What do you think of when you think of Jameela Jamil? (I realise that I may be talking to the wrong demographic here, but bear with me, and I promise I’ll broaden it out.) I think of hair – lots and lots of shiny, black, beautiful hair. Personally – and I thought this long before telogen effluvium, caused by the trauma of spinal surgery, made half of mine fall out and turn the rest grey – I don’t believe I’ve ever seen hair as lovely, not even on the great stars of Hollywood like Veronica Lake. If ever anyone had ‘pretty privilege’ (a term which I find censorious and covetous; attractive people should get prizes, just like brainy ones do) it’s Jamil.
But, rather than glory in it, she’s forever looking for a reason to make herself be seen as a geek, an oddity, an outcast. Often she has done this by publicising her health problems (oops – I do this now!) including being partially deaf, having a shellfish and peanut allergy, being a coeliac, a ‘recovered’ anorexic, having ‘the invisible disease’ Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (also shared by the ghastly Lena Dunham, who I wish really was invisible), getting mercury poisoning from leaky fillings and damaging her spine in a car accident when she was 17, prompting her to pull out of her A-levels.
But if that doesn’t make her interesting enough, she’s now revealed herself as ‘sapiosexual’, informing the podcaster Anna Wolfe that she has never experienced instant attraction based purely on physical appearance. Instead, a ‘sapiosexual’ finds intelligence the most attractive aspect of a potential ‘partner’ and first gets to know them as a friend, seeing if they ‘click’ with humour and conversation, before jumping into bed with them. ‘I’m sapiosexual, so I’m attracted to anyone I find very funny and compelling and have a hormonal, like a pheromonal reaction to,’ she says.
Of course, what Jamil is describing is how most people feel most of the time – but because she’s part of the look-at-me cohort, she has to give it a fancy name, because Lord forbid she should ever come out as Completely Normal. By being a ‘sapiosexual’, she adds another string to her bow, somewhere between the peanut allergy and the mercury poisoning.
I think that Jamil has long been caught up in what I recently dubbed the ‘self-othering’ trend. ‘Othering’ is defined by the Cambridge Dictionary as ‘the act of treating someone as though they are not part of a group’. Prejudice has definitely been rife in our (and every other, of every creed and colour) society until comparatively recently. But very few people are prejudiced now and those who are a bit different are encouraged to let it ‘all hang out’ as the hippies used to say.
As this has happened, some look-at-me types actually miss the feeling of being ‘othered’ as it made them feel brave and special – so they present themselves as underdogs even when, as Jamil is, obviously having the time of their lives. The huge amount of adults being diagnosed with autism and ADHD who have gone through life doing what the rest of us do I’d include in this, and anyone who needs to publicly announce their sexuality.
Of course, what Jamil is describing is how most people feel most of the time
In a recent i Paper Q&A, Jamil gave a masterclass in self-othering. Amongst other things she identified as a failure (‘I never avoid failure. I run at failure. I’m like a moth to a flame… failure is where all my growth has come from’) and sexually unattractive (‘a very big part of my personality is inspired by Mr Bean. I have the sexual energy of Quasimodo and maybe that’s a subconscious self-protection’) both of which are patently untrue. Even when she admitted to liking That Hair, she had to spoil it by saying she could never wear it short as she has ‘an ugly neck’. She also claims to be ‘very into wrinkles – on everyone else and myself’. Yet her skin is as smooth as the proverbial baby’s bottom.
But the ultimate answer has to be the biggest and best example of self-othering twaddle I can ever recall reading: ‘I still don’t know how I’m invited into some of the rooms I’m invited into, like speaking at Congress about creating regulations around teenagers having access to diet products or being on Time Magazine’s 25 Most Influential list. I often wonder why I get invited on to some of these lists.’
What can one say to such an immense humble brag? I don’t believe it can ever be topped. If I give the impression that I dislike Jamil, I must stress I don’t. I merely find her preposterous, by being so beautiful and pretending that she’s not. But after all that blah about not having a gender or looks preference, she gaily burbles, perhaps not noticing the dichotomy: ‘I like a beard. Facial hair…someone who looks like a grown adult man… clean and doesn’t smell.’ She has been in a relationship with the singer-songwriter James Blake for more than a decade; Jameela, welcome to Normie World.
Of course, ultra-good-looking people should be allowed to express their feelings and opinions; I’ve seen Zoolander. But there does come a point where it invariably becomes perhaps a bit… greedy. Why not leave the controversialist gigs to those of us who have lost our allure? And swish That Hair one more time!
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