It is no mystery that beauty (feminine, ça va sans dire) is considered a value in today's society, all built around the image. Value that quantifies a woman's desirability and defines her place in the world, in work, in relationships. Beauty as a virtue, therefore, and ugliness as an eternal condemnation.

Giulia Blasi, Friulian writer and journalist, in her new book “Brutta. The story of a body like many "(in all bookstores since last week for Rizzoli) resolutely claims the right of every woman not to feel at fault for her physical appearance, whatever it is, and the freedom to use a term that the author herself defines "the ultimate taboo": ugly, in fact.

Intimate reading

Hers is not a look that from above wants to teach or explain something to other women, perhaps starting from concepts applicable to anyone. Blasi chooses to tackle the question with an intimate, subjective and complex interpretation: the relationship with his own body and the perception he has had (and in some ways still has) of it in the fundamental stages of his personal journey.

Sixteen essays

Through sixteen short essays written "to be read aloud", Giulia Blasi explores her own experience with an eye that does not belong to her but that, in some way, has always been part of her: "In pieces I looked at myself and I look at myself even now, despite being able to recognize in that gaze the implantation of an eye that is not mine, the same that is installed in all females from an early age and with which we build a relationship of codependency that accompanies us for lifetime". A judgmental gaze, son of male chauvinism, which dissects the external aspect in search of any defect to be eradicated or to be filed to escape the ugliness and therefore the undesirable, as if the two were irremediably connected. This phenomenon only affects women because, as the writer points out, “a man is allowed to be ugly. To be bald, fat, with ball eyes, a prominent nose. Ugliness has never prevented a man from occupying space in the world ». Women, no, they cannot be ugly without someone making them weigh it with a look, a comment, an attitude.

Ironic analysis

The sincere, ironic, at times pungent analysis that Giulia Blasi makes of her physical characteristics, of the transformations of her body, but above all of how she has experienced and perceived them over the years, refers to herself, but there is no lack of more general considerations on how dominant and pervasive the labels affixed to the female body are, as in the essays, to name a few, "A woman to eat" or "Someone was a feminist" contained in the collection. Necessary reflections on attitudes so common as to go almost unnoticed, which show how much the aesthetic judgment hangs over women's lives and affects their choices. A judgment that triggers, however, many automatisms including the habitual body monitoring, a constant (and merciless) analysis of one's body in search of what society considers defects.

Occupy spaces

What to do then? "Ugly. Story of a body like many others ”a suggestion gives us:« Occupying space in public as ugly, feeling ugly, knowing that we are ugly and giving a damn about it, that is the goal. In a world that asks us to make ourselves small, not to disturb, expand and spread, overflow and take space, raise our voices and make noise. "Ugly", so what? Today I'm ugly, tomorrow I'm beautiful, it doesn't matter. What matters is that I am here, I exist, and I have no intention of disappearing ».

Because feminism is (also) this: freedom and self-determination, regardless of the body we inhabit.

Alessandra Ghiani

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The author on Monday in our social lounge: Unione Cult, born during the pandemic from the need to open a cultural space on our social networks, starts again on Monday 4 October at 8 pm (Facebook and unionesarda.it) with Giulia Blasi.

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