{"id":1749,"date":"2007-12-18T08:36:59","date_gmt":"2007-12-18T15:24:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=1749"},"modified":"2007-12-18T08:54:15","modified_gmt":"2007-12-18T15:42:15","slug":"having-observed-females-on-both-sides-of-the-atlantic-our-correspondent-claims-british-women-are-unkempt-and-lazy-about-grooming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=1749","title":{"rendered":"Having observed females on both sides of the Atlantic, our correspondent claims British women are unkempt and lazy about grooming"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/women.timesonline.co.uk\/tol\/life_and_style\/women\/beauty\/article3029451.ece\">Tad Safran writes for the Times of London<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p>I was set up with Sophie (I have changed the name) by married friends. Sophie was a truly beautiful girl I used to be friends with, but hadn&rsquo;t seen in 15 years. I was surprised to hear that she was still single and was excited to meet her again. At dinner, I found myself sitting opposite something that surely would have been happier hunting for truffles in the forests of France or grazing on the grassy marshlands of Canada. My friend&rsquo;s wife had told me that Sophie still had the body of a 20-year-old. Maybe she did . . . dismembered in her freezer at home. She certainly didn&rsquo;t have it on her skeleton.<\/p>\n<p>I&rsquo;m not saying that I&rsquo;m the greatest prize out there, but at least I&rsquo;d put on a clean shirt, shaved and brushed my teeth. Sophie tumbled into the house looking like a refugee from Hurricane Katrina. She smelt like the R&amp;D lab at Philip Morris. Her outfit was about as sexy as a half-pound of ground meat. And, surely, the only time she&rsquo;d seen the inside of a gym was to ask directions to the nearest pub. I was hurt that my friends thought I&rsquo;d be remotely interested in Sophie. Even more insulting was when my friend&rsquo;s wife pointedly said: &ldquo;Tad, I hear you just sold a screenplay to the producers of <em>My Big Fat Greek Wedding<\/em>.&rdquo; I could not believe it. She was selling ME to HER!? I sat there watching Sophie tuck into a second huge plate of shepherd&rsquo;s pie and realised why no self-respecting American girl consumes carbohydrates after 2pm. I&rsquo;m not surprised Sophie was having trouble finding a boyfriend. Regardless of whether she was interested in me or not, she was unwittingly sabotaging her own chances with any man.<\/p>\n<p>It&rsquo;s not entirely Sophie&rsquo;s fault, I suppose. My friend&rsquo;s wife didn&rsquo;t manage my expectations. Maybe it would have been better if she had said: &ldquo;Tad, you enjoyed <em>The Lord of the Rings<\/em>. Would you like to meet an orc?&rdquo; Why is it the case (and I&rsquo;m generalising here) that British women spend so little time and effort on looking after them-selves? Take, for example, Helena Bonham Carter, a spectacular example of the English rose. And yet she is regularly photographed looking like a bag of spanners. Can you imagine a similar photo of the American equivalent, say Michelle Pfeiffer? Absolutely not.<\/p>\n<p><!--adsense--><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tad Safran writes for the Times of London: I was set up with Sophie (I have changed the name) by married friends. Sophie was a truly beautiful girl I used to be friends with, but hadn&rsquo;t seen in 15 years. &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=1749\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[210],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dating"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1749"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1749\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}