Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder: May 2021 podcast playlist

Beauty is subjective…one person’s “beautiful” is another person’s “ugly.” Yet, as a society, beauty is an ideal many strive for. But, what does that mean exactly? Why does society value certain types of beauty over others? Has social media and selfie culture changed the way we revere beauty over other attributes? And how does a very narrow and specific definition of beauty play into power dynamics? This podcast playlist was curated in an effort to explore those questions and more.

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Podcast Listening List on BEAUTY

Get the full listening list on your podcast player of choice using these platforms:

Only Human: “Growing Up ‘Ugly'” (July 2016, 24 min)
Robert Hoge has been called “ugly” since the day he was born. Hear his story.

Ololgies: “Kalology (BEAUTY STANDARDS) with Renee Engeln” (August 2018, 1 hr 38 min)
Psychologist and beauty-researcher Dr. Renee Engeln, author of “Beauty Sick: How the Cultural Obsession with Appearance Hurts Girls and Women”, is the guest on this episode. She shares her research about the value that culture has placed on beauty and how truly messed up it is.

Thinking Allowed: “Beauty – Ugliness” (July 2018, 28 min)
Beauty and ugliness – to what extent are our ideas about physical perfection culturally and socially constructed?

BBC Earth Podcast: “The Ugly Animal Preservation Society” (April 2019, 26 min)
Never has the saying ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder’ been more true, than in nature. This episode ponders a question: who really decides what is beautiful?

Code Switch: “Pretty Hurts” (January 2019, 48 min)
Some may think of beauty as frivolous and fun, but on this episode, we’re examining a few of the ugly ways that its been used to project power.

Bonus podcast episodes:

• The Moth: “Mirror, Mirror: Kujegi Camara & Nyla Gilstrap” (February 2021, 30 min)
• Ladies, We Need to Talk: “The gender beauty gap” (June 2020, 34 min)
• Deeply Human: “Episode 6: Mirror Mirror” (June 2020, 34 min)
• Radiolab: “The Beauty Puzzle” (February 2019, 43 min)
• This Is Love: “The Ugly Club” (May 2019, 27 min)
• Adulting: “#71 Black Beauty & Racism with Ateh Jewel” (June 2020, 1 hr 5 min)
• Earshot: “No Ordinary Beauty Queen” (September 2019, 29 min)
• The Nocturnists: “S5 E4: Black Voices in Healthcare: Hair” (June 2020, 33 min)
• Thinking Allowed: “The ways women age – Beauty politics” (June 2019, 27 min)

Recommended Books/Resources:

We’ve started compiling recommended books from the podcast playlists and from our chapter meetings on our Amazon Idea List.

• Own your face | Robert Hoge | TEDxSouthBank: Watch the TEDx talk by Robert Hoge, the guest on Only Human.
• “Beauty Sick: How the Cultural Obsession with Appearance Hurts Girls and Women” by Renee Engeln, the guest on the Ologies episode above.
• “Ugliness: A Cultural History” by Gretchen Henderson, one of the guests on the Thinking Allowed episode above.
• “The Ugly Laws: Disability in Public (The History of Disability, 3)” by Susan M. Schweik. A study of the “ugly laws” of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, which seemed to criminalize disability.
• “On Ugliness” by Umberto Eco. “Renowned cultural critic Umberto Eco’s On Ugliness is an exploration of the monstrous and the repellant in visual culture and the arts.”

Some of the links on this page are affiliate links. If you use these links to buy something PBC may get a little something in return.

Conversation Starter Questions:

1. How do you define beauty?
2. Do you think the culture in which you live values external or internal beauty more? Why?
3. How do you think social media is playing into and/or challenging our beauty-based value system?