Stop talking about Samantha Brick!

I was born a feminist. Largely because I come from a family of strong women - on both sides - who taught me I can do anything and be anything I want. My incredible mum can turn her hand to anything, Auntie Norma is the cleverest person I know, Auntie Pauline fearlessly left home and built an amazing new life on the other side of the world and my Grandma, Jess, brought up four children (single-handedly for some of it), fostered others, ran her own business and somehow managed to find time to be a local councillor.

So it was with dismay that I watched the hoohah (I've never written that before - is that how it's spelled?) unfold over Samantha Brick's claim in the Daily Mail that women hate her because she's beautiful.

"She's not all that," some people said/tweeted/facebooked. Others pointed out that it was probably her over-inflated ego that lost her friends, not her nice hair. I admit I joined in. We gathered round my colleague's computer, read bits of the feature out loud and laughed. And then a thought occurred to me. Was this an elaborate test set by the women-hating Daily Mail? And had we all just failed it?

I'm a journalist. I know how it works. And I suspect this was an idea dreamed up by a couple of features eds on the paper. "Let's prove women hate each other," they'd have said. "And let's choose someone who's pretty but not stop-the-traffic stunning."

Up stepped Ms Brick. Why would she hold herself up to such ridicule, you may ask? Well, frankly, I'd write anything for a couple of hundred quid and a bag of Maltesers. I assume Ms Brick is the same. Freelance journalists tend not to be too fussy...

Ms Brick put pen to paper, the Daily Mail printed it, and then they sat back and watched as we all bayed for her blood. Epic fail, girlfriends. Epic. We've been played. By the Daily bloody Mail. And the worst thing about it is, it's not even true. Of course women don't hate their beautiful friends. We all love it when a friend glows with pregnancy, or wows 'em down the aisle on her wedding day. My own bridesmaids were jaw-droppingly pretty. I didn't sack them because of it.

So, like I do when my toddler's being naughty, let's give this no more attention. Let's ignore Samantha Brick and her silly article. Let's stop looking at the Daily Mail's website (oh, okay, I know it's really good for celeb gossip and pictures of awards and stuff. Let's see if we can limit it to once a day, eh?) and let's start celebrating each other. Women are all beautiful. And they rock. That's all.