14 DAY TRIAL // Do you remember Samantha Brick, who, in 2012, penned an essay called “Women Hate Me Because I’m Beautiful” that went viral because it was so obviously not the case? Apparently, there are more Samantha Bricks in the world, and they’re eager to claim their beauty is something like the world has never experienced before.
Take for instance Stephanie Arnott, a 58-year-old grandmother-of-one from Maidstone, Kent, who made headlines in the UK and abroad last week for saying she was so beautiful she stopped traffic. Literally so, she didn’t mean it as a figure of speech.
Arnott could pass for a 35-year-old, can make men cry
You can see a photo of Arnott attached, with a teaser video of her latest appearance on ITV’s This Morning. The Daily Mail says she maintained her claim that she can stop traffic with her beauty and that she has made men cry with her looks, but she failed the practical test.
Indeed, the producers at This Morning had her walk down the street to see if she really did manage to get male drivers to lose their concentration and pull over, or if, at the very least, she could walk down the street and not have every single man stare at her in complete awe.
She failed the test: though she was dressed in an eye-catching, all-white, very tight ensemble, the men she passed by barely looked at her, let alone give her a second look or, as she claimed would happen, burst into tears.
She had to admit she had failed to get the reaction she said was customary whenever she stepped outside.
A little bit of attention is worth the public humiliation
Beauty is a relative concept, so we’re not going to discuss whether she’s beautiful in the traditional sense or not.
However, to say that you’re as beautiful as to stop traffic means you’re either above-average-good-looking or completely delusional. The third option would be that you’re so attention-hungry you wouldn’t mind making a fool of yourself to get it.
And make no mistake, Mrs. Arnott spared no expense in painting herself as a goddess come to earth to stun mortals with her impossible beauty.
“Women can be intimidated by me because of the way I look, dress and speak. I have class, elegance and beauty, which are all powerful assets,” she told the Mail in an interview last week. “I never used to realize that other women were jealous of me, but now I see it. Women even frown at me on the street - something my husband’s noticed too. But that's what happens when you are 58 with the face and figure of a 35-year-old. It's all natural as well. I put it all down to luck and good genes.”
She complained that this kind of attention got “overwhelming” at times, but she’d learned to cope with it. She was leading a hard life, but such was the price she was willing to pay for being this beautiful.
Since she went on the record with this kind of outlandish claims, is it a wonder that she’s being viciously mocked online right now, for failing the test?