Ugly: The Beauty Book Our Mothers Should Have Read

Former corporate HR worker bee, Naveen has abandoned Excel spreadsheets in favour of working on her first love: writing. A beauty junkie as well as a lover of fiction, Naveen refuses to be put in a box after years of sitting in a boring cubicle. Currently developing a line of lipsticks and honing her craft of writing fiction at The Novelry, Naveen enjoys spending time with a good novel, her young children, her pets and her husband (who insisted that she put in the disclaimer that the order is not indicative of preference).

My fellow brown beauty junkies, I hope you’re sitting down for this. I have found our very own beauty bible. And get this, not only is it something we can benefit from, but it’s something we can and should give to our mothers and our daughters when the time comes. Not sure the nosy auntie who is your cousin’s wife’s neighbour’s daughter in law would want to read the whole thing, but it couldn’t hurt to lend her a copy next time she talks about how much weight you’ve gained, as she scarfs down samosas at your house on Eid day. 

Ugly by Anita Bhagwandas was published in February of this year. I noticed it while searching for books on beauty history, my distraction from my boring day job, and immediately placed a pre-order around Christmas time in 2022. Bhagwandas is a South Asian beauty journalism trailblazer (yes we needed one of those, it’s been a LONG time coming) who publishes a regular column on beauty in the Guardian Saturday publication and heads the Beauty division at Conde Nast Traveller. In addition, she freelances for a number of other popular magazines, e.g. Glamour, Allure, Stylist, and many more. Ugly is her first book, and I hope it won’t be her last. 

I know I am not alone in my experience when I say that I have been held to a beauty standard that has been unattainable, from the very first time I looked in a mirror. Bhagwandas drew me in with an experience she had which was very similar to mine. In her opening chapters, she talks about going to a party and all of her friends being given princess dresses, whilst she was singled out for being “too big” and given something else instead. This was the first time she felt othered by her looks. 

I remember my mother and my nanny pulling and tugging at my Eid clothes, also at the age of four, trying to get the embroidered kameez down my torso smoothly. I remember thinking, even at that age, “Why can’t I just wear a t shirt or something?” Really, do we need to subject every slightly chubby four year old girl to this kind of embarrassment? It’s not like that was the first day my family realised I was “chubbier than most four year olds” (I can’t believe I am even writing that phrase down, it’s 2023 and hopefully it isn’t a thing anymore).

What’s interesting to me is that Bhagwandas grew up here in the UK, and I lived in Pakistan until the age of 17, but our experiences were very similar. I am sure most of you who are reading this are familiar with the colourism and the reverence towards euro-centric beauty standards that exists in South Asian communities. If not, I suggest you look at the Rishta section of a South Asian newspaper, where tall, thin, light skinned and green-eyed women are always in demand, even though the British left India almost a century ago. 

I am now what we call a lovely and tanned complexion (read: wheatish) and if I lay off the naans (I mean gluten) I can look quite nice in a midi dress, but the little girl inside me will always be aware of the fact that I am “not quite” what people are looking for when they think of the word “beauty”. 

That brings me to the definition of beauty. Who defines what it is in the first place? How can there just be one kind of beauty in the world? Bhagwandas articulates this in a way much better than I ever could but I’ll give it a try. White patriarchy defines the world’s beauty standards. If women are so busy trying to fit into a mould they will never be able to achieve (I can bleach my hair blonde and my skin white and wear contact lenses but I 100% will never pass for a European supermodel, try though I might), we won’t be able to object to the wider issues that continue to oppress us. We will be too depressed, too defeated to try. 

An interesting take on the “heroin-chic” and “ozempic” trend; anytime women have made any kind of progress in history, society’s beauty standards change back to the ideal of “thinness”. Women stop focusing on the progress we have made, and start wanting to be “skinny” even if it means wreaking havoc on their health in the process. 

Bhagwandas’ skill lies in the fact that she can make such a serious and sometimes dark topic enjoyable to read about. Her writing style and descriptions will appeal not just to SouthAsians but to other communities as well. I will definitely be suggesting Ugly to everyone I meet who speaks to me about the subject of beauty and how nice and bright my blue dress looks against my tan skin, and I will definitely gift it to my mother. It would have been nice if our parents had a book like this, but luckily we get to benefit from the foundation that Bhagwandas has laid in this book for our daughters and their daughters and for the many more powerful, intelligent and beautiful South Asian girls to come.