Beauty and Ugliness Are Siblings, and We Get to Redefine Them
Writer Arabelle Sicardi says material things carry no fixed meaning, so love and critique can coexist.
When asked how they can love beauty and still criticize it, Arabelle Sicardi, a writer, fragrance expert, critic, and author of the new novel The House of Beauty, did not choose a side. They turned instead to their Buddhism.
"Beauty and ugliness are siblings and this materiality is, ultimately, meaningless," Sicardi said. "We make meaning, and we can change that all the time."
By samsara, Sicardi means the Buddhist idea of life as an ongoing round of birth, hardship, and death. The idea, Sicardi says, "kind of does away with black and white thinking of this nature." Sicardi calls beauty and ugliness siblings, whose meaning people make and can keep changing.
Meaningless, in Sicardi's account, is not dismissive. It is permission. If material things do not come with settled meaning, people supply the meaning, and they can revise it. Sicardi put it this way: "I can love something sincerely and understand it is a cruel creature."
Sicardi extends that point to truth itself. Sicardi argues that more than one truth can hold at the same time, and that frustration often comes from insisting on only one version of the truth or feeling betrayed because someone else experiences it differently. They see no point in that competition, or in the sense of scarcity and perpetual lack. That mindset, they said, sets people up for suffering.
The way forward, as Sicardi describes it, is seeking wisdom. Sicardi hopes readers take away that "beauty isn’t mundane – it’s transformative."
Questions people ask
What is samsara?
Samsara is the Buddhist concept of the continuous cycle of birth, life, death, and rebirth, marked by suffering. Beings remain in samsara until they attain wisdom or liberation through practices like ethical conduct, meditation, and insight.
What is The House of Beauty?
It is Sicardi's new novel and work of critical reporting on beauty. It examines beauty's ties to power, money, and politics while also treating beauty as a ritual of care and transformation.