Recently, I have felt a burning desire to upgrade myself. Thus far, my self-image has persevered through womanhood relatively unscathed; I never had problems with eating in my teenage years, nor felt any strong pull towards getting ‘tweaked’ cosmetically. Yet, as I creep into my late twenties, I have become more aware of my flaws and more intrigued by how to fix them. I have spent increasing amounts of time staring into the mirror and examining the faintly developing wrinkles that map out my face. To me, visually aging feels a little like that immortal snail meme; something is slowly creeping its way towards me, and if I am not vigilant, it might suddenly strike to kill. This death is not one of my body, but of its meaning; everything I do or say will become ever tainted once I ‘lose my looks’. 

I suspect all women have different yet interlocking narratives when it comes to understanding their own image. It's inescapable, it’s in our advertisements, celebrity images, conversations in the toilets. In The Most Normal Woman, a book of essays by journalist and fiction writer Roisin Kiberd, our contemporary beliefs on beauty and self image are discovered and dug out. By exploring various methods of buying, selling, and measuring varying forms of the human image, she strives to understand how we develop ideas of what creates the ideal appearance, and how we all endeavour to reach some imagined idea of what is ‘normal’.  

The book is written in two parts; part one focuses on the consumerist aspect of beauty, the things that are sold to us, whilst the second part focuses on pageants and beauty within competitive frameworks. In between essays, she envisions an alien coming to Earth, and what it might do to become a ‘normal woman’ in our world. Kiberd’s writing style is creative and engaging, her topics are well researched, and she provides some analysis, science, and history behind the varying aspects of beauty culture. Some of my favourite essays in the book include one on the- quite literally - toxic history of Botox, the radical cult of the Birkin bag, and the uncanny world of AI beauty pageants. It's fresh and diverse, a little like Louis Theroux’s Weird Weekends in personal essay form.

It’s also refreshingly honest. Throughout the book, Kiberd reiterates how she herself is also immersed in the world she writes about. She too has had Botox done, has obsessed over owning the right fragrance, the right handbag, and allowed her consumer desires to create her understanding of her own identity. For example, she notes that Botox left her feeling a “sense of divide between my inner and outer self”, leading her to see her “body as a product”, unsure where her true emotions fitted in when they couldn’t show on her face. Is appearing younger a good trade-off for losing your emotional self-expression? It’s largely left to us to answer that for ourselves, but moments like this highlight that whilst it can be tempting to judge the beauty industry from a distance, armed with critical feminist literature, we still cannot pull ourselves out of the reality we live in. No one can escape the pressures of a world that places the value of women on the way they look, where even the most successful women have to conform. Kiberd’s work hears this and responds in a way that is poignant and intimate, placing herself deeply within the beauty narratives pushed on us by advertisements and media.

However, whilst Kiberd’s prose and storytelling are interesting, there was a missed opportunity in the text for a conversation going beyond her own introspective analysis. There is very little space given to speaking to the participants of varying beauty regimes and pageants featured in the writing, leaving it a bit lacking in terms of further insight. Additionally, the aspects of analysis were often quite momentary and musing, focusing on what she imagines or thinks about beauty regimes and how they fit into wider sociological theories, but does little to further flesh this out or create substantial conclusions.  The hook on the idea of ‘normal’ therefore feels a little flimsy, and is not properly woven into the texture of the piece. What does ‘normal’ mean for women dedicating their lives to competing in beauty pageants? And what drives a bodybuilder to take copious steroids and push their body to extreme, unhealthy limits? Whilst the beauty world is fundamentally (perhaps purposefully) confusing, a more pointed focus, paired with wider perspectives, would have made for a more substantial and encompassing piece.

On a different note, it is hard to talk about beauty ideals without discussing social media, which is not largely focused on within the work. Beauty exists in space and time; this space being our phones. What strikes me today is that the beauty ideal invades our most private spaces; we could see hundreds of Helens of Troy launching one million ships before leaving our beds in the morning. We are inundated by adverts promising to enhance us and place us inside a nirvana, a feeling of ultimate peace in a bottle for just £19.99. Influencers live in sparse and airy apartments, some claim to enjoy spending most of their time indoors yet continue to look immaculate, constantly. There is little time to consider why, as there is another video to scroll down to, infinitely. Yet why wouldn’t they want to look beautiful? The entire world is watching the inner lives they create online. We hear the calm sounds of bottles being opened, products being squeezed onto the hand, self-preservation and optimisation as the ultimate form of bliss. 

But beauty also exists in time, in a constant presence that seems to evolve by the moment, served with a sprinkling of amnesia. The cool thing now is worlds away from what it was two weeks ago, and galaxies away from two years ago. We don’t argue that glass and glazed skin is the goal today, but we forget that a decade ago women covered their faces in matte powder, constantly topping up in fear of shine, be it sweat or oil. Who knows what the ideal in ten years will be and where the millions of half-full plastic bottles will end up.  

All this is to say that beauty and fashion are, of course, a capitalist project; one that is sold and resold to us in constant flux, driving profit through inventing new ways to make us feel like we are in a constant state of lack. Kiberd’s book does not attempt to create a large-scale examination of the business of beauty, or how it exists in the mainstream. The work is ultimately reflective and personal, it will make others feel seen and help them to unpack the bizarre ways that we understand the cosmetic world. My favourite essay, ‘I dream in plastic’, focuses on the invention of the department store and how it sells dreams of an ideal future to its customers, compared to modern-day online shopping, which places us inside a never-ending supermarket. As someone somewhat addicted to online shopping, who constantly feels just one purchase away from peace, I found this tragically relatable. Through advertising and constant access to the online storefront, our imaginations are constantly reshaped, and the goalpost of what we can have in this world is constantly pushed further away from us.

Kiberd’s creativity is enlightening and refreshing, and whilst it could sometimes be fleshed out more, it is still an enjoyable read that points towards the strange reality we are living in. Ultimately, we can all feel like aliens in a commercial world that rips off our own skin and sells it back to us. I look forward to reading more from Kiberd’s creative view in the future, and hope that it will help shield me a tiny bit more from the intense and invasive world of aesthetic pressures that we live in today.