Month: April 2025

• Why must beauty be pain?

  Why do so many beauty practices, especially for women, necessitate pain?

  From teeth sharpening of the mbenjele, to feet binding in imperial China, to injections and fillers in today’s world.

  Some practices can be explained (although, to me, not justified). Such as squeezing oneself into corsets to achieve an ideal waist-to-hip ratio, since evolution perceives a WHR suggesting high reproductive health to be attractive.

  Others are arbitrary standards of beauty that pass with time. The suffering and permanent damage far surpass the constructed ‘attractiveness’ it promises.

  Many of these painful practices, I have concluded, are a way to signal exclusivity, commitment, wealth, and thus social status. I.e. only when you have the money to survive do you have excess left to spend on fillers. Only the privileged in imperial China bound their feet, for they have access to medical services that ensure their survival after, and servants to carry out the multitude care it requires.

  Even the teeth sharpening of mbenjele, I believe, is a sign that one is ‘committed’ to this arbitrary, but community-defined standard of beauty. The pain is an offering and sacrifice to show one’s extreme devotion to societal standards.

  And it made me think of allll the things we are insidiously influenced – or even pressured – to do to our bodies. I look in horror at pillow faces of who were the most beautiful celebrities. Fillers moving about in faces. Starting skincare or facial augmentative therapies that are the norm these days, but finding oneself unable to just stop going for them any longer.

  Anyway, I have made myself a vow. That I will not cave to needing to maintain my appearance or youth.

  Firstly, I have never been known for being attractive anyway, so why is it of such importance? I’m no celebrity or influencer. As long as I’m keeping my base level of hygiene and am put together, all other preservations or augmentations are unnecessary.

  Secondly, and something I’m very grateful for, is that my husband makes me feel undoubtedly attractive – to him! Which i think all husbands should do. As long as those who love me, and are worth my consideration, are content with my appearance, why should anything else matter?

  Thirdly, I want to start practicing the mindset that it is okay to age, to not look ‘as good as I did before’. To be alright with my face and body changing and not what I used to deem ideal. Undo the ingrained anxiety of ‘not looking good’ by digging deeper and asking ‘so what?’

  I want to be a happy old person, to embrace aging. Not someone inching with dread towards the inevitable of more wrinkles and white hair. Why, really, does it matter so much? If the people who love you still love you? Who are we really trying to impress, or keep up appearances for?

  April 20, 2025

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• This reality

  Sometimes I’m hit with a pang at how fundamentally fucked up beyond repair the world is.

  It’s bone-chilling that we live in an already dystopic world and have been for centuries. In which our basic survival and needs are shackled to a man-made construct: money. More entrenched than ever, and as a result with power more dangerously consolidated than ever.

  Is it not completely illogical and horrifying that work that brings the most, and most direct, value to our lives, such as shit shovelling and trash collection, for health, hygiene, standard of living, are paid the least?

  And the most useless – or most times malignant – work are most highly compensated? For instance any work that makes people spend more, manufacture more, without any positive impact to our well-being, health, survival, or propagation. Beyond a few seconds of dopamine boost. Not only is it a harm to humankind but also the soil we are rooted to. The earth that gave us life.

  Is it not depressing that 99% of us work tirelessly for ONLY, and I stand by this ONLY, the benefit and luxury of the undeserving 1%? I say undeserving because all deserves basic necessities, but NO one person deserves a $2 million piece of accessory, especially at the expense of many, many other’s suffering, but they do.

  I strongly believe no one person should be a billionaire. Or a multi-millionaure. There should be a universal cap on one’s personal wealth, for what one person could need or use so much? Just a tiny fraction of their assets brings about a larger than proportional benefit to individuals, and then a ripple effect to the rest of society.

  When I’m feeling shallow and unthinking, I tell myself I ‘love money’, it’s fine, what’s the point of fighting a system I can never change, why not just work within in and make the best of a futile situation.

  Other days I’m in shock that we let humanity spiral to this state. When such a mood strikes and come face to face with the bleak reality, I question where most of my efforts are expended.

  In my ideal world there is no consumerism. We live to live: eat what we need, socialize, reproduce, have a community, simple entertainment through art and music.

  Currency is but trade of skills. A baker’s loaf for a weaver’s basket. The way it was before the first shekels changed hands.

  It is also in a bout of these musings that I rethink my ‘love’ for money, struck by the irony that I chase after the one thing that oppresses us all, and start thinking about what I can do that doesn’t perpetuate this rot, but rages back at the machine, even a little. Throwing starfish back into the sea kinda thing.

  Ultimately, I’ve not been brave enough to begin on the harder path that aligns with my inner belief. Yet.

  April 16, 2025

  capitalism, consumerism, dystopia, social critique, social hierarchy

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