"Moving beyond a politic of desirability to loving the ugly. Respecting Ugly for how it has shaped us and been exiled. Seeing its power and magic, seeing the reasons it has been feared. Seeing it for what it is: some of our greatest strength"
(Mingus, 2011)
"We all run from the ugly. And the farther we run from it, the more we stigmatize it and the more power we give beauty. Our communities are obsessed with being beautiful and gorgeous and hot. What would it mean if we were ugly? What would it mean if we didn’t run from our own ugliness or each other’s? How do we take the sting out of “ugly?” What would it mean to acknowledge our ugliness for all it has given us, how it has shaped our brilliance and taught us about how we never want to make anyone else feel? What would it take for us to be able to risk being ugly, in whatever that means for us. What would happen if we stopped apologizing for our ugly, stopped being ashamed of it? What if we let go of being beautiful, stopped chasing “pretty,” stopped sucking in and shrinking and spending enormous amounts of money and time on things that don’t make us magnificent?"
(Mingus, 2011)
"There is only the illusion of solace in beauty. If age and disability teach us anything, it is that investing in beauty will never set us free. Beauty has always been hurled as a weapon. It has always taken the form of an exclusive club; and supposed protection against violence, isolation and pain, but this is a myth. It is not true, even for those accepted in to the club. I don’t think we can reclaim beauty"
(Mingus, 2011)
"If we are ever unsure about what femme should be or how to be femme, we must move toward the ugly. Not just the ugly in ourselves, but the people and communities that are ugly, undesirable, unwanted, disposable, hidden, displaced. This is the only way that we will ever create a femme-ness that can hold physically disabled folks, dark skinned people, trans and gender non-conforming folks, poor and working class folks, HIV positive folks, people living in the global south and so many more of us who are the freaks, monsters, criminals, villains of our fairytales, movies, news stories, neighborhoods and world. This is our work as femmes of color: to take the notion of beauty (and most importantly the value placed upon it) and dismantle it (challenge it), not just in gender, but wherever it is being used to harm people, to exclude people, to shame people; as a justification for violence, colonization and genocide"
(Mingus, 2011)
Where is the Ugly in you? What is it trying to teach you? Mia Mingus asks us to sit with ugliness, to deconstruct it and unpack what it means. In doing so, Mingus is not only challenging us to be critical of beauty and it’s promises of liberation but also to think about how ugliness often names the myriad categories of people who are always already dispossessed and devalued: “physically disabled folks, dark skinned people, trans and gender non-conforming folks, poor and working class folks, HIV positive folks, people living in the global south and so many more of us who are the freaks, monsters, criminals, villains of our fairytales, movies, news stories, neighborhoods and world.” Though we are trained to refuse ugly, to cut it, conceal it, hide it, and excise it from ourselves, ugliness not only lies within us but is part of a broader regime of social processes. As Pride month continues, Mingus’ essay is a provocation to reflect not just on ugliness but also the nefarious work of desirability. How might standards of beauty continue to uplift some and disenfranchise others? What might it mean to sit with our own ugliness and monstrosities, not for the sake of recuperation but for naming the ways in which cultures of beauty, desireability, and value always leave remainders? To listen to the ugliness in and around us is to learn to celebrate those queer remainders left out of systems of desire, beauty, and value . ✨
