Samantha Brick: "Why Women Hate Me for Being Beautiful"

A couple weeks ago, a writer for the UK tabloid website The Daily Mail ignited quite a bit of controversy and an outpouring of angry responses. Samantha Brick wrote an article entitled “There are downsides to looking this pretty: Why women hate me for being beautiful”. In this article she detailed instances of attention from men and hatred from women. She described her countless failed friendships with women as being the result of overwhelming jealousy. She provided an example of her boss telling her to not wear dresses as they elicit so much attention from men that they were unable to pay attention to their jobs. She listed several more similar examples. As the article’s title indicates, her main point was that women were jealous and intimidated because she was so gorgeous and perfect.

Samantha received an influx of comments and responses ranging from outrage: “OMG is this woman for real? Who does she think she is. Her ego is huge. Get over yourself love. You are not going to win Miss World anytime soon!” to support: “EVERYTHING you say—I can relate to. I am so please you’ve produced this article….I appreciate my looks. I am beautiful.” A large proportion of the responses were along the lines of “Is this an April’s Fools joke?!” “This has to be fake!”

Samantha wrote a subsequent article declaring that the negative reactions were proof that women really do hate beautiful women. She failed, however, to recognize that many of the responses were written by men.

I have to assume that many of the responses had absolutely nothing to do with her “beauty” and everything to do with her attitude. People are bothered by pompous catty attitudes no matter who they come from. They’re very off putting and elicit feelings of aversion. If she’s anything like this in real life, I would argue that it is her attitude, not her looks, that cause her to have no friends. I am not trying to claim that people’s reactions were acceptable, appropriate, or justified; however, I do understand them to a certain degree.

While her article and overwhelming arrogance was unmerited, embedded in that self-serving mess was a somewhat valid point: women do have the tendency to be competitive. Some women need to feel better than others. It’s sad, but in some cases, it’s very true. I know a girl who is extremely competitive with other women. She plays the “if you win, I lose. If I win, you lose” game. There’s no middle ground, no friendship, and no understanding. For her, it’s about taking other people down to lift up her exceptionally poor self-esteem. I see in her the same thing I see in Samantha Brick: insecure people who attempt to project their feelings of intimidation and competition onto other people in order to feel better about themselves. It’s sad. Women need to not degrade other women. Competition is useless.  

Samantha Brick:

Original article: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2124246/Samantha-Brick-downsides-looking-pretty-Why-women-hate-beautiful.html

Follow up article: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2124782/Samantha-Brick-says-backlash-bile-yesterdays-Daily-Mail-proves-shes-right.html