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17 Aug

Will being ‘ugly’ be aspirational sooner or later?

Will being ‘ugly’ be aspirational sooner or later?
“I even have a theory, in like ten years, being a bit ugly and a bit wrinkly goes to be in fashion,” says Ash Powers in a TikTok video. In the following ten to fifteen years, she explains, when everyone has succumbed to smoothing and tweaking their faces, “we're going to take a look at someone who has never had any work done and say, ‘Oh my god her crows feet… she just looks so… expressive. It’s so beautiful.’” With over 2.8 million views and 490,000 likes at time of writing, this video has kickstarted a conversation about our fascination with rarity, the longer term of beauty, and the role we play...
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28 Mar

Bonnie Bakeneko’s fetish face and mouth jewellery find beauty

Bonnie Bakeneko’s fetish face and mouth jewellery find beauty
Meet the avant-garde designer creating bespoke pieces to your inner fetishist Like many creatives who're othered for being ‘different’, Bonnie Bakeneko is all about difficult conventional beauty standards – something they do through their handmade bespoke fetish pieces for the face and mouth. Drawing on their struggles with mental health, the non-binary artist’s designs reflect the dark desires that underpin your deepest fantasies. Offering custom pieces to cater your individual aesthetic taste, Bakeneko’s extravagant designs vary from bejewelled cheek retractors – formerly confined to the dentist chair and something which Bakeneko’s own fears and anxieties have long been certain up in – to headpieces adorned with beetle wings and taxidermy. Growing up in...
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24 Apr

‘Not ugly, just poor’: how the sweetness industry is

‘Not ugly, just poor’: how the sweetness industry is
Botox, fillers and cosmetic surgery have gotten increasingly needed to live as much as contemporary beauty standards, making a beauty tax that's pricing many people out In our latest Class Ceiling series, we unpack how class actually affects young people today – from our jobs, to the best way we now have sex, to our general experience of the world. Beauty and wealth have at all times been bedfellows. Throughout history, the sweetness standard of any given period has served the ideological interests of the ruling class. Through the Renaissance, plump, pale skin was a prized signifier of high social status, while sun-darkened skin became synonymous with lower classes labouring outside. Today, nevertheless, that very...
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