Monday, 9 April 2012

Forget oh what a night in late December back in ’63, and think oh what a week in early April 2012!


Granted this week’s blog title might not be the zippiest that I’ve ever come up with, and it’s certainly not going to win any awards, but quite frankly I’m feeling in a little bit of a daze! This week has to have been one of the most bizarre weeks that I’ve experienced in a very long time, and I’m not even talking personal experiences here. There was the storm on twitter on beauty – I’ll get to that in a second, and then there the man in the Thames ruining the Boat race!!

Okay, so firstly this week’s bizarreness began with Samantha Brick! Now I have to preface my next run of thoughts on this, by saying that that I’m not entirely sure if I’ve missed the intention behind this headline story. Was her initial article a spoof, and if so did the editors at the Daily Mail forget to run it on 1st April?? Also, did they forget that spoofs are supposed to be in some way amusing?? Brick’s article was more bemusing than amusing!

Also, the thing I’ve struggled with since the story was published and the uproar began, was the fact that I’m not sure if I care. Yet I can’t decide if this just makes me simply apathetic, or I’m just very cynical! You just know that she’s coining in it in and she’ll have got a book deal out of this, which is a travesty in both senses. Not that she’ll care because she’ll be minted, and as they say all publicity is good publicity. Added to the fact that all her publicity right now is also coming to her free!!  

However, now that I’ve forced myself to come down from my cynical / apathetic post, I would just like to point out though that I had a few issues with the whole Brick article and Brick rebuttal. None of my issues though are to do with whether she’s beautiful (which I just don’t care about as it’s totally subjective), or whether women hate her for this (which I can only think is a sweeping generalisation as I doubt she’s done polls on this).

One of my issues was that I didn’t like the fact that as a woman, I was given a collective voice. I’m not against this at times when it comes to women’s issues for example, but in an article that lacks any credence or gravitas I mostly found it irritating. I can’t agree with my mates on what take away to order, or which film to watch at the cinema. The notion therefore that we’d see one woman and have the exact same opinion defies belief. Although I think it’s likely that we might’ve all inferred that she seems to come across as conceited and Narcissus – esque! (Yes that’s not a word – but Narcissus was the beautiful boy who drowned in his own reflection!) Yet I feel I may have reached this conclusion without ever seeing her photo, and just reading her article.

Yet my major problem with the articles was the simple fact that they were very poorly written. Aside from the fact that she can spell –although we shouldn’t rule out some editor involvement here, I had issues with both the perspective that she took and the credibility of the article. On This Morning she claimed that the piece that she’d started out writing / had intended to write was on the sisterhood and how we don’t band together, and then she also threw in how women don’t like her around their husbands and boyfriends.

Now – this is where I find it gets quite interesting! As I think that a writer with an ounce of skill could put together a great article on this. I think most women will accept that we do on occasion moan and b*tch about other women, but do we really impinge each other’s careers and does that mean we hate beautiful women? Well I’m sure that people who’ve done research and studies on this are well placed to tell us, yet I don’t get the feeling that Samantha Bick is one of these people. Also an ode to oneself generally isn’t going to be that reflective of a societal issue I find!

Anyway, onto bizarre story number 2! I love the boat race and watch it year in year out. This year though, like for the thousands and thousands of other spectators, boat race day was ruined. The race started and then had to be stopped due to a man being in the river! Then when it did start again there seemed to be a little bit of confusion, and then it all went horribly wrong; broken oar, easy Cambridge victory, and one of the Oxford oarsmen collapsing.

It is such a shame that the race ended this way especially as it looked set to be a nail biter, and my sympathies go out to both teams who would’ve worked for months upon months to prepare for one day and one race that was ruined by one foolish man!

It is reported that the man in the river was protesting against elitism, but quite frankly there has to have been a better way for him to have got his point across. He could have got hurt, he could have injured others, and he’s ruined what is a traditionally exciting day of sport on the British calendar. Quite frankly – shame on him!

Yet between him and Brick, what a random week it has been! Although the only highlight of the week has to be that we’ve all now got a catchy song for when we’ve lost our keys, or lost our phone!

No comments:

Post a Comment