Entertainment
Jo Brand opens up about experiencing difficult knockbacks as a teenager for not being ‘conventionally attractive’
Jo doesn’t think of herself as being attractive (Picture: Venla Shalin/Redferns)
Comedian Jo Brand says she experienced difficult emotional knockbacks as a teenager due to her appearance.
Jo, 64, who worked as a psychiatric nurse for 10 years before moving to entertainment, said she doesn’t think of herself as ‘pretty’ but does not dislike her appearance.
Speaking with Angela Scanlon on the Thanks A Million podcast, she 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 know that I’m not what kind of men go for because I’m not thin and I don’t have long flowing locks and lovely eyelashes, and all that bollocks.
‘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.’
The stand up star added: ‘It’s very hard for really attractive women to understand the mental state of not so attractive women, and the other way round.’
The comedy star says ‘really attractive’ women don’t understand her mental state (Picture: Dave J Hogan/Getty Images)
Jo, who now regularly appears on comedy panel shows QI, Have I Got News for You and Would I Lie to You? also discussed how she feels women are very resilient and have most likely taken the brunt of issues during the pandemic, saying ‘good on them for getting on with it.’
She said: ‘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.
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‘I just think women have so many kinds of unsung, heroic things about them to recommend them.’
Jo currently hosts a show on Scala Radio on Sunday evenings where she plays classical music from different areas of Britain each week.
The Thanks A Million with Angela Scanlon podcast is available on Apple, Spotify and all podcast providers.
MORE : Billie Eilish says she’s ‘obviously not happy’ with her body as she speaks about beauty pressure
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