Our dominant story of beauty is that it is simultaneously a blessing, of genetics or gods, and a site of conversion. You can become beautiful if you … - Tressie McMillan Cottom

But if I believe that I can become beautiful, I become an economic subject. My desire becomes a market. And my faith becomes a salve for the white women who want to have the right politics while keeping the privilege of never having to live them. White women need me to believe I can earn beauty, because when I want what I cannot have, what they have becomes all the more valuable. I refuse them.

It is the industrial complex of cosmetics, enhancements and services that promise individual women beauty. The idea that Big Beauty is evil but good men are nice is part of Big Beauty’s systematic charm. Big Beauty is just negging without the slimy actor. The constant destabilization of self is part and parcel of beauty’s effectiveness as a social construct. When a woman must consume the tastes of her social position to keep it, but cannot control the tastes that define said position, she is suspended in a state of being negged. A good man need only then to come along and capitalize on the moment of negging, exploit the value of negged women, and consume the beauty that negs. It is really quite neat, if you think about it.

The networks of capital, be they politics or organizations, work most effeciently when your lowedst status characteristic is assumed. And once these gears are in motion, you can never be competent enough to save your own life. This is how black feminism knows the future.