As a teenager, Kareen Martel was very skinny. For three years, she wore braces to straighten her teeth, and even had to undergo surgery to break her jaw so that her chin would no longer fall unduly inward.
In two words, Kareen Martel says she was ugly. To the point of being shouted at in the street. To the point of hugging the walls so that no one looks at her. She needed to talk about it in her essay uglypublished by Somme tout.
The ugliness she talks about is an experience that ends up being internalized, but which remains essentially dictated by others.
“We often say that tastes are personal,” she says. But, within the same group, we have a general idea of who are the beautiful, the average, the ugly. »
She admits it in an interview. It wasn’t so much her own mirror as the gaze of others that invariably sent her back to being “ugly.” As if access to a beautiful face was a right she flouted by her mere presence.
“When you’re ugly, it’s as if you were less human,” she says. It’s as if we were shocked. As if people had the right to lay their eyes on a beautiful face. They are frustrated with us. »
However, psychology studies have already shown that the more a face is average, the more it is considered beautiful. “It’s a shame,” she laments. It’s like a form of laziness, to choose the “most average” as being the most beautiful. »
After her surgery, which occurred at the start of adulthood, Kareen Martel was no longer openly called “milk” as in the past. But she can’t help but wonder if it’s not rather because adults express their judgment less openly than children.
Career prospects for “ugly” people are 8% lower than for others, she says. On this subject, she quotes the economist Daniel S. Hamermesh, author of the book Beauty Pays Why Attractive People Are More Successful. “For public figures like Safia Nolin [qui signe la préface du livre], the consequences can be devastating. »
A story of emancipation
In writing this book, Kareen Martel first attempted to tackle her own laidophobia. “I have ugly reactions,” she says. I try to hide my own ugliness. I wanted to deconstruct my own laidophobia. Also because I have a teenage daughter […] I wanted to participate in this reflection on laidophobia. »
Her own ugliness, if it is no longer as conspicuous as in the past, which now can “pass for average”, she admits, continues today to make her bend her back, to make her avoid speaking in public. Ugliness, she says, was the foundation of her identity.
However, she continues to fight it, by dyeing her hair or depilating her legs, so many bodily cares that give her no pleasure, apart from trying to be accepted.
She also appropriately notes the inconsistencies of this tyranny of beauty. “We emphasize the beauty of long legs, but not that of long noses. We want big eyes, but small ears. We celebrate big breasts and big lips, we even sell them, not big bellies. We enhance thick hair, with blows of shampoo to strengthen it, while elsewhere on the body, we remove the hair at great expense and in the worst pain. I see in it an arbitrariness supported by capitalism and patriarchy which would make people laugh if it did not cause so much suffering, ”she writes.
This story is therefore also a kind of emancipation for her. Liberation from the chains invisible to the gaze of others. “At first, I was ashamed to say what my book was about. I started by saying it was about bullying. I was ashamed to say that I had been called ugly,” she says.
Today, she rather appeals to ugliness, this community of people who feel ugly and who can bring comfort to each other. Because the fact remains that ugliness remains a subjective reality. “There are people who feel ugly but aren’t ugly and ugly people who don’t feel ugly,” she admits.
“In ugliness, there is less fear of aging, of no longer being pretty or attractive. We never had that privilege. It’s one weight less,” she wrote. In this community, “we share a culture, a way of thinking, of moving, of considering space and interactions”. “I aspire to be in solidarity with the ugly ones, moreover the old ugly ones, and to be proud of it. »
Kareen Martel likes to think that ugliness “is a kind of subculture, where there is more empathy for this experience of discrimination”.
In his History of ugliness, Umberto Eco writes that “the concept of ugliness, like that of beauty, is relative to various cultures, but also to time”. How, then, not to dream of a society that would upset the criteria?
“I want to continue to love myself, to find myself adequate, desired and desirable,” writes Safia Nolin in her preface to the book. It is the work of a lifetime.