During my teenage years, I started hearing of this thing called "women's liberation". Wow, I thought, why not? What was wrong with thinking that women were not just some sort of baby-making machines, whose sole purpose in life was to search for a husband and become all honourable home-makers? What was wrong with thinking, believing, I would say, that women were as, if not more, capable as men? This is how I started loathing stereotypes: girls do this, boys do that. Girls behave like this, guys behave like that. But there was one I deemed particularly dangerous: girls can do this, boys can do that, what meant "girls can't do this while boys can do it". Why?, I thought. I mean, I have two hands, two feet, two eyes and brains as functional as any guy's. Why should I be limited by standards that felt alien to me? Why should I respond to stereotypes that did not ring any kind of bells within me?
Sadly, as years went by, I realized that that thing of "women's liberation" was nothing but a big, fat lie. I mean, while I was in my teens, I didn't notice anything of the so-called girls' group, the Queen Bee and all that stuff that films of the like of "Mean Girls" feed upon. Perhaps it was because at my high-school there were no clear social or economical divisions, and, if there were, they went unnoticed. I don't remember any of my female friends making remarks about the other girls' attire, if the wore designer clothes or not or anything of the such, and things like "anorexia" were completely out of our vocabulary. My naivete regarding "women's liberation", so, perhaps comes from this sort of environment, where there were no catfights over wearing the same outfit and definitely there was no such a thing like fierce competitiveness in order to see who the most popular among us was. It came, of course, as a big surprise to find out that, notwithstanding what I felt or thought on the subject, it simply did not have a place in the, let's say, "real world".
The older I got, the clearer it appeared to me what a big delusion to speak of "women's liberation" was. Take, for example, the so-called women's magazines. Their discourse has not changed a bit over the years. One could think that women's worries are exactly the same they have always been: to look pretty, to be fashionable and to stay fit in order to catch a husband. This is very sad, in my opinion: it has led to the perpetuation of myths about womanhood and it has contributed to keep building a completely artificial concept of what womanhood is. But here I have a question to make: do the magazines and the media in general actually shape us as society, or is it that they are mere reflections of what we have always been as a society, understanding the term "society" as a cultural entity that shares certain values and prejudices?
Take, for example, the sad case of Samantha Brick. This woman, who boasts a successful career on TV and now has nothing better to boast of than a French husband-a dominant, overweight and balding lumberjack ten years her senior-, has written a piece where she complains of the woes she has gone through for being oh-so-beautiful. Champagne bottles sent to her table, flowers offered to her at markets, free drinks, paid-for cab rides and train tickets...all of these unwanted courtesies are nothing compared to the true hell that has meant for her being hated by jealous women. Because, let's get the point clear right from the start: in Brick's world, all women are haters and all men are potential suitors.
It comes across as a funny thing that it is precisely her who points this out. Looking in her past archives in the Daily Mail, where she publishes her writings, I am almost convinced that this woman is short of being a schizophrenic. On the one hand, she thinks all men are potential suitors, and that's ok, because that's the way it should be, especially when you are as beautiful as she is. On the other hand, she does not hesitate to call those same suitors whom she deems ok because that's the way it should be, sexist pigs. She accuses women of being mean to her, but then, she impudently states that she would rather spend her lunch time flirting with the bosses than wasting her oh-so-precious time having lunch with the girls. This is particularly interesting, for let us not forget that she stated that men in the entertainment industry are sexist pigs. But, as contradictory as it may be, the general feeling I got from her writings is that this woman is a firm believer in the corporate, social and political prowess of men. In her controversial writing, she says, more or less, that for a woman to pass through certain tresholds, the doors should be open by a gentlemanly hand. Women are just slammers who, when a threat coming from another woman is perceived, will shut the door against her face. And then, in her first contribution to the Daily Mail, when narrating her corporate woes-...hold a second...is it just me, or does this woman seem to be constantly complaining about this or that?-when being the head of her own company, she says that it basically went bankrupt because an all-girl environment, the ideal one she wanted to create in order to avoid the "sexist pigs" that had made her career so miserable, was nothing short of pure hell, merely because women are always so mean to each other that it is impossible for a company to thrive in such conditions. What she fails to mention there is that as a boss she was just as uncapable as all of her employees, though she makes several points attacking her manager for her lack of assertiveness and spirit to solve conflicts; of course, she says that the lack of professionalism and overall interest in their jobs in the women under her charge is appalling, so much so that they will only behave when having men around, but how on Earth can she condemn such a behaviour when, having the chance to rule her own company, to enforce her behaviour codes and to create the environment she wanted to, she just went back to what she knew best: that only men are capable of taking decisions, of being the head?. I would like to say that if her company went belly-up was due to her own incompetence, not to mention her own acknowledged addiction to clairvoyants and fortune tellers of various kinds, which speaks of a woman uncapable and unable to think for herself and make her own decisions. Pre-menstrual syndrome as a cause for the bankruptcy of a company? Nah, there is no way on this Earth I am going to buy that. In fact, I don't quite believe in the so-called power of hormones to transform a well balanced female into a harpy of sorts a few days of the month. I would rather believe this woman embarked in a venture for which she was not fully prepared, really did not know what she was getting into and had, in her very own words, a very poor business plan. To hell with hormones, then.
The Brick woman goes on in her rants to say that she used to be a greatly successful TV executive who now, after her company went bankrupt, lives quietly and makes a modest living out of being a free-lance writer who sheds light on the sordid corporate world. Then again, what she fails to note is that, at least to me, all her arguments come across as little more than poor justifications. If she lived as happily as she states she does, why, oh why, she always seems to be justifying why and how her company went bankrupt, forcing her to the lifestyle she says she cherishes so much? In the piece that caused the most controversy and that made her an instant celebrity, it is as if she stated that yes, she was successful but not because she was so intelligent: it was merely because she is beautiful. It is funny, because one could think that people will always be envious of a successful person, but in this case, no one talks about her success, real or fictitious. No, what everyone points out is that this lady is clearly delusional because, for starters, to some she is not even pretty. Letting that aside, I would like to say that this poor lady is obviously very affected by the fact that she now has to live a quiet and secluded life in rural France when she obviously is convinced that she was made for the brightest of success, socially and financially. All her writings are lame justifications as to why she is not leading the life she supposedly should be living, given that she is so beautiful. She is always blaming this and that to justify her own mistakes; she does not own the poor decisions she has made all through her life, and obviously the culprits are always women. The clairvoyant who told her to wrap up her operation in LA to go back to the UK; the women she hired when she formed her own company, and now, all the women around her, have plotted and planned against her, to sink her into her current misery, which she tries to mask saying she is oh-so-happy, and have succeeded. It is as if this Brick woman thought that there is a big conspiracy against her and only her, led by the meanest of women who cannot stand her, the most beautiful of women. Obviously, she doesn't think that her failures come from poor decision making or poor judgement, or, why not saying it? From utter lack of capacity and intelligence. What she fails to see is that utter lack of intelligence and capacity may come in any size or form: there are idiot men and women all over the world. The bad thing is that Brick makes the rest of women regret precisely being women. I, for one, would not like to belong in the same club as her.
Are we really to take seriously a woman like this, like the one her own writings portray? If the answer is "yes", I'd say we are in for a big mistake. It's beyond me the purpose of this woman in writing such "inflammatory" pieces, but there is one thing quite clear to me: if anyone wants to debunk the myth of women's liberation, go to Samantha Brick's writings. There are all the answers you can hope for as to why women's liberation has always been nothing but a myth and a lie. There you are going to find the perpetuation of the classic female stereotypes whose only worry is to find, catch and retain a husband, destroying all the competence in the process. The professional world? Nah, women are not made for that in Brick's world. In her world, and in her words, women are mean, vile, base and horribly competitive creatures that will not hesitate in trying to bring down the alpha-female in order to feel and be validated by men, who, by turns, are the suitors, the gallants or the enemy. As for me, I would rather stick to the lie of women's liberation than believe Samantha Brick's sick, distorted and profoundly nauseating vision of the female world, of which, of course, she and just she is the exception confirming the rule. Thanks, but no, thanks. If I am to live deluded, I would rather do so in my own delusion than hers.
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