Joyce: Brandi Was Habitually Cruel

Hola mis amores! I hope you all had great New Year and I hope that 2014 is a fantastic year for all of you! May this year be filled with health, happiness, success and most importantly: LOTS OF LOVE!

I would love to start the new year with a clean slate, but you all know we have to comment on what we've seen in the episode so here we go. . .

In tonight's episode we continue with the dinner from hell. I'm sure you all know this was a longer dinner than what you've seen and it is a difficult task to compact many hours of footage into a one hour episode.

The entire table was defending and making excuses for Brandi's behavior, and while I do find it admirable to stand up for your friends, true friends also stand up when someone is being attacked for no reason. Being a good friend doesn't mean you have to always agree with someones bad behavior.

I was blessed to have my loving husband who is my best friend with me at the dinner, otherwise it would have been me alone against a group of people condoning Brandi's attacks. Of course my husband will always have my back. Although he is known for his strong opinions, he did actually not intervene during our conversation at the beginning, not even when Brandi brought up her mutual friend attack. He knows I can defend myself very well. But when Brandi started calling me "stupid" and continued the "f--- yous" at me, he could not tolerate it any longer. You might agree or disagree with me here, but I would not expect any less from my partner.

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You heard me say I thought Brandi needed rehab, and unfortunately I do stand by that. I have nothing against drinking. I love to have drinks with my friends, and I enjoy a nice wine with my husband. But when you are a person of public interest and it comes to the point that you are conducting yourself drunk multiple times in front of TV cameras and you have to witness a paparazzi documentation of your behavior, it's time to wake up and reevaluate if you are just having fun with friends or if you have a legitimate problem.

Even though at dinner, Yolanda condoned Brandi's behavior and tried to make excuses for her, I think after our conversation she understood my point. It was great to see her doing the intervention with her friend Brandi.

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Although I do believe Brandi needs help, the night of the SUR dinner she was not drunk. She was just plain vicious. Some people say the word "bully" is too strong of a word for her. If it is, I apologize. The reality is there were uncountable moments in this season when I felt bullied by her.

Let's simply look into the definition of "bully" and you decide for yourself:

1. A person who is habitually cruel or overbearing, especially to smaller or weaker people.

In my opinion, Brandi was being habitually cruel to me. She did believe I was the weaker person, as I was the newcomer in this group and was supposed to just eat it up. Brandi was convinced I was going to be a dumb wallflower that would sit back and take her abuse. Some people say adults cant be bullied. I work with an anti-bullying campaign and unfortunately bullying is not something that is only among children. I believe it is our social responsibility to stand up against this.

And again, I don't want to use the term "bully" lightly. Hopefully we can retire it from the vocabulary in the new year. But it might be a good enough moment to bring awareness to this very topic. At the end we are (and this includes Brandi) role models to many fans of the show, including many young viewers and certainly our own children. Tell a kid in a schoolyard that he is not being bullied when a someone else repeatedly tells him he has to do something and his posse joins in on the "fun." Tell a kid at the playground he is not being bullied when another child repeatedly calls him by the wrong name just to press his buttons and upset him. Tell that kid that the one who attacks him for no reason and hurts his feelings, makes fun of his language or ethnicity, and tells him the name given by his parents is the name of a big fat pig is not "bullying" him.

Sorry but if anyone did that to my children I would not be OK with it! And I am sure that Brandi would not be OK with behavior like that towards her beautiful boys.

I am not a kid (although sometimes this has felt like the Beverly Hills Schoolyard). I am not a wallflower. I am not a victim -- but I simply did not have a better term for Brandi to ingrain into her brain that what she had done to me was wrong and hurtful and needed to stop.

I pray to God that people out there learn that it is not OK to attack someone multiple times and get away with it just because they think it's funny. I understand a good joke and can laugh about it. I did at the beginning with Brandi, as you remember. But a repeated joke at the expense of someone's feelings stops being funny very quickly.

I was raised by a single mother who did everything in her power to give me and my brother everything she could. Even though some might think I was raised "poor," I felt very rich. I had all the love in the world, and that was more important than a big house or fancy clothes. I wish you could see more of my conversations than the superficial beauty queen stuff you've seen so far. As you heard me say to Kyle in the episode, I think Brandi is a gorgeous girl and if she is lonely or miserable its only because she wants to be. No man would want to spend the rest of his life surrounded by someone so negative and mean.

And unfortunately as I told Kyle, by now Brandi has three very predictable steps:

1. She plans a vicious attack
2. She goes on "f--- you" rants when confronted
3. When she realizes she is wrong she plays the victim and starts crying

I've seen her do that to other people, but now I lived it first hand. It's hard for me to have pity for someone like that. She always uses the "I'm a single mother. Poor me" Card.

My mom was a single mother who had three jobs to support us. Brandi is in the top percentile of the world. She lives a blessed life. Has a beautiful home, a car, money to support a great lifestyle, can buy whatever she wants and has two gorgeous boys. There are mothers out there who are struggling to pay rent and put food on their children's table. Start counting your blessings and stop playing the victim. How difficult can her year have been? While I feel very sorry that she lost Chica, she is a best selling author, is on a hit show, and got a new home. . .Is life really that bad?

Regarding me calling Brandi a racist: I dont want to call her a racist any longer, as long as she admits that her behavior and her remarks have, in fact, been racist. Saying I'm like a black person because I can't swim, saying all black girls have a weave, saying I need to shut the f--- up with my Spanish language or go to Miami, saying "fill this up before I kill a Puerto Rican," telling a foreigner to go back to wherever the f--- they came from -- these are the things you have seen, but the list goes on. So as long as we all agree that she has made many insensitive racial remarks. . . then I will stop calling her a racist.

I agree with some people thinking I might be annoying because I touch my hair too much. Trust me! I hate it myself! I think it's my nervous tick. . .I am really trying to work on it. LOL.

And as I've always said, I'm not a $100 bill for everyone to like, and I know I am the new girl -- but all I asked from this group was a fair chance. Unfortunately at the beginning I didn't get it from some of the ladies.

After the SUR fiasco finally Lisa gave me a chance. She invited me to her home and I happily accepted her invitation as I had always liked her. She is a stunning and elegant woman from whom I could learn a lot -- I love to learn from my girlfriends.

When I arrived at Lisa's beautiful home, I was very happy that we could finally have a one-on-one conversation and she could see where I was coming from. She could see the whole "Hairgate" thing was silly and taken out of proportion. She saw that she needed to stop making excuses for her friend Brandi and "chastising" (a new word I learned from Lisa) her behavior.

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I'm not embarrassed to admit that Spanish is my first language and I learn on a daily basis. My mother speaks very bad English and is very shy about speaking it; so she forced my brother and myself to watch TV only in English and that's how we learned. I confess that I still think in Spanish and sometimes there are lots of words that I don't understand. I'm not embarrassed by it as we are never too old to learn.

This is the moment when Lisa and I started to get to know each other, and I can happily say that right now we are in a great place.

Now to my favorite part of tonight's episode...I loved seeing Carlton with her children, they are truly precious. I think she looks like a fun and great mother and I would've loved to see this side of her more firsthand.

I also enjoy seeing Kim and Kingsley! He's cute!!!!

But the part I enjoyed the most is Kyle's charity event. I applaud Kyle and Mauricio for their incredibly generous contribution to the Children's Hospital. I love them! This is what it's all about -- especially when we are in the position of having such a great platform. We all have to learn how to give back in life and how to help the less fortunate. Even if sometimes the things we do to help might seem small, with many people doing something small, it turns into something big.

During the fashion show you could see my wonderful friend Laimarie (who I LOVE) and my Queen of the Universe Ivette, who has been an amazing girl to work with during this year of her reign. She loved doing all the charity we do together. And while I believe she is gorgeous externally, she is even prettier on the inside.

Until next week! I send you all a big kiss and again, Thank you for your support
xoxo