In the West, the beautiful woman is white, slim and young. And even this woman is not immune to criticism. “You can never win,” says Marilyse Hamelin. Author, feminist, and until recently columnist, she directed 11 short essays on beauty – to escape the tyranny of preconceived ideas, a collective work that brings together as many feathers from various horizons, including Perrine Leblanc, Heather O’Neill and Estelle Grignon that we have brought together for a discussion.
Beauty is “to fit into the mold”, remarks Estelle Grignon, trans woman, musical director at CHOQ, who signs Irises, a powerful text on the gaze of the other, transphobia and self-acceptance. “One of the most difficult things for a woman at the start of her career is not so much to imagine herself as a woman as to imagine herself beautiful,” she writes. The company gives us the right to a decision, she explains in an interview. To be trans yes, to be old yes, but you still have to be beautiful. Or be black, but not too much, as Perrye-Delphine Séraphin explains in a text on colorism, included in the same collection.
“To be beautiful for your age”: this is an expression that annoys Marilyse Hamelin and which is not foreign to the birth of this collection. Back in 2020, halftime of the Super Bowl. Jennifer Lopez and Shakira impress in a sultry performance. On social networks, many emphasize how beautiful J. LO is for her age (she was then 50 years old). In a nocturnal Facebook status spawned (too) spontaneously, Marilyse Hamelin evokes the undernourishment of these stars. The next morning, reviews are raining down. “By wanting to talk about the pressure of thinness, of grossophobia, of the pressure to look young, I seemed to judge women and that’s the last thing I wanted,” she says today. ‘hui, repentant. It was a nightmare. The reactions were super violent. And it was the drop. After 10 years of blogging and chronicling feminist, I found that I had nothing more to say, I was tired. ”
But the seed was sown. She began to reflect on beauty, in depth this time. She decided that it wouldn’t be her voice alone, but that of other women as well (and a man, Alex Rose, whom she intentionally wanted to put in a minority position). Because for her, this subject is above all feminine.
The direction of this collective gave rise to surprises such as the text by Montreal author Heather O’Neill, who delivered a tale inspired by the legend of Rose Latulippe, this young girl who danced with the Devil past midnight, the eve of Lent. A book that Heather O’Neill read often as a child.
When I was young, I was troubled to see that the women in the stories were always beautiful. I understood that if you weren’t classically beautiful, you couldn’t be the heroine of a story.
Heather O’Neill, author
“I wanted to explore this idea that when a woman is beautiful, society thinks that this beauty belongs to her and the beautiful woman becomes an object that others have. She becomes an object of desire and her own desires are erased, ”emphasizes the author, who had just returned from the Frankfurt Book Fair, where Canada was the guest of honor. His next novel, When We Lost Our Heads, will be released in February.
Perrine Leblanc’s humiliation
From the Gaspé where she settled, Perrine Leblanc speaks of beauty and ugliness as a “weapon to humiliate”. In his text The smile of the middle class, she confides in her relationship to her dentition. If, when we take a picture of her, she always smiles with her mouth closed, it is to hide her upper teeth that she has never had the financial means to straighten. “We do not all arrive at adulthood with the same means to face the world of beauty,” she notes. When I smile to the fullest, you immediately see that I don’t come from wealth: I have crooked teeth. ”
PHOTO MARTIN CHAMBERLAND, PRESS ARCHIVES
Perrine Leblanc, when her second novel came out, Malabourg, in 2014. Its next, Northerners, is due out next winter.
The highlight of her essay is when she recounts the humiliation she suffered in college when the posters of her theater company on which she appeared were marked with these destructive words: “you’re ugly”. “Telling someone they’re ugly is a bit like dropping an atomic bomb. We know it hurts […]. [Ce geste] falls under both pure wickedness and female jealousy, which is also a form of violence. Women too can use each other’s beauty or non-beauty to destroy someone who is scary or who is different. ”
Surprisingly, Perrine Leblanc could also have written quite the opposite. In The Superb, a work on the success of women edited by Léa Clermont-Dion and Marie-Hélène Poitras, she recounted how her literary success had been attributed to her beauty. “There is a glass ceiling, but before this glass ceiling, there is a hand above the head of a woman who wants to go up. We’re going to tell her: “Be careful, you’re not that talented. It is because your photo could circulate that your texts circulated. I am not the only one who has happened to. ”
But, she believes, a cultural revolution is underway. “The world today and our relationship to beauty today will not be the same in 10 years. “Despite their flaws, social networks help expose various forms of beauty and bring together marginalized people, adds Estelle Grignon. Her beauty, she continues to tame. “I’m starting to feel comfortable with my body. I take hormones, I learn how to put on makeup, my wardrobe changes too. But as I made my coming out at 24, I have the impression that there is a whole part of my youth, of that beauty that young people have, to which I have not had access. ”
In bookstores on October 26
11 short essays on beauty – to escape the tyranny of preconceived ideas
Under the direction of Marilyse Hamelin
Overall editions
112 pages