I’m in the process of moving and have just started packing up all the beauty products in my bathroom. I have, ever since I can remember being aware of myself as distinctly female, had a complicated relationship with beauty. When I was a teen, I spent more years than not shifting between thinking I was offensively ugly and okay-looking. I remember hesitating to wear makeup because I feared it symbolized a mark worse than failure: hopeless effort. I was tortured by my desire to be pretty and my inability to do anything about it. I cycled through feminist literature finding myself in reluctant agreement with Friedan and Dworkin — beauty and the maintenance of it seemed a heavy distraction for women from things of importance and further contributed to our othering, our objectification. From Sontag’s essay
on beauty
on beauty
on beauty
I’m in the process of moving and have just started packing up all the beauty products in my bathroom. I have, ever since I can remember being aware of myself as distinctly female, had a complicated relationship with beauty. When I was a teen, I spent more years than not shifting between thinking I was offensively ugly and okay-looking. I remember hesitating to wear makeup because I feared it symbolized a mark worse than failure: hopeless effort. I was tortured by my desire to be pretty and my inability to do anything about it. I cycled through feminist literature finding myself in reluctant agreement with Friedan and Dworkin — beauty and the maintenance of it seemed a heavy distraction for women from things of importance and further contributed to our othering, our objectification. From Sontag’s essay