Beauty and the Daily Beast

Has anyone been following the vilification of this poor woman (Samantha Brick)? Her Daily Wail article was bad enough, but she followed it up with a defence on breakfast tv, when she would have been better off laughing it off as an April fool.

She seems to have misunderstood the interest in the topic, the tv didn't want to debate her premis (women don't like beautiful women), it, like the newspaper, just wanted to poke fun at a plain Jane with delusions of grandeur. It is all very cruel and I have always had a sneaking admiration for those that want to be princesses despite the obvious poverty of their assets. Good luck to them all!

When I was 18 and a very plain jane, country bumpkin, I spent 6 months living in Paris. It is a looks obsessed city, more than any I have ever visited, other than perhaps Milan. Far from avoiding the beautiful crowd, I was thrilled when I fell in with a group of models (which included Elle Macpherson, who was still not that big and 'old' by model standards). Two of the set were English and beautiful in a slightly other worldly way. They look human but everything was so elongated and perfectly proportioned that they could have been a different species.

One was very dark and the face of Armani, while the other was fair with turquoise eyes and had just been signed to feature in the Nina Ricci fragrance ads. To live life with them, was like being in a parallel universe, fantastic things happened daily. Chauffeur driven cars pulled up and took us to an impromptu party at the chateau belonging to Christina Onassis, We went out to dinner with Prince, jumped the queue at every club and got passes to come back for free at any time, we never paid for drinks or food and there was always someone on hand to drive if we wanted to go somewhere. It opened my eyes to an experiences I had never known. For my part I was mainly the translator, who made sure that everyone got home alive.

One day I got to their apartment (a penthouse which was a show flat for a development, the developer allowed them to stay there for free as which red blooded Parisienne man would not want to buy a flat in a building that housed supermodels?) To find the door open, they were tidying up, which was unusual as seemingly the more beautiful don't seem to concern themselves with earthly pursuits such as throwing away old take away boxes (yes they really did live on pizza and Macdonalds and still look like goddesses). They were chatting and I heard one say to the other 'is your pet coming tonight?' In that moment the realisation struck, I was a plump teenager with bad dress sense, this life would never be mine. I wasn't even disappointed, just pleased to see reality. I had had the most amazing summer experiencing how life changes when you are gifted like Aphrodite, and happy that I had been lucky enough to have had beautiful friends.