Ugly

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A tender, moving, and insightful account of queer motherhood and an interrogation of life on the margins of American culture as a self-described “ugly” woman “A rigorous ladyballs-out polemic that also tells the most raw, tender, against-all-odds story of parenthood that I've ever read.” —Mary Gaitskill, author of Veronica Ugly is a word with fangs that can kill a woman’s self-esteem in one bite. Edicts about how women should look, behave, and think are the brutal forge through which they are made — not born — as Simone de Beauvoir famously argued in The Second Sex . And to defy the pretty imperative is to experience a kind of invisibility. It can be a hard thing to admit to yourself, let alone to your child, to say the words “I am ugly” or “I am seen as ugly.” But early on in her motherhood journey, watching her young daughter begin to wrestle with beauty standards, Stephanie