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beauty: 2023 creative non-fiction supplement

beauty. is The Ubyssey's 2023 creative non-fiction supplement.

All in beauty: 2023 creative non-fiction supplement

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October 23, 2023

Seeing past my reflection

When I was younger, I never understood why the spots on my face were called beauty marks when they didn’t make me feel more beautiful, but quite the opposite in fact.

Elena Zanuzzi

October 21, 2023

Butch is beautiful: Medusa in the hair salon

Medusa struggles to let someone hold her femininity in their hands. She fears opening herself up, showing the most sacred part of herself to a room that sees her snakes as a poor excuse for what a woman is supposed to have.

Amelia Brooker

October 18, 2023

Threading is cultural, political, familial

Though my mom would hold my eyebrow skin taught, when I looked in the mirror, I’d smile at myself. Not because I thought I looked better — or fundamentally different, even — but because I felt better. I felt like an adult. I felt like a woman. And I felt brown.

Iman Janmohamed

October 17, 2023

please love me

i used to wish i was a boy / because i thought / i would get / the benefit of the doubt / from a culture that loved / what i wasn’t.

Shubhreet Dadrao

October 17, 2023

Beauty is walking into the woods

From a queer perspective, the idea of embodying something genderless is incredibly empowering. But I understand not everybody wants to cosplay as a plant.

Karen Zhou

October 17, 2023

The woes of 'growing up ugly'

Saying I “grew up ugly” doesn’t mean I was ugly — it meant that I never quite fit in the way other people did, and that's especially difficult when you have been forced to adapt to different standards of beauty your whole life.

Regina Hipolito

October 17, 2023

Beauty blossoms and changes with us

And looking back to the young girl who secretly shaved her legs, I see a girl who just didn’t know how to exist in a body that seemingly developed overnight. But most importantly I see a girl who thinks she is anything but beautiful. I see a girl who was wrong.

Rhea Mann

October 17, 2023

The metamorphosis

Beauty has always felt like this incomprehensible, elusive thing, forever outside of my reach. Running around with a tangled mane of hair and dirt on my face, what did beauty matter?

Isa S. You

October 17, 2023

Stale marshmallows

I tell her I used to wear makeup because I felt bad about my face, but I stopped because wearing makeup felt like covering it up rather than learning to accept it. It's the same argument I made to my mom and grandma. The same argument I still make to myself.

Jocelyn Baker

October 17, 2023

Checking out

Standing at the grocery checkout with my mom, my eyes level with the Sports Illustrated model. I ask her questions but she doesn't respond. I wondered if she answered his questions. I wonder if he asked her any.

Danica Dickinson

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