Britain's favourite whipping girl has once again leaped with suicidal abandon into the lion's den of the Mail Online. Samantha 'I'm So Beautiful' Brick's latest article on her unending attempts to police her appearance included a rather worrying account of a phase she went through in her youth that involved only eating Polo mints. Her 'partners are not only boyfriends but weight-loss coaches,' but I can only hope that no one else was party to this particularly alarming episode in her quest for beauty.
This leads nicely on to my first reason why I am better than Samantha Brick: I can eat a pizza. In fact, next time I do it, I may deep fry Polos for dessert, just to stick two fingers up to the anxiety-riddled image of womanhood that is promoted in such articles. Of course we should all heed the desperate warnings of the posters in the doctor's waiting room and attempt to eat healthily, but recounting such episodes of disordered eating in a piece that, on the whole, lauds dieting is reckless.
As for her other halves monitoring her weight, I would personally find that infantilising. A grown woman, able to regulate her own diet? By herself? What is this black magic?! If my boyfriend tried to take my aforementioned pizza away from me, I would promptly throw it at him in the manner of a clown with a custard pie at the circus. Then I'd probably lick it off his face, ensuring I would not waste perfectly good pizza. Kinky, I know.
It is hard to be a woman in the Western world and not feel ashamed of your appearance. In the press, starlets in bikinis are picked apart more comprehensively than if an autopsy was being performed on them. Scrutiny naturally turns toward your own, inevitably inferior, body. So, although I tip my hat to Samantha for her boundless appreciation of her own beauty, comments like 'I maintain a food diary. I never shop when I'm hungry, I always read the packaging, and I weigh myself every other day', reveal a sadly indoctrinated point of view. One of the greatest (and most fun) rebellions against the media has to be the ravenous post-gym Tesco run: "Emaciated underwear model on the front of that magazine, your sunken eyes can stare hungrily at my meaty thighs for as long as you like. To add insult to injury, I'm off to buy a pack of reduced doughnuts," goes my internal monologue.
I would be happy to share my doughnuts with Samantha. After all, she seemed such a fan of Polos, and they really don't look that different, when you think about it...