" When beauty is white and I am dark, it means that I am more likely to be punished in school, to receive higher sentences for crimes, less likely to marry, and less likely to marry someone with equal or higher economic status.16 Denying these empirical realities is its own kind of violence, even when our intentions are good. They say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder and that ugly is as ugly does. Both are lies. Ugly is everything done to you in the name of beauty. Knowing the difference is part of getting free. "

― Tressie McMillan Cottom , Thick: And Other Essays