No one clearly told me that long hair was beautiful, but even as a child, I knew it was. My Barbies had it. The Disney princesses had it. The American Girl dolls I wished they had. So I had it too, although it was a real pain. “One has to suffer to be beautiful,” my father joked as I squealed and freed myself from my mother pulling a comb through my perpetually tangled hair. Cutting it short would be more appropriate. But I wanted to be beautiful—of course I did.
Humans learn early on what is attractive, and some people spend their lives trying to reach that level. They look like, in search of a huge popularity of jaws and social networks, one young man he repeatedly hits his face with a hammeror if an already thin celebrity goes on a crash diet to fit into a the famous dress of the woman who died in a few minutes. Americans pay for makeup and hair removal, blowouts and make-up, personal trainers and facials, botulinum toxin injected into muscles and hyaluronic acid to plump lips—collectively spending hundreds of billions of dollars a year to achieve the look they want, or at least the look they think they should have.
This is not just driven by vanity: According to research, pleasing people with beauty they are generally more economically successfuland discrimination based on appearance occurs measurable economic costs. Beauty has historically been confused with notions of morality, purity, and fitness to lead. Being beautiful opens social doors too; A person’s real qualities and abilities can be enhanced by what psychologists call the “attractive halo” effect, and such treatment can lead to beautiful people having a more optimistic outlook on life.
Good looks and their benefits are well known and openly discussed, but there is very little talk about the experience of it is not be interesting. In 2022, the philosopher Thomas J. Spiegel wrote about the uncomfortable fact that discrimination based on appearance is a form of injustice, which has psychological and material consequences. Author Stephanie Fairyington has been thinking about Spiegel’s work, and the interesting idea, for a long time. What, and who, all should be for, anyway? What does it mean to achieve
And Fairington, Stephanie
In his new book, Bad: A Letter to My DaughterFairyington explores why physical beauty—as defined by personal standards that have changed over time and still vary widely between cultures and generations—is valued so highly. And he begins by admitting that he is bad. Not “in a way that would make people look at people without a mouth,” he explains; he is “stupid, very offensive, like someone who has given up or doesn’t try.” But even hinting at this fact without self-deprecation infuriates the people around him, especially women, who “cannot allow such an idea to remain in the air.” Acknowledging and naming evil is blasphemy, “almost the worst thought to think,” he writes. Not everyone can be naturally beautiful, but this comment indicates that the real sin is to leave one’s appearance alone instead of taking advantage of all available interventions – all the ways one can. to fix themselves.
What should a woman who calls herself dirty do? And, most importantly, how can Fairyington raise his middle daughter with traditional looks in a world that will teach her to value, nurture, and improve those looks at the expense of pursuing other desires? Badwhich is addressed to an older, future version of his son, is dedicated to trying to answer that question. This book is a philosophical text and a mother’s cry as she tries to imagine a new world where physical beauty is no longer something to consider.
Fairyington isn’t stupid enough to think we can just ignore the looks. Humans are social creatures, and so of course we understand ourselves in relation to others. It is common sense that among friends, say, we can tell who is shorter and who is taller, who is thin and who is fat, just as we agree that some of us enjoy opera while others prefer video games. The problem, he points out, is that most people don’t see these facts as merely interesting differences; rather, they are evaluative, tied to distinctions such as good or bad, hot or not. He is also not saying that we should challenge the norms of beauty by boldly celebrating what is considered ugly as beautiful. He explores that opposition through figures such as the English musician Polystyrene and drag queen Fauxnique, and he agrees creative, playful, powerful effects of emphasizing the elements we have been taught to minimize. But embracing the spectacle of ugliness can be as difficult a task as pursuing unattainable beauty ideals—and it can prove what it is considered interesting.
The author remembers well how it was to care about his appearance as a heavyset boy who never lived up to other people’s standards for him, which caused him great pain because of how beautiful his mother was. When Fairyington was 10 years old, an adult asked scornfully, “That is daughter Chrysí?” Fairyington hopes to spare his son from the same thing. Hope is the keyword: Bad it is a book of desires, an attempt to explore how we can live within our bodies and with each other. It represents a parent test to make society a welcoming place for her child—or, failing that, to make her child the one to see the most destructive messages of past societies. This tension—between working toward a better world and arming her child against the one we have—leads to some of the book’s most interesting and difficult moments.
When their daughter wants to include her love of shopping on a resume to appear under a poem she wrote, Fairyington and his wife initially discourage it, dismissing shopping as a futile pursuit. When the author learns that his wife and a family friend are planning a trip to take his son to the nail salon, he refuses: “Why are we encouraging him to deny himself so early?” he asks, and his friend replies, “You don’t have it hate womenare you Steph?”
It’s a joke, but a biting one. Fairyington denigrates the leisure pursuits of a large proportion of the female population, and that attitude does not exist in a vacuum – the cultural stones laid by women such as Taylor Swift, romance novelsand reality television is often seen as silly, while typically male entertainment, such as sports and historical war dramas, is often considered gravitas. However, Fairyington does not want to denigrate femininity; she grew up interested in feminist subcultures like the Riot Grrrl punk movement, and she just wants her daughter to look up to other girlhood role models. Fairyington feels constrained by a culture in which women are constantly pushed to “modify our bodies and our faces” in order to remain desirable (which, she notes, means desirable. for men) In his view, nail polish, cosmetics, and personal grooming are all part of this ongoing racket.
I do not disagree with his claim at its core. Still, I guess, as the internet saying goes, people are allowed to enjoy things. What makes us feel good isn’t always good for us. Deflection why we love what we love is a lifelong project. And at the same time that Fairyington criticizes his son’s interests, he also admits his own hypocrisy: He is proud of how beautiful his daughter is to others. “When I walk with you on the street,” he writes, “and see charming smiles, like the flashes of paparazzi cameras, looking at you with meditative approval, I think, I may be a failed woman, but just look at my beautiful—and very normal—daughter..”
Although being a woman usually comes with obvious rewards, Fairyington realizes that her son—consciously, at least—is not trying to impress anyone but himself. She happens to like wearing nail polish. She likes many things: admiring the outrageous costumes worn by drag queens in Provincetown, going to her parkour class, trying out magic rituals under the light of the full moon, boys. He, like any other child, is the same and different from his mothers, and Fairyington knows that his interests and personality will continue to change. All Fairyington can do now is provide an alternative.
Among his more analytical and philosophical passages, Fairyington quotes a casual conversation with his son. In one scene, her daughter discards a carefully planned costume from her Halloween costume bin after a classmate makes fun of it, and Fairyington can only watch in sorrow as someone else’s opinion affects her child’s preferences. In other scenes, Fairyington tries to get her daughter to think about things in a new way: She asks her what she likes about what her body can do. do itcontrary to what it seems, and her daughter replies that she loves that her body can swim, make bracelets, dance, sing, climb trees, and play video games.
Bad it ends with an unlikely tendency toward awe and wonder—feelings that can, according to researchers, help quell the self-criticism and unhappiness that creeps into our lives amid constant reminders of what we need to do to fix ourselves. It’s a good place to end the book, an invitation to her son—and to readers—to see our smallness and find comfort, rather than despair, in the insignificance of our many worries.
But I can’t help but keep coming back to Fairyington’s assessment of her face earlier in the book. Giving up, or not trying, feels to me like a severe form of transgression. Beauty and health companies make billions of our efforts to control our appearance—but simply accepting how we look bypasses the whole process. Some of us will always be naturally beautiful, and some more ugly; it has never been an equal field. But how much space can be freed up for other activities if those of us who find the whole thing just boring… took our attention elsewhere?
I found out in a small way a few years ago, when I stopped shaving my legs and armpits. At first, yes, it was part of the middle finger for what I expected. It didn’t solve my insecurities; I still felt awkward and on display, like the worst person in any room. Then I realized that I would always feel that way, no matter how hard I put it. Once I quit—except, on rare occasions, for fun or to live in a work environment—I was free from constant feelings of failure. Strangely enough, moving to Los Angeles, where beautiful professional people are found, liberated me even more; There is no way I can measure here. Instead of trying, I appreciate the beauty that surrounds me—the golden light of LA, the hills and mountains and the sea, the weird and wonderful slabs of vanity—and spend my time on other things, like reading, writing, raising my child, and trying to make ends meet.
Small, personal choices like mine won’t magically create social change, but they can open the door to finding out what really makes us happy—what brings us joy and fulfillment. I know people who truly enjoy their makeup, who find going to the hair salon comfortable, and whose skin care routine is a way to pamper their own bodies. If doing any of this felt good to me, I would do it—though, as Fairyington says, it might still be worth questioning. why I found it a pleasure. But I don’t, and so trying to look pretty feels like a chore, another thing to add to my long to-do list. There’s a relief in putting my aesthetic dissatisfaction aside and worrying, instead, about the world’s more immediate forms of ugliness.
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