You're just a lonely star.

There has been one news story dominating my Facebook and my Twitter today, and once again it is nothing potentially threatening to life as we know it; but a feature by a woman called Samantha Brick.

The feature entitled "There are downsides to looking this pretty: Why women hate me for being beautiful" had created endless amounts of complaints on both my newsfeeds so I decided that I would read it. When I did, I was genuinely surprised at how this woman seems to view herself. I am fully supportive of women who have confidence in themselves because let's face it, not many women are any more thanks to the recent media portrayal. But does no one else believe that this is stepping straight over the line of confidence and straight into arrogance?

The whole feature, is basically about how this woman receives gifts on a regular basis purely because of her "pleasing appearance and pretty smile".

After getting shamefully irate over how this woman seems to view herself; I decided to see if she had a twitter (because let's face it, who doesn't these days?) which only led me to become more frustrated. Not to say that Mrs Brick isn't a pretty woman for a 40 year old, but she just screams for attention with tweets such as "To all my new male followers: I'm flattered, but I'm not surprised." Despite the fact she concludes her story about how she wishes she weren't so beautiful so she could fit in.

Obviously I do understand that her whole article rambles on and on about how women are jealous of her for being beautiful, and as I am female I'm sure that she would say that this whole post is written out of pure jealousy. (Trust me, I'm a 20 year old woman; I am not particularly jealous seeing as I have yet to get any wrinkles). Even if I were jealous of Mrs Brick, I can assure you that it wouldn't be over her good looks but for her jobs in the media industry. That being said, at least we can rule out women being jealous of how modest she is.

Since today's post on The Mail Online, Samantha Bricks has become something of an "Online Celebrity", so I decided to look back at some of her previous articles and noticed that despite the fact in her recent post she assures as that she is not smug, and she is no flirt; there is a post from August 2011 under the title "I use my sex appeal to get ahead at work... and so does ANY woman with any sense."

Now I have to admit that this article hit me a little harder than the previous one, not only because once again she has spent the whole article talking about how pretty she is, (which is a common occurrence throughout her columns) but she clearly states that NO woman can become successful in her profession unless she flirts (or sleeps) her way there.

I find this more disgusting than anything, for I believe that women have fought to get to where they are today. Women have died. Yet this historical idea that women are not as good as men in their workplaces still exists, and apparently even women think so too. While I am not completely naive to what goes on when you want a job in the media industry, I refuse to believe that I will get to where I want in life by being the sex pet of my boss.

Yet if I go further back to an article written in 2010, I find a story called "How TV is run by sexist pigs who only want one thing (and it's not ratings): A shocking inside account from a former TV exec". This story basically tells the audience about how she has made her way up the career ladder through sheer hard work.

My point is, that once I'd worked out how much this arrogant woman contradicts herself, I got slightly less angry and felt more pity. Pity at the woman who seems to believe that women truly hate her because she is incredibly unlucky for being beautiful (when in fact she is nothing more than average looking). Pity for the woman who doesn't realise that the reason people probably don't really like her because they are disgusted by her obvious lack of morals, lack of consideration for other people and the fact that she still believes that the only way you will become successful is if you are pretty or give your bosses sexual favours.

Panic at the pumps.

In light of the recent news stories of the potential fuel strikes, the government has advised people with half a tank of petrol to make their way to a petrol station and fill up, in case of emergencies. This has apparently resulted in panic buying, and a large amount of news stories about how bad the traffic is because of this. Yet on my way out of a local Tesco’s earlier today (when if I’m honest, I didn’t really know the whole story), I saw nothing unusual. No extensive queues along the road, no one panicking about whether they’re not going to have enough petrol to last them.

Now, I know I come from Essex; a county which is frequently looked down upon due to its supposed lack of intelligence, but when I look at it from this angle it does appear that my small town is choosing not to worry about the warnings that the government has issued. In fact, I’ve seen many people on my Facebook feed making jokes about the situation, for example “If you say 'gullible' really slowly, it sounds like go fill your car up.” As well as a trending topic on Twitter: Ghetto ways to save gas”. This makes me wonder whether people are actually taking this “crisis” as seriously as the press is making out.

I know that I don’t drive, I don’t have a car, and I don’t have a license. So as a pedestrian it doesn’t really affect me, and drivers reading this could be thinking “she doesn’t even know what she’s talking about” but honestly, around my town I have seen no signs of panic whatsoever, in any of the petrol stations that I have gone past.

If any major companies were to announce a strike, they would have to announce it publicly around seven days before that date, meaning that since there has been no official date mentioned as yet, there is no current problem. As for the apparent mass panic around the whole of Britain, I think that it’s a myth; maybe there are the few odd stations that have slight hysteria, but all in all I believe that the government have made people panic over absolutely nothing.

Society Killed The Teenager.

We are society. Society didn’t kill the teenager. We did.

We are a generation of teenagers with access to almost anything in the world. We have everything ahead of us, and basically everything handed to us on a silver platter. We are able to find almost any piece of information on the internet, and with Web 2.0 we are able to interact with it with comments, sharing and an opinion.

These comments and opinions are the new society.
People have problems, and these are sometimes triggered by the fact that people find it acceptable to intrude in their lives; leaving comments of malice and general hatred.

People say that “Society killed the teenager”, but they don’t do anything to stop it. They call people fat and throw hateful words around as though they are fashionable and don’t have consequences, and when the consequences arise they deny it. They pass it as the demons of society, when in fact we are the demons. We are the people who hate; we are the people who fight, and we are the people feel that it is ok to go on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter and judge someone for the way that they express themselves.

We wonder why people feel the need to self-harm, we criticise those who have serious issues such as eating disorders; and yet we are doing nothing to help them. We are not telling these people that it is ok to feel a little down every now and then, we are not telling people that we are here for them and that there is always someone to talk to. Someone cares; whether it is your family, your friends, your colleagues or your teachers.

Much like serious issues as those mentioned above, our society is becoming a problem, and the first step of recovery is to admit this. Stop hiding behind words that are making excuses for what is happening to our world. The fighting, the hatred and the problems aren’t ever going to go away.
We are society. And we are killing ourselves.