by Jenny Johnston

…Laura was branded the girl ‘too pretty to work’ and her words, read by an army of workers probably feeling very unbeautiful as they trudged, bouquet-less, to the office, were widely mocked.

You’ve got to feel sorry for Laura Fernee. Not only is she supposedly too beautiful to hold down a job, but now it emerges that the poor woman can barely leave her house without men declaring their undying love.

‘I was just walking down the street when this car pulled up and a man got out, gave me a bunch of flowers then drove away,’ she says. ‘I’d never seen him before, but he’d obviously noticed me and felt compelled.’

Then there was the old man who approached her and asked if she was someone famous, ‘because I had a special look about me, he said’.

And just the other week Laura had stern words with a chap she saw taking pictures of her.

‘I said: “Please stop that,” and he replied: “But you are so beautiful.” He genuinely thought I would be flattered.’

[READ: “My beauty is ruining my life”: Meet the woman who says she is too pretty to work (PHOTOS)]

Most bonkers of all is the story she tells about the time she was in hospital and the nurses gathered round her bedside to discuss how pretty her eyeliner was and how her skin resembled a peach.

In short it seems the world and its wife just can’t help being overwhelmed by the 33-year-old’s beauty — and is determined to hound her about it.

So great is the problem, the Mail reported this week, that Laura had to quit her career as a medical research scientist two years ago in order to free herself from the constant misery of being asked out by her male colleagues and resented by her female ones.

She also disclosed that, instead of working, she was being supported by her rich parents, who are now retired from lucrative jobs in the medical field and who paid her rent and picked up the tab for her £700-a-month hairdressing sessions.

Of course, the inevitable happened. Laura was branded the girl ‘too pretty to work’ and her words, read by an army of workers probably feeling very unbeautiful as they trudged, bouquet-less, to the office, were widely mocked.

The more reasoned online commentators kept it short and sweet with ‘oh, get over yourself, love’ type remarks, but others went for the jugular. In short, Laura became the most hated woman in Britain overnight, elbowing the Mail’s own Samantha ‘I’m so beautiful’ Brick out of the equation.

Now, Laura says she is living in fear, such has been the level of online vitriol.

‘It has been a complete nightmare. I haven’t eaten. I can’t sleep. Someone posted that I should have acid thrown at my face as it would “sort me out” by taking away my prettiness, apparently.

‘Some said I’d obviously had plastic surgery and looked like Michael Jackson. It’s gone all around the world, with more and more people pitching in with all this hatred. My parents are absolutely devastated.’

Vitriol: Laura says she has suffered trolling since she revealed that being beautiful is ruining her life

At our interview, given in order to set the record straight, Laura looks absolutely dazzling and not in the least bit like Michael Jackson. Her hair is bouncy and glossy (as you’d hope from a £700-a-month do). She is tiny, svelte and looks like a doll fresh from its box.

People of both sexes do clock her as she makes her way through the restaurant where we meet — but then she is wearing the sort of tiny, flirty skirt that practically demands you follow her legs through the room, an odd wardrobe choice for someone living in fear of a public lynching. But then Laura is a woman of contradictions.

By rights, her stellar academic record — a first-class degree from a London University, three years spent studying for a PhD, and a career investigating new drug treatments for various diseases — means we should be talking about her professional achievements, yet her comments mean that instead we are talking about lecherous men and bitchy women.

‘What I wanted to do was draw attention to harassment in the workplace, and how difficult it can be to concentrate on your job because of it. People say to me: “Why did you not complain?” but you just don’t. No one wants to be seen as a troublemaker.’

The problem here is that, while not wishing to belittle Laura’s complaints, there isn’t much substance to them. She uses strong words such as ‘harassment’, but offers little evidence that any took place.

She says she has worked in four different medical research companies since leaving university, and found herself targeted by men in all of them.

‘In every place I’ve ever worked, the approaches from men started coming quickly. One colleague sent an email asking if I would like to go for a drink. I didn’t even know who he was! Another left a gift on my desk. It gets quite wearying after a while.’

When I ask Laura if any of her admirers were her superiors she says vaguely: ‘No, I don’t really know who they were.’

She also admits that nobody continued to pursue her after she turned them down. It’s hard to see where the ‘harassment’ comes into play.

‘The fact was that it was constant,’ she says. ‘I’d work with someone and think: “Oh, I am doing a good job here. He values my work and professionalism,” and then I would get an email from him asking for more. It is horrible to have to deal with, day in day out. You quickly get the impression that all people care about is your face and body. Your brain isn’t important.’

What of her female colleagues, did they not offer support?

‘No, not at all,’ says Laura. ‘There was this attitude that I must have been flirting to attract such attention, which is absolutely not true. I go into work to work. Flirting is just not on my radar.’

Indeed, she appears to have had more problems in the workplace with bullying from other women than sexism from men.

‘Women are worse than men,’ she says. ‘They are threatened by women who are . . .  I am not going to call myself beautiful, but let’s say “women who are of above average beauty”. Sometimes I think that maybe they can handle pretty women if there isn’t much sign of intelligence there, but if they are intelligent, too — well, that is toxic.’

Jealousy: Laura said that she suffered more workplace sexism from women than she did from men

Again, I ask for examples of how she was belittled, sidelined or bullied by female colleagues.

‘I went out of my way to be supportive to one colleague, and I thought she was a friend. One day she brought cakes and biscuits in and made a big show of passing them round — but she didn’t include me. It happened again and again, so I couldn’t have been mistaken. I was really hurt.’

Her bottom lip wobbles. It’s an extraordinary display from someone who, just ten minutes ago, was telling me how she got into medical research because her mum suffers from an autoimmune disease and she grew up wanting to ‘cure these things rather than treat them’.

Surely no one with such passion throws that career down the toilet because they don’t get offered a piece of cake?

It’s pretty clear that other issues are at play here, although it’s not immediately clear what these are.

For her childhood sounds idyllic. She grew up in one of London’s smartest boroughs, went to private school and admits that she wanted for nothing. She was a bookish, academic child — but always exceedingly pretty, of course. By the time she was 15, she says, men began to stare at her in the street.

‘Older men would turn up at the door and ask to take me out for the day. Mummy wouldn’t let them, of course, but, yes, it has always been there.’

High-maintenance: Laura says that her hair alone costs her £700-a-month

So too, has a certain difficulty with female friends.

‘Girls are bitchy, aren’t they?’ she says.

‘When I was young they would criticise everything about me . . . how I dressed, looked, spoke. Then, two weeks later, they would be wearing the same sort of clothes. I could never win.’

It seems as if Laura was always different, a little odd.

‘I never wanted to fit in,’ she protests.

‘As a child I remember going to the park and my mum apologising to our friends, saying: “I didn’t make her wear this. She wanted to.” I was never a tomboy. I liked floaty dresses and dainty little shoes.’

It’s not just her clothes that single Laura out. Her voice came in for some stick when she appeared on This Morning earlier this week, talking in an accent so posh it made the Queen sound common.

‘She’s got to be putting that on,’ was the general consensus. (Although I can testify that she sounds just as plummy in real life.)

Perhaps her accent was alienating  to her colleagues, I try to suggest tactfully? ‘Well, I can’t help who I am,’ she shrugs, wide-eyed.

This apparent innocence is all a little strange in an intelligent, educated 33-year-old woman and she can come across as not-quite-of-this-world.

‘I think I do have that childlike, naïve quality,’ she concludes.

Without lining up her former colleagues and asking them what their issue was, it’s impossible to say whether Laura’s problem is her abundant sex appeal, her privileged background — or simply her personality.

She refuses to be drawn on the exact circumstances which led to her leaving her post, saying only that it is complicated and was the subject of legal action. ‘What I can say is that the situation had become intolerable.’

She hasn’t had paid work in science for the past two years, but has modelled in the past and is trying to get back into that — a strange career path for someone who is adamant she shouldn’t be viewed as a sex object.

‘Well, the pay for scientists in this country is terrible,’ she says. ‘I can’t say I ever enjoyed modelling but I do like fashion, and needs must.’ In the meantime, her generous parents are still supporting her financially.

The big question, of course, is if she will ever be able to get back into the workplace. It’s fair to assume that this whole ‘too beautiful to work’ debacle won’t have done her any favours in the job market.

‘That’s the worry. I know people will say I’ve brought it on myself, but I only hope future employers can see past all that, to the person I really am.’

And with that she is off, sashaying back down the restaurant, her little white skirt swishing behind her. I just hope she makes it safely home without any more smitten men foisting flowers on her.

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Read this article on the Daily Mail

Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.