The Fairest Of Them All

I see Samantha Brick, who created an internet sensation back in April when she wrote an article for MailOnline in which she claimed that all other women hate her for being beautiful, or some such rubbish, is back to troll us all a second time.

This time she’s interviewed five other women, who contacted her in response to her original article, and who also feel victimised by their fellow women folk, who, they believe, feel threatened at having to ‘compete’ with them. The thrust of the article is that all women will hate on any other woman who has the audacity to be good-looking, friendly, and confident to boot.

I’m not going to comment on any of the women in the article except to say that none of the examples they give seems to come close to  confirming their assertions. For example, one woman states that she had a close bunch of friends, all of whom were couples, who all used to socialise together on a regular basis. The woman then explains that when her relationship broke down she stopped seeing all those friends. She asserts that  this is because the women were jealous of her new-found confidence, and worried that she would try to steal their own partners.

Now, this might be the case. I don’t know her, or them, so I’ve really no idea. But on the basis of the information she provided it seems the explanation could just as easily be that the friends sided with the woman’s partner over the split, that the social group was composed of couples and she was no longer a fit, or that they were her ex partner’s friends to begin with and they never actually liked her.

I’m also not going to dwell on the numerous studies which have consistently shown that beautiful people are more likely to excel at work, be acquitted if they stand trial, and generally report that they find the world to be a warm and welcoming place, because we see beauty as a virtue and treat those who have it more favourably as a result. All of which directly contradicts the assertions that Brick makes in her article.

What I do want to talk about is a good friend of mine who we’ll call Nicole. Mainly because I don’t actually know anyone called Nicole.

Now, Nicole is a very beautiful woman. I mean Hollywood starlet beautiful. The kind of woman who, even if she’s not your type, you would never deny was incredibly pretty.

She’s also very confident. She knows she’s good at what she does, she’s secure in the love of her husband and family, and she’s always happy to meet new people.

She is also universally loved.

Contrary to everything that Ms Brick and her cronies would have you believe she should expect, I don’t believe that one single person Nicole has encountered in the whole of her life has found it in themselves to dislike her.

And it’s because she’s adorable. She’s a very warm person, and at ease with herself in the way that people who got more than enough hugs in their childhood are. She has the openness and generosity of someone who has always found reciprocity from others.

She’s also sweet-natured, caring, adventurous, and funny. Overall, she’s just incredibly easy to like and get on with, and so many find that she ends up being one of their favourite people.

I’ve known a few Nicoles over the years. And I think they give the lie to the assertions of people like Samantha Brick who try to paint all women as competitive and insecure. If that were the case then the Nicoles of the world wouldn’t stand a chance but instead they get along swimmingly with everybody.

They’re incredibly lucky. Few people find that they are exactly everybody else’s cup of tea. The rest of us have to aim for being liked by a healthy majority of the people we meet, and rubbing along tolerably well with the rest.

Because there are some people who, no matter how hard you try, you just won’t gel with. Not because those people feel threatened by you, or are jealous of anything at all about you, but because the old adage that you can’t please all of the people all of the time is pretty accurate.

Although, as I’ve said before, if you go around expecting that people will be hostile towards you, as the women in Brick’s article seem to, you’re probably increasing the odds that they will be.

If you treat all other women as though you assume that they’re jealously competing with you a lot of them are bound to think you’re a bit of a dick, because, well, you are.

I’m very sold on the idea of karma. Not in the sense that if you do good deeds someone will eventually do something good for you, but in the idea that you will, for the most part, get the same vibes returned to you as the ones you put out.

So if, like Nicole, all your vibes are sweet and serene, people will tend to respond to you in kind. Whereas, if you give out prickly awkwardness, that’s how people are likely to feel and behave around you.

It really is just as simple as we were taught as children.