going to be honest, a lot of the pushback that’s like “why are you telling people to embrace being ugly, that’s just reinforcing beauty standards” is frustrating to me because it’s missing the point imo. why are we reifying the concept of beauty and acting like it’s a goal to be beautiful when that’s the whole problem? as long as physical beauty as an idea has any power it’s inevitably going to be used to uphold and define hierarchical standards as dictated by society, because a culture that places great social value on appearances is going to use it to create an oppressive visual shorthand. when someone tells me to “embrace ugliness” i don’t think they’re telling me that i’ll always be ugly and that i just have to get over it or something, what i hear is “it’s time to ridicule and humiliate the concept of physical beauty to begin with” which is super fun and awesome to do
i.e. neither beautiful nor ugly but another secret third thing
