Ozempic, selfie-culture, and self-esteem

Paint me in oils, don’t take a photo.

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I simply do not reach the beauty standards of the current moment. That does not mean I am not beautiful: I am cherubic, rounded at all edges, and have a great smile which showcases the intelligent twinkle in my eye. I will never have a vacant, thousand-yard bitch stare; clothes cling to me in a way that challenges the imagination to undress me rather than showcasing an inherent, fashionable good taste, and the slouchy stance baddies use makes me look like my boobs are dragging me downwards to hell rather than being insouciant. I am round and soft and unevenly pigmented and better in whole than in parts. You might think in the pre-Ozempic fashion for Kim Kardashian’s butt I might have been considered beautiful, but I didn’t see myself in that either: the perfection of sculpture and effort is not one that comes naturally to anybody but no matter how hard I try my hair wants to be free and my body will never be corralled. I am courtesan hot, not model hot – more appealing to spend time with than gaze at. I have a face and body for being painted, the sensuous softness of a brush stroking oils, not for the unforgiving aperture and flash of the camera. Call it being ‘soft dramatic’, ‘cherub-faced’, or having a ‘peach body’, but I want to acknowledge the beauty I have rather than changing myself to suit the social moment. I want to be a timeless beauty, the kind that people talk about as having some indefinable thing that sizzled in person but could never truly be captured, for what is life if not ephemeral?

Beauty is a strange thing, and doubly so when considered alongside social mores. As somebody whose work is based in aesthetic philosophy I am deeply attracted to the idea of beauty, discussion of beauty, complications of beauty [1]. Blame it on watching Moulin Rouge at an impressionable age, but beauty, for me, needs to be situated: are we discussing bohemian spirited beauty with redness from dancing and laughing too hard? High-class patrician beauty with excellent posture and icy demeanour? Lads-mag beauty of the 2000s where you’re wearing a football shirt and have pouting blow-job lips? Beauty can be elements of all these things and must be, as the cliché says, in the eye of the beholder. I have a particular way that sometimes comes that makes me feel attractive. This is not necessarily what is ‘objectively good’ or what my husband, gay best friends, and female friends would tell me is the hottest on me – but they might all give me different answers for improvement, because each gaze values different things. I can’t help you fit the current mould but I can give a few tips for the oils-inclined that might raise your self-esteem in a messy, post-feminist world and let you look at yourself differently.

LINGERIE

Whether you prefer a sports bra or a balconette, women with bodies like ours need lingerie on their side. This is also true for gender-nonconforming people, baddies, and anybody who isn’t heroin-chic-type hot. Get underwear that fits, and make the foundational garments an enjoyable part of your dressing that suits your style.

NOT YOUR GRANDMA’S HOTTIES

There are silver screen sirens in every era that conform to all beauty standards (Florence Pugh I am free on Wednesday would you like to go out with me on Wednesday when I am free) but the mid-century taste for fleshpots will remind you that we might be in an era with this standard, but other standards were held not so long ago. This also applies to opera, Bollywood and Nollywood: there are plenty of women decreed the ‘world’s most beautiful’ who have thin lips, or big noses, or large shoulders, and you can’t feel inadequate about a single body part when there’s somebody out there with an altar that’s being worshipped at that has it too. You are a collection of unique attributes, and you should focus on holding your favourite parts up to the light, just like those beauties of the past.

LESBIAN GAZE

Nobody finds femininity in all its messy glory as sexy as WLW. I am completely serious: follow some lesbians on socials and you will see body hair, fat rolls, sweat, and scars presented as the divine feminine. The lesbian gaze does not break up the object but appreciates a whole self, regardless of what it looks like – lesbians can find washboard abs AND muffin tops sexy, and they are right, because the female body is great. THIS DOES NOT MEAN WATCH LESBIAN PORN. Porn is boring and unreal. Read a WLW book if you must, but I am talking about the mundane appreciation of womanhood in a partially non-sexual way that has its own culture of fashion, rituals of courtship, and vocabulary. Listen to some MUNA and feel better about yourself.

ADJECTIVES

Banish words like ‘pudgy’ or ‘pear-shaped’ and consider things YOU LIKE in relation to your body. Are you shaped like a strawberry daifuku, with motion to match its mochi coating? Are you as tempting to lick on your cellulite as the ice crystal formed at the bottom of your popsicle[2]? It doesn’t have to be food: your legs might be like the forest floor, your varicose veins spreading from the back of your knees like a beautiful hen-of-the-woods, your stubble like the gentle velveteen moss you feel grounded when you touch. There are so many beautiful things in the world – why are women only associated with cats and the moon?

PUSSY RAP

You want to meet a girl who finds herself attractive, high value, and will scream about it from the hilltops? Listen to female rap. I am not doing any gym sessions like the Hot Girl Coach but I sure can appreciate lines like “I eat hate, that’s why I ain’t gotta waste” and “look good chubby, I look good slim“. Pussy rap is by women, for women, and thus doesn’t (fully) conform to the male gaze [3] and is much more alive than pop ballads about how pretty women are despite people putting them down.

TRUST THE MIRROR, NOT THE PHOTO

A couple of weeks ago I went out with a friend who was genuinely struck dumb by how good my outfit was and how nicely it hung on me. She complimented each piece individually, then the whole look, then how it was exactly right for me. About a month before that I wore the same outfit to a birthday party and all the photos make me look like a beached whale, a sweaty balloon, a crazed waxwork. [4] I had felt a bit shitty seeing those photos, but my friend reminded me that people had raved about my outfit and how well it suited me at the party, too. This, to me, is evidence that people with bodies like ours are not meant for photos – our bodies look best in motion, our faces belie our emotions, we are tangible and reflect our surroundings. DRESS FOR THAT REALITY! Swish in front of the mirror to see what will happen when your hips sway, smile when you’ve done your makeup, and spread the beautiful magic of enjoying yourself over the way you look. Leave photos to the bitch girls, and live rent-free in people’s memories.

DO NOT SUCCUMB TO SURGERY.

We are luscious without filler, and our fecundity is a sign of profit. We are the women who would not be controlled – nuns and courtesans of the modern age whose minds cannot be controlled by men or what Mona Eltahawy describes as ‘foot soldiers of the patriarchy’. Sure, there’s a touch of the poison in there – I know there is, or you wouldn’t be reading my antidote – but you have the power to arrest its progress. Surgery, non-invasive procedures, even hair-straightening will not fix your relationship with yourself if it is based on trends or how others see you. Know your worth outside of the trend cycle, outside of the marketability of a woman’s body, outside of ‘for appearance’s sake’, or learn it. Claw it from the world – you are more than your body, and there’s nothing wrong with your body, and you have better things to do with your life than worry about how other people perceive a thing that you don’t need to change.

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On This Topic:

• Personally I think it’s time for China’s fifth great beauty – y’all know we can just declare things like that, right? Get a reality show together, stat!!
• Elinor Glyn is a fascinating woman: as well as writing scandalous romance that articulated sex appeal for the mainstream for the first time she was at the most scandalous party of the 20s (that’s saying something) and lived among British aristocracy for her early life. Where is her biopic??
• Radical self-acceptance, posited as a follow-on from body positivity, might be the healthier way to live, but for epicureans, sybarites, and voluptuaries that is simply not an option. Mainstream philosophy needs to move away from the Stoic bros and acknowledge that there are many more ways to view the world!

To-Do:

• Read a fiction book for fun. Actually, read three: I am behind on my reading goals because of all the sodding Bourdieu I’ve been wading through
• Check in with supervisors on PhD progress
• I need to clear out my clothes, but it’s hard because I own a lot of cardigans and the summer has got me thinking it’ll never be cardigan weather again.

Today’s Culture:

• Please can somebody take Ariana Grande thinkpieces away from me? I cannot help but click on every single one I see.
• Brighton: I am for some reason heading over there twice this month? Apparently it’s the place to be.
• God bless the Zebra Sarasa Vintage – I got lax and let my fountain pens run out this week, and it’ll be a cold day in hell when I write with something I don’t love.

[1] please stop talking about the Sublime until my thesis is finished and I can publish it!!!

[2] I am British, that is called an ice lolly.

[3] Please clamour for this piece and I will write it. I have so many thoughts about female audience / male gaze genres. For a sneak peek, check out my writing on Iggy Azalea.

[4] I’d say it was during the heatwave but this whole fucking summer has been a heatwave. It was in the hottest part of the UK that weekend.