ABSTRACT
The main goal of her life is to be loved; her strategies are directed at getting and keeping love, in the form of a man. However, she is critical of men as a category. ‘It is a man’s world we live in, and it is therefore that it is such a shitty place, because men are so insanely egotistical’ (128). But later: ‘I am completely free to do what I want… I just take things calmly and ask nothing more than to have it as beautiful as possible every second (131). From her perspective and that of the women’s magazine eva, beauty and ugliness are choices. From this standpoint, while there is an ‘objective’ standard of beauty and ugliness, most women could be passingly pretty if they chose to work on it
and act in ways that are beauty-making. And who, if beauty were hers to choose, would choose to be ugly? The radical nature of the Redstockings’ practice was that they chose to be ‘ugly’, that is, to oppose the societal beauty contest by acting ‘ugly’.
