The taste of the ugly

French-British fashion journalist Alice Pfeiffer talks with Alain Berland on the occasion of the publication of her essay Le goût du moche (The taste of the ugly) published by Flammarion.

This essay, in the form of a personal account, touches on what is foreign about loving what does not fit into the norms of good taste.

Is ugly a new trend? Is it a simple pleasure to displease that to display the ugly on oneself? Could the ugly be a political, radical gesture, an act of resistance in an ultra-filtered virtual world?

The ugly is a weapon that says more about the one who looks at it than about the object in question.

The ugly of today is the pretty of tomorrow and the strange of yesterday. Sometimes the opposite.

Alice Pfeiffer is the author of Je ne suis pas Parisienne. Éloge de toutes les Françaises (Stock, 2019).

Penser le Présent is produced with the support of Société Générale.

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Photo credit: Léon Prost / Flammarion