The Ugly History Of Beautiful Things Essays On Desire And Consumption 1st Edition Katy Kelleher by Katy Kelleher 9781982179359, 9781982179373, 198217935X, 1982179376 instant download after payment.

Katy Kelleher has spent much of her life chasing beauty. As a child, she uprooted handfuls of purple, fragrant little flowers from the earth, plucked iridescent seashells from the beach, & dug for turquoise stones in her backyard. As a teenager she applied glittery shimmer to her eyelids after religiously dabbing on her signature scent of orange blossoms & jasmine. And as an adult, she coveted gleaming marble countertops & delicate porcelain to beautify her home. This obsession with beauty led her to become a home, garden, & design writer, where she studied how beautiful things are mined, grown, made, & enhanced. In researching these objects, Kelleher concluded that most of us are blind to the true cost of our desires. Because whenever you find something unbearably beautiful, look closer, & you’ll inevitably find a shadow of decay lurking underneath. 

In these dazzling & deeply researched essays, Katy Kelleher blends science, history, & memoir to uncover the dark underbellies of our favorite goods. She reveals the crushed beetle shells in our lipstick, the musk of rodents in our perfume, & the burnt cow bones baked into our dishware. She untangles the secret history of silk & muses on her problematic prom dress. She tells the story of countless workers dying in their efforts to bring us shiny rocks from unsafe mines that shatter & wound the earth, all because a diamond company created a compelling ad. She examines the enduring appeal of the beautiful dead girl & the sad fate of theugly mollusk. With prose as stunning as the objects she describes, Kelleher invites readers to examine their own relationships with the beautiful objects that adorn their body & grace their homes.