Anger detracts from her beauty

Anger detracts from her beauty is a well-known Polish saying. I heard it often when I was a little girl, most often from my mother, who probably heard it from hers. This aphorism carries with it the admonition that anger makes a woman ugly. And, of course, ugliness is the very worst attribute that a woman can be branded with. The depiction of female anger as irrational, hysterical, and just plain ugly has a long tradition: from harpies, witches, and Medusa, to young girls inculcated to be polite and smiling, to memes of raging feminists and the so-called Resting Bitch Face syndrome. Albeit, socially, women’s anger becomes an instrument of political change, in an individual dimension, it often remains a shameful and concealed emotion.

Weronika Perłowska is a visual artist based in Warsaw. Her practice combines photography, video and objects. She is interested in manipulating images and symbols in order to scrub them of preconceptions and stereotypes. She has exhibited her work both nationally and internationally, including Athens Photo Festival (2020), Krakow Photomonth (2020), Circulation(s) Festival in Paris (2020), the Lumix Festival in Hanover (2018), and the FOCUSPhotography Festival in Mumbai (2017).