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Grooming Oneself With All The Crazed Compulsion Of An Under-exercised Lab Rat In Order To Hook A Rich Man And Obtain A Lush Lifestyle Makes A Certain (albeit Seedy) Sense.

-Julie Burchill

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Grooming Oneself With All

Julie Burchill

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Grooming Oneself With All The Crazed Compulsion Of An Under-exercised Lab Rat In Order To Hook A Rich Man And Obtain A Lush Lifestyle Makes A Certain (albeit Seedy) Sense.

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When Did Women Whose Looks Are Not Their Living Start Conducting Themselves Like The Simpering Inmates Of An Ottoman Empire Seraglio?

The Pictures From The First Professional Photo Session That The Young David Beckham Submitted Himself To Are Extraordinary. He Has A Barely Suppressed Smile, As Though He And The Cameraman Are Complicit In The Understanding That This Is Not Yet David Beckham We See And That There Is An Element Of Deceit In Selling The Photographs As Such

A Good Part - And Definitely The Most Fun Part - Of Being A Feminist Is About Frightening Men.

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Having 'best Friends' Is - At Least For Me - As Outdated And Small-minded A Concept As The Idea Of 'sunday Best Clothes.'

When I Moved To Brighton From London In 1995, I Was Struck By What I Thought Of As Its Townliness. A Town, It Seemed To Me, Was That Perfect Place To Live, Neither City Nor Country, Both Of Which Like To Think They Are Light Years Apart But Actually Have A Great Deal In Common.

The Truth Of The Matter Is, Beauty Is A Specific Thing, Rare And Fleeting. Some Of Us Have It In Our Teens, 20s And 30s And Then Lose It; Most Of Us Have It Not At All. And That's Perfectly Okay. But Lying To Yourself That You Have It When You Don't Seems To Me Simple-minded At Best And Psychotic At Worst.

To Believe That One, Or Even Three, Mates Can Supply All The Things One Needs From One's Friends Is As Stupid As Believing Married Couples Must Do Everything Together.

What Sort Of Sap Doesn't Know By Now That Picture-perfect Beauty Is All Done With Smoke And Mirrors Anyway?

Is The Raggle-taggle Brangelina Tribe Any More Bogus Than That Of The Landlocked Yummy Mummy Who Believes That She Can Drop Half A Dozen Brats And Still Keep A Modest Carbon Footprint? I Don't Think So.

What I Find Most Upsetting About This New All-consuming Beauty Culture Is That The Obsession With Good Looks, And How You Can Supposedly Attain Them, Is Almost Entirely Female-driven.

These Women Whose Antics We Smirk At Good-naturedly In The Pap-traps Put Themselves Out There At Least Partly On Their Beauty; They Are In Showbiz, And Showing What They've Got Is Part Of Their Business As Much As It Is For Male Show-ponies From The Chippendales To George Clooney.

But Just Think What A Boring, Bread-and-milk World This Would Be Without The Boastful.

I Feel Even Less Patience With Transsexuals.

Punk Was Over In Two Years. That Was The Only Damn Good Thing About It.

Sadly, A Lot Of What Passes For Feminism These Days Is Just Moaning About Men, Congratulating Ourselves On Nothing In Particular, And Mocking Them For Being Big Kids While Doing Everything We Can To Keep Them That Way.

Whenever I Am Sent A New Book On The Lively Arts, The First Thing I Do Is Look For Myself In The Index.

May I Just Single Out For Salutations, On The "anti-war" Side: Pop Stars For Appeasement, Dancers Against Democracy, Actors For Apathy, Fashionistas For Fascism And Jugglers For Genocide. All Of Them United Under That Flaccid Flag Of Convenience, Show-offs For Saddam.

The Latest Twist On The Pampering Concept Is Spa Parties, Where A Group Of Friends Take Over An Entire Spa.

Make No Mistake, Most Women Are Well Aware That They've Never Had It So Good; When They Enter A Spa Or Salon, It Is Purely A Hair/nails Thing, A Prelude To An Evening Of Guilt-free Fun.

I Wouldn't Know How To Fool A Man Any More. My Deceiving Days Seem So Long Ago.

Covering Up, So Far As I Can See, Is Often The Accompaniment To Far More Truly Shameful Behaviour Than Stripping Off.

As With Most Liberal Sexual Ideas, What Makes The World A Better Place For Men Invariably Makes It A Duller And More Dangerous Place For Women.

Hooliganism Incarnate, A Walking, Talking, Screaming, Squawking Metaphor For What's Wrong With Young People Today.

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I've Never Been Nostalgic, Personally Or Politically - If The Past Was So Great, How Come It's History?

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A Cynic Should Never Marry An Idealist. For The Cynic, Marriage Represents The Welcome End Of Romantic Life, With All Its Agony And Ecstasy. But For The Idealist, It Is Only The Beginning.

The Money I Pay For My Cultural Experiences Came Willingly From My Own Pocket - They Were Not The Result Of Bread Being Removed From The Mouths Of The Poor So That Miss Thing Here Could Mince Off To The Circus Smelling Of Roses.

When Actresses Jump On The Anti-iraq Bandwagon, They Often Combine Down-home Momism With An Ignorance Of Islamist Intent Which Is Truly Awesome.

Grooming Oneself With All The Crazed Compulsion Of An Under-exercised Lab Rat In Order To Hook A Rich Man And Obtain A Lush Lifestyle Makes A Certain (albeit Seedy) Sense.

It Seems That One Moment I Was This Little Kid Only Caring About Animals And Flowers And Stuff, And Then The Next Minute I Was This Raging Stew Of Hormones. I Don't Know If You've Ever Been A Raging Stew Of Anything, But I Wouldn't Particularly Recommend It.

Big Women Do Themselves A Disservice When They Attempt To Become The Righteous Fat (the Righteous Thin Are Bad Enough, All That Running Around And Sweating, Somehow Believing It Means Anything).

I Know That Brighton Is Famously A Mixture Of The Seedy And The Elegant, But In The Summer Of 2001 Seediness Swamped Elegance Hands Down.

I Jest, Of Course; Premature Ejaculation Isn't A Laughing Matter For Anyone, Except For Your Friends When You Tell Them About It On The Phone The Next Morning. My First Marriage Ended Because The Main Event Was Invariably Over Before My Husband Got His Socks Off.

Surely Being A Professional Beauty - Let Alone An Ageing One - Is One Of The Most Insecure And Doomed Careers Imaginable.

The Freedom That Women Were Supposed To Have Found In The Sixties Largely Boiled Down To Easy Contraception And Abortion; Things To Make Life Easier For Men, In Fact.

I Didn't Cry When I Left Free-booting, Smash-and-grab Papers That Would Have Appeared To Be Far More Natural Homes For Me And, At The Risk Of Being Vulgar, Paid Far Better For My Services.

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I Have Experienced Jealousy, Possessiveness, Verbal Abuse And Violence From Men, But I Have Also Experienced Jealousy, Possessiveness, Verbal Abuse And Violence From Women, Usually When I Failed To Respond To Their Advances.

Transsexualism Is, Basically, Just Another, More Drastic Twist On The Male Menopause.

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In My Third Husband I Had Discovered A Blissfully Laid-back Type Who Thought It Nothing Less Than Hilarious When I Misread The Map On The Way To Wales, So It Took Us An Extra Three Hours, Or When I Was Sick In A Plastic Carrier Bag During Much Of The Drive Back From Devon - A Bag That Turned Out To Have A Hole In It.

Presley Sounded Like Jayne Mansfield Looked - Blowsy And Loud And Low.

The Feminist Me Says That A Woman's Right To Her Own Body Should Be Inviolate At All Times, Free From Fear Of Peeping Paps.

Sex, On The Whole, Was Meant To Be Short, Nasty And Brutish. If What You Want Is Cuddling, You Should Buy A Puppy.

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The Terrorist Attacks Were A Tragedy For The People Who Died Or Were Injured, And For Their Families And Friends. For The Rest Of Us, They Were A Wake-up Call As To What Type Of Lunatics We Are Dealing With. And Sleepwalking Our Way Back Into Ill-sorted, Dewy-eyed People Personal Politics Is The Last Thing We Need To Set Us Up For The Fight Ahead. Come On You Liberals, Don't Give Me The Morbid Pleasure Of Saying, 'i Told You So' Again.

Prostitution Reinforces All The Old Dumb Clichés About Women's Sexuality; That They Are Not Built To Enjoy Sex And Are Little More Than Walking Masturbation Aids, Things To Be Done To, Things So Sensually Null And Void That They Have To Be Paid To Indulge In Fornication, That Women Can Be Had, Bought, As Often As Not Sold From One Man To Another. When The Sex War Is Won Prostitutes Should Be Shot As Collaborators For Their Terrible Betrayal Of All Women.

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I Don't Have A Spiritual Bone In My Body; But What I Am, Is Religious.

A Woman Who Looks Like A Girl And Thinks Like A Man Is The Best Sort, The Most Enjoyable To Be And The Most Pleasurable To Have And To Hold.

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As A Precocious Teen I Dreamed Of Being Graham Greene. Well, As It Turned Out, I Never Wrote A Great Novel, Sadly, And I Never Converted To Catholicism, Happily, But I Did Do One Thing He Did. That Is, In Middle Age I Moved To A Seaside Town And Got Into A Right Barney With The Local Powers-that-be.

It Has Been Said That A Pretty Face Is A Passport. But It's Not, It's A Visa, And It Runs Out Fast.

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Feminism Seeks To Turn The Biggest, Bloodiest Carnivore In The World - Passion - Into A Right-on Cud-chewing Vegan. It Can Never Work. Sex Was Never Meant To Be That Way. Sex, On The Whole, Was Meant To Be Short, Nasty And Brutish. If What You Want Is Cuddling, You Should Buy A Puppy.

My Second Husband Believed I Had Such A Fickle Attitude To Friendship That Each Friday He Would Update The List Of My 'top Ten' Friends In The Manner Of A Top Of The Pops Chart Countdown.

When The Sex War Is Won Prostitutes Should Be Shot As Collaborators For Their Terrible Betrayal Of All Women.

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Graham Greene Famously Said That All Writers Need A Chip Of Ice In Their Heart; Cusk Can Come Across As The Most Beautiful Ice Palace Of Stalactites And Stalagmites, And Some People Find Her Company, Albeit By Proxy, About As Inviting As A Long Weekend In A Walk-in Frigidaire.

Contrasting British Servicemen And Women With The Appeasers, It Is Hard Not To Laugh. Are These Two Sides Even The Same Species, Let Alone The Same Nationality? On One Hand The Selflessness And Internationalism Of The Soldiers; On The Other The Whites-first Isolationism Of The Protesters. Excuse Me, Who Are The Idealists Here?

Prostitution Is The Supreme Triumph Of Capitalism. When The Sex War Is Won Prostitutes Should Be Shot As Collaborators For Their Terrible Betrayal Of All Women, For The Moral Tarring And Feathering They Give Indigenous Women Who Have Had The Bad Luck To Live In What They Make Their Humping Ground.

As A Child, I Wanted Only Two Things - To Be Left Alone To Read My Library Books, And To Get Away From My Provincial Hometown And Go To London To Be A Writer. And I Always Knew That When I Got There, I Wanted To Make Loads Of Money.

Gluttony And Idleness Are Two Of Life's Great Joys, But They Are Not Honourable.

It's Received Wisdom That The English Are Uniquely Child-unfriendly.

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Exception To The Rule

Writing Is More Than Anything A Compulsion, Like Some People Wash Their Hands Thirty Times A Day For Fear Of Awful Consequences If They Do Not. It Pays A Whole Lot Better Than This Type Of Compulsion, But It Is No More Heroic.

What Men Don't Want, In Fact What Anyone Who's Any Sort Of Thrill-seeking, Intelligent Adult Doesn't Want, Is Some Crushing Bore Describing Their Emotions In Real Time Every Waking Hour.

Intersectionality May Well Sound Like Some Unfortunate Bowel Complaint Resulting In Copious Use Of A Colostomy Bag, And Indeed It Does Contain A Large Amount Of Ordure.

Here In Barcelona, It's The Architects Who Built The Buildings That Made The City Iconic Who Are The Objects Of Admiration - Not A Bunch Of Half-witted Monarchs.

I Am Firmly Of The Opinion That Women Who Make A Lot Of Effort To Hang Onto Their Looks In Middle Age (unless They Are Beauties, Entertainers Or Prostitutes) Are Rather Sad, As One Should Surely Have Something More Substantial To Recommend One By This Time, Such As Kindness Or Cleverness.

Knowing That The 'sex And The City' Chicks Now Rack Up Almost Two Centuries Between Them, Why Do Some Of Us Fuss And Hiss About A Bit Of Retouching On Their Forthcoming Film Poster?

Now The Whole Dizzying And Delirious Range Of Sexual Possibilities Has Been Boiled Down To That One Big, Boring, Bulimic Word. Relationship.

I Won't Be Going To Any New Year's Eve Parties Because I Think They're Naff. No One Over The Age Of 15 Should Bother Going To Parties.

Monarchists Frequently Declare That Without The Royal Family, Britain Would Be 'nothing.' What A Woeful Lack Of Love For One's Country Such Statements Express.

Being A Monarchist - Saying That One Small Group Is Born More Worthy Of Respect Than Another - Is Just As Warped And Strange As Being A Racist.

If You Want Sex, Have An Affair. If You Want A Relationship, Buy A Dog.

As A Kid, I Grew To Define What I Didn't Want My Life To Be Like By Sitting Behind Moaning Women On The Bus, Hearing Them Bang On About Their Aches And Pains, Both Real And Imagined.

In Barcelona, Things Seem So Different. For Example, I Know That It's Traditionally The Least Spanish City, But You'd Never Know They Had A Monarchy, Coming Here As A Tourist - As Opposed To The Uk, Where The Queen Is Probably The Best-known Animal, Vegetable And/or Mineral Going When It Comes To Overseas Visitors.

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