A digital magazine on sexuality, based in the Global South: We are working towards cultivating safe, inclusive, and self-affirming spaces in which all individuals can express themselves without fear, judgement or shame

Beauty and Sexuality

beauty and Sexuality: Picture of a flower with a thick green stem and little pink buds emerging from all directions

Editorial: Beauty and Sexuality

Beauty gleams in unexpected places, but its effulgence turns to tawdry glitter when it is shaped and squeezed into form-fitting frames. Rigid ideas of what is beautiful or desirable can reinforce oppressive structures. However, when these concepts are more flexible they can be subversive as well.
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इस्तांबूल में निर्वस्त्र होना – डव की ‘असली सुंदरता’ क्यों एक धोखा है

सम्पादक की ओर से: यह लेख सन् 2014 में डव कंपनी के 'रियल ब्यूटी' अभियान की प्रतिक्रिया के रूप में लिखा गया था पिछले साल जब मैंने पहली बार डव के 'सौंदर्य स्केच' अभियान का विज्ञापन देखा, जो उस साल के 'सबसे ज्यादा देखे गये विज्ञापन' में से एक था,  तो मुझे बहुत असहज महसूस…
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Picture of a woman on a billboard, half of her face is fair-complexion, the other half is dark-complexioned

Bleached Girls: India and its Love for Light Skin

Bleaching syndrome is not a superficial fashion, it’s a strategy of assimilating a superior identity that reflects a deep-set belief that fair skin is better, more powerful, prettier. And it’s not limited to India; skin bleaching is also common in the rest of Asia and in Africa.
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Picture of Miss Moti in a bathing suit, lying in a pool

Brushstrokes – Miss Moti Comics

“Moti” is often used as a slur, a denigrating epithet translating as “Fatty”, that is used to shame and to degrade; but when the “t” sound is pronounced differently, it becomes “moti”, a pearl – shining, precious, priceless.
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The first design is dedicated to Ismat Chugtai’s bold, fearless attemp at telling a story like it is - raw! Photo courtesy: Piktag

Review: Lihaaf

A woman can be more than something that just exists in a marital home, a woman can be more than just a beautiful body used as a mere decoration in the household. Isn't it high time we talked about the problems of the terminology used to define beauty and the association of it with sexuality if Chughtai tried doing this in 1941?
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a woman's silhouette

Too Beautiful to be Faithful

“It’s fascinating Yasmina, but also scary how sex or sexualising something can be ignited from our need for beauty that probably stirs positive emotions that we consider beautiful, such as feeling pleasure. But you know as well, desiring what we think is beautiful can generate fluidity: I can never know what I am exactly. All I know is that I was with men, and I was with women, and all of them tickled something within me. "
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A Knife that Cuts Skin and Soul

Beauty – a word that often haunts me, and ironically also a key idea in the process of my own empowerment with regard to owning up to my preferred gender, sexuality and my body-type. The popular imagination, trends and culture around ‘beauty’ baffle me. They often make me feel belittled and put me in a…
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