"Why do women hate me for being beautiful?"

That's the question 41-year-old writer Samantha Brick asked in a column published in the Daily Mail on Tuesday.

But instead of gaining sympathy from her readers, she received a ton of brickbats.

Her name trended globally on Twitter for two days, and netizens even created spoof photos, videos and blogs of her.

So what was it about her column that got people so hot under the collar?

Ms Brick had told the Daily Mail of her unfortunate experiences with her friends and colleagues due to her looks.

She said: "I'm not smug and I'm no flirt, yet over the years, I've been dropped by countless friends who felt threatened if I was merely in the presence of their other halves."

She added: "While I'm no Elle Macpherson, I'm tall, slim, blonde and, so I'm often told, a good-looking woman. I know how lucky I am.

"But there are downsides to being pretty - the main one being that other women hate me for no other reason than my lovely looks."

Undeterred by her critics, Ms Brick appeared on ITV's This Morning on Thursday to defend herself and her claims.

She remained resolute, refusing to concede that women's instant dislike of her could be linked in any way to her character, or her personality.

"This whole experience has proven my thesis," she maintained. "Women do not like attractive women.

"This is proven by the thousands of vile messages on my personal e-mail account, on Twitter, and on my telephone answer machine."

She added that while the Internet storm had been mostly negative, the e-mails and personal messages she had received since the article appeared had been divided 50/50, with half calling her "deluded" and "a nutter", and the rest thanking her for telling the story of their own lives.

This article was first published in The New Paper.