Amélie Webb

“Our dominant story of beauty is that it is simultaneously a blessing, of genetics or gods, and a site of conversion. You can become beautiful if you accept the right prophets and their wisdoms with a side of products thrown in for good measure. Forget that these two ideas—unique blessing and earned reward—are antithetical to each other. That makes beauty all the more perfect for our (social and political) time, itself anchored in paradoxes like freedom and property, opportunity and equality.”
― Tressie McMillan Cottom, Thick: And Other Essays

“Beauty isn't actually what you look like; beauty is the preferences that reproduce the existing social order.”
― Tressie McMillan Cottom, Thick: And Other Essays

“Do not think me a maiden who needs saving from a dragon. I am the dragon, and I will set the world aflame.”
― Sydney Marie Hughes

“Beauty is not good capital. I compounds the oppression of gender. It constrains those who identify as women against their will. It costs money and demands money. It colonizes. It hurts. It is painful. It can never be fully satisfied. It is not useful for human flourishing. Beauty is, like all capital, merely valuable.”
― Tressie McMillan Cottom, Thick: And Other Essays