Moving Toward the Ugly: A Politic Beyond Desirability
leavingevidence.wordpress.com
Moving Toward the Ugly: A Politic Beyond Desirability
The default assumption tends to be that it is politically important to designate everyone as beautiful, that it is a meaningful project to make sure that everyone can become, and feel, increasingly beautiful. We have hardly tried to imagine what it might look like if our culture could do the opposite—de-escalate the situation, make beauty matter... See more
Jia Tolentino • Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion
The form of the protest—the bizarre blood sculpture, the poems—was itself a protest against passivity, lack of imagination, and normalcy.
Lola Milholland • Group Living and Other Recipes: A Memoir
“I think this is like a widespread public health issue, and the way to start solving it is has got to be part of a bigger collective political movement, really, focusing on solving the inequality of beauty versus the insecurity of beauty, and once the inequality of beauty is addressed, the insecurity will naturally follow that pattern”
Zeynab Mohamed • Can Beauty Be A Source Of Joy?
Sicardi further explains the broader function of beauty in society: “Beauty has always been a tool of fear and respectability politics, a language of ‘passing’ in a system of surveillance and judgement. We’re going to see it operate in several ways – as a method of distraction (So many products! So many problems to fix in ourselves!), and as a way... See more
Article
“a way of thinking about beauty that’s less about harmony or perfection and more about provocation, strangeness and visual interruption as a means of disrupting the homogenisation of appearance that we are currently experiencing.”