The official LIZ JONES thread

Being childless won't drive me mad, but Mumsnet might: Why is it only women with no offspring who are fair game?

I always seem to leave the cinema after watching the latest romcom more depressed than when I went in. But I had thought Friends With Kids, from the team who gave us Bridesmaids, would be different.
The first 15 minutes are glorious. Two young friends go for dinner at the apartment of a married couple (Maya Rudolph and Chris O’Dowd). There is noise and mess, shouting and recrimination. The father is hiding in the bathroom while the mum, overweight and overwrought, is screaming at him to do stuff.
The harassed parents have no self-awareness, no concept of how rude they are being: they have forgotten to buy their friend a birthday present, let alone wipe the table free of sticky stuff, while the mum falls asleep sitting up.

But then, of course, it becomes a morality tale designed to keep flibbertigibbets in their place.
Birthday boy cannot see his platonic friend – also the mother of his child – as sexy, and dates instead a skinny, beautiful girl, played by Megan Fox. She doesn’t want children, because she works long hours and is portrayed variously in a face pack, and screaming during sex.
More...Being a 'helicopter mother' could land you with depression: Parents whose lives revolve around their children damage their health


In a restaurant, she turns up her perfect retroussé nose at the noise from kids at the next table, and the scales are lifted from our hero’s eyes. He confides he now finds her ‘ugly’. A relationship with a beautiful woman who doesn’t want children can only be ‘fleeting’.

Women without children are always fair game. When I wrote earlier in the week that neither I nor Marie Helvin have had children, therefore this might be a factor in our looking more or less acceptable in a bikini, all hell broke loose. I received quite a few emails along the lines of: ‘You haven’t had children because no man would want to f*** you, you shrivelled up, self-obsessed bitch.’

There was even an item on Woman’s Hour on Wednesday morning, examining new research in Denmark that says women who are unsuccessful undergoing fertility treatment are more likely to go mad in later life, and to suffer from alcoholism.
The Woman’s Hour website sums up the problem thus: ‘Given the financial, as well as the human cost of picking up the pieces, is it time for us to prioritise the availability of fertility treatment?’
YES! Let’s ignore the fact that it is the child-free woman who has to do all the WORK, and probably has no PENSION or TAX CREDITS or FRIENDS, because all our contemporaries hate our flat tummies. It can’t be those things that tipped us over the edge, it must be our lack of mummyhood. I swear this Woman’s Hour story is true, and not something from a French And Saunders sketch.
And how about the way Marie Colvin, a hugely successful, brave, hardworking war reporter, is portrayed in the latest issue of Vanity Fair? Colvin is necessarily tragic, not because she was murdered doing her job, but because she wasn’t a mum. What she was – of course, because what else is there to do if you’re not baking cupcakes? – was a heavy drinker. Did we have to know that? Don’t all journalists drink, especially the male ones?
But now, it seems the latest generation of baby-producing couples are made up of two women, not one.
Facebook’s chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, said recently that women who want careers should find supportive husbands who will share the domestic workload, and not ‘lean back’ from promotion out of fear they won’t be able to cope. And, ta da!, the new generation of mums, weaned by (part-time) career women to expect to rule the world without doing very much at all, have now bullied their husbands into taking up their rights of paternity leave.
I am being plagued by such a person at the moment, a man who is impacting on my life, finances and sanity, all because he is on paternity leave.
Why, if someone else’s personal lifestyle choice impacts on me, am I not expected to moan about it?
And if, as a single, child-free woman, you do moan about it, you are the devil incarnate.
As more men step up to the nappy, expect even less to get done. Britain will soon be populated by the types on Mumsnet, who feel the whole world revolves around them, like a brightly-coloured mobile.
I, meanwhile, will be left to endure the constant stream of abusive emails.
As I’ve already got 17 cats, perhaps I should go the whole hog and add a pointy hat to my byline picture.
 
http://www.STOP FUNDING HATE.co.uk/...s-areas-sent-LIZ-JONES-work-biggest-shop.html

You'll just have to click it I'm afraid because I'm on my phone.
 
This was my favourite line:

My name badge says ‘Everything’s £1’, a simple concept, but you’d be surprised how hard it is to get used to, especially for someone like me who can’t love anything that costs less than £5 unless it’s a loaf of artisan bread
Click to expand...
 
she obviously thinks it's all like a quirky fish-out-of-water comedy, but it's just PLAIN OFFENSIVE :D
 
http://i.STOP FUNDING HATE.co.uk/i/pix/2012/07/04/article-2168876-13E8DBEB000005DC-615_306x829.jpg

http://i.STOP FUNDING HATE.co.uk/i/pix/2012/07/04/article-2168876-13E8DB94000005DC-970_306x781.jpg
 
I scrolled down really fast and thought it was Jade Ewen. And no, I'm not sure how either.
 
Private Eye pointed out that earlier this month she was bitching about Madonna stripping off at the age of 54, and then she goes and does it herself. At exactly the same age :bad:
 
Is it possible to go through a mid life crisis in your mid 50s?
 
http://i.STOP FUNDING HATE.co.uk/i/pix/2012/08/11/article-2186863-1473CF66000005DC-193_468x313.jpg:D

http://www.STOP FUNDING HATE.co.uk/...ake-Answer-Of-course--toughest-bake-life.html
 
Last edited:
http://i.STOP FUNDING HATE.co.uk/i/pix/2012/09/29/article-2210486-152212DA000005DC-265_634x410.jpg
I thought tattoos were for sluts...until I was branded with a 4-inch high prancing horse.

:D
 
Last edited:
http://i.STOP FUNDING HATE.co.uk/i/pix/2012/09/29/article-0-153DF2E8000005DC-857_634x468.jpg

Has she not had a Vajazzle yet? That seems like an obvious thing for her to have jumped on. Get to it Liz.
 
She is amazing

I love how her column every week starts out "my secret famous boyfriend is angry with me for relaying his texts in this column..." before going on to do the exact same thing all over again.
 
COB said:
Liz investigates SUICIDE CHATROOMS.
Click to expand...

"My £2000 MacBook's webcam set up, I gently placed the noose, tied from organic woven hemp, around my neck, careful not to smudge my make-up (which I had bought from my favourite counter at Harrods earlier)."
 
This is from a few days ago and an absolute treat to read:
http://www.STOP FUNDING HATE.co.uk/...ds-depressing-message-fans.html#ixzz284hucs00
Just 24 years old, and having made her name with a band most Britons have never heard of, Tulisa Contostavlos has suddenly positioned herself as the face of Saturday night TV.
Installed by Simon Cowell as a judge on ITV’s X Factor, she is now a role model for millions of young girls who slavishly follow the show — many of whom are still at primary school but who watch the programme with their families every week.
Now, Tulisa has capitalised on this sudden rise in her profile by writing an autobiography about her troubled upbringing in North London. And it is enough to make any sane parent’s hair stand on end.
When I read it this week, the first thing that struck me was the price: £20. Do the girls who are the target audience for this book really have that kind of money?
Then there was the photograph on the cover: she is depicted as having the unformed face of a toddler. This is deliberate, of course: no tattoo, no nose stud, no joint hanging from that innocent rosebud mouth (in the book, she talks of regularly smoking cannabis). Just over-large blue eyes, like a doll.
The image is seductive, certainly. And dangerous. Just like her story. So why is it such a bad thing to print, at her grand old age, the autobiography of a pop star?
Aren’t we supposed to feel sorry for a young woman who, as she reveals so graphically, was brought up by a mother with mental health problems, was bullied at school, drugged and date raped at 16, was a member of a gang, but overcame it all to find success, despite having no qualifications at all?
Unfortunately, the impressionable young women who will lap up the book, Honest, will not see it for the improbable, chance-in-a-million story it is. Nor will they be able to read between the lines and see into the future (viz, that success rarely lasts, that money does not always bring happiness).
The book is dangerous because young women will believe the exact same thing could happen to them — that one day they could be presenting The X Factor, too. Because most young women from Tulisa’s background — indeed, from any background — do not get to have books ghosted for them.
In her memoir, she writes about almost losing her virginity aged 12, saved only by the fact that she was so drunk she vomited on her assailant. It finally happens when she is 14, and with an older boy named Jono, who is her drug dealer, no less — at a bed and breakfast in North London.

The face of Saturday night TV: Tulisa stars as one of the judges on ITV's hit reality show The X Factor
‘He didn’t ask if I was ready to take that step or if I was OK with what was happening, he just went ahead and undressed me and we had sex. Afterwards, I felt slightly numb, knowing I had just lost my virginity. Was that it?’ (For good measure, she adds that at the time she was ‘on and off’ with another boy as well.)
There is no self-awareness or responsibility in that account: no mention of birth control, no fear that she might be pregnant, or infected with an STD.
I looked hard and nowhere in the book is the word ‘condom’ used. This is because her account has no thought for the girl who might read it and think, OK, this is normal to let this happen. There are no consequences, only stardom.
Tulisa writes, too, about self-harming, from the age of 14 until she was 17, and the high it gave her: ‘When I first cut my arm with the scissors, there was a part of me that enjoyed it . . . the sharp pain felt kind of good . . . I started slashing madly at my wrists, causing the blood to pour rather than seep.’
She says herself the idea to harm herself only came when she met another young girl whose wrists were bandaged. Tulisa says she also suffered from a compulsion — called dermatillomania (skin picking) — which meant she would use tweezers, clippers and her own fingernails to cause ‘catastrophe on my face, leaving gaping, weeping holes that must have looked horrendous’.
But rather than also write that such self-harm never works, that you can ruin your skin for ever more (surely the only deterrent young girls care about, and another reason her airbrushed cover is so duplicitous), she finishes: ‘I was lucky, my skin always healed quickly without too much scarring.’

For all her persona of being a tomboy, and ‘in control’, Tulisa’s relationship with men is stuck in the Victorian era: she put up with violence, but could never for one second exist without a man, even after she has suffered grievously at a man’s hand.
The most horrifying section of the book is the description of the date rape. She describes how, when she was 16, she went to a rave with a group of local boys. They were all ‘mates’. One boy slipped a drug into her drink.
‘I was dizzy, could hardly stand up . . . I remember waking up, in the back of a cab. I blacked out again. When I came round, I was in a bedroom, my so-called friend was on top of me, having sex with me. I couldn’t even move, let alone get up or speak.’
Next morning, she woke up in this lout’s bedroom, and his mum was standing over her, with a cup of tea. She says she was ‘embarrassed and ashamed’. She never spoke about it, or told the police. ‘I’d like to see someone try that with me now!’ she concludes.
Yet she continued to date wildly unsuitable, domineering men, who metaphorically rape her in other ways, such as the release of the infamous sex tape by an ex-boyfriend called Justin Edwards — a DJ, of course — in March of this year.
At first Tulisa thinks such a tape impossible, and then, she remembers: ‘I recalled having a terrible hangover after a drunken night with Justin. I remembered him . . . filming me [performing a sex act] because he thought it was funny, and me yelling at him to stop.’
But still she plays the victim, unable to see a pattern. She was drunk aged 12; four years later, at that rave, she was drinking again, which indirectly led to her being date raped. If she does not learn from her behaviour, then how will her readers?
On stage in The X Factor, she is all about control: the strong, raised salute with her right arm which reveals the tattoo that reads: ‘The female boss.’
But she has never once stopped dating men who leach from her, or been part of a drive to stop young women from binge-drinking. Indeed, her book is a wildly retro, pre-feminist portrayal of what it is to be a woman now.
It’s interesting, too, to see how soon after becoming famous she abandoned the tomboy outfits for the retro, man-pleasing Hollywood-style glamour she invests in now, all Veronica Lake blonde quiff and pillarbox red mouth. She’s turned herself into a walking Barbie doll, her past seemingly erased.
I had wondered why Simon Cowell chose this girl to be a judge on his talent show, given her paucity of a track record in the public eye — a few hit singles, a couple of tours; her music never made it in the U.S. — but now I can see exactly why.
She is like a worm on the end of a fishing line, a mirror held up to all those other girls out there who believe they are, or are going to be, stars just because they have a tan and fake eyelashes.
There is a big difference between a cautionary tale and the one Tulisa’s book presents, which will encourage her fans to believe that no matter how much you drink, or play truant, you will be ferried around in a limo wearing an expensive dress before lounging by a pool.
The problem is that too many young women, including Tulisa, have developed a sense of entitlement, however limited their talent or willingness to work hard, let alone get out of bed early.
Take what Tulisa says in her book about when her band, N-Dubz, started to make it: ‘We had fought so long for success.’ The woman was barely 18! This new brand of pop is so much worse than the Spice Girls, who at least had solidarity, wore sugary pink and laughed, whereas in this book Tulisa sees other young women as rivals to be fought.
Click to expand...
 
The amount of girl-gang violence is graphic and vile: so many times Tulisa is beaten up or attacked with broken bottles, but her solution is never to stay at home and practise her so-called music, but to become ever tougher, to fight back.
She recalls one night when her gang of girls — as the only white member she was known as ‘Whitey’ — fought with a rival crowd. One of her allies, ‘one of the hardest bitches I’ve ever met’, removed one of her Timberland boots and starts hitting a girl in the face with it.
‘When the girl was crying and bleeding on the floor, the girl from our gang started screaming at her: You f****g b*****d! Look! You’ve got blood all over my new boots.’
When they were not fighting, they were stealing, both from men they mixed with and from women in ‘the richer areas of London, like Hampstead or Swiss Cottage’. Tulisa recalls how they would snatch handbags while she would be ‘the lookout, or the one who hid the bag once it had been stolen’. She admits to feeling guilt afterwards, but explains her actions away by saying: ‘I felt safe with these girls . . . I didn’t want to give that up, even though it meant committing crime.’
Who do I blame for all this? I don’t blame Tulisa’s parents — her musician father left home when she was nine. The only commendable part of the book is how it explores what it is like to be the child of someone with mental illness.
OK, so do I blame singers such as Rihanna and Tulisa for the effect they have on their young fans, making them believe they have to be pretty, and sexualised, and aggressive and confident and mouthy?
No, I don’t. I blame the record industry for not caring about neither their ‘artists’ nor their fans. They care only about money.

I’d have got these record labels and radio stations to have helped foot the bill for the damage done during last year’s riots.
But there is one line in the book that really made me laugh: ‘I find it easy to get on with people on the whole.’ I met Tulisa, once. I was with the X Factor contestants she was mentoring in the make-up room backstage during the semi-final of last year’s series.
About two hours before the live show, Tulisa turned up in a tracksuit, an entourage of young men in her wake. She came in the room, blanked me, said ‘Hi!’ to her protegees, and then promptly disappeared into her dressing room. She even watched the dress rehearsal via the flatscreen TV in her room (I wonder that she could see it past all the flowers), and only communicated with her singers via email.
Why wasn’t she telling them what this book fails to do: ‘You know it could all be over in minutes, this fame stuff.
‘Are you sitting A-levels? What I need most as a singer is not lash extensions, but a degree in accountancy. Trust no one, least of all a man .  . and, above all, don’t drink and take drugs: they will destroy you.’
Perhaps if she had done that, I’d have a little more respect for her.
Click to expand...

Eileen is going to be furious at all this.
 
For every argument Liz makes that begins to approach what you might consider a reasonable point-of-view, she says five or six things that are just so horrendously offensive.
 
No likey.

Love that Zoiey has no unnecessary letters in her name.
 
Last edited:
Please say she's in it for the long haul :D I want to see someone get lumbered with her.
 
She tells me she is 23, although ‘I tell everyone I’m 21’, a model for magazines such as Nuts and Zoo, and that her name is Zoe. I write it down. ‘No!’ she shouts, peering at my notebook. ‘It is spelt Z-O-I-E-Y!’
Click to expand...

:disco:
 
Thiopia is AMAZING. I didn't watch it this week, did she get picked?
 
Did anyone read her article last weekend about going to Haiti*? Quite tame by Liz's usual standards, but there were some amazing shots of her SLUTTING IT UP in an off-the-shoulder hoodie next to poor Haitian blanket weavers and also a desperate search through a shanty town to find a photogenic enough child to pose with her :daf:

*(we found the magazine discarded on a train, HONEST)
 
Perhaps her greatest work to date:

http://www.STOP FUNDING HATE.co.uk/...e-Now-flees-city-bids-ferocious-farewell.html
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Users who are viewing this thread

Total: 2 (members: 0, guests: 2)
Back
Top Bottom