"What do we mean when we speak of 'beauty"? What do we experience? Beauty is no longer considered to be the human experience of the harmonious object; today an aesthetics of difference has revolutionised our ways of seeing the beautiful. Now, we live in a time of "extreme beauty"."Cutting-Gray, J., and Swearingen, J. (eds). Extreme Beauty: Aesthetics, Politics, Death, 2003
"It was self indulgent, we told ourselves. It was reinforcing bad old stereotypes - women as vain, self-absorbed. it was the evil step-mother looking in the mirror, bemoaning the signs of wear and tear. It brought back the lessons learned at the mothers knee, from the media: women are in competition with one another and can never be true friends, and looks are the arena in which the battle is fought. Hence, women cannot openly discuss their looks with each other. It would be giving too much away to the competition."
