Moshtari Hilal discusses her book Ugliness (New Vessel Press, 2025), translated from the German by Elisabeth Lauffer—dealing with attraction, repulsion and mounting pressures to conform to norms of appearance—with New York Times columnist and Hofstra University literature professor Rhonda Garelick.
How do power and beauty join forces to determine who is considered ugly? What role does that ugliness play in fomenting hatred? Moshtari Hilal, an Afghan-born author and artist who lives in Germany, has written a touching, intimate, and highly political book. Dense body hair, crooked teeth, and big noses: Hilal uses a broad cultural lens to question norms of appearance—ostensibly her own, but in fact everyone’s. She writes about beauty salons in Kabul as a backdrop to the US invasion of Afghanistan, Darwin’s theory of evolution, Kim Kardashian, and a utopian place in the shadow of her nose. With a profound mix of essay, poetry, her own drawings, and cultural and social history of the body, Hilal explores notions of repulsion and attraction, taking the reader into the most personal of realms to put self-image to the test. Why are we afraid of ugliness?
"a sweeping meditation on a subject rarely addressed, combining personal memoir with history, sociology, philosophy and the author’s original drawings, poems and photographs.”—Rhonda Garelick, NYTimes
Presented by Hofstra University's Institute for Public Humanities and the Arts in partnership with Goethe Institut, the New York Institute for the Humanities, New Vessel Press, and The School of Art, Design History & Theory at Parsons School of Design.
Rhonda Garelick is the founding director of the Interdisciplinary Institute for Public Humanities and the Arts at Hofstra University, where she is also the John Cranford Adams Distinguished Professor of Literature. She is the author, most recently, of Mademoiselle: Coco Chanel and the Pulse of History, and is currently writing a book called Why Fashion Matters. Rhonda writes the “Face Forward” column for the New York Times Style Section. She holds a PhD and B.A. from Yale University.
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