Harare Review of Books

225 pp. Published February 11, 2025 by New Vessel Press. Non-fiction.

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My ongoing intellectual enquiry (read: thinking about this makes me want to go down rabbit holes) on the human obsession with beauty and our association of ugliness with monstrosity (also the parallel questions of the interpretation of disability) is given a wonderful boost by this wonderful collection. In a variety of pieces—through poetry, photographs, drawings, and essays—Moshtari Hilal reaches within herself and into her childhood to ponder that obsession and its effects on her life.

Hilal reflects on the distinctive shape of her nose and the hairs on her body as evidence of her ‘ugliness’—things that she, of course, cannot help, being as they are evidence of her genetic heritage. She struggled with these throughout her childhood, although her mother tried to protect her. How much protection, though, could any mother provide in a society that demands irrational perfection according to some ridiculous standard? Even when you are closest to the ‘ideal’—pale-skinned, fairly thin, narrow-nosed—you’ll still need to primp and bleach and shave to get even closer.

What hope, then, for a woman of colour, ‘cursed’ by her genes?

Hilal describes a really monstrous and repulsive thing I had not heard of: As part of the US’s attempts to ‘free’ Afghanistan (codeword for freeing that country into being more like the US), the Department of Defense sponsored beauty salons in Kabul-with all of the implications of that. I was also shocked by this: Iran apparently has the highest rate of nose jobs in the world. In other essays, Hilal expands on her thoughts on the sense of alienation people of colour feel in the face of cultural imperialism (Fanon is central); explores facial symmetry, physiognomy, eugenics and Galton; discusses illness (leprosy) and ugliness in the process of dying; tells readers about the history of rhinoplasty; and discusses feminism, attitudes towards hairiness, and the pressure to be hairless. Finally, she considers what reconciliation with our bodies would mean, and what that would require.

Who is this for? Women, mostly—because we are constantly pressured to be ‘beautiful,’ whatever that means. Women of colour in particular, because of those standards we will never reach. But this is also for anyone who has ever pondered society’s obsession with not being ugly—all of the implications of that, from disability and illness to racism and aging.

Ugliness is set apart both by Hilal’s explorations of different forms of expression, and by how incredibly profound it is. Deeply thoughtful, and very highly recommended.

Many thanks to New Vessel Press and Edelweiss for an early DRC.

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