It is very easy to mock Jones; her column is often tone-deaf and condescending, and she seems to take pride in ripping down the "little people" who just don't seem to understand her way of life. As is the case with many recession based pieces, Jones took this opportunity to play poverty for a week or so, noting that her experiences without the comfort of her credit cards taught her that "Money puts you in a thoughtless cocoon. It was as if I'd been wearing really dark (designer, obviously) shades and someone had rudely whipped them off."

Jones is shocked by the costs of beauty treatments, food, and transportation, noting that she's laughed at when she doesn't have the proper fare on a bus and humiliated that she has to shave her own legs for the first time in decades. It is your standard "how DO poor people get by?" article, though there are moments were I actually felt quite sorry for Jones, notably in a de Maupassant moment wherein she attempts to pawn a set of pearls her father gave her when she was 18 and discovers that the pearls are fake and ultimately worthless. "He pushed them back under the thick security glass. I started to cry," she writes, "Not because my dad had bought me plastic pearls, passing them off as real ones. But because my parents had been unable to buy nice things."

This is Jones' basic problem: she equates things with success. She cries because her parents didn't have the money to buy her the real thing, not because she's realized that the "real thing" isn't what made those pearls so important to her. Jones' life is measured in brands and belongings, and she's willing to overlook the fact that even though her "experiment" eventually ends, she's still thousands of dollars in debt and ultimately should be living frugally in order to pay her damn bills. But as much as she protests otherwise, I have a feeling Liz Jones will keep buying bat sanctuaries, and Liz Jones will keep acting stunned that some people take the bus, and Liz Jones will keep writing pieces about how brave it is to try to walk away from an extravagant life in order to face reality. Every so often she picks up a stone and attempts to smash the facade she's carried for so long. Unfortunately, she lives in a plexiglas house, and the stones she throws don't even make a dent.

Liz Jones: What Happened When I Tried To Live On £65 A Week [DailyMail]

"Modern man has evolved, due to his love of cars and fast food, into a blob with all the muscle tone and definition of a slug," she sniffs, "These men might all wear trainers and tracksuits and workwear such as denim jeans and combat trousers, but it is all just dressing up, an illusion, a hark back to the days when men actually knew how to do physical things like, ooh, I don't know, put in a light bulb or change a duvet cover or make love to a woman." This would be a zinger, I guess, if every column Jones writes wasn't about how ugly, fat, or incompetent someone else is. Someone needs to create a Liz Jones "Oh Snap" Flowchart that includes an extra arrow saying "Does Liz Jones hate someone? Yes? This Oh Snap Is Therefore Invalid."

Jones goes on to attack Jamie Oliver for having "a body as soft as butter," and Simon Cowell for having a "peacock chest and underdeveloped thighs. And then there is this:

I wonder why it is that gay men like to stay in shape, and be all smooth and oiled. I hope I am not straying into Dannii Minogue territory here when I wonder if that is merely their feminine side emerging, a genetic tendency to have the humility to take care of themselves, rather than being an arrogant straight bastard who believes, despite the beer gut and nasal hair, he is catnip.

There is really no central argument here; Jones is just off on another one of her pointless and slightly insane tangents, and out-of-shape men, who apparently represent every straight man in the world of Liz Jones (all in-shape men, you see, are gay) are her targets this time around. To wrap things up, Jones declares that men, based on her assessment of Cowell and Oliver as being schlubby, are "wimps" and "wastes of space." It's tempting to declare Jones' column a waste of space as well, but then what would we have to bang our heads on our desks over every Sunday evening?

The Modern Male, He's Softer Than A Slug With A Beer Belly [DailyMail]

Liz Jones is starting to make me uncomfortable. I mean, more so than usual. And in different ways. I can sum up her latest screed in one line: She hates rich women.

Although Jones, a former Marie Claire editor and owner of a farm, is not what anyone would call destitute, she's a far cry from the posh women she lambasts. In some ways, this class-rage is typically British; in America, despite our yawning inequalities, we simply don't have millennia enough to build up the same caliber of inherited resentment - and even our "oldest" and richest families are mere parvenus by Euro standards. In England, the posh are as 50s suburbia is to us - universally and tacitly reviled, even by those who come of it and try to distance themselves via self-loathing. So in that way, regard it as an interesting window into enduring cultural implacability. In every other way, regard it as madness, and back away slowly.

Jones hates posh women even more than she hates mothers. She hates their beauty. And their gap years. And "the fact they have so many friends." She hates their vacations. She hates their tans. And, oh yes, their "filth."

I once went to a party at a posh woman's house on Exmoor. It was freezing (they only lived there at weekends, so the heating never had time to crank up) and filthy - there were mouse droppings on every pillow. Their awful posh children were milling about on long limbs, tossing honeyed locks and seeping privilege instead of sebum from every tiny pore. I wish I, too, partook in blood sports so I could put a bullet through the space where their brain should be.

Charming. Time was, Liz Jones could work in the occasional reasonable opinion. But in the last year especially - and even more so since she published her memoir - she's become a byword for overexposure and instability. In recent weeks, her scathing dismissal of her country neighbors has apparently resulted in some serious criminal harassment - including someone shooting up her mailbox - and having by her own blithe account long-since alienated friends and family through her lack of discretion, Jones must be alone indeed. She's long-since ceased to speak for anyone other than herself, and she's long-since established herself as nuts. However much of it is purely exhibition, she seems to have blurred the line beyond what's healthy, and reading her nowadays is more voyeuristic than anything - which is why, having said this, I don't think I can cover her antics any longer. While it's hard to feel generous towards someone so consistently bilious, it's easy to feel pity, and I think we all should - however fascinating her ongoing performance piece might be. This is not Howard Beale speaking truth to power in his madness; this is someone looking at a perfectly well-dressed emperor and declaring triumphantly that he's naked. But I'm starting to feel like the Network parallel isn't that far off, like we're watching human pain play out publicly, in slow motion. Maybe that's melodramatic - and that's obviously how Jones makes a very good living - but I just hope Jones realizes there are other options, and it's really not too late. And, as her eds at the Fail can tell her, redemption's the best copy of all.

Liz Jones Moans [Daily Mail]
Rachel Johnson Offers A Few Home Truths: Liz Jones, You're The Marie Antoinette Of Exmoor [Daily Mail]Local Difficulty For Country Columnist Who Was Rude About The Villagers [Guardian]
Between Ourselves [BBC]
Enough About Me [Guardian]

As I mentioned earlier today, Jones' mailbox was shot up earlier this week, and Jones believes it was done by one of her neighbors, who all seem to hate her for reasons she can't quite understand. "I'm disappointed and shocked because I have never been nasty about people personally," she claims in the Daily Mail, "I am quite shocked at how small-minded people are."

This, of course, after Jones has spent a good deal of time mocking her new country neighbors in her columns, picking on them for everything from their poor dental hygiene to their drug use to their intelligence levels. "She portrays us as a bunch of toothless inbreds who eat only basket meals and rum baba and spend our spare time being cruel to animals," says one farmer, who then decried the attack on Jones' mailbox.

Jones defends her swipes at her neighbors by claiming that there's a bit of truth to all of them: she called them toothless, she says, because her "gardener, Brian – a man who has become like a surrogate father to me, concerned as he is about my isolation and inability to drive in snow – has had most of his teeth out." She goes on to explain that she was only trying to say that the younger men had moved out of the country and back to the city, to find work, but her explanations sound a bit similar to "but my best friend is toothless! I love toothless people!" and it's not hard to see how her neighbors might misinterpret her nasty little digs, even if she has, in her mind anyway, a point to back them up.

In any case, Jones, per usual, positions herself as the victim: "I'm the stranger, the single woman starting over (I doubt if I'd be attacked were I a posh man), but not one person has invited me round for tea, or even come to say hello. Is it insularity, boredom or fear that makes them treat me so? I wonder how someone who doesn't employ so many locals would be treated if they moved here." Perhaps if Liz had bothered to take a second to actually, I don't know, invite her new neighbors to tea instead of expecting everyone to come calling for her, she might have met some of them. And perhaps, instead of just acting like hiring local people makes her an instant member of the community, Jones should have recognized that her actions weren't enough to make up for the hurtful words and reputation slams she delivered against her new neighbors on a weekly basis.

I don't think anyone should have shot up Liz Jones' mailbox (or egged her car, or tp'd her trees, or whatever the nasty neighborhood attack of the moment might be), but Jones doesn't seem to understand that unless people know you, they aren't going to "get" your hilarious little jokes at their expense. She can mock her community to bits; but unless they're in on the joke, it's no surprise that they aren't laughing.

And also: feral children in London? Really?

Liz Jones: My Terror Over Gun Attack On My Exmoor Home [DailyMail]

I think the reason I didn't care to dispatch with Jones' latest ante-upping is simply that it was too stupid. If Jones is writing about her eating disorders in a way that's unhealthy and deluded and potentially misleading to young readers, that's one thing. If she's sharing her insights about working in the magazine industry, sure, that's interesting. She may be a crackpot, but at least these are authentic experiences. But I really could care less what Liz Jones has to say about politics - or whatever the hell it is she's talking about here - and her Black Like Me-style undercover impressions after one week of burqa-wearing don't seem exactly definitive.

Indeed, the piece is stupid, pointless, ignorant, and racist. It is also so absurd as to approach camp.

Squatting next to me is my burka. It looks so innocuous: just a few yards of black fabric. But, my goodness, how oppressive it is, how suffocating, how transforming. Moved by the plight of Lubna Hussein, a Sudanese woman who faces 40 lashes for wearing trousers in public, I decided to spend a week enveloped in what she should have been wearing. Out shopping one day, I caught sight of myself in a Knightsbridge store window. Instead of me staring back, I saw a dark, depressed alien. A smudge. A nothing.

That right there is objective journalism, folks. It's really good she undertook this, because it's not like there are any actual religious Muslim women whose impressions we could have heard (oh, forgot, they're too oppressed) or maybe the story of a convert explaining her impressions of the new lifestyle, or even, you know, a serious writer. No, it had to be Liz. We knew, Liz, you'd give us the real squatting-burqa experience, and that one week in costume can give a true taste of the life of a devout Muslim woman whose culture or motivations you've made no effort to understand! (Also: Sean Penn called. He wants his terrible, 18-year-old ghostwriter back.) Shockingly, the week doesn't exactly prove a revelation to Jones: wearing a burqa's as dumb as she suspected! It's hard to eat and drink and get around, and while white people are totally nice and not at all racist, a mean "Arab" man yells abuse at her (she thinks). Her conclusions?

On yet another perfect summer's day in Hyde Park during my week covered up, I saw a crocodile of schoolchildren. Only the pale moon of the faces of the Muslim girls was exposed...I know now exactly how they feel: marginalised, objectified, kept box-fresh for the eyes of male relatives...I find it disgusting that we allow British schoolgirls to be treated in this way.

While I think it's safe to dismiss Jones, at this point, as an attention-mad lunatic, it's not crazy that an actual Muslim should take some umbrage at this distillation of superior ignorance. And Muslimah Media Watch's Krista takes down Jones' stunt with an able seriousness I can't, at this point, honor her with, so I'll let Krista have the floor:

What really bothers me is when these attempts are explained as a way to understand "what it's like to wear the burqa" (or niqab, or headscarf, or whatever). If you're wearing any of these things without any personal religious or cultural meanings attached to them, it would be hard to even come close to appreciating what it's really like for women who wear them.

She dismantles Jones' opus point by point - maybe women who do this for more than a week actually, you know, know how to get around and eat - and is particularly offended by Jones' dismissal of white racism, based on her brief experience. Ironically, she points out, Jones' own stated contempt for her appearance gives the lie to that claim. In sum:

All I can say to this is, no. No, you don't know how they feel (or at the very least, you can't say for certain that you do.) You don't know why they're wearing what they're wearing, or what meaning it has for them. Yes, some Muslim women feel marginalized and objectified, and sometimes this even relates to their clothing. Other women might wear exactly the same clothing and feel entirely different, or might even feel more marginalized and objectified by non-Muslims than by their "male relatives." Spending a week in a burqa (especially when this experience is entered into already with fear and disgust towards the burqa) does not make someone an expert on how women who wear these things feel, or on how they should react to racism and abuse.

Ah, but that would require Jones to be reasonable, and honest, and think rather than emote, and challenge the assumptions that any injustice in the larger Muslim world must be tied to every aspect of the religion, and that no woman who observes it is capable of being more than chattel! This would require research - or at least a momentary consideration of other people's motives, which isn't exactly the author's strong suit. Liz Jones wore the sullen, squatting burqa. Liz Jones had a hard time eating and a guy of indeterminate ethnicity maybe yelled at her. As such, Liz Jones has condemned the entire religion, made sweeping assumptions about every Muslim she meets, and emerged with her superiority in tact. Yes, this piece is a marvel of ignorance and stupidity. But I also think if Krista reads a little more of her sweeping oeuvre - or perhaps her unhinged new memoir? - she'll feel a little better.

Burqa Tourism at its Finest: How to Become an Expert on Muslim Women in Just One Week [Muslimah Media Watch]
My Week Wearing A Burka: Just A Few Yards Of Black Fabric, But It Felt Like A Prison [Daily Mail]

Earlier: Daily Mail's Liz Jones Strengthens Her Case For Biggest Crazypants In World
Is This Woman Actually "Mad"? Results Inconclusive, Fascinating

The first thought about Rachel Cooke's profile was, "man, these British journalists are harsh!" Take this description of the 50-year-old Mail masochist: "She is seemingly addicted to fake tan, so she is always a slightly unnatural shade of caramel. She has suffered from anorexia since she was a child, so her round face has always been balanced on a preternaturally thin body."

I mean, don't get me wrong, Jones dishes it out. This is the woman who's called children "germ-brewing sprogs," American women "mindbogglingly stupid" and one politician's wife's outfit as "befitting a six-year-old with attention deficit disorder" with the makeup of an "Eastern Europe refugee." Jones' persistent self-flagellation and orange-levels of overexposure have led more than one reader to question her stability. Most recently, Jones has penned a memoir, The Exmoor Files: How I Lost A Husband and Found Rural Bliss, which chronicles her brutal divorce (with which regular readers are all too familiar) and the healing effects of buying a bucolic farm and relocating there to live with a number of rescue animals, including a cat ("my fur baby"), a dog ("my new boyfriend") and the horses, one of them agoraphobic, who wear boots, require the services of masseur, chiropractic and psychic.

This, you see, is in contrast to a life in which Jones' OCD got out of control (she vacuumed her lawn) and her marriage degenerated into recrimination and desperation. (Her attempts to keep it going, says Cooke, "included oral sex on demand: 'I didn't even stop when one of my sharp back teeth caused an ulcer.'") The new life, according to the memoir, though, feels anything but idyllic. Indeed, Cooke calls it "neurotic, incontinent, contradictory." Because Jones' oversharing has not changed. (Her latest column deals with her plastic surgeries and the sadness of aging.) Says the article,

In Somerset locals have taken exception to the fact that she has written that none of the menfolk over about 40 are in possession of their own teeth, and that the food served in local pubs is heated-up rubbish. She has also described her violent crush on a man whose wife is one of the few locals to have been friendly to her.

So, what's with the urge towards masochism? As the article points out, "the kind of writing she does leaves her marooned on a sad little island of self from which there is, apparently, no way back to shore." Jones says she's lost all her friends, wants no love life (she finds sex "quite tiring and repetitive... it's such an odd thing to do") and is miserable, but she doesn't want the therapeutic intervention many a concerned reader has suggested. "I don't want to be sorted out. This is who I am...You have to have a certain amount of self-esteem to think you're worth saving. I don't care about myself enough to change." The author is highly skeptical about the combination of ego and allegedly low self-esteem that characterizes Jones' columns - a mix of self-pity, self-denigration and obvious self-obsession - but it doesn't seem weird to me. Jones is a deeply unhappy woman, with the narcissist's conviction that she's speaking for others who lack the courage to admit what she does, but she couldn't have the career she does if we didn't want it.

Sylvia Plath is often maligned for launching a thousand confessionals, but it was she who said, "One should be able to control and manipulate experiences, even the most terrifying, like madness...with an informed or intelligent mind...it should be relevant." As art, yes; as entertainment, the three-car-pileup voyeurism will do just fine, thanks. Jones is among the most extreme example of this phenomenon, and perhaps the most disturbing, but she's hardly unique. What is perhaps most distressing about her is that it's hard to know - probably for her as well as us - where the reality ends and the story begins. Surely she heightens the drama of her responses, but at what point does that effect those responses? And then too, putting it out there in such a public way, and refusing to treat obvious problems, normalizes - even legitimizes - them for readers: what, 50 years ago, would have seemed mad, is now quotidian, and it's a vicious cycle. If Jones is really unwell, her column is unethical. If she's not, it's manipulative. The truth, probably, lies somewhere between the two. We were glad to learn, though, that she likes Irene Dunne screwball comedies; no life containing The Awful Truth can be all bad.

Enough about me [Guardian]
Question Time: Liz Jones, Fashion Editor [Independent]
Rupert Everett Looks Great, But I'd Rather Grow Old Gracefully Over A Long Lunch Or Two [Daily Mail]
Sylvia Plath Interview [YouTube]

We've read Liz Jones' opus against the stomach-softening joys of childbearing. But she's not alone. Last month, Polly Vernon wrote a similar screed in The Guardian, in which she confessed to being "appalled by the idea, both instinctually (‘Euuuw! You think I should do what to my body?') and intellectually (‘And also to my career, my finances, my lifestyle and my independence?')." Meanwhile, No Kidding!, a non-parents club, has more than 40 chapters in five countries. French psychotherapist Corinne Maier has penned No Kids: 40 Good Reasons Not to Have Children. The book, which will be published in English this week, is, ahem, controversial. Can't imagine why, when the mother of two includes bromides like, "if you really want to be host to a parasite, get a gigolo."

Is this still shocking? Bold? Or is it merely... infantile, and a bit misogynistic? Yes, the cult of motherhood is annoying, and no one should, in this day and age, be considered less of a woman for having children. But biting back in the same key is hardly the way to exact revenge or encourage respect for different choices. Are people going to be defensive when you call pregnancy and childbirth parasitic, disgusting, germ-ridden? Um, yes. I don't have children, but I can see how goes beyond irreverence into insulting something fundamental. I can't comprehend the bond, physical and emotional, that a mother feels for her children - which is why I wouldn't presume to demean it, any more than I'd insult someone who'd chosen not to have children for any reason. You shouldn't need to, but you can justify your desire not to reproduce on any number of environmental and personal grounds - more than 40, I should think. But when the arguments become emotional or degenerate into contempt, it's as futile and destructive as promoting a retrograde earth-mother cult of maternity. Bottom line: not wanting kids does not make someone more interesting or a better woman than wanting them.

This whole thing reminds me of the "I hate my kids! I hated my kids! I hate girls! I hate boys! I'm a bad dad! I'm a worse mom!" movement, which seems to confuse these sorts of self-indulgent exposes with barrier-breaking courage. Indeed, Maier does the double-whammy!

She admits there are times she regretted having her own children, now aged 14 and 11, a declaration that has predictably branded her a "bad mother" whose children are destined for a lifetime of therapy. (Yet she's only saying what many mothers silently think but aren't allowed to say. In 1975, Ann Landers famously asked readers: "If you had it to do over again, would you have children?" Seventy per cent of respondents said "no.") Maier reports that when she had her children she was madly in love, a hostage to her hormones. She too bought into the modern parenting mythology that children could be psychic curatives. Raised as an only child, she believed children would end her feelings of loneliness. Instead, she says, their arrival created new forms of loneliness.

Yes. Having kids is hard. It's not all roses and pregnant-belly sculptures (thank dog.) Some people don't want them. Other people do. I don't understand the point of this provocation - okay, I do, but not from the, I don't know, Socratic point of view. Is this line of thought actually going to make people who want kids stop reproducing? No. It might give those who don't want children more ammunition, but rather than upping the ante, I would so much rather see this girl-on-girl debate die a mature death. Not everyone loves the doctrine of "choose your choices," which can feel lax and laissez-faire. But if there's one case that calls for it, I think we've found it. (And why do I get the feeling that in those nations where there's no access to birth control - or women are compelled to abort their children - the mother's moral superiority is less of a topic of debate?) The Maclean's article concludes with one woman, who's happily childless, saying the following: "Why did we fight so hard for the right to make this choice, only to have it not respected when we do?" Oh, the irony.

The Case Against Having Kids [Macleans]

Related:It Takes Guts To Say: 'I Don't Want Children' [Guardian]
Related: Daily Mail's Liz Jones Strengthens Her Case For Biggest Crazypants In World

Liz Jones is not one to back away from sweeping statements. Not content to give voice to the common complaint about the modern cult of smug maternity, the food-phobic editrix does everyone one better, launching a bizarre rant about...well, you'll see. Jones seems bound and determined to undermine the insight of some of her columns with incoherent, defiant screeds. I guess she's styling herself as a provocateur - and is apparently taking credibility lessons from Ann Coulter. If I had to describe the structure of Jones' essay, it would go a little something like this:

-I hate working moms

-I hate stay-at-home moms.

-I hate my friends' involvement with their kids.

-Moms are freeloaders.

-Kids hurt the environment.

-I hate that moms are ugly

-I hate kids

-Women only have kids because of men.

-I love my dogs.

We get Jones' initial point: you don't need kids to be a valid woman and she shouldn't be made to feel inferior because she hasn't chosen that life. "I really, really, really hate the fact mums believe that if you don't, like me, have children, you are incredibly self-indulgent and lazy." This begins and ends the only not-crazy writing in the whole piece.

Here, a few choice quotes:

I have long moaned, too, about the working mums who sprint out the door at 6pm on the dot, leaving the rest of us (the hopelessly barren, like me, and the men) holding the baby. Although not literally, of course.Hardly more commendable are the dedicated, oozing and secreting stay at-home mums, the ones who are always so tired.

I hate the way they dump their jazzy, squashy hold-alls in the hallway. I hate the way these women snatch their uninoculated germ-brewing sprogs away from the path of my cats, eyes wide with alarm in case the horrid child were to get scratched.

I once (oh dear God, never again) had a friend called Liv for tea; she was en route to a £6,000-a-week holiday rental on the Exmoor coast. She brought with her four children, a dog and a long-suffering, entirely mute husband....As she sat there, nursing her muffin stomach, she looked around at my beautiful garden and said: 'I wish we could afford a garden like this. (Afford! She spends £400 a week on food! Not to mention school fees for the oldest two.)

As a woman with no children, I am constantly outraged, too, at the way the Government heaps incentives upon prospective parents. Money for fruit and veg, child support, baby's trust fund, help with childcare, flexible bloody working, tax breaks. Never mind the ludicrous idea of putting IVF on the NHS, as if having a baby were a God-given right and not a blessing.I believe that women should pay for the services of a midwife and health visitor. I don't have a child in education, so how about the Government gives me some money towards cat food?...And do not even get me started on how incredibly bad for the environment bringing even more humans into this world is. My neighbour has two boys and has just announced she's pregnant with her third child. 'I really want a girl,' she told me, as if she were ordering something online from The White Company.

The other day, a group of mums was stood in my garden - don't ask me why - and one reached up to scratch her head, probably at me and my hedonistic lifestyle, and I caught sight of her stomach with its texture and hue of cold, congealed porridge and I couldn't help but stare, aghast.
My point here is that these mums think that to care about how they look is beneath them when they have more important things to worry about - such as organic lunch boxes and whether or not I have diluted the fresh orange juice...Which brings me smartly to the reason most women have children. They want to hang on to their husbands. While this tactic might once have worked, now that men are the giant toddlers in need of babying, to have a child for that reason will never, ever work.

By essay's end, Jones is somewhat melancholy at the thought she'll never have kids. "I might look young on the outside, still wear platforms and pigtails and ride ponies, but I know I have missed my chance to experience something that could have been wonderful." But she has her dogs. And from the sound of it, she made the right choice.

I Loathe Smug Modern Mums...[Daily Mail]

Related: 3 Reasons Ex-Marie Claire Editor Hates Ladymags
Lifelong Anorexic "Forced" To Eat Normally For 3 Weeks
Daily Mail Writer Says Drive To Be Thin Holds Women Back
Daily Mail Columnist: American Women Are "Mindbogglingly Stupid"

Jones has been both a producer and a consumer of women's magazines — she has a stockpile of Vogue issues dating back to 1975, and in the early 2000s she was the editor of Marie Claire UK. But her early love of ladymags has turned to hate, and the reasons will not surprise you:

• They're dumb. As an example (like we need it) Jones quotes a recent article in British magazine Easy Living: "As an alternative to wine, I'd like to drink beer, but I haven't tried it since I was a teen! Where do I start?" She also mentions a British Vogue feature on "new ways" to carry your handbag (in your mouth? Up your butt?). Jones writes, "We have had The Female Eunuch, The Beauty Myth, the Equal Pay Act, and this is the sort of twaddle that is still being fed to us?" Um, yes.

• They push expensive shit. Jones describes a shoot in Kerala, India for the June issue of British Vogue: "in a region where most people live on less than $1 a day, there is Daria Werbowy in a £3,690 cotton dress by Yohji Yamamoto and a silk/linen ballgown by Ralph Lauren costing £9,500 - the little children used as obscene accessories." While this kind of excess will come as no surprise to ladymag readers, Jones does explain the motivation behind it. She writes,

The reason all the magazines, no matter the demographic of their readers, feature expensive brands is simple: it is not about inspiration or aspiration, it's about survival.

Unless a label is featured editorially, preferably on a cover and worn by a top model or celebrity (or, if not, on a whole page inside), a magazine does not stand a hope in hell of attracting a fraction of that brand's advertising budget.

This means that during the recession, when ad revenues are down, magazines have an even greater need to hawk expensive clothes.

• They're sizeist, ageist, and racist. In her Marie Claire days, Jones learned that she couldn't get designers to dress a cover girl unless the girl was skinny, hyper-famous, young, and white. She writes, "I once tried to put the singer Sade on the cover: beautiful, black, in her 40s. I was told by my publishing director that Sade was far too ancient." When she asked Giorgio Armani to dress another black prospective cover girl, she got the response, "Have you tried getting Natalie Portman?"

Jones doesn't make as much as she might of women's magazines' effect on body image. She mentions in passing that "I remember a photo of model Sandra Dickinson in Vogue eating a watermelon; it prompted me to eat nothing but difficult fruit for a year," but doesn't draw an explicit connection between her own ladymag reading and her much-publicized anorexia. She does say, "I think the glossies' days are numbered. Last month, media buying company Group M predicted dozens of magazines were under a 'lethal threat'." Are women's magazines just another casualty of the recession, or are women actually getting tired of page after page of advertorial content that makes "us feel dissatisfied with ourselves and what we own?" And if women really are finally sick of this shit, what will they read instead? Jones says ladymags "are being usurped by sharp, super-critical online sites and blogs that are not afraid to stand up to be counted." Thanks for the mention, Liz! Now, back to usurping.

Patronising, Fake, And Pointless — Why I've Given Up On The Glossy [Daily Mail]

Fortini has a point: the genre of autobiographical writing be pretty dull if everyone wrote about how healthy and self-actualized they were. And, as Fortini's many examples illustrate, confessional journalism is neither wholly new nor wholly limited to women. However, there's a pretty big middle ground between requiring writers to pass a mental health test and applauding "My Boom And Bust Boobs."

Fortini writes,

Freeman not only frets about the women who write confessional journalism, but she also frets about the women who consume it. These are "vulnerable readers" for whom sentiments about disordered eating "are surely just as dangerous and potentially influential as the photos of the skinny models the journalist professes to abhor," to quote Freeman. Journalism of this stripe supposedly makes women appear "self-hating" and "self-obsessed." But why should a female journalist writing an essay be required "to open a window into what life is like for women today?" Why can't she write a singular account of herself, and expect that readers will recognize it as such? Why not trust that they will perceive what is useful or interesting or even damning about an article? How boring if all pieces of writing were made to meet some standard of exemplary behavior and thought. I say, if some women want to write about their miseries, let them. And let readers judge for themselves.

Certainly readers should judge each piece of writing for themselves. But that doesn't make writers above criticism. Saying that a writer bears no responsibility for the effects of her work — that laying any blame on her or her editor is tantamount to "not trusting" readers — is a little like Oprah's claim that she doesn't mean to influence her viewers in any direction. When a writer publishes in a public forum, her voice carries farther than that of an average private citizen. She shouldn't have to speak for all women, but she can no longer claim that her words have zero power. And readers aren't stupid or untrustworthy if they take what she says to heart.

It's true that if writers couldn't write about their pain, we'd be missing a lot of great literature. But there's a difference between exploring one's misery and offering oneself up as a sacrificial lamb to a culture that, on some level, wants to see women suffer. We wouldn't say that Liz Jones, who has previously written intelligently on fashion and weight, shouldn't discuss her struggles with her own body. But her chronicle of a ridiculously ill-advised, gimmicky "treatment" for her anorexia, and her relapse into the depths of the disorder, essentially turns her mental illness into a stunt. This isn't self-examination — it's self-mutilation.

At least Jones tells her readers to get comfortable with their bodies in order to escape her fate. Other practitioners of female confessional journalism have more damaging messages. Under the guise of "facing facts," Zoe Lewis says her choice to pursue career over family has made her miserable — and implies that it will make readers miserable too. She writes, "If you find a great guy, don't be afraid to settle down and have kids because there isn't anything to miss out on that you can't go back and do later - apart from having kids," and, more upsettingly, "every day, minute, hour that goes by makes you older and more desperate." Lewis isn't just describing her experience and letting readers judge for themselves — she's giving explicit advice, advice colored by a jaundiced perspective on feminism and life. The trouble with her piece, and with Lori Gottlieb's, is that they take misery as their vantage point, offering wisdom to women from the depths of of self-loathing. And while self-loathing may sell papers, it doesn't help make good decisions.

Debate still rages about how "confessional" Sylvia Plath's poems really were, but some lines from "Lady Lazarus" leap to mind here. Plath wrote,

There is a charge

For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge
For the hearing of my heart—--
It really goes.

And there is a charge, a very large charge
For a word or a touch
Or a bit of blood

Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.

Plath was certainly aware of the mass appeal of female pain, but she may have been aware, too, of the damage that regular consumption of this pain can do. There is a charge for the eyeing of Jones's or Lewis's scars — an image of helpless, self-hating femininity that we cannot un-see once we have seen it. No matter how smart or self-possessed we are, what we read affects us, and the defenders of confessional journalism are disingenuous if they deny that.

Boobs, Bulimia And Breakups [Broadsheet]

Earlier: Female Confessional Journalism And The Business Of Self-Hate

Freeman specifically mentions Christa D'Souza's Daily Mail article about her increasingly harrowing experiences with breast implants, and of course Liz Jones's truly upsetting story (also, predictably, in the Daily Mail) of trying to treat lifelong anorexia with three weeks of scones and brie and — shocker — still feeling bad about her body afterwards. But she has a larger point: a genre has sprung up in contemporary lifestyle journalism, in which "a female journalist describes her obsession with her weight/breasts/ageing face/food or alcohol problems/inability to have a happy relationship" and usually ends up "sufficiently unhappy to be commissionable for another very similar piece."

As Sadie pointed out in her coverage of Jones's piece (Jones is pictured above), this kind of writing is bad for everybody. It's bad for the writers, who — if they're not totally manufacturing their distress for the reader's benefit — probably need therapy. But Freeman argues that it's actually worse for readers. For them, she writes, articles like Jones's "are surely just as dangerous and potentially influential as the photos of the skinny models the journalist professes to abhor."

Liz Jones is certainly troubling as thinspo, but Christa D'Souza is more complicated. Her experience with scar tissue, lopsided breasts, cancer, pain, and the total absence of any self-esteem boost from her new breasts isn't going to convince anybody to get implants. But it might convince some readers — male and female — that women are "self-hating, self-obsessed," and that it's normal to be like this.

One of the best pieces of feminist advice I've ever gotten is not to insult my own body in front of others. It perpetuates the idea that women should hate our bodies — that our inevitable physical flaws are worth valuable brain-space and conversational time. But pieces like Jones's and D'Souza's aren't just body-snark, they're self-snark: public expressions of low self-esteem so intractable that it lingers for years, harms relationships, and even endangers physical health. Freeman says editors assign these pieces because they have a "misogynistic image of what women are like," and that may well be true, but it's a vicious cycle. The more "boom and bust boob" stories we read, the more it seems that women are like D'Souza or Jones — irrevocably fucked up by aesthetic or social strictures they recognize are unhealthy but can't seem to escape. And the easier it is to assume that we, the female readers, can't escape them either.

These strictures aren't just about beauty — Zoe Lewis's I-chose-a-career-and-now-I'm-miserable screed and Lori Gottlieb's cautionary tale about how failing to "settle" caused her lifelong loneliness are basically cut from the same cloth, maybe just a little more highbrow. All these sob stories basically promulgate the notion that women can't have it all, or even much of anything, because even smart ladies who write for newspapers and magazines are basically unfulfilled and miserable.

The truth, of course, is much more complicated than that — even the disturbing Liz Jones is probably happier, at least at times, than she seems in her anorexia piece. Freeman is correct that most confessional journalism of the Jones/D'Souza variety is likely conceived with the goal of "getting a reaction from readers," and female misery seems to get hits. But editors who rely on self-loathing for numbers (and we're looking at ladymags too here) need to recognize that they're exploiting their female writers and giving their readers a twisted view of what it means to be a woman.

The New Confessional Journalism Turns Female Writers Into Tedious, Self-Hating Semi-Celebrities [Guardian]

Related: My Boom And Bust Boobs: What It's Like To Suffer The Agony Of Enlargement Surgery - Only To Realise You've Made A Terrible Mistake [Daily Mail]

Earlier: Lifelong Anorexic "Forced" To Eat Normally For 3 Weeks
Settle For Mr. "Just OK" - While Your "Marital Value Is Still At Its Peak!"
Feminism Is The Supposed Key To Women's Unhappiness
The Self-Flagellation Of The First-Person Beauty Piece

Yes, it's the Daily Mail. And Liz Jones has been party to a goodly amount of asshattery in her time. But she's a also writer who's actually bucked her publication's trend and written smart pieces in which, as she puts it, she's "vocal in campaigning for more diverse women on the catwalk, on the covers of magazines, and in adverts - encouraging women to love themselves as they are, not to conform to some outrageous, one-tiny-size-fits-all ideal of beauty." But, as she frankly admits, in her case that's theoretical.

I certainly don't practise what I preach and am in fact secretly proud that I'm still a size 8 [4 US -ed], a sample size. I love my concave stomach and I can't help, despite my beliefs, but regard women who are fat, who don't exercise, who gorge on things like Galaxy, as somehow lazy. They just don't try hard enough....That's the thing about being a borderline anorexic: it makes you feel superior, clean, morally unimpeachable.

There's nothing "borderline" about it. Perhaps because she's not currently hospitalized (she has been in the past) she thinks her life is not in the grip of illness but merely joyless and controlled. "I have never pigged out. I have never eaten a whole bar of chocolate, a whole banana, or even a whole avocado," she says with the strange mixture of self-awareness and defiant pride that characterizes the piece. But as the article continues, it becomes abundantly clear that the author is very ill - and that what she needs is not to be force-fed a bunch of heavy food, but to see a psychiatrist, and quickly.

Jones is perfectly ready to admit that her illness has impacted her life, but conflates neurosis and illness, veganism and ED, looking good in a bikini and being unable to menstruate, "being thin" with "being sick" with an ease that's alarming.

Being this way made me not just socially awkward, but unlovable: I've always hated being touched, hugged, naked, half-dressed on holiday, in case I'm found wanting, in case someone felt or saw an extra ounce of flesh. Being this thin meant I never got pregnant; I have menstruated perhaps half-a-dozen times in my life...In fact, I was always fearful of getting pregnant because the thought of my stomach growing fat, of stretch marks and a big bum, was not a price I was willing to pay for a child. The whole process seemed messy, dirty, greedy.

We are used to reading about people struggling with ED, perhaps, but not from the eye of the storm: usually these accounts come from the tentative safety of recovery, or from someone receiving some kind of treatment. This is different: Jones may be smart and self-aware, but she's so in the grip of her illness's distortions that she doesn't seem able to see what's appallingly clear to any reader. And why, in the name of heaven, does she then decide to "address" her illness by allowing her visiting sister to stuff her with scones and cream and cake for three weeks on end? "To learn pleasure in food" presumably - and to help offset her doctor's concerns about osteoporosis - but does anyone really think this kind of unbalanced 0-60 is going to do anything but produce more anxiety and self-loathing? Even Jones doesn't: as she begins the "experiment," she says, "And so, for the first time in 40 years, I'm going to try, for three weeks, to eat normally. To see if my world falls apart and I become fat, and bloated, and lazy." She adds, "Oh, and by the way, at the start of this odyssey I weigh 8st 2lb, which is slight for my 5ft 8in frame. What a silly, empty half-century achievement that is." She may know the second part is true, but that's hardly the same as believing it.

And what happens? Well, her sister puts her on some kind of grandmother's weight-lifting diet, heavy on the carbs, cream, and sugar. Not shockingly, Jones feels "incredibly fat, and lazy, and tired." There are up-sides: she enjoys some of what she eats, begins to take things a bit easier and "when I stand up, I don't see stars and black clouds. A first." Of course, she ends up putting on a few pounds, and she's "horrified." Not shockingly, taking on her semi-acknowledged ED in an incredibly drastic and unhealthy fashion, without professional guidance, has not achieved any miracles on her psyche.

I'm afraid I find all the extra flesh disgusting. I start imagining myself thin again, savouring how much I will enjoy losing this weight...The thought gives me focus. All this eating has proved what I thought all along: food makes you soft, lazy, undisciplined. And I realise my not eating is an excuse not to take part, and that part of my personality has not changed.

What's the most terrifying part of this? The self-deception? The fact that one of the few fashion-writer advocates for runway diversity actually has contempt for anyone over a sample size? That her publishers would run such a naked cry for help? (Okay, that doesn't shock anyone.) That some young girl could read this and, like Jones, believe this isn't a serious problem? It's hard to know what Jones' intent writing this is (with the Mail, a certain amount of gratuitous humiliation is apparently contractually obligatory; that shot - cropped by me - is intended to show off her new "gut") but one thing is for sure: this successful, mature woman's confession that "I'd rather be thin than happy or healthy" is not unique, and is cautionary. And Liz? Despite your avowal that "it's too late" for you? It's not.

For 40 years I have battled anorexia - so what happened when I had to eat normally for three weeks? [Daily Mail]

Earlier: Daily Mail Writer Says Drive To Be Thin Holds Women Back

Columnist Liz Jones Buys £585 Silver Leggings, Encourages Children To Go Hungry

Daily Mail Columnist: American Women Are "Mindbogglingly Stupid"

Of course, this wouldn't be a Daily Mail article without a few ham-fisted statements. Jones writes of hugging Gisele Bundchen, "as I crunched her tiny form in my arms, it was like hugging a broken umbrella." She then hints that Gisele may develop brittle bone disease. But you can't tell if someone's healthy by hugging them, and snarking on Gisele's body doesn't help anyone else's.

That said, Jones makes some pretty solid allegations against the beauty-industrial complex. She writes,

making us think about what we ate today and what we will eat tomorrow is a great way of ensuring women don't have the energy to succeed. We don't need 'gender pay audits' [...] to find out why on earth women are paid less than men.

The patriarchy probably isn't consciously using diet tips to keep us down, and there are many reasons for unequal pay, but it's no coincidence that women and not men are constantly pressured to fight against biology. Women's bodies are constantly described as flawed, in need of perfecting, and ever-deteriorating in a march of time that, if you believe advertisers, seems to bypass men. This focus on making our "bad" bodies "good" (and rest assured, they'll never be good enough) doesn't just distract us from more important things, it also underscores the notion that women are lesser. After all, we're the ones who need creams and shakes and cayenne pepper cleanses to make us less what we are. So while Gisele may be healthy, what she stands for — the preference for one female body type above all others, and the pressure to strive for an ever more perfect version of that type — definitely isn't.

Now I get it - stick thin means women will never have the energy to succeed [Daily Mail]

• Like everyone, Anna Wintour heard that rumor Nina Ricci was firing Olivier Theyskens. Her reaction? "How could you do this to me!" It's nice to know her concern rests with the possibly unemployed guy. [Blackbook]

• But does Cathy Horyn know something about that unconfirmed scuttlebutt we don't? The New York Times critic wrote on her blog that last week's Nina Ricci show "appeared to be Mr. Theyskens' swan song for the house," and that senior Louis Vuitton designer Peter Copping will replace the Belgian when his contract expires in October. [On The Runway]
• The Council of Fashion Designers of America awards will be at Lincoln Center's newly reopened Alice Tully Hall this year, breaking the tradition of using the New York Public Library and the Bryant Park Grill as venues. (This confirms the general upward-westerly trend in New York fashion: next season, all the shows will be at Lincoln Center instead of Bryant Park as well.) The awards, once again sponsored by Swarovski, will be given on June 15; nominations are due next week and the nominees will be announced on March 16. [WWD]
• The Wall Street Journal's fashion magazine has an excellent profile of LVMH head Bernard Arnault — otherwise known as the man who can make John Galliano say, meekly, "If you tell me so, sir." [WSJ]
• Aretha Franklin will part with her inauguration day hat. Although previously unsure if she could cede the fancy bit of millinery to a mere institution like the Smithsonian, she has announced that, indeed, that's exactly where it will go. After the period of its loan to the museum, Aretha's hat will be displayed permanently at Barack Obama's presidential library. [The Cut]
• Michelle Obama wore a shirt from Isaac Mizrahi's first — or, if you will, inaugural — collection for Liz Claiborne this week. It's expected to sell out, since wearing a shirt like Michelle Obama's will make you automatically as awesome as she is. [WWD]
• Even though neither the president nor the first lady wears fur, the inauguration caused a spike in D.C. fur sales in December and January, and an unusually high number of the people in the crowd were wearing items of fur. Since Obama's presidency began, a guy who works at the Kennedy Center coat check has seen "ridiculous" quantities of fur. People think this has to do with two things: the fact that the new president has brought so many Chicagoans to Washington, and Chicago is second only to New York City in fur sales, according to an industry group, and also the fact that African-American fur consumption is growing at a much faster rate than consumption of fur by whites. PETA doesn't like this very much. [WSJ]
• PETA, possibly noting the increase in fur on the runways this season, or possibly just riveted by the attention paid their assholery, is stepping up its protests at Paris fashion week. After creating a raucous crush of street harassment outside the Dior show, PETA protesters actually ripped the sleeve off French Vogue editor and regular fur wearer Carine Roitfeld's Balenciaga dress outside Jean Paul Gaultier. She was also wearing a lilac coat apparently made of goat fur; presumably that was the intended target. [Style.com]
• The animal rights organization is also launching a gruesome television commercial wherein Ricky Gervais, Pink, and Stella McCartney — who uses no leather or fur in any of her designs — speak as animals who've been skinned for the garment industry. [Telegraph]
• British journalist Jonathan Heaf tries to get to the bottom of the latest men's catwalk trend — leggings. So he calls up that guy from The Darkness, who tells him to "Step and thrust," and pulls on a pair of sparkly black Margiela leggings. Things seem to go well until his girlfriend tells him his pants hurt her eyes. [Guardian]
• The founder of Net-a-Porter.com, Natalie Massenet, is launching a new business. To be called TheOutnet.com, it'll sell out-of-season designer goods at a discount — but unlike sites like Gilt, it won't require a membership to shop. [Times of London]
• Liz Jones of the Daily Mail does not understand this person named "Agyness Deyn." In fact, Liz Jones thinks "Agyness Deyn" dresses rather strangely. Also, Liz Jones would like "Agyness Deyn" to get off her lawn. [Daily Mail]
• Dancing With The Stars' Cheryl Burke has a new line of fitness wear, available online this week for $46-85. [People]
• It's confirmed: Freida Pinto is to be a new face of Estee Lauder. [Telegraph]
• And, finally an appropriate celebrity product endorsement! Lindsay Lohan is launching a fake tanning lotion. [WWD]
• Nicole Richie's long-planned House of Harlow jewelry line has debuted; Richie went to L.A. boutique Kitson to promote it in person. [Fabsugar]
• Christian Audigier says the rumored partnership with Madonna won't be a clothing line with Ed Hardy, but "a completely new project" with a new brand. I know I am on the edge of my seat. [WWD]
• In London, L'Oreal is suing eBay for allegedly fostering the trade of counterfeit cosmetics and beauty products, in what is seen as a test case for online retail and the enforcement of trade agreements. [Financial Times]
• Daphne Selfe, age 80, still works as a model for photographers like Nick Knight and Mario Testino, and books the occasional Dolce & Gabbana campaign to boot. She says she's only become more striking since her hair greyed. [Telegraph]
• Interior designer Jonathan Adler created a real-life Barbie's dream house, in — where else? — Malibu. [AP]

While you could chalk up the fury over Winslet's mawkish acceptance speeches to cultural prejudice, this latest wave of vitriol, epitomized by a typically restrained offering from the Daily Mail's Liz Jones, is somewhat more mysterious. Much of it seems to center on Winslet's body — or, more accurately, the fact that she still pretends to be normal when she obviously puts Hollywood-level effort into keeping svelte. "It is the duplicitousness that enrages me and most other women I have spoken to," says Liz Jones, claiming that Winlet's repeated disingenuous claims to comfort with her image grow wearisome. What's more, Jones implies, the actress is ungrateful, biting the normal hand that fed her:

But Kate? Surely she is more normal than most? Why would she give up that unique appeal, as vital to her success as Angelina Jolie's lips and hips are to hers, and give up that appeal so completely and utterly so that she has become, in my opinion, as drippy and as impossibly vain as the rest of them?

There are several odd things going on in this critique. Perhaps most strikingly, why can't we leave actresses alone? Kate Winslet has not broken up marriages, made (many) terrible films, or swanned around in pelts — so we can't even pretend a measure of moral outrage. Has she done anything but been around for a long time and, as a result, said a lot of different things and looked a lot of different ways? And even then, we're not talking claims of virginity for life or bizarre, Xtina-style makeovers. There's a petty bitchiness to the criticism that feeds into the worst woman-on-woman stereotyping. Might some of us feel a measure of disillusionment that a Hollywood movie star wasn't, in fact, exactly like us? Winslet after all belongs to the small society of Hollywood types who we tacitly believe, despite the trappings of success, secretly nudge-wink understand that the industry is stupid, that most of what they're dong is vapid and that they could give it up in a moment. And, sorry, it's not the case. Most of us feel stupid when we have one of these moments of disappointment over a public figure we've never met. Others, apparently, write self-righteous columns.

Perhaps the strangest part of the diatribe is that Jones never once comments on Winslet as an actress. And isn't it this, after all, which has kept Winslet in public esteem? We get angry with Jennifer Aniston because her persona, onscreen and off, is the same: Winslet is actually an actress. Even those of us who found Titanic tripe, consider this year's award-winning turns to be overwraught, and have no great love for Little Children, have at least one Winslet performance we love, and can acknowledge that she's a risk-taking talented actress of tremendous versatility. Maybe she's not our "best friend" anymore, but she doesn't need to be: she's a performer, and a good one. (For best friends, we have Kat Dennings, who's obviously totally normal and exactly like us...right?)

Should Kate Winslet win an Oscar for the world's most irritating actress? [Daily Mail]

Earlier: English Not Amused By Kate Winslet's Acceptance Speeches

For the first time ever, you could see my face, and my neck, and my back. I still refused to look at myself in the mirror, but I did let him show me the back of my head, which looked lovely, all swingy instead of lank, like the creature that climbs up out of the well in the Japanese horror movie The Ring. 'You look . . .' started Paul. 'Don't tell me I look younger,' I said. 'Yes, you do. You really, really do.'

So here's where I tell you about my own adventures in hair care. I had long hair for years. Long, curly, unruly, heavy and pretty effing damaged hair, to be honest. When you're black and people tell you you have "good" hair and you should "never cut it" you tend to listen to them, even if you suspect otherwise. But I hated the idea that "girls" were "supposed" to have long hair. I dreamed of having hair that didn't drip all over my clothes when wet, that didn't take 2+ hours to blow dry (and all day to air dry); that didn't always look like a shaggy dog. I wanted "grown-up," easy, "sophisticated" hair. I just didn't think I could have it. And then I saw a model with the hair I wanted. It was Noemie Lenoir. And then I saw actress Thandie Newton, with the hair I wanted. And I grew more and more convinced I could let go of the burden of long hair. I got a job at a publishing company where a magazine needed a candidate for a makeover, and that person had to agree to get a haircut. I volunteered, and it was one of the best decisions I've ever made. It's been almost 9 years since I've had long hair, and every now and then I'll see long locks and have a pang of yearning. But did chopping off my hair change my life? Definitely. As Ms. Jones writes, "Because I felt like a different person — not the one who never got a single date in high school, not the one whose husband cheated on her — I acted differently, too, chatting to people when normally I would have been too shy." For me, it was all part of becoming an adult, of going after what I wanted and letting go of some childhood baggage. Now when I see women with super long hair on the street, I just want to "liberate" them — using a sharp pair of scissors.

Can A Haircut Change Your Life? Liz Jones Chopped Off Her Waist-Length Locks To Find Out [Daily Mail]

[Image via Oh! My God! I Miss You ]

There were lots of laughable things about Liz's collected columns, but the best has got to be her attitude towards spending. According to Private Eye, "The failure of Nirpal Dhaliwal to spend more than £375 on his gift for wife Liz Jones last Christmas was a major contributing factor in their subsequent separation." I guess £375 is chump change to a woman who spent £585 on a pair of leggings. On 12/31, Jones wrote: "You have to be careful when wearing leggings...I bought a silver pair by Les Chiffoniers for £585 to wear on Christmas day, but made sure I wore them under a sheer chiffon skirt and a gray cashmere sweater."

A mere week later, Jones has this to say about wasting money: "Rare is the school-age child in this country who has ever been allowed to experience hunger...I have a friend with three young children who admits to spending more than £400 a week on food. There is no longer any concept that you might make do towards the end of the week." Are you making do because you spent all the children's food money on leggings?

The next day Jones asks herself, "What will be my number one style resolution for 2008?" The answer: I must look at myself long and hard in a full-length mirror." Maybe this narcissist will never write another column because she'll be so busy gazing at herself! Ah, we can only dream.

Private Eye [Private Eye]
Liz Jones: I'm Finally, Finally, Finally Divorcing My Husband

Earlier:
Daily Mail Columnist: American Women Are "Mindbogglingly Stupid"