i leave Mx holding O/our spot – around six feet from the barrier where soon Kesha will emerge – and wander to the toilets. my hips sway in a glittery orange mini dress that slides up my thighs as i walk, exposing just a peek of pink thong. That’s not the main show though. The accessory of the night is a £3k face, and a cloud of curled blonde hair bouncing around it like an 80s porn star fantasy. It’s not just the vodka that has me feeling myself.
And it’s 2003. i apply acne cream in the mirror. She stands behind me and says, with a dramatic sigh – “I never thought I’d have an ugly daughter.”
Glowing up as an ugly duckling is a weird as hell experience. i’m gonna try to capture it, in all its messy, overfilled glory, but i won’t do it justice. i won’t capture the nuance i want to and i already know it. As a writer, that’s infuriating. As an enigma, being unable to compress myself into a bite size snapshot is quite validating. In any case, here we are.
You shouldn’t have to pump the most toxic substance in the world in the world into your face, or have chunks of your own fat dragged out over your tongue, or blow up your lips until they feel like plastic, to triumph over your abuser. That’s a fact. Beauty standards suck. i am also decidedly not adhering to beauty standards in any kind of consistent way. That sparkly orange mini? Highlights my belly pooch delightfully. There’s things i still plan to change, and blatant “flaws” that please me no end. my injector would have raised his eyebrows, if he was still capable of such mortal actions, when i told him i don’t want to look younger or smoother under any circumstances. But carving out a version of me – in added volume and increased angles, in nips and tucks, in colours and shadows and glitter and lace – that says “i am free of everything you said i would always be” – has unleashed me in ways i never knew were possible.
2024 – in the car to Tynemouth, summer sun and heart shaped sunglasses and Their hand on my thigh. Somethings shifted lately – i wear little shorts and Nice Bra, my only bra that isn’t a basic sports bra. And Mx is talking about new kinks – new ideas, running them by me to see what snags and sticks in my mind. Bimbofication catches in the brambles of my desire and i perk up – one part of me already shrugging it off, dismissive, maybe a little bit elitist. my kink lives in black leather and blood and dungeons that smell a little of piss. It’s dirty, dark, edgy and raw. Not pink and glittery. That’s for the tourists, right? Another part of me wakes up, hungry. What would it be like to let myself be remade? What could be possible for me, if someone else broke and reformed the parts of me that They chose? And the deepest question of all, lurking below the surface, too sharp edged to dare to even say – could i ever be anything but ugly?
Because by 2024, i’m doing better, but i still believe that i am ugly. That is a fact – absolutely immovable. The shift came in how many fucks i had to give. As a teenager, to be ugly was the greatest sin i could commit, an instigator of violence and verbal abuse that blew up without warning in my home environment. Ugliness was an offence, an insult, my ingratitude and poor character leaking out of my oily pores and staining the pristine world around me. In my 20s, being ugly was low self worth, heavy makeup and brittle-bleached hair and a smile that didn’t show my teeth or reach my eyes. And then i went fully off the fucking rails and learned two important lessons – that i could get uglier, and that there were much worse things to be.
my no-fucks-to-give era kicked in when recovery did. Being androgynous – not the same thing as ugly, but in heterosexual spaces it’s functionally identical – made me invisible in the rooms of 12 step recovery. At first i thought that was peaceful, later, after i escaped yet another toxic environment, i realised it had potentially saved me from horrific abuse. Starting pole dancing didn’t make me think i wasn’t ugly, but it did give me a way to be sexual, confident, and feel proud of myself in ways that didn’t feel all that connected to my looks. And then, kink. Kink not only allows for ugliness – at its best, it celebrates it. Sweaty, scarred, bruised, crying, with vomit dripping down my chin, i found the place where ugly meant desirable. But, still, i believed i was what i had been taught.
So when Mx talks about bimbofication, that’s the resistance i trip over. i can do ugly kink. But to do this – makeup, hair, sexy little outfits – i can’t use ugliness as my currency anymore. Grotesque won’t be enough to feel hot, not in this place W/we’re going. And for the first time in a long time i feel the flicker of old insecurities – i’m too ugly for this.
2025 starts with O/our monthly check in, and the first version of the bimbofication rules. It’s basic, but ramps up rapidly over the year. W/we shop for makeup – to wear when directed at first, and to wear daily not long after. W/we stock my wardrobe with the required pink, glitter, low cut, and cropped. i order tanning injections, and find a local sunbed shop. W/we start discussing my hair (which takes a full year – W/we’re indecisive). i book 2ml of lip filler, then another 1ml, and a lip flip.
It’s not the injectables that start to shift something in me – at least, not mostly. my transformation is dramatic, yes, but my features remain mostly the same. Each morning i face myself in the mirror and the ghost of twenty years ago still stands there in her corner, thin-lipped, I never thought I’d have an ugly daughter. my face is puffy from sleep, my hair a ball of frizz. Teeth crooked, nose bumpy, brows too low… and i like what i see. The ghost fades with the dregs of sleep as i contour out the version of me W/we’re creating. The beauty isn’t in my features – the beauty is in the purpose. Skills that build with each repetition, clarity of mind as i let myself disappear into Them and Their control, Kim Petras blasting out the speaker and me in the mirror – golden tanned, painted, perfumed, Theirs. The beauty is in being Their most treasured creation – because who would insult a God by calling Their works ugly?
In 2026, i pay a surgeon to cut away a family resemblance that bothers me far more than ugly ever could. i go blonde – decision finally made. i learn to apply false eyelashes (literally, this morning). i make plans to get my plumped up lips blushed, discuss eyebrow options, get a consultation for chin filler, and order clip in veneers. They’ll either be life changing or i’ll look ridiculous – but maybe that’s good too. The joy, and beauty, is in the exploration. The constant change, the experimentation, the leaning into extremes as in all of this i found the edge of the grotesque again. Not performing femininity – becoming an inhuman sculpture of Their will and the body horror of beauty distilled into its raw, gory, toxic component parts. Hot, bloody fat slithering over my tongue, and a paralytic poison making my smile something uncanny, i am Frankenstein’s fuckdoll.
And in this new form, with new confidence built in the weird alchemy of it, i learn the truth. The reality is, i was never ugly. i may not have been beautiful either – that’s a matter of opinion and preference and i simply don’t care to keep up with what the beauty standard is saying this week. What i looked like was a human. Sometimes oily and sometimes spotty and sometimes too thin or too fat by some arbitrary measure. What changed is that i took action. i learned skills, i surrendered control, i accepted what i could not change and changed the things i could (look at that, a little bit of 12 step hung around after all). i made this face mine, while simultaneously making it Theirs. i found new pleasures – eyeliner coming out symmetrical first time, a surgeon impressed with my unflinching stillness as they cut, pull, and cauterise, a package of new candy-coloured thongs turning my underwear drawer into an explosion of colour. A body reclaimed as much as remade. Swiping makeup off in the mirror and seeing the quirks of the old me inhabiting the skin of the new. And no ghosts. She’s quiet now in the peace of a routine built into the fabric of my life, and in the flames of my rebirth that voice is burned away. i am not an ugly daughter – i am something new
kirizal talks kink 