Author
In a society where beauty sometimes seems to be the gateway to everything we celebrate - fame, wealth, success, love - Does being ugly mean you can never achieve true happiness?
How can we find our way out of this hall of mirrors?
Ugly was published in hardback in 2023 by Blink, after a hard-fought five-publisher auction to secure the title, and will be available in paperback in 2024.
UGLY
UGLY
ABOUT UGLY:
We've all had those moments. The ones where you look in the mirror and nothing feels ok looking back at you. For Anita Bhagwandas, this started when she was a child growing up in South Wales, and it created an enduring internal torment about her looks.
We're all told that this sadness is just part of 'being a woman' but it stays with us evolving as we age. We're encouraged to obsess over it and go to any length to change it, but we're also ordered to 'just love ourselves' from every corner of the internet. The latter also bombards us with images of airbrushed, filled and plumped perfection, upholding centuries-old beauty standards that move so quickly, we can’t always see them; though we feel their effects. Our beauty rituals are so often based around things we think we need to fix, grow, develop - sometimes tipping into dangerous obsession. So, what seismic shift does it take to break free from this mentality?
In UGLY, Anita uncovers where these beauty standards started, unpicks why they’re been perpetuated, and unmasks the structure that continues to support them. From the ever-growing cosmetic surgery and ‘tweakments’ industry, to the hidden pitfalls of ‘pretty privilege’, it is time to finally break free from those limited beauty standards, because feeling ugly has nothing to do with how we look, and everything to do with who wants us to feel lacking.
UGLY has been featured in multiple titles, including: The Guardian Saturday Magazine, The Independent, Sunday Times Style, ES Magazine, Independent.ie, The Irish Examiner, Cosmopolitan, The Daily Mail, Elle, Glamour, Vogue, Women’s Health, Grazia, Marie Claire, Stylist, Porter, Mr Porter, Metro, Buzz, Spell, Good Housekeeping, Woman & Home and many more….
Praise for UGLY
“Anita’s deep dive into beauty, its history and the pressure to look “perfect” is essential reading”
Section Styles sticky-header testimonials
“We predict this book will have you and all the women in your life talking”
“From the smart and questioning beauty writer Anita Bhagwandas, this book is set to explore the intersectional notions of what is beautiful”
“A bold, beautiful undertaking - this book unravels what we think we know about beauty, both in how we view ourselves and others. Anita’s thorough research, lived experience and brilliant prose makes it a must read for anyone struggling to find their place in the world.”
“UGLY is provocative, powerful, and will challenge everything you thought you knew about beauty standards. I’m so grateful for Anita Bhagwandas’s work.”
“A brilliant and necessary book. Anita combines memoir with analysis to dissect the ways in which notions of beauty are subverted to subjugate and undermine. Anyone who has ever worried about their looks—and that’s pretty much every girl and woman—should read this to understand the mechanisms driving their sense of inferiority and inflicting the worst social, economic and psychological penalties on people furthest from imposed, Barbified ideals.
- Catherine Mayer, author and co-founder of The Women’s Equality Party”
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