Loving Ugly
Podcast: Download (Duration: 19:36 — 18.0MB)
Subscribe: More
Have you ever been worshipped? I’m not talking about the “bring offerings to an altar built in your name” kind of worship—although if you do happen to have offerings of chocolate, I’m open. I’m talking about the core meaning of the word worship, looking into its origins and oldest implications. I’m wondering if you have ever had anyone hold you and your life in awe? I’m curious if you have had someone ascribe worth to the fullness of your being? Have you ever been worshipped?
One of my favorite recent examples of this kind of worship comes from a joyously unexpected place—the movie Magic Mike XXL. It’s a story about five male strippers on a road trip for one last major hoorah at an annual stripper convention. In the last scene of the film, when our main characters are about to take the stage, their MC, played by Jada Pinkett Smith, asks the crowd of women if they are “ready to be worshipped.”
What then takes place is a kind of worship that, as feminist writer Roxanne Gay describes it, caused moviegoers to throw actual dollar bills at the screen. It was raunchy, it was risqué, it was filled with fantasies of all kinds. As each character performed his act, we saw consenting women of various body shapes, skin colors, and ages being treated as attractive, sensual, and yes, sexual beings. Throughout the scene, we saw women with many—though admittedly not all—kinds of bodies being held up as worthy of physical intimacy and love, as attractive and beautiful.
And the effects of that worship were made clear immediately after I saw the movie with my friend. When the film was over, we started walking down the theater steps to exit. As we began making our way out of the room, we found ourselves behind a couple of women, one of whom looked to be in her 40s and another who looked older, maybe in her 70s. As we followed them down the steps, the older of these two women turned to us, grinned and said: “I need to find myself a young man!” The exchange was made ever more perfect by the 20-something theater employee, whose eyes went wide with shock when the older woman exclaimed her need.
Part what makes Magic Mike more than a film about five male entertainers on a road trip is its prophetic message about the limited definition of what we call physically “beautiful” in our society.
In affirming the beauty and worthiness of a range of women’s physical forms, it challenges the exclusionary features that are so often required for anyone to be considered beautiful. In worshiping this wider-than-traditionally-accepted range of women’s bodies, the film ascribes worth to—sees the beauty of—what has so often been called “ugly.”
That message contradicts the way that many of the physical characteristics we might call “ugly” are treated in our typical discourse. Rather than see them as features worthy of worship, we are too often taught that we need to change or eradicate them. We are sold make-up to hide acne marks and wrinkles; we use control-top pantyhose and heels to get the “perfect” butt and thighs; we color the gray in our hair; we cycle through the newest diet and exercise fad every month because we think, “Maybe this one will actually get rid of my gut.” Our culture is constantly reminding us that to be worthy of the label “beautiful” we have to get rid of everything that is not part of a very specific, and largely unrealistic, idolized form.
And when we say something is “ugly” in our society, what else are we attributing to those physical characteristics? What are we saying about what we believe is its nature? About how we should interact with it? Something that is “ugly” is unattractive. It is unpleasant or repugnant. Something that is ugly is repulsive, nasty, shameful, objectionable, horrible, vile, or even frightful. When we call something “ugly,” we are saying it is “less than.” We are saying it is not worthy of love.
And that angle just considers how we are constantly approaching what we have been conditioned to see as physically ugly. What does it mean for all that we have been conditioned to see as socially or culturally ugly? What does it mean for people whose characteristics we have been conditioned to view as unpleasant not just to our eyes, but also to our minds? Repulsive and shameful to our spirits? Objectionable or frightful in our hearts? What else are we saying is not worthy of our worship? Not worthy of our love?
What has been deemed “ugly” in our society is unfortunately not limited to our body image. Much of the marginalization, hatred, and violence inflicted upon certain people and communities is the result of being judged and treated as “ugly,” as with people who our larger cultural narratives tell us don’t live up to what we are conditioned to think is “good” or “right.”
In the example of racism, black and brown lives have been historically portrayed and treated as “ugly,” as less good and less worthy than white lives. From narratives of savagery about indigenous peoples, to narratives of inferiority justifying the forced enslavement of Africans in European colonies, people of color have long been presented as being “ugly” in U.S. cultural history. What we call our “criminal justice system” has long been used to treat black and brown people as ugly—as inherently violent, threatening, and criminal.
Narratives surrounding gender identity also carry their own ideas of what has been deemed culturally “ugly” or objectionable. In a sad example, in 2015 residents of the city of Houston voted to overturn HERO, the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance that had made it illegal to discriminate against anyone on the basis of multiple protected classes, including race, disability status, sexual orientation, and gender identity. HERO was a great example of a “loving ugly” measure, designed to prevent treatment of certain marginalized identities as “less than,” by offering protections that affirmed their inherent worth and legal rights. Unfortunately, what happened in Houston with the repeal of HERO was anything but love.
When this kind of treatment of people and communities as “ugly” or “less than” in our society goes unchallenged, the consequences can be devastating and even fatal. Verbal abuse and the denial of legal protections can cause trans and gender-non-conforming people, especially youth, to internalize the messages of hate and worthlessness that surround them, and lead to their pursuit of self-harm and suicide at rates that are nearly ten times the average.
But we know that the narratives around what is seen as worthy and beautiful, and what is seen as less than and ugly, can and have to be changed. And if we wish to live into that first Unitarian Universalist principle, the inherent worth and dignity of every person, we must commit ourselves to affirming people whose worth and beauty have for too long been denied.
And that work, that effort, is happening. Today, there are numerous movements by people on the margins, people who have been treated as “ugly,” to proclaim their beauty and challenge the attitudes and structures that say they are anything else. These are movements of self-love, assertions of worthiness and power that are being led by the very people who have been denied their right to be worshipped, to have their lives held in awe.
In the area of body image, particularly for women, there is a growing effort to affirm the beauty of all body sizes, shapes, and colors. There are campaigns like the international movement, The Body Is Not an Apology, founded by Sonya Renee Taylor. This campaign promotes radical body empowerment, and the affirmation of “perfectly imperfect bodies, shaped by differences in age, race, size, gender, dis/ability, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, class, and other attributes” as all beautiful and worthy of love. There’s also Mirna Valerio, a marathon runner whose blog, Fat Girl Running, breaks through the stereotype that bigger bodies cannot be healthy or capable of amazing athletic feats.
It is worth noting that Taylor and Valerio are women of color, a reality that points to another campaign of self-love and affirmation of worth—Black Lives Matter, which, in the words of its organizers, “is an affirmation of Black folks’ contributions to this society, our humanity, and our resilience in the face of deadly oppression.” It is a richly intersectional effort that both includes and goes beyond challenging police brutality and mass incarceration. It seeks to ensure the inclusion and affirmation of black lives and experiences in multiple justice movements such as disability justice, housing affordability, employment and economic justice, healthcare access, and LGBTQ equality. It resists cultural narratives that have dehumanized or erased the experience of being black in our society, and thus helps to make black lives visible, reminding all of us that they have yet to be treated as the worthy and beautiful lives that they are.
And despite the heartbreaking outcome of the HERO vote in Houston, there have been many successes that lift up the beauty and worth of trans lives. Twenty states have laws on the books that explicitly protect transgender people from discrimination. Transgender storylines, and in particular ones featuring transgender actors, are slowly gaining nuanced representation in popular culture and media. While invisibility and fear-based lies continue to present trans lives as ugly, major legal and cultural efforts have challenged this assumption with life-saving affirmations of worth.
So how are we called to love what has for too long been called ugly? Some of us may hold identities or be part of communities that continue to bear the status of ugly in our society. Loving what has been called ugly in your life may very much be an act of self-love, a breaking down of the cage of lies that have declared you are not beautiful or powerful, or worthy of worship. Loving “ugly” may largely be an act of resistance to cultural narratives around your worth, through the celebration of your own beauty.
For all of us, and especially those who may hold identities that have historically had the privilege of being affirmed as beautiful and worthy, loving ugly is an active process. It is much more than simply believing that all people possess an inherent worth and sacred beauty that should never be denied, although that is an essential part of the process. But feeling or thinking that so much of what has been called ugly should be seen as beautiful is not the same as acting upon it.
To love ugly is to engage in the act of transformation, to commit ourselves to ensuring the affirmation of another’s worth. It is to take the risk of naming the beauty and value of what has been called ugly in the public sphere, knowing there will likely be resistance. It is to lovingly challenge the assumptions of ugliness embedded in the minds and hearts of those closest to us, knowing that the cost to our relationships is likely to be less than the cost to the lives that have been deemed less worthy if those assumptions are allowed to go unaddressed.
It requires a willingness to be transformed ourselves—a willingness to let our relationships with the people who have been called “ugly” and “less worthy” change how our minds and hearts understand the world. Loving ugly means we build into our lives regular interactions and relationships of accountability that ensure we are indeed listening to the proclamations of self-worth being made by the “ugly” members of our society. It means checking our actions to make sure they are in line with the needs and direction of the people whose worth we are seeking to affirm.
Loving ugly means not necessarily being the ones to lead change, but rather becoming respectful and accountable accomplices in the work for universal justice. Loving ugly is a process of learning from the visions of those who have been called less worthy or less beautiful, and supporting their strategies for achieving affirmation and change. It is not so much about giving power to the marginalized in our society, but instead about seeing and following the power they already have, the power that nobody else has been willing to recognize. It is about actively worshipping the beautiful in all the infinite variety of its forms, making more and more places for that beauty
to bloom and grow.
- Loving Ugly - June 1, 2018
