Anna Blundy

Saying ‘sorry’ is mostly wicked and usually irrelevant, says Anna Blundy. People should not be allowed to dump their inner shame so easily There is no end, of course, to all this human erring. And we know forgiveness is divine — look at Nelson Mandela. But, for the non-divine of us, genuine forgiveness is largely impossible. This is, in my view, because most apologies are so insincere and self-serving. And it is to the, frankly, Satanic act of apologising that I would like to turn my attention. ‘Oh, I slept with someone else. Sorry.’ ‘I hit my sister over the head with a cello bow. Sorry.’ ‘I embezzled the Christmas club money. Sorry.’ ‘I hired five prostitutes and snorted loads of cocaine. Sorry.’ See?

It is time someone spoke out against the vicious discrimination casually meted out to blonde women in all areas of life. Attractive blonde women are especially liable to be subject to open and unapologetic abuse in the most ordinary of circumstances. Somehow, in this dark corner where the exposing floodlight of feminism has yet to shine, it is still acceptable to make sexist ‘jokes’ and it is still acceptable to state that a person’s appearance makes them unsuitable for the job. Blonde humour is the last bastion of the Bernard Manning (may he rest in peace) –style sexism that women have fought against for so long. Anyone so much as dimly aware of the work of Sigmund Freud knows that there is no such thing as ‘just a joke’.