Suzanne Harrington: Let's celebrate beauty found in connection this International Women's Day
Emma Dabiri, writer of the essay Disobedient Bodies. Picture: Alex Cameron
It’s International Women’s Day on Friday and what better way to celebrate than to read Emma Dabiri’s glorious and rousing essay Disobedient Bodies. Female beauty, she says, needs to be about adornment and pleasure, rather than conforming to how we’ve been told to look (thin, young, pretty – no matter what size, shape, age we are) and driving ourselves mad and miserable in the process.
30 years ago, Naomi Wolf wrote how “a cultural obsession with female thinness is not an obsession about female beauty, but an obsession about female obedience”. While body positivity borne of social media has slightly adjusted this – assisted by inclusivity champions like Edward Enniful, Lizzo et al– our beauty ideals still remain dull, narrow and prescriptive. Added to this, we have allowed female ageing to be pathologized, which is about as stupid as pathologizing the weather. And as self-defeating.
