I think taking pride in and putting time and money towards your appearance is a positive thing if coming from a place of love for oneself, as watering a plant is done because you want it to stay healthy and grow. I think the emphasis should be less about beauty and instead about decentering men and refusing to fit inside the box the patriarchy puts... See more

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

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