Beauty Myth

Shut it, Hurles

Liz Hurley. Isn’t she just vile? I’ve just had one of her quotes pointed out to me, a jumble of words that have made me search for a corner in which to vomit. And while this quote was uttered many years ago, by all accounts, it’s still worthy of my rage, as are most things that I come across these days.  Here you go, here’s the Hurley gem: “I’d kill myself if I was as fat as Marilyn Monroe”.

Oh. My. God. There are so many things wrong with this vapid fucking statement that I’ve had to invent numbers to count them all. It’s just 11 words but they carry such a burgeoning amount of snobbery that it’s amazing that the sentence hasn’t collapsed in on itself, creating undiluted evil.

For a start there’s the suicide reference, a boggling reaction to the piffling issue of putting on a few pounds. Not for Hurley, the prospect of suicide as a reaction to the death of her entire family or the loss of all of her lower limbs in a bomb attack. Christ no. Instead she keeps a stash of paracetamol and razor blades next to her weighing scales in case her entire life is inverted by the appearance of an extra ounce.

Then there’s the laughable comparison of herself with Marilyn Monroe only for her to conclude, by her remark, that she is thinner and therefore better than the bombshell of blondeness.  Fuckety-fuckety-fuck. First, the only way you could put Hurley and Monroe in the same category is by identifying them both as female. That Hurley thinks she is up there with one of the most beautiful women in the world displays a giddying lack of self awareness, a bit like David Cameron believing that he’s actually improving the NHS.

Worse, Hurley has then studied Monroe’s curves and defined them as fat and therefore as ugly. Oh fucking hell, Hurley, spare me, will you? Not only was Monroe the definition of womanliness,  so it’s no surprise that Hurley doesn’t recognise it, but she was hardly trapped in her bed under 40 stone of suppurating flesh either. Monroe? Fat?  Then pass me the Mars Bars because I’d prefer that to looking like the lettuce-sucking Hurley.

Anyway, tell me who is more fun to be with, who is more appealing? A gorgeously curvy woman who knows exactly how to treat a chocolate éclair or a hatchet-faced stick insect on alert for rogue calories? Quite.

Which is why Hurley’s statement blows holes in the beauty myth that she’s surrounded herself with. It’s brimming with ugliness, bitterness and self-obsession, none of which makes Hurley the beauty that she thinks she is. Shrivelled. That’s the word that springs to mind. Inside and out.