“As a value framework, the beauty ideal provides shared standards by which to apportion praise, blame, and reward, making beauty-success a moral virtue and beauty-failure a moral vice.”
Professor Heather Widdows' latest book, Perfect Me: Beauty as an Ethical Ideal, is mentioned in pieces by The Atlantic and the New York Times in relation to the forthcoming film I Feel Pretty, starring Amy Schumer.
In Perfect Me, Heather explores the changing nature of the beauty ideal, showing how it is more dominant, more demanding, and more global than ever before. The demand to be beautiful is increasingly important in today's visual and virtual culture. Rightly or wrongly, being perfect has become an ethical ideal to live by, and according to which we judge ourselves good or bad, a success or a failure.
The book is being launched at the Barber Institute of Fine Arts at the University of Birmingham on Friday 1 June at 17:30. To find out more and to register, please visit the book launch event page.