examines concepts of beauty and personal appearance at The Beheld. Her essays have been published in Salon, Jezebel, Glamour, and Marie Claire, among other outlets.
Repeated mechanical labor—such as beauty work—can have a stultifying effect. But under the right conditions, it can also bring about a state of presence, by dint of its ephemeral quality.
Makeover apps combine gamified play’s curtailment of actual playfulness with gamified labor’s trivialization of actual work, forming a neither-nor zone robbed of both the joyful possibilities and the political significance of beauty work.
Between the association of bare legs with "cheapness" and pantyhose with conservative fields and regions, is there a connection between nylons and conservatism?