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Professor Heather Widdows at the Hay Festival

Professor Widdows' talk from the Hay Festival 2014 is now available to download.

University of Birmingham Aston Webb building

Professor Heather Widdows spoke at the Hay Festival 2014

The Professor of Global Ethics explores the idea of perfection as exhibited in contemporary ideals of beauty. She questions the ways the aspiration can be read: as an individual’s aspiration to perfect themselves (‘I want to be perfect’), as assertion of what being perfect is (‘this is what I would be if I were perfect’), and as a command which a woman feels she should obey (‘you should be perfect’).