On the politics of being ugly

Inspired by an article on turn-of-the-19th-century American whiteness this morning, I made my first tumblr-style triptych.

Other things I learned along the way:

  • Several major US cities, including Chicago, San Francisco, and Omaha, had “Ugly Laws” making it punishable by law for people deemed to be ugly or unsightly to be caught in public. [sourcesourcewikipedia]
  • Ayatollah Khomeini sanctioned Iranian nose jobs as compatible with Islam, saying “God is beautiful and loves beauty.” [sourcesource] Of course, by solely focusing on the “indigenization” of nose jobs under Islam, we miss the histories of Euro-American eugenics and race classifications that shaped those very definitions of beauty, both in Iran and among the diaspora living abroad.
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