The Top 40

Re. Mrs. Brick, I find it interesting that she has framed the entire discussion such that any female who does not agree that she's strikingly beautiful can not possibly be speaking from any objective standard, but must instead be motivated by pure jealousy.

Certainly, there may even be an element of jealousy among some of her detractors. However, I suspect the true source of all the hate is the impression of pure self-aggrandizement. Even if her beauty were so striking that she deserved to grace the covers of popular magazines without the assistance of Photoshop, it would be in extremely poor taste for her to write a full-page article about her own hotness and inability to keep the men away. The fact that she isn't up to such a standard, based on the photos in her original article, just makes her look like a self-absorbed nitwit.

As an artist, I enjoy looking at beautiful women. And a beautiful woman animated by inner grace is an inspiration, not a personal threat. This woman, though... meh.

My guess is that she is rejected by other women not for her looks but for the fact that she is an annoying twit. She could probably get away with it better when she was younger, and men did tend to swoon over her a little. Forty-one is not old -- at least not to me -- and some women that age are unbelievably attractive, but mostly, as Julie says, they are the ones who have cultivated inner beauty.

Mrs. Brick is not one of those. Her sell-by date is past, the physical looks are fading, and she is still a pain in the ass.

So true: "When it comes to sex appeal, women are notorious poor judges of other women.

The most beautiful woman in the world can lack sensuality while a woman of middling beauty might be filled with it.

On this score most adult women know that their own sensors are not necessarily telling them the truth. They have learned to key off of the reactions they observe in men.

A woman will observe the way men react when another woman walks into a room and when they converse with her. She might look homely to them, but if men are responding to her they will find her threatening."