And why women are better than men

Jo Brand said it was ‘hard work emotionally’ not being attractive as a teenager.

The comic says she doesn’t hate the way she looks, but that being dismissed because of her appearance when younger always came as a blow.

And she says attractive women will never understand the mental state of those who are not conventionally pretty.

Speaking to Angela Scanlon on her Thanks A Million podcast. Brand said: ‘It's a very weird thing that if you're absolutely gorgeous, then you don't really get any sense of how it feels to be desperate. 

‘I don't dislike the way that I look. But I know that I'm not pretty and I know that I'm not what men go for because I'm not thin and I don't have long flowing locks and lovely eyelashes and all that bollocks. 

‘So it's very hard for really attractive women to understand the mental state of not so attractive women and the other way round. 

‘I would say as a teenager, I got quite a lot of knockbacks, but also kind of like horrible ones. Not them really meaning to be horrible, but just them being so dismissive. And when you're really keen on someone to be dismissed as a teenage girl, it's pretty hard work, emotionally.’

Brand also told the Irish broadcaster how she liked going out in the rain ‘because you have to put so much stuff around you that people don't recognise you so easily’.

‘I know that's that sounds sort of weird,’ she said. ‘It's not that I'm unfriendly, but it's just that sometimes people don't realise that you're not the same all the time… I like being able to disguise myself when it's raining.’

And she described how she thought women were better than men, and felt that needs saying after watching a trailer for BBC News.

‘At the end of this trailer there was a young Asian woman who was quite tearful,’ Brand explained. ‘She says, "I've come to the realisation that women will always come second to men" and then she starts crying. And I don't know why. It just really affected me, that. 

‘And I mean, I would just like to say that I think women are better than men. I always have. I think women are less complaining. They work much harder. They're not as up themselves… I just think women have so many unsung, heroic things about them to recommend them. And so I just want to say thanks to the women all for actually on the whole, comparatively speaking, being pretty uncomplaining. 

‘And I would imagine that during Covid the people that have taken the brunt of all this shit yet have been mainly women and good on them for getting on with it.’

• Thanks A Million with Angela Scanlon is available on Apple, Spotify and all podcast providers

Published: 17 Aug 2021