Ugly: Giving us back our beauty standards

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Take cosmetic ‘tweakments’. In Ugly, Anita highlights that ‘the UK is the fastest growing market for facial filler and British plastic surgeons reported a 70 per cent rise in requests for consultations in 2020 – and yet our levels of body confidence are decreasing’. You’re too big for it. Here’s a butterfly outfit,” declared the lady doling out the costumes, after looking me up and down and thrusting some trousers into my hands, along with a flaccid-looking cape contraption.

Why? Because I don’t feel old and I hate being categorised, but society treats women over 35 as if they don’t exist.

In her enlightening new book, Ugly, beauty journalist Anita Bhagwandas says these daily rituals to ‘fix’ ourselves, usually to fulfil what society has deemed pretty or beautiful, can be self-flagellating. Pretty Girl reappeared in many guises in the TV I watched. She manifested as Kelly Kapowski in Saved by the Bell (it always irked me, even as a kid, that the only person of colour on the show, Lisa, never had a serious love interest; what does that tell its teen audience?). As a child, Anita Bhagwandas, second from left, saw that the heroines in her favourite TV shows looked nothing like her (Photo: Supplied) Julianne Moore just proved that wide leg jeans and a pair of Adidas makes the best combo at any age We aren’t responsible for everything that’s come before us – but we are responsible for what we do now, and the changes we can all make to shift archaic narratives. Considering where whiteness might be ruling your beauty standards and routines – no matter what your heritage – is a great starting point. I wish every woman of any age could read this one. It has certainly given me so much room for thought.

The author’s pre-set experience has added value to the writing process: ‘I’ve worked on the inside of the industry, I’ve got a very unique insight into how so many parts of it work. The personal experiences I explore in the book bring together the elements of politics, history, science and psychology of beauty standards,’ she explains. I would scour teen magazines for any information I could use to make myself feel better, feel prettier. It was a very narrow beauty remit – thin and white, basically,’ she says. I’ll add 10 women my age or older who embrace their age to my social media feed and remove anyone I compare myself negatively with.To say that navigating “ugly” shaped my life is an understatement. It affected everything, including my career trajectory, which eventually led to me becoming a beauty editor. I had put myself into the very world that I had felt so alienated from. Why? I hoped that being around so much of it would finally rub off on me. Instead, I felt uglier than ever. Cosmetic surgery seems to boom during periods of female emancipation, for example during the 1980s when more women were entering male-dominated workplaces than ever before. When the contraceptive pill was introduced in the 1960’s it gave women more reproductive rights but subsequently, body standards shifted to being ultra-slim. This aim is matched by the title’s impact. Each chapter delves into a different intersection of beauty standards – from age to body size, race to pretty privilege – and the unrealistic expectations within them. Bhagwandas says she loves a “practical tip”, which was the reasoning behind ending each chapter with a helpful set of questions to take forward. Is there one overarching practical tip someone could take from Ugly? I’ve also undergone hypnosis and done years of talk therapy; even my degree in philosophy was all about appearance: “What is the existential definition of beauty in classical art?” my dissertation pondered. Yet, no matter how much time and money I spent, the malaise still lingered, hovering like a dementor ready to snatch my self-esteem at any opportunity.

We're all told that this is just part of growing up, but it stays with us, evolving as we age. The internet tells us we should love ourselves, whilst bombarding us with images of airbrushed perfection, upholding centuries-old beauty standards which we can't always see. Our beauty rituals are so often based around things we think we need to fix, grow and develop - sometimes tipping into dangerous obsession. I can’t help but grieve and be furious that these beauty archetypes made me feel so ugly at such a young age. But at the same time, taking a more critical and challenging perspective on the limited and limiting beauty standards we’ve been force-fed has helped me close that loop of self loathing. You know, the one that tells you you’re not thin/pretty/straight-haired/light-skinned enough to be valuable.

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This was not new information to me; I’d always felt resoundingly unattractive when it came to my appearance. And now, here was the proof for everyone to see. Had the troll criticised my writing, called me “weird-looking”, even the customary “fat bitch” or one of the similar insults I’d received before, perhaps I wouldn’t have been quite so rattled, but here was an online confirmation from a stranger of how I really felt about myself. This was indisputable truth: I was ugly.She kind of lost me with the yoga bit. I understand her frustration with the cultural appropriation aspect but yoga without the spiritual aspect has a place - especially for us atheists who could benefit from the physical movement aspects of the practice. Perhaps not calling it yoga, as such would be more appropriate. These days, before buying anything, I ask myself a series of questions to combat marketing and societal pressure. Let’s take a face-massaging device … The ‘jar of hope’ is hard to resist, but we can and should. Photograph: Getty Images This is when I started doing research into where our beauty trends come from and the different things that affect them, from politics to colonisation to class – it was a real turning point for me. That's why I wrote the book, to make sense of that void (or chasm) in the middle." Having been taken with Ugly, an unflinching critique of ‘beauty’ and how we perceive it throughout history, Elizabeth Morris learned more from its author Anita Bhagwandas – a south Wales writer striking out with this debut book after several years highlighting how the beauty industry underserves women of colour. I’ll make a moodboard of beauty and fashion looks I want to try just because I love them and they represent me. And I’ll try one new thing every week.