beauty: 2023 creative non-fiction supplement

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

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Features - The home to long-form reporting, investigations, human interest stories and profiles at The Ubyssey!

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    Features    October 24, 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    Features    October 18, 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    Features    October 18, 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    Features    October 18, 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    Features    October 18, 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    Features    October 18, 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    Features    October 18, 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    Features    October 18, 2023

SEX ED. — 2024 Sex Issue

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