Thick as a brick? No, much thicker: how Samantha Brick mugged Daily Mail readers

All that fuss about Samantha Brick's April 3 article, "Why Women Hate Me For Being So Beautiful". Mail readers obviously didn't do any research at all before keying in their bilious online comments, for if they had they'd have come across one of hers from almost exactly a year ago: "I'll always be that fat girl: Samantha Brick has always obsessed about her weight... all because she was a chubby child".

The latest, controversial hit was published two days too late, for it's made fools out of millions.This is about beauty versus brains, and brains win hands down every time.

What clever Brummie (and there's another preconception exploded) Samantha has discovered is what Malcolm MacLaren said years ago: you can make much more exploiting yourself than exploiting others. I'd like to know who at the Mail gave her the space to do this one, but I guess it's enough of an obvious coat-trailer to justify publication on its own meretricious merits, without having to speculate on the possible use of her feminine wiles at the workplace, delicious journalistic follow-up though that might be.

Can men do the same? You may care to copy and paste her article, and swap the sexes to make a comic spoof. The exercise is comically revealing, because male attractiveness is measured differently in a woman's eyes.  They say a woman is what she is, and a man is what he does. He does confidence, action, aggression  - like Lord Flashheart in the Blackadder series:  



... and again here (from about 4:07 in):



Traditionally, the strategy for women is to have a sponsor, and to be set in a context of focused admiration, as Roger Vadim did for Brigitte Bardot in the cinematic launch vehicle "And God created woman":



But a young, slightly chubbier in those days Madonna broke the mould - it became "look at me", not "look at her", though again it's be piquant to know the who and how behind getting her the film deal:



Like Madonna, what's smart about Brick is her use of brash self-assertion - and if she hasn't really got the confidence, she's faked it very well for the purposes of her piece. She's played it the man's way.

Good luck to her.