Beauty bashing - it's not on

It’s probably quite obvious, but health and beauty is kind of our thing. Get The Gloss is founded on the principle that you can have brains and beauty. The two are by no means mutually exclusive, and the same goes for looking fair while getting fit. Oh, and appearing ravishing while raising funds for charity. In fact, I know it’s a shocker, but you can achieve a great many heroic and groundbreaking feats while wearing make-up. It’s those that think that you can’t that are the shallow party in this clever clogs vs cosmetics debate; enter the Daily Mail’s very own ‘Rita Skeeter’ Jan Moir.

The Daily Mail is hardly revered for its empowering, reasoned and gender-neutral content, but Jan really lowered the tone earlier this week in her diatribe against Welsh classical singer Katherine Jenkins. In what was most likely a deliberately outrageous onslaught to increase click rates, the detestable Moir attacked Katherine Jenkins from all angles, but particularly vis-à-vis her visage.

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While Moir acknowledged the £25,000 that Jenkins has raised so far Macmillan nurses and her ‘respectable’ performance in the marathon, she nevertheless dismissed Katherine’s participation in the event as another of many ‘dumbfounding public appearances’. According to Moir ‘she did it looking as fresh and crisp as a frosted, coral-coloured rose from beginning to end’. We’re going to put this out there - that doesn’t even make sense Jan. Just… what? Next on the critique checklist was Katherine’s (healthy, normal) complexion:

“Her biscuit maquillage was flawless. Hosed on, as they say in trade. The building trade.”
Industrial strength bitchy quips attacking Katherine for her apparent ‘sooty false eyelashes and sweeping, coal black eyeliner’ came to a crescendo with judgemental Jan’s assertion that ‘perhaps the only miracle was that she didn’t run backwards, in high heels, while singing the Welsh national anthem at the top of her voice’. Words fail us.

Luckily, the ever gracious Ms Jenkins has done the talking in this case, tweeting Jan and wishing her ‘love and happiness’. It wasn’t all marshmallows and candy floss you’ll be pleased to hear, as Katherine took this golden Twitter opportunity to take down her short sighted antagonist in an admirably civil manner:

“I adore and support other women and I only wish you could do the same. I ran on Sunday in memory of my father & to raise money (£25,000) for an excellent charity (@macmillancancer) who helped him when he was dying.”

In defence of her marathon ‘maquillage’, Katherine stated that:

“I ran in sunglasses because it was sunny. I tied my hair back because I expected to sweat. As if you had some insider knowledge you wrote I was wearing eyeshadow, eye liner & lip gloss. Wrong again-none of the above- I had Vaseline on my lips, handed to us by St John’s Ambulance on our way round the route…”

Katherine rounded off her eloquent social media statement by offering to sponsor Jan for a future marathon. Boom. Since Katherine’s proffering a Facebook group has been set up urging Jan to do just that as ‘now it’s time for Jan to get a bit sweaty’. Oh yes it’s time; we suggest Jan whips out the joggers post haste.

Unfortunately this isn’t the first time that jealous Jan has flown in the face of feminism and common decency to attract attention. Last year she criticised Hillary Clinton for appearing in public without make-up, while Claudia Winkleman has also fallen foul of Moir’s pen of poison, saying of the fabulously fringed presented that her ‘world-view must be that of a gonk trapped inside a post-box, peering through the slit’.

I too happen to have some blunt, dark bangs as you may already know, so now Jan, the bashing got personal. I’m no gonk, I’m a Glossy and go after us if you dare. But Jan, you won’t win, and to be honest you’re not even in the race. You’ve been officially disqualified from the sisterhood.