Ugliness

Moshtari Hilal, an Afghan-born author and artist who lives in Germany, starts from the features she was taught to hate: dense body hair, crooked teeth and a big nose. From there she examines how power and beauty combine to decide who counts as ugly, and what that label does to the people who receive it.

The book mixes essay, poetry and Hilal's own drawings with a cultural and social history of the body. Her inquiry into appearance begins with her own face but is meant to apply to everyone's.

The subjects range widely. Beauty salons in Kabul appear against the backdrop of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. Darwin's theory of evolution and Kim Kardashian each get their turn, and so does an imagined utopian place in the shadow of her nose.

Hilal treats repulsion and attraction as political forces, and she examines the role ugliness plays in feeding hatred. The tone is intimate and personal while the argument stays political. It closes on the fear of ugliness itself, and on where that fear comes from.