Pre-Christian Irish and Yoruba beliefs share a reverence for the natural world. Whereas for the British colonist, value is derived from the individual. Western beauty standards are enmeshed with patriarchy, capitalism, and religious legacies.
In Disobedient Bodies, Irish-Nigerian academic, author and broadcaster Emma Dabiri laces her experience as a Black girl growing up in Ireland with the prevalent disdain women feel for their bodies.
Preparing for teenage discos with her friends, just like every other girl, she would eagerly seek mirror space to apply eye make-up - an image, I'm sure, women across Ireland are familiar with.
But equally as recognisable, young Dabiri became fixated on her weight. Her dysmorphia was influenced by a combination of the misogyny as well as the deep-seated racism underpinning the Western concept of beauty. A boy of the same age calling her 'fat ’and using a racial slur stood as a trigger for Dabiri’s disordered relationship with food.
It is through a deeply personal journey of the author’s own changing relationship with her body from being a young girl to becoming a mother of two that she persuasively argues not only why beauty should be reimagined, but why it needs to be.
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Listen: Emma Dabiri talks Disobedient Bodies with Jennifer Zamparelli
She posits from the very beginning that the relationship to the body concerns a whole lot more than just beauty. European power structures have long been determined by physical characteristics, such as skin colour and a person’s genitalia. In this essay, the author of Don’t Touch My Hair and What White People Can Do Next describes women who were "super skinny, with blonde hair and blue eyes" as being the perceived pinnacle of beauty when she was young.
Now more than ever before, different body types appear in the media. But Dabiri is critical of inclusion alone as a solution to unattainable beauty standards. While it is important to have more diverse women in spaces deemed for the beautiful (ie. modelling), this does not confront the contempt we have for our bodies in the western world. If it did, every thin, white woman would feel confident - which, obviously, they do not.
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Listen: Emma Dabiri talks to The Nine O'Clock Show on RTÉ Radio 1
"For most, beauty becomes something beyond reach", Dabiri explains. Even the women who are, by most standards, physically perfect, do not think that they are beautiful themselves. Both Megan Fox and Zoë Kravitz have struggled to accept their appearance. Competition is an important force in beauty, and these kinds of women are often seen as "fair game".
Sinéad O’Connor’s beauty vexed people. She defiantly rejected conventional standards by shaving her head and refusing to wear make-up. Of the endless nuggets this book-length essay provides, perhaps the most powerful is that entertaining a negative narrative of other women only intensifies the aspects of our beauty culture, like consumption and competition, which benefit from our division.
In exploring a subject as dark as this one, Dabiri offers hope. Like O’Connor, we should all connect to our bodies in our own ways, not as dictated by others. There is nothing wrong with having an interest in beauty. It has the potential to be a source of great enjoyment - it just needs to be expanded beyond the physical.
Everyone should read Disobedient Bodies. You will never view beauty the same way again, but actually, you won’t want to either.
Review: Molly O'Connor
Disobedient Bodies is published by
