I do remember saying to my own bridesmaid, who is very beautiful, that I would put a bin bag over her head. That was a joke but some women do take that very seriously, not wanting to be upstaged on their wedding day.”

It is not, she says, easy for any woman to spend her working life among “6ft tall goddesses. Of course it’s very difficult when you’re getting older and worried about wrinkles and putting on weight.” But she laughs at the idea that her husband should be forbidden from talking to them.

Jealousy is a normal human response to a threatening interloper, especially one with desirable qualities such as long blonde hair or peachy skin. Infants first experience it at five months. It is also something that has dogged the feminist movement, a taboo subject that is painful to discuss. “Female jealousy isn’t just a myth dreamed up by a man having a pillow-fight fantasy,” says blogger Lou McCudden. “It is one of the biggest roadblocks to women challenging sexism from a united front. I’m a feminist, but you know what? Sometimes I feel threatened, very threatened, by other women, especially when I’ve been hurt or heartbroken.”

So is this all a diversionary tactic, to keep women arguing about who’s the hottest of them all while the evil patriarchy carries on with business as usual? Feminist comedian Liz Ely certainly feels that Brick has missed the point and that the so-called disadvantages of beauty pale in comparison to the structural downsides of being female. “Women face a wide variety of real issues as a result of their gender. In our society, being female is its own disadvantage: we suffer from cuts to public services that we rely on, not to mention the fact that women are losing their jobs in massive numbers. We are also at a disadvantage as a result of pressure to live up to false beauty standards. The notion of beauty disadvantages all women, whether or not you live up to it is neither here nor there.”

She does not recognise the behaviour Brick describes. “In my experience women are far more co-operative than the media have us believe. We are encouraged to hate each other and celebrate other women’s failings and physical imperfections. Brick’s article is part of that: we are supposed to hate Samantha for being so ‘up herself’. It’s incredible that, in the face of all the bile, we are generally quite a co-operative bunch.”

“How often,” asks McCudden, “are we taught to be jealous of women for their civil engineering skills or their hockey medals? We’re not. We’re only taught to envy things that prove beneficial to men. Perhaps female jealousy is just the outward expression of all the hatred we learn to turn inward on ourselves. When we pretend it doesn’t exist, it divides us. But if we talk about it, it can unite us.”

Perhaps Samantha Brick has done the sisterhood a favour after all. «

Limelight lovers

David Brent

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Zoolander

Dim male model played by Ben Stiller in 2001 film of the same name. “I'm pretty sure,” he says at one point, “there’s a lot more to life than being really, really, ridiculously good looking. And I plan on finding out what that is.”

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