Reclaiming UGLY

I have spent a large portion of the last year working to help others see the beauty that they posses, both inside and out, through poetry, discussions, blog posts, performance art, and so on. (Just look at how many blog posts I have written over the years about being beautiful!)

This mission comes after years and years of struggling with my own demons; in fact, I’ve been fighting to feel pretty and worthwhile for so long that I think, maybe, I have lost sight of the bigger picture. In my quest to help myself & others feel beautiful, I’ve stopped asking questions.

Questions like…

What is beauty, anyway? How can EVERYONE be beautiful?

Why do I even want to be pretty? Why are beauty and self worth so intertwined in our culture?

Why am I working so hard to subvert beauty standards? Wouldn’t it be better to just abandon the quest to be beautiful all together?

Why does it feel more important to be beautiful than nice, or smart, or interesting, or funny… or any of the other awesome traits people have?

Now, I’m not saying that all of the work that I (and so many others) have done is worthless by any means, but at the same time I have to ask…

Just for a few minutes, at least, can we try thinking of something even more radical? Namely, why can’t we just say FUCK YOU to beauty?

Radical Radiance: Dr. Sarah Weddington

Dr. Sarah Weddington came to speak at my college today, about her involvement in the landmark Supreme Court Case, Roe v. Wade, as well as her life before and after the case. Dr. Weddington is an amazingly charming and engrossing public speaker, she made the story of the Roe v. Wade case, a story I have already heard several times, seem just as interesting as it was the first time I read it in my history textbook.

Because of Dr. Weddington’s contributions to the Reproductive Rights Movement and the Feminist Movement, as well as the inspiration she continues to spread through her public speaking career, I have decided to make her this week’s Radical Radiance candidate.

Weighing In

Watching True Beauty today I was unsurprised to see the contestants freak out when they were told they weighed ten pounds more than they actually did. I was, however, a little surprised and unsettled the other day: I was sitting in my friend’s room eating fantastically yummy taco dip and chatting, when some of their neighbors came in to drag a different girl out to party. My friends had a scale in the hall which quickly inspired some of the visiting girls to weigh themselves and express their joy at the discovery that they weighed less than before. “This is better than my birthday!” one girl exclaimed.

Let me just be clear before I begin, I have nothing against people on diets, or people who are actively trying to lose weight for WHATEVER reason. I commend your willpower and your commitment to a goal.

That being said, I have this thing with weight. I just don’t get it.

Missed the Mark

True Beauty is a new ABC show that attempts to show the meaning of inner beauty by judging ten stereotypically physically beautiful people on both their physical attractiveness and their inner beauty. In order to assess the competitor’s inner beauty the judges of this show set them up in “hidden camera” situations to see how trustworthy, helpful, kind, and compassionate they are in everyday life. While this show has noble aims it is, in my opinion, unfortunately quite superficial at its core.

In order to be up for elimination, where they are judged on their “inner beauty” the competitors must score the lowest in an outer-beauty competition. This sends the message that outer beauty is more important than inner beauty; if you are the most physically attractive competitor there is no need for concern about your insides; you are automatically safe. I’m sorry but, that hardly sounds enlightening to me.