Description

In this powerful reflection on an often overlooked topic, Moshtari Hilal confronts the crucial questions: How do beauty and power come together to define who is deemed ugly? And how does this perception of ugliness fuel hatred? Hilal, an Afghan-born writer and artist now living in Germany, offers both an intimate and profoundly political exploration. She investigates standards of appearance—initially using her own dense body hair, uneven teeth, and prominent nose as starting points—to highlight how societal norms affect us all. Through a wide-ranging cultural perspective, she reflects on Kabul’s beauty salons during the period when the U.S. invaded Afghanistan, Darwin’s evolutionary theories, Kim Kardashian’s global celebrity, and an imagined utopia inspired by her own distinctive nose.

Blending essays, poetry, personal drawings, and research into the cultural and social dimensions of the human body, Hilal thoughtfully engages with feelings of repulsion and attraction, continuously pushing readers into the most private spaces of self-reflection. “Ugliness” exposes the beauty industry’s power, which traps women in a costly cycle of insecurity, ultimately asking the profound question: what causes us to fear ugliness?