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American and British women

The screenwriter, Tad Safran (whoever he is), has penned a rather coarse and unpleasant item about the physical pros and cons of British vs American women. It says something about the state of the Times (of London) that they would print this sort of thing at all. There may be some limited truth in his observation that women (or for that matter, men), spend different amounts of time on personal grooming and appearance. But in my experience of travelling to the States, I have seen enough examples, from both sexes, of scruffiness/smartness to reckon that his generalisations are BS.

This is a rather more uplifting study on the wonderful womenfolk of these Anglosphere nations.

Note: in my original item I said Safran was an actor, not a screenwriter. Mea culpa.

22 comments to American and British women

  • Nick M

    The Times really has lost the plot. The website is awful. Why is there so much religion on it? Needless to say I haven’t bought a paper version for quite a while.

  • RAB

    What a vile piece of fiction.
    $700 dollars a month?
    The only way the likes of Roseanne Barr when she lived in the trailer park, would get their hands on $700 of beauty care would have been to shoplift it.
    Different Nations do and do not have style though.
    The undisputed winners (asking for it there aint I?) are the Ladies of Italy. Even the Mamma Mias look magnificent! And I bet they dont spend 700 bucks a month on it either. It just comes naturally.

  • I don’t know about the UK, but in the US it really depends where one looks. This guy is based in LA – I rest my case. I visited London while living in a small town in MO, and I was amazed at how elegant and well-groomed the English women looked. But I also got the same impression when visiting NYC and Chicago (I wish I could say Tel Aviv as well, but I am afraid not so much). It really is a no brainer, I think. Regardless, this guy does sound like a nasty piece of work.

  • Oh, and if you have not seen the women in the cities of Italy, you have not seen anything.

  • Johnathan Pearce

    Alisa, I married a Maltese, lovely woman of strong Italian extraction, so I can endorse your remark 100%!

    Seriously, though, I really wonder what the f**k a supposed quality newspaper like the Times thinks it is doing.

  • Episiarch

    This guy is from Los Angeles. That is the pool of women he asked. Nothing more needs to be pointed out.

  • Matthew

    This is the only valid study about comparative female pulchritude I’m aware of.

  • Hhmmm… bitchy comments about women on both sides of the Atlantic, preference for women with the figures of teenage boys, implied boasting about how many women he has slept with…

    Can anyone say “closeted”?

    (Minor nitpick: the Times article and imdb both describe Mr. Safran as a screenwriter.)

  • slugger

    When I was 18, I found that 90% of all women were desirable. I now realize that this was a result of hormones and immaturity. At age of 62, I am older and wiser and find 95% desirable.

  • Los Angeles and New York are not representative of American female beauty, I’m rather sorry to say. Although, how much of the beauty there is genetic is anyone’s guess.

  • CFM

    Safran is a putz. Some Brit chick probably failed to be impressed by his Hollywood status and turned him down. Now he’s having a tantrum. Putz.

  • Nick E

    As a resident of Los Angeles I can only say this: as far as looks, the women here may be a 9 of 10 on average. As far as personality, education, or intelligence . . . well, it would be unfair to assign a number. That is, it would be unfair to the number to associate it with such soulless, uneducated, and dull women.

  • Slugger: as Alan Parson put it…

  • Kim du Toit

    The guy is a showbiz groupie, whose primary contact with women is showbiz chicks in NY and LA.

    That’s what we researchers and statisticians call a “biased sample”.

    Next topic.

  • Have some sympathy for the man, he is probably quite young and clueless (IMDb lists 3 movies, 2005-2006) and now has to face a lifetime of neither USA nor UK girls wanting to date him….and all for the sake of a bit of goofy humor.

    The blame really goes to the organ that decided to publish this item. I’m guessing the editor who made that decision was a UK girl, rubbing her cruel little hands with glee.

  • Sam

    I laughed when I read the article, but it was deeply offensive to both American and British women. I don’t have much experience to comment on the truthfulness of his claim since I live in a medium-sized city in flyover country and try to avoid LA and NY at all costs. And I have never been to Britain. One female commenter on the Times site said that it is no wonder he is single. I would have to agree. He seems to have a thinly-disguised contempt for women in general based on this article.

  • The author is 100% right in ways he doesn’t even know.

    The fact is, not looking after yourself is common to all western women. But like others above me have said, he happens to live in Los Angeles which is the only exception.

    Compare the women of London to those of Hong Kong or Singapore and see who comes off looking second best. Beauty and fashion is a religion there. The only religion really.

  • manuel II paleologos

    I didn’t really get any further than the sentence “UK girls, in my opinion, are the greatest natural beauties in the world”.

    What’s interesting about that is imagining just where he actually has been that leads him to that conclusion. Perhaps Greece and Portugal on his holidays, and maybe Ireland, as well as obviously the USA and perhaps parts of the middle east. Hard to imagine anywhere else.

    Can’t possibly have been to any Scandinavian countries, can’t possibly have been to Holland, never ventured as far as France or Italy, probably not India and certainly nowhere in the far east or indeed Africa or South America.

    Poor chap. Needs to get out more.

  • Donna

    That twit undoubtably made people who already nurse a grudge against Americans hate us just a little bit more.

    As a Yank in flyover country, I found his assertion that American women openly criticize each other’s appearance ridiculous. I don’t falsely compliment people, but I don’t ever tell them I hate what they have on. And I dated my ex for 8 months before I found out what he earned – he told me because he was estatically happy about his raise.

    There are beauties, average-looking women and plain women everywhere. Although I have to agree with the above posters: In London, I felt attractive, in Ireland (in pre-Celtic Tiger days), I felt positively glamourous – and in Italy, I felt dowdy within 10 minutes of getting off the plane.

  • UK girls, in my opinion, are the greatest natural beauties in the world

    He has clearly never been to Bratislava, Prague or Zagreb.

  • Chris Oliver

    This is rather off your point, Johnathan, but I mention it anyway. Australians – Melburnians more than others -have a (to my British eyes) wonderfully straightforward approach to prostitution, or sex work as we’re trained to call it. On the highway coming in to Melbourne there are billboards announcing The Boardroom, Australia’s Number One Brothel or boasting about the facilities (indoor pool and full-size snooker tables) at The Daily Planet brothel. Prostitutes clock on and clock off, and pay tax, just like other workers – except they get paid substantially more than others doing semi-skilled work.

    This item, from a report of committal proceedings against a judge who seems to have perjured himself, caught my eye:
    Not all those involved in the Einfeld case have had a bad week. Take the sex worker Marie Christos, who announced her arrival at the start of this week’s proceedings with an unusual introduction: “I’m the prostitute in the case.”
    The lurid publicity surrounding Ms Christos’s dalliance with Einfeld’s solicitor, Michael Ryan, caused the former McClellands partner to quit not only the case but the profession.
    Ms Christos, 44, spent several thousand dollars on designer clothes – a new dress for every day of the hearing – although she saved on underwear as she claims she wears none.
    Ms Christos has been inundated with emails from men who have “googled” her name on the internet. She said she had no plans to follow them up as she has a discreet list of male clients and no wish to expand.

  • Liyla

    I truly believe that British women have a more proper look to them but their faces are so solem. Not like the fun and cheerful faces of American Women.