We should teach our young girls to be more like Serena Williams and smash the size morons
There is no point trying to conform to somebody else's idea of perfection as you'll always end up dissatisfied
I’M a big believer in being precise when it comes to finding the right person for a job.
But one recruitment firm really took that concept and ran with it last week. Matching Models, which hires PAs, hospitality staff and receptionists, were so specific they cited hair colour and the “correct” bra size. Seriously.
One of its job ads, as well as requiring the candidates to be attractive women, requested “brown long hair” and a “B-C cup”.
Can you imagine job ads for men being so prescriptive about appearance? Let’s just say it’s unlikely.
This is just one story highlighting the “push-me-pull-you” culture that we women live in.
Take Scarlett Moffatt, from TV’s Gogglebox. First she was too fat, remember?
One columnist thought it entirely OK to tweet about Scarlett a while back: “Little Miss Moffatt sat on her tuffet, eating her curds and way more than she should.”
Lots of other people routinely mentioned her size. A few months later Scarlett, who by the way has looked gorgeous all along, has lost a couple of stone, no doubt partly in response to the criticism.
Far from celebrating this, though, “concerned fans” on social media are now worrying that Scarlett is wasting away.
It’s funny, isn’t it, how we don’t like it when women are “too fat” but nor do we like it when they lose “too much” weight? Then there’s Bobbi Jo Goldsmith, who booked a table at club Libertine London, in Soho, a week ago to celebrate her 20th birthday with friends.
But the group were approached in the queue by a promoter and size-ten Bobbi claims he asked them to leave because they were “too big”.
It’s no surprise some women think the answer to perfection is surgical.
Take 24-year-old Chloe Munnings, from Norfolk, who was bullied when growing up for being overweight. She lost 4st 7lb but still felt insecure.
So Chloe, has spent £27,000 on plastic surgery including breast enhancement, rhinoplasty, lip and cheek fillers, Botox and veneers.
She will not stop, she says, until she’s “perfect”.
I wish her all the best but it’s hard not to feel the odds of her insecurities going away are slim because she is scratching the wrong itch. It’s not what people say about you, it’s how you react.
Talking about the public’s opinion of her, the champion tennis player was quick to point out the inconsistencies.
Serena said: “It was, ‘She’s too strong,’ ‘She’s too sexy,’ then, ‘She’s too strong,’ again. So I’m like, ‘Well, can you choose one?’”
The key thing, though, is what she said next.
“Either way, I don’t care which one they choose. I’m me and I’ve never changed who I am.”
The point is, you never can be “perfect”.
Trying to conform to someone else’s idea of perfection is a short course to dissatisfaction, self-criticism and insecurity. The best thing you can do is say: “I don’t care.”
I still face more than my fair share of criticism. My response is to give it short shrift, though.
When people make mean comments, safely on the other side of Twitter, you can be pretty sure they feel so bad about themselves that their only weapon is to try to make other people feel worse.
The only response is to ignore them. I suppose what I am saying is, we all need to be “a bit more Serena”.
She's still human at the end of the day
THE world seems to be up in arms about Kim Kardashian having the audacity to “flaunt” her wealth and her jewels, almost as though it’s actually her fault that she was burgled.
Or, worse, that it “serves her right” for having so much.
All I can think is, what a terrifying ordeal. Regardless of the material worth of what you own, and what is taken, burglary is one of the most intrusive things that can happen. A total violation.
Kim has worked hard for her jewellery, whether you agree with her career choices or not.
Saying that this serves her right is schadenfreude at its worst.
IS COMMON SENSE DEAD?
HAD to re-read the story about the paedophile spared jail so he could go and start a FAMILY.
But it’s true. Richard Arrowsmith, 41, was caught with more than 137,000 child sexual abuse images on his laptop and phone and faced up to five years in prison.
But he was let off with a suspended sentence after telling a judge he wanted to become a father, which beggars belief.
It’s one thing asking what the judge was thinking.
But who is the woman he is planning on starting a family with – and what on earth is SHE thinking?
Love life just like Norma
I LOVED the story about, Norma Bauerschmidt, the 91-year-old woman who refused chemotherapy for her terminal cancer and instead spent a year doing the road trip she’d always dreamed of.
But you know what it made me think? Let’s not wait to have terminal cancer to live our dreams.
I speak as someone who has had a life-threatening illness – a brain aneurysm – which certainly put things into perspective.
I know a lot of people make radical changes to their life when faced with their own mortality. They get divorced, quit their job and reorganise their lives, blessed with a certain clarity about how they want to live it.
Sure, my illness definitely added some perspective.
There is no doubt that it shone a spotlight on one thing in particular – that life is short.
Funnily enough, though, instead of making radical changes, what I realised is just how much I love my life and want to carry on living it as I am for as long as I can.
A couple of things did change, though. I stopped lying awake worrying about whether the grass would grow on the pitch. In other words, I really did stop sweating the small stuff.
I also started seizing the moment and making the most of things.
So, after 15 years of putting it off, three months after my operation I booked a ticket to Hong Kong to visit my best friend there.
I suddenly realised that if you wait for the right time, the right time never comes, so it was a life lesson in the importance of seizing the day. Life is what you make it.
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It really is true that while all of us die, not all of us live.
Don’t wait to have a life-threatening illness to start acting on that.
If you aren’t happy, start doing something you love.
Sadly, Norma died just over a week ago – in the motor home in which she had spent 12 months’ travelling with her family. But her story proves it’s never too late.
A true superstar
LOOKING at the pictures of Adele at the zoo with her son this week, free of make-up and in jeans , she looks like any “normal” mum instead of the superstar she is.
She’s found the perfect “famous working mum” balance. She does a sell-out concert in the evening and takes her son out in the day. No hours getting ready with a make-up artist. She throws on her jeans and off she goes.
She looks exactly what I suspect she is – happy and confident, with her priorities right.
Kim Kardashian, please take note.
She'd be common wealthy
AS a rule, I’m all for women taking a stand when it comes to equal pay.
And normally, if a woman turned down a job on principle because she was offered a lower salary than the man who did the job before her, I’d be behind her all the way.
But who knew there was a job called Secretary-General of the Commonwealth that pays £160,000 a year and comes with a free mansion and a full-time chauffeur?
Most of us would probably jump at that opportunity.
But Baroness Scotland initially turned it down as her male predecessor’s salary was bigger.
Normally, I would say “Good on her”, as I have a lot of sympathy with her point of view. But what I don’t have sympathy with is the job – or non-job, rather – which seems like a colossal waste of taxpayers’ money in the first place.
Real men do blub
TOUGH guy Steve Backshall was ashamed he couldn’t hold back the tears when his wife Helen Glover won Olympic rowing gold in Rio.
In fact, he vowed on Good Morning Britain to never embarrass her again by what he called “blubbering”.
For what it’s worth, Steve, I think you should let yourself off the hook. The tears came from joy and pride. What could be more romantic?
Revel in the fact that real men do cry . . . and they wear those tears with pride.