How Beauty Became Monoculture

Being too much of one thing and not enough of another had been a recurring theme in my life.

Our so-called counternarratives about beauty and what they demand of us cannot be divorced from the fact that beauty is contingent upon capitalism. Even our resistance becomes a means to commodify, and what is commodified is always, always stratified. There is simply no other way. To coerce, beauty must exclude.

The post-2016 obsession with conventional beauty isn’t a coincidence. It’s a cultural reaction to far right politics, and one that conveniently furthers the movement’s goals. Think of it as the aesthetic arm of trad-wifery2 — a promise that women can find peace, ease, and fulfillment by retreating not into the traditional roles of wife and mother,