Ugly: Giving us back our beauty standards

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I am so glad I found this book. It spoke to me on so many levels. It named things I already knew but also brought new perspectives to concepts I thought I have worked through. I wish everybody would read this book because it would give them a huge relief, offer understanding and compassion towards self and others. We need knowledge like this as a society, community, a group of people just so we can start unlearning all the toxicity and beauty anxiety. I wouldn't say I stopped hating the way I look but this book helped me make a significant steps towards just accepting myself the way that I am. 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. Anita felt the world was telling her to ‘correct’ the colour of her skin as she got older (Photo: Supplied) That pity factor is aimed at all women who defy patriarchal norms of behaviour and cast those like Madonna, who refuse to ‘put it away’, into a negative light. So, it’s no wonder that appearing ageless has become one of the few ways women have to battle against a force that wants them to just ‘disappear’ (with the anti-ageing and cosmetic surgery industries only too happy to offer their services in exchange for our cash). But here again, there’s a fine line to tread because while female celebrities like Madonna are often subjected to tabloid headlines stating they’ve gone ‘too far’, those who choose to age naturally are accused of looking tired or having ‘given up’. The sweet spot is being frozen by time—in a way that the male gaze deems both acceptable and desirable, of course.

I’d feel its piercing criticism when I swiped on layers of concealer to cover my dark circles or when I blotted furiously at my oil-drenched skin with too-pale powder. Every brush stroke became a silent prayer, a plea for me to look like the girls around me held up as the beauty ideal. 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."That trend for highlighting the ends of our noses to create a defined tip is, again, a beauty ideal that stems from whiteness. MAC artistic director Terry Barber told me in a feature for Glamour: “Everyone is trying to look the same to fit into a social media and reality TV look. The danger is this is a Caucasian beauty ideal for all women. This new beauty ideal is also based on the idea of surgical correction – the highly sexualised kind you see on Love Island and The Kardashians. Published: 30 Sep 2023 At war with my own skin: my life with eczema – and how I found the key to keeping it away Every brush stroke became a silent prayer for me to look like the girls around me who were held up as the beauty ideal. Those girls all looked largely the same: white, thin and pretty, everything I was shown I wasn’t. Think Joey Potter in Dawson’s Creek, Marissa Cooper in The OC or Rory Gilmore in Gilmore Girls, and their wholesome, effortless good looks. I genuinely believed that people were staring at me because I was so deeply unappealing and odd-looking.

Much of my work is as a speaker and I have curated, moderated and appeared on panels at Women Of The World and Stylist Live plus numerous literary festivals. I also regularly host beauty events with global brands like Sunday Riley, YSL and The Body Shop.

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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. OK, but you know why that’s the case though, right? Yes (sigh). Archaic data on fertility, patriarchal views of women’s appearance and the multiple industries that sell youth to women as the sole beauty ideal.

Diving into the origins of the constantly changing beauty standards and how they correlate with women winning more rights, my jaw dropped quite a few times.I try to police negative self-talk by catching myself when I feel I look “tired” – a codeword for old – and questioning what exact trigger made me feel this way – whether it was somebody I compared myself with on TV, or something somebody said about my appearance. Once I’ve figured it out, I write down why it made me feel so bad: ageing is a natural process after all. In this case it’s the way women over 40 are so seldom celebrated as desirable. Then I try to create an action around it: by filling my social media feed with women who live life unrestricted by arbitrary definitions of age for inspiration. I now focus on using makeup for self-expression, rather than obsessing about trying to ‘conceal flaws’ or look younger 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. I’m also a beauty columnist at The Guardian Saturday magazine, freelance Beauty Director at Condé Nast Traveller, and have contributed to Vogue, Glamour, Allure, The Telegraph, i-D, The Evening Standard, NME and many more. Instead of doing things because we think we should, we need to think what do I want? How do I want to look?’ says Anita.

Perhaps the biggest shift was learning why I’d reduced my self-worth to being entirely defined by how I look, and that made me realise how imperative it was to root my self-esteem elsewhere, in the qualities that really define me – my character and positive traits. Because ugly is an ever-changing, politically charged construct – and the biggest lesson I’ve learned is never to trust those binary categories, “pretty” and “ugly”, don’t actually exist. * * * How to resist the ‘jar of hope’ impulse buyEveryone should read this book, but perhaps most imperatively, all women and girls. Its the kind of book I wished I could have read as a teen, because so much of it described how I was raised to view, observe and consume beauty culture growing up.