India Doyle: Constructive criticism

It’s been a long time since I wrote one of these, I was going to do one on holiday but I was too busy running around trying to verify the […]


It’s been a long time since I wrote one of these, I was going to do one on holiday but I was too busy running around trying to verify the locations that David Cameron claimed to have eaten pasties in. Oh, no, that wasn’t me. That was the BBC. ‘Pasty-gate’ as intellectually termed by the brilliant broadcasting channel was only one of a number of things that dominated the news during the holidays. The other thing that got people tweeting more rapidly than when Bieber announces he’s changing his hairstyle was an article written by Samantha Brick (insert some sort of shit surname pun here) on why people hate her ‘coz she’s pretty.

Yes I am late to comment on this, but am I too late? No.

True to form, Daily Mail readers managed to clock up over 5000 comments underneath the article on the website, the majority of which effectively said YOU’RE NOT FIT and FUCK OFF, or something less eloquent. Obviously, this woman wasn’t a model, but beyond that, she seemed to miss the somewhat obvious answer as to why women hated her. It isn’t because she’s pretty, it’s because she writes articles about how everyone hates her because she’s pretty. There’s a difference between being attractive and being a dick.

Let’s explore why people might hate her:

On a recent flight to New York, I was delighted when a stewardess came over and gave me a bottle of champagne. ‘This is from the captain — he wants to welcome you on board and hopes you have a great flight today,’ she explained.

1. The captain is in the cock pit which is at the front of the plane. You’re at the back of the plane, sucking on some haribo so your ears don’t pop. Unless you stood on the runway and held up a sign with an enlarged picture of your face before you checked in, he has no idea what you look like. And he’s doing more important things, like flying a plane. Also, a stewardess gave it to you, if she hated you she would have smashed you over the head with it. Moreover he ‘hopes you have a great flight today’ is not a personal message but what’s announced over the speaker phone. Get over yourself love.

A charming gentleman paid my fare as I stepped out of a cab in Paris.

2. There’s no such thing as a charming gentleman. And please, in Paris? Such a cliché.

While I’m no Elle Macpherson

3. You’re inadvertently drawing a comparison between yourself and the hottest person in the universe. Therefore when you conclude:

I’m not smug

4. We know you’re a LIAR.

You get the jist. I could conclude with some intellectual thoughts on how the responses show that we all like hating on people who dare to say something controversial more than finding anything positive or interesting in what she had to say. Or I could say that it’s sad that most women still find the need to use looks as their first point of reference for how they’re received in the world. I could even have raised the debate as to whether the Daily Mail should be classified as a newspaper when it publishes, well, everything but the news. But I’m no Einstein, so I’ll leave you with those thoughts and the promise of more cutting edge journalism next week.

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