34: beauty as alienation from the self 👽

if toxic, eurocentric beauty standards won’t let you rest: this episode is for you. i made a tiktok (620K views) about this idea in June that people resonated with, and so I decided to make an episode about it. let’s unpack how Beauty is a form of alienation from ourselves — and from each other. i hope you enjoy this episode, made with love. 🤎

ADVICE COLUMN:

☎️ seeking advice and want to PHONE IN with a question? ⁠⁠⁠⁠submit a voicemail here⁠⁠⁠⁠.

📩 OR WRITE IN an advice question anonymously at the ⁠⁠ASK Ayanda form⁠ here⁠.

🎥: Watch the video of this episode on Spotify or YouTube.

Key quotes:

“I believe there’s a world in which we see each other as Divine Beings that cannot be flattened into a toxic Eurocentric, colonial, elitist, ableist beauty standard that is always and already going to dehumanize us and remove us from the ability to experience ourselves and each other as Love.” 

“Beauty dislocates you from being able to claim yourself in the present tense” 

Time stamps

(02:48): What is alienation?

(05:07): Beauty as a distorted mirror

(12:32): Beauty and Time 

(15:48): Intra-community Beauty standards 

(19:43): Mirrors and Love

(25:50): The relentless pursuit and pressure of Beauty 

(27:17): 3D vs 5D consciousness

(32:01): Why I struggled with this episode

Sending all my love to you today, sunshine. 

Sources mentioned: 

TikToks: On beauty as alienation by me Video 1 (https://www.tiktok.com/@ayandastood/video/7249132796822752518) and Video 2 (https://www.tiktok.com/@ayandastood/video/7249137595135872261)

Essay: Estranged Labour, 1844 by Karl Marx (https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/labour.htm)

Related episodes

Industrialized vs. Spiritual Beauty (Idea via Jessica DeFino)

Beautiful Lies Ft. Kalpana Mohanty

The Ugliness of Beauty

The Myth of Inclusive Beauty

 Moving toward Ugliness Ft. Mia Mingus

Read my hand-written essay on Breaking the Colonial Paradigm of Beauty

Other key quotes:

“We can be so much more if we dismantle the Beauty hierarchy” 

“Beauty robs you of your sense of self in two ways: Number 1, it equates who you are with how you look according to a toxic, Eurocentric beauty standard. Your “ideal self” is someone who looks a certain way, rather than someone who is a certain Being — which you already are. Number 2: you are always relegated to being worse than your ideal future self, so then when are you ever allowed to exist and to claim yourself? As you grow older and age, people say you don’t look yourself. If you gain weight, people say you don’t look yourself. If you lose weight, you are meant to “feel more yourself than ever”. So then who are you? Surely you always look yourself? No, because Beauty is the alienation of the self from the self” 

“A world with more radical love, rooted in an anti-colonial understanding of life, HAS TO dismantle the beauty hierarchy, and replace it with a deep love and awe for people as people, rather than value people based on their ability or inability to conform to toxic Eurocentric beauty standards” 

“You are a multi-dimensional being who, through Beauty and other oppressive structures, is forced to conceive of yourself as a one-dimensional self” 

“Beauty dislocates you from being able to claim yourself in the present tense” 

“We will always be alienated from ourselves when we are made to feel unloveable because of a standard that has been imposed on us, one that deeply limits how we then come to understand, experience, and make sense of ourselves and each other” 

Join the community: 

my newsletter: ⁠⁠ayandastood.substack.com⁠⁠ please join me here!

follow me at ⁠⁠⁠@ayandastood⁠⁠⁠ on TikTok and ⁠⁠⁠@ayandastood⁠⁠⁠ on IG

every Sunday: Join ⁠⁠showing up together⁠⁠, a virtual working session every Sunday on Zoom from 9am-12pm EST.