Latest / Soul Salon with Ayandastood / 4: the ugliness of beauty — part 2

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4: the ugliness of beauty — part 2 · Soul Salon with Ayandastood

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On part one of our grand beauty tour, we explored some of the key paradoxes of beauty,
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the different faces of the beauty, prism, all the contradictions, all the ways that beauty
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distorts, colors, slots, our understanding of the concept and the nature of how it affects people's
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lived experiences and daily lives. Don't forget to listen to part one before you listen to this
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episode and today we continue our grand beautiful sensational tour of the ugliness of beauty.
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The sun is shining today, the air is crisp and it's a gorgeous day and we love gorgeous days.
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I for one I'm so grateful to be on this glorious adventure together. It feels like the start of
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something powerful. Like I don't even know where we're going but I know that we're going and I know
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that we're going to give there. Okay so finally it has sunk into the soil of our minds.
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Everything is ours to reimagine. Let's tend to the soil and plant the seeds of our dreams.
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Recall that we are talking about beauty as a social hierarchy. We aren't so much talking about
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your individual practice of beauty but we are talking about the structural demand that you have
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won at all. We are talking about how your physical appearance affects your lived experience in ways
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that are fundamentally inhumane. The fact that how you physically appear in the world, what your body
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can and can't do, how big or small your body is, how your features approximate to or do not
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approximate to a beauty standard, a norm that was literally formulated to further colonialism.
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That should not affect your lived experience. That should not affect how you navigate
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doctors offices, how you're able to access people's belief or love or trust, how you're able to move
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through society and schools, how you're able to be loved or receive love in your family.
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So the stakes of these things are extremely high. We are talking about the ugliness of beauty.
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The Sun shines out of you and into me. Hello, Sun shines and welcome to reimagining with
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I understood a podcast where we reframe, rethink and reimagine everything, standing in the way
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of love and liberation. I'm your host, Ayyanda and I am delighted, enchanted, ecstatic, overjoyed
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to have a slice of your precious time today.
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Any rejection that I've had with people said that I was not pretty and not for a role really
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gets on my damn nerves. It breaks my heart and it makes me angry. For many reasons,
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a lot of it is based in race. It really is. Because let's be honest, if I had my same features and I
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were five shades lighter, it would just be a little bit different. And if I had blonde hair blue eyes
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and even a wide nose, it would be even a little bit different than what it is now. We could talk
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about colorism, we could talk about race. It pisses me off and it's broken my heart.
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Any number of projects which I won't name. When indigestion colonized and all and the British
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people came and they were basically all white and they looked down upon us like these are colored
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people and they are not good. They started the races in my field. They considered themselves
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to be better so all of this became inflated. I like light skin curve making me more
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prettier. Growing up, I wanted to be every shade, I've been in a shade that I would
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wear makeup that would make me look lighter. I would use steroids and what it did, it faded
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your skin. But for skis now, rich, like I have money because I saw cream and I make more money
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from my cream business because I saw the cream all over the world. At the points where I was
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missing my skin, I struggled so bad with accepting who I was. I felt like I was just, I don't know
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if somebody else's body. Without enough knowledge or not taking enough precautions while using
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those products, there has been grave damage that you know occurred on those skins. My black
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is black. If I can change one thing about myself, it's getting back to my completion. Do you know why?
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Because the stress I use in rubbing my cream every day is terrible.
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We can improve those skins, bring them closer to what the original used to be.
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Unfortunately, there are cases whereby there's irreversible damage and they will need to learn
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to live with that. So beauty seeks to erase all of these people in their fullness. That's what I
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want to be so clear on in their fullness. Yes, you can be old, but you can't look old. Yes,
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you can be fat, but not too fat. Yes, you can be black, but not dark skinned, not with a white
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nose, not with hinky, coarse hair. Beauty will only let in a very specific kind of each of these
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groups, one that approximates the Eurocentric beauty standard that is firmly in place and one that
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is deeply rooted in classism and elitism. Conceptually, we know we can't all be let in because then
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inness ceases to be differentiable from outness. The concept loses all meaning in a sense. Beauty is
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fundamentally exclusive and the stakeholders who profit from beauty, the beauty industry,
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the diet industry, the health and wellness industries, as well as the media and entertainment
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industries have no authentic intention to include us all. Evercrombian Fitch said we go after
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the cool case. If they didn't look a certain way, they didn't belong and are clothing. Are we
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exclusionary? Absolutely. As a manager, you have to recruit good looking people and this is what
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good looking is young, then and white. Evercrombian rooted themselves in discrimination at every single level.
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There's a reason people like to that brand. Exclusion is part of our society.
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They were also firing people on the basis of their looks.
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Evercrombie said it wasn't that we were being racially discriminated against. It was that we
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weren't good looking enough. They literally made so much money. Exclusion was the root of their success.
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They had a no-ped scarf policy.
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I've been coming all the way to the Supreme Court. They didn't invent evil. They didn't invent class.
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They just packaged it. They define a beauty standard so narrow that it is based on a global
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minority in terms of race, in terms of size, in terms of height and in terms of body type.
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So for example, the majority of women are not thin and yet who is paraded as the beauty standard.
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And so it's the scarcity mindset that keeps the majority always ready to consume and be consumed
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by this toxic, exclusive beauty standard. Because if you think that you're enough,
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you're less profitable to these systems and to capitalism and consumerism that wants you to
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fulfill the logic of in the words of Raffia's or Korea, I consume, therefore I am.
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Because they want us firmly rooted in a scarcity mindset of what beauty is,
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so that we have to keep buying and buying or yearning and yearning to be part of something
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special, something always beyond our reach. We are already something special. We cannot be removed
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from our inherent worth as human beings on this earth. We are precious. And I think the way that I
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use precious is very similar to the way that Mia uses magnificence in the sense that I believe
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that we as human beings on earth are fundamentally precious. We have inherent worth and value.
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And that preciousness is magnificence, okay? And yet our sense of self and our sense of each other
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is constantly under assault, especially with the rapid rise of social media networks
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that globalize Western beauty standards and catapult a very specific celebrity as the beauty
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inspiration and aspiration, okay? And so what I'm really trying to promote here is the notion
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that there should not be social hierarchies in a healthy society. We should be seen as fundamentally
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worthy of love, of delight, of trust, of belief, and a healthy society should nurture healthy
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relationships between people within that society and should provide what those people need to
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access in order to live a really good and meaningful life. I reject self-love as the response to
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the beauty predicament. Why? Because of the individuality of self-love as a solution to a societal
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problem. What would self-love feel like in a healthy society? I think that a healthy society would
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facilitate as in make easier instead of preclude or hinder or make more difficult the possibility of
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us loving ourselves. In other words, I want a society that makes it so easy for us to love ourselves
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and love each other because of the idea that we are inherently worthy of love. I don't think that
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beauty has a home in the world that I want to see. This is similar to what Mia was saying in the
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sense that she doesn't think that beauty can be reclaimed in that it's fundamentally exclusive.
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The practice of beauty of course can be reclaimed in a certain sense. Many cultures and communities
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have defined their own beauty practices that bring true joy to those communities just as art has
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always and will always do. But the expectation, the demand, the requirement that a very specific
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group of people participate in these practices to be seen as worthy subjects? No. The hierarchy and
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the requirement of beauty has no place in the world that I imagine. We are sprouting skepticism
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at the ever increasing demands of beauty routines and beauty standards that feel increasingly
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impossible to meet and increasingly impossible to avoid, to escape this pervasiveness of the
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beauty ideal and of the capital that is afforded to people who do meet that ideal. And I would include
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myself in this. My experience of myself, how I've navigated society has been so benefited from
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capital B beauty from desire capital. Beauty allows us to see some of the deep cultural
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ironies that we are living. That women are taught to fear aging and yet it is quite literally the best
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existential outcome any of us could hope for as living beings that many women and firms feel more
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obligated to remove our makeup at night than to go out of our way to be compassionate or kind or
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helpful towards others that a male dominated industry is said to empower women and girls that
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even as we try to decolonize beauty we fight to be included within a fundamentally colonial
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construct. That's celebrities who make us feel bad about ourselves and whose lives could not be
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more removed from ours sell us products to make us feel better and feel like we can be just like
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how many great relationships or friendships are missing from our society because of beauty.
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Suddenly out of nowhere in other words we meet an ancient tree and it speaks to us in an unshaking
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voice. Beauty is a conspiracy between systems of oppression to not only legitimize and protect
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themselves but to make the oppressed join in. Slow down Mrs. Tree we can't go as fast as you
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the tree obliges. Beauty is a conspiracy in other words the act of conspiring not a conspiracy theory
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but the act of conspiring together between systems and hierarchies like white supremacy, patriarchy,
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ableism, classism, capitalism, imperialism and so many more to keep these hierarchies living
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and breathing in our culture and in our collective imagination. Beauty accomplishes this conspiracy
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by sprouting two branches okay two branches one is the way that the oppressor group makes the oppressed
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group feel inferior and how this is instantiated in every structure within society okay how men
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make women feel inferior through beauty how white people make black brown and Asian people feel
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inferior through beauty how white brown and Asian people make black people feel inferior
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through beauty how able to people make disabled people feel inferior through beauty how thin people
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make fat people feel inferior through beauty so this is a kind of inter community as in between
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community violence okay but unfortunately this is only one branch beauty does some of its best work
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through the other the second branch is an age old trick of divide and conquer of intra as in
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within community violence by dividing and conquering people of oppressed groups women black people
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queer people and of course the intersection of these and having them having these members of
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oppressed groups take up the charge of their own oppression via the inter community violence
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that is done in the name of beauty and this necessarily is the ugliness of beauty that it divides
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the very same people who should be united that it shatters possibilities of solidarity as people
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within an oppressed group become more invested in the project of being beautiful and of being
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represented as beautiful than in the project of a radical transformation of society liberation
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and a radical inclusion within the society of all especially the most marginalized the name calling
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the othering the excluding the ridiculing the dismissing the bullying some of the harshest form
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of these slights of these exclusions come from within our own communities because we are made
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and in plot inclined to see beauty as good as aspirational as pure we do not question how our
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obsession with beauty and the requirement that people be beautiful and the status rewarded to
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people who are then deemed beautiful covertly reinforces these hierarchies even in the same
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places and spaces we are meant to be able to call home when i first decided to use leach
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ingredients was when i think i was in secondary school and we'd get changed for pe and they used
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to comment things that oh you'd be so much prettier if your chest with the same color as your face
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oh you've got really pretty features and even though you're dark skin the black boys say that
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they'd be never date um a blick thing they'd never date a black girl they'd only ever go for a
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light skin girl you're good looking for a dark skin boy that's one that you hear quite a lot
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because of how dark you are when you put makeup on it's an opportunity to make yourself look lighter
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that's what i was told i've been bullied for my skin tone and that too by my teachers when
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teachers are supposed to treat their all their students equally one of my teachers bullied me i
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mean i was in like a class third of all i was just a child i don't know i have a dark tone and all
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the same spaces and places where we are meant to be fostering a deep committed sense of solidarity
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is often where we feel the highest pressure the highest exclusion when we fail to live up to the
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toxic beauty standard now we have to meet our friend conspire a word that is asking for an
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introduction to some and a reintroduction to others what does it mean to conspire to conspire
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literally means to agree together especially secretly to do something wrong evil or illegal
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for example they conspired to kill the king or figuratively to conspire is to act or work
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together toward the same result or goal for example the wind and rain conspired to strip the trees
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of their full color isn't that beautiful actually have to read this again this is simply from
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the dictionary wow okay the wind and rain conspired to strip the trees of their full colors between
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the wind and the rain they're both acting within their strengths to achieve this end result okay
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so the ancient tree has laid out these two branches of beauty and it's telling us that through beauty
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systems of oppression conspire together in a secret agreement as in beauty is the secret
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agreement these systems include white supremacy patriarchy ableism capitalism ageism homophobia
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transphobia all the isms each of these systems independently have particular ends as in particular
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goals they seek to achieve a particular outcome white supremacy seeks to achieve the outcome
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of ensuring the dominance a domination of white people above especially black people but also
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brown people and Asian people but not only to achieve that in but to normalize it and to legitimize
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it and to protect itself against annihilation against the possibility that could it could ever be
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any other way so white supremacy wants white people to be at the top of society patriarchy once
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cisgendered men to be at the top of society ableism once able to body people to be at the top of
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society and so on and so forth but what do you do when you have a common goal when you find yourself
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in a room of people and you're like hey huh it actually seems like we kind of get along well you
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sign a deal with like-minded people those with aligned interests and you trust that in that
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collaboration you're going to be able to reach something that independently you might not have
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been able to reach as powerfully or as easily haha each of these systems know they know they know
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that individually their ends can be met through the collective project of beauty
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they find a deep alignment within this concept so they sign an agreement and we all suffer okay
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so let's really unpack what's going on here over time and over centuries over decades over years
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values change the zeitgeist as in what does the zeitgeist mean i'm going to define zeitgeist as
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like the cultural spirit of the times but let's see a zeitgeist is the defining spirit or mood
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of a particular period of history as shown by the ideas and beliefs of the time okay over time
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values change is the idea the cultural zeitgeist shifts constantly and there are many of course
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is not one it's defined in a particular place and time people for example stop being able to say
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things in the same way that they used to be said but the thing must be said one way or another
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i'm going to unpack that in another way people stop being able to say racist or sexist or
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ableist or homophobic things as explicitly as they once could now of course this still happens
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explicitly all over the world but what i'm saying is there's a certain
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forwardness explicitness that gets deteriorated over time and this is when a system has to lean on
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it's more implicit it's more subtle it's more insidious resources because we have to ask ourselves
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if we are white supremacy how do we keep the underlying system the same even as the cultural values
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the cultural zeitgeist shifts it is in all of these systems of oppression it's in their interest
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if there are more subtle tools and ways available to communicate to further to reinforce and to
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protect the same message that white people are at the top of society that anti-blackness racism
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and colorism should pervade every corner of society that women are to be subordinated objectified
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and alienated from their inherent self worth that cisgendered heterosexual people are at the top
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of society and should be viewed as the norm beauty helps each of these systems secretly achieve
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their ends so in the face of this what do these oppressive systems do while they agree to work
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together for a harmful evil purpose they conspire they sign seal deliver the beauty norm the
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beauty standard the beauty expectation and mostly the beauty hierarchy and the world is none the
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wiser when we personify ideas we come to a much deeper fundamental understanding of them
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we get to know them we are invited to come to terms with their complexity longevity and
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motivations why because we are human beings we were literally born and bred to relate to to be
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in community with to support to raise to love to heal to collaborate with other human beings that's
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that's what defines our species in a sense one of the things that we can collaborate in very
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powerful ways that we can understand each other even as we are not each other
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and still of course we fail to do that often i'm not saying we have a perfect understanding of
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each other but there's a way that we can relate to human beings that's why storytelling is so
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powerful when we personify an idea we start to ask the right kinds of questions
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isn't that again when we personify an idea we start to ask the right kinds there's different types
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of questions you can ask of anything we ask questions that i think we don't ask ourselves
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nearly often enough about things like white supremacy about things like beauty about things like
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cis heteropatriarchy questions like well if i were this idea what would i do you know what i mean
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what would i do what would be my goals and how would i realize those goals so the goal of any being
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with life any sentient life is to ensure its own survival to grow and to propagate itself
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in order to be a dominant species okay so there's this deep commitment of any species of self
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preservation so that is the goal of any living being on earth is to survive like literally there
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are cells in your body right now that are conspiring to keep you alive so now what have we done by
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stepping into the skin of a construct literally embodying it we come to understand its motivations
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in a deeper way so now we have to we have to really we have to go the full core we have to go the
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full journey with this one we've got to go we've got to go into the skin if i am white supremacy
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let let me fully embody let me take on everything what does that mean like what would keep me
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up at night what would allow me to rest easy oh i'm good i'm sick i'm i'm literally like i'm chilling
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okay what would allow me to do that well i must ensure that why people remain at the top of society
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with privileged access to everything good publicly land education health safety but also privately
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self-worth self-regard self-esteem like that must be my goal that is my end that is what i
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am living to ensure the survival of if those things cease to be then me i am my supremacy i cease to be
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so then what would i do logically to ensure my survival and my growth over time
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what would i do to protect myself as any species does against any meaningful attack as times change
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remember again what i said about this this zeitgeist it's not that i want to survive today
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it's all that i wanted to survive in nineteen fifty it's not that i wanted to survive in eighteen
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fifty i want to survive always i want to remain culturally socially politically and economically
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relevant i must ensure my survival and my growth and my procreation about the taste of time how
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am i going to do that what am i going to do to make myself untouchable immortal well i would
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have to have my own goals normalized reflected embedded in the very fabric of society that would
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let me rest easy right the other goal of any living species is to exert minimal energy and if it
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like i am an energy conserving being that's what we do that's why you're not lazy your goal is to
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conserve energy so what i want to do as white supremacy is to offload as much of the burden of my
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existence onto others onto the people themselves onto the subjects themselves so i would need everything
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about what i want a society to look like to seem so grotesquely normal oh and that's the gag
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i would need everything about what i want society to look like to seem so grotesquely normal
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because notice how protected you are when you are hidden in plain sight because how many species
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we hide to protect ourselves literally it's like a shell it's like a very evolutionary thing you
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have a safe space of refuge you hide yourself i need to hide myself from being viewed and perceived
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critiqued or killed so within the public consciousness i need to obstruct myself from plain view
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and i would choose if i were white supremacy to hide behind ideas that seem noble ideas with a clean
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social image cleaned by my dear friend the church another co-conspirator we're going to talk
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about this another day to protect me i would need beauty what beauty offers me is self-preservation
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beauty is my shield beauty makes it all seem grotesquely normal that my ends are reflected in the
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fabric of the society that white people at the top why because white people are beautiful finished
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okay so beauty offers me refuge beauty lets me get everything i want everything we want remember i'm
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co-conspirating with patriarchy and with ableism and with homophobia and with so many others okay
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white people on top women at the bottom and if some of the blacks slip through the cracks send
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to levels of power or influence become presidents become vice presidents at least let them be
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light skinned or mixed let them if not be thin and so on beauty helps me do all of this do you see
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that is the ugliness of beauty
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so i think we really need to get into the skin of these constructs in order to understand them and
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in order to end them and in order to construct something different a new way of being a new
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form of life that will sustain itself and that will propagate throughout the society so remember
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that as white supremacy i want to do my dirty work my evil buildings my dehumanizing acts but
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i also want the benefit of all these acts seeming normal i think that's such an important point
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i want to seem normal justified obvious deserved nothing to see here carry on nothing to see carry on
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nothing to see carry on nothing to see carry on so i'm going to employ all my ideological resources
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to ensure that my ends are normalized all of these forms of oppression transphobia homophobia
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ageism how do i make them all seem normal well i construct i co-construct remember we are
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conspiring something that normalizes each of these systems on their own and in their collective
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and so beauty is one of the key ways that i am going to achieve this feat this magic trick
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and i'm going to take it a step further because i'm diabolical literally i'm the greatest villain
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of all time and i'm going to make sure that the oppressed the marginalized are so enticed
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by me and by the promise of me so enticed by the project of being accepted represented reflected
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in this new normal in all that i can bring to them all the money the status the fame the love the
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acceptance the safety remember what beauty said that beauty keeps people safe i'm going to make it
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such that they too will join in and participate in their own oppression pro black but not too dark
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pro black but not too fat pro black but not too trans pro black but please be rich in fancy clothes
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pro black but please be capital be beautiful and similarly wow i'm going to limit the project
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of solidarity among women so in so doing i will ensure that the oppressed participate in
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disciplining and othering and excluding themselves never achieving true solidarity as women
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or as black people or as queer people or at the intersections why because they will be so enticed
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by the idea that they too can be beautiful and then i will only give power to those who are deemed
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beautiful but now i've defined beauty in my own image and so the people closest to the norm that
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i've set out are going to be included in the definition of beauty but because they're closer to
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the norm they're less likely to have ideas and principles and values that are threatening
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to the white supremacist colonial construct that i'm trying to keep in place
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and in so doing i will ensure that the oppressed participate in disciplining and othering
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and excluding themselves never achieving true solidarity and in this work beauty does not
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act alone it's not the only conspiracy but boy does it act so i'm really wise what i've done
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and what i've collaborated with these others with because what i've done between me between patriarchy
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between all of these systems of power and oppression sexism abilism ageism everything
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everyone that i seek to imprison to kill to gaslight to harm to bully to tease to abuse to ridicule
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to neglect to subordinate to exploit to under protect to underpay to erase to assault to engage
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to deport to remove to hurt to incarcerate i'll name these people ugly in both explicit and implicit
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terms i will name everyone that i seek to eradicate ugly and i will equate ugliness to being subhuman
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and subhumanity to being worthy of violence neglect bullying hate harm disbelief gaslighting
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all the above because of course you're ugly of course you're being bullied online you're ugly
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of course your doctor didn't believe you you're fat which is ugly of course your doctor doesn't
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believe you you're black you know what i mean it goes on and on and on and i gain i'm not saying
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that beauty is the only actor i'm pulling the thread but i'm pulling one thread there are many
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okay the organization reclaim ugly states what is uglification uglification consists of personal
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and cultural beliefs behaviors practices and laws that dehumanize people as ugly undesirable
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e-moral and unworthy it feeds maintains and depends on oppression such as lookism racism
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abilism sexism and homo trans fat and xenophobia there we have our conspiracy unchecked it facilitates
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normalizes and validates hatred childhood bullying workplace exclusion criminalization medical
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neglect violence exploitation and more that is so powerful unchecked uglification facilitates
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as in makes easier normalizes as in makes normal makes it seem like there's really nothing to see
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because it is the status quo and validates as in makes just makes right makes valid makes legitimate
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hatred do we want to legitimize hatred childhood bullying all kinds of bullying but yes childhood
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bullying of course workplace exclusion criminalization medical neglect violence exploitation
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and more in other words when there are human beings who are uglified it is easier as in it is
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facilitated it becomes normal and it becomes valid that those people are criminalized neglected
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violated exploited they continue practicing self-love in a world so rooted with uglification
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is a powerful act of healing and resistance but we want more than self-love we want to create
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a world where we intentionally strive towards the transformative inclusivity that will support
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people to love themselves and each other more to do that we have to fight the urge to
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uglify ourselves and other people within our families who friendships who workplaces who
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organizing spaces who creative expression media religious institutions and politics
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we have to fight the urge to uglify ourselves and other people within our communities it's so
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important to acknowledge that this happens in some of the most intimate spaces of our lives between
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mothers and daughters between parents and children between teachers and students between students
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and students like there's so many ways that this is happening again both in term communities
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between different communities especially across power lines and within communities in truck community
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okay so this collusion will be so powerful the collusion between all of the systems of oppression
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that the oppressed will be made to do it to themselves i will make them turn on themselves
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just watch the ancient tree has spoken their roots are deep and mighty and the branches that the tree
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has laid out are powerful and mighty as well i remember our incident from my own childhood
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when a very close friend of mine and i were we were walking down the street we were discussing
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whether god existed and she said he did not and i said he did but then she said she had proof
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she said i have been praying for two years for blue eyes and he never gave me any
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so i just remember turning around and looking at her she was very very black and she was very very very
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beautiful how painful can you imagine that kind of pain about that about color so i wanted to say you
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know this kind of racism hurts this is not lynchings and murders and drownings this is interior pain
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so deep for a 11 year old girl to believe that if she only had some characteristic of the white world
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she would be okay