An unmissable, radical essay from Emma Dabiri, bestselling author of ‘Don’t Touch My Hair’ and ‘What White People Can Do Next’.
What part of your beautiful self were you taught to hate? We spend a lot of time trying to improve our ‘defects’, according to society’s ideals of beauty. But these ideals – which are often reductive, tyrannical and commercially entangled – are imposed upon us by oppressive systems and further strengthened by our conditioned self-loathing.
This book encourages unruliness, exploring the ways in which we can rebel against and subvert the current system. Offering alternative ways of seeing beauty, drawing on other cultures, worldviews, times and places, as well as looking beyond the capitalist model – to reconnect with our birthright and find the inherent joy in our disobedient bodies.
It accompanies ‘The Cult of Beauty’, a major exhibition at Wellcome Collection in autumn 2023.
