ugly girl manifesto

people on here often ask me: “father_karine, is it difficult being the only alleged female poster on substack who doesn’t post pictures of herself?”

the answer is yes, i’m certainly the most oppressed person on this platform, maybe even in the world outside the middle east. not posting pictures of a good looking face means i have to gain so-called “subscribers” (they’re like dollar bills but people) by doing tedious things like writing interesting or funny stories. sure, i’d love to soar to the top of the substack charts (an infallible metric of quality) simply by posting articles titled something like “is the magic rectangle in your pocket making you retarded and sad?” with a suspiciously flattering mirror selfie next to it.

but i have chosen a different path, a much more arduous one that no other woman has ever chosen before. the consequences have been life-altering: people here often confuse me for a man. they’ll respond to my notes and say things like “i like the cut of HIS jib.” sometimes when i say anything remotely snarky about some facet of modern feminism someone will pop in and call me an incel (a man that doesn’t use his penis but wants to). it makes me sad, because i definitely have the face of a woman as well as the vagina of one. and every day i fight the urge to post pictures of these things here to validate myself. an outfit of the day. a provocative book draped over my tanned hotdog legs. a cheeky little photo of my tight pink innie pussy that doesn’t have any labia whatsoever b/c i had all six of them removed at the vet when i got my dog de-wormed last spring... it’s just like the old thought experiment that begs the question: “if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” if i don’t post pics of myself on substack dot com, am i even real???

but why don’t i post pictures of myself on here? it’s a question i get several times a day, from hundreds of different people. of course, i answer with the usual responses: “oh, it’s because i have a respectable career i don’t want to jeopardize with this nonsense” or “oh it’s because i value privacy in what has essentially become a surveillance state” or “oh it’s because i want to write without fear of reproach from people i know in real life” or “i don’t need or want to.” but the truth is, all of that is cope. there is only one reason a woman would abstain from posting pictures of herself online: because she is ugly.

yes, as soon as you see a PFP of a flower, a cat, or even worse—a cartoon lady—you know you’re working with a real dog. a bona fide blister. a true uggo.

and the internet will have you believe that ugly people—specifically ugly women—are by far the most persecuted class of people to ever exist in the history of humanity. and it’s true. why would the internet lie? what motive would it have?

the internet will rightfully lead you to believe that anyone who is “mid” (a benevolent term coined by the internet to humanize ugly people) will struggle to make friends, find love, be successful at work, and secure happiness in this life. yes, all the “mids” can hope for is a swift death and expeditious reincarnation into a bug where the mere concept of self is but a distant dream. ah! it’s simply part of the Burden we uglies must bear: not only must we covet the charmed existence of our comely human neighbors, we are doomed to seethe at the blissful ignorance of the toads, roaches, grubs and other vermin only marginally less attractive than ourselves. we are truly god’s worst creation. even “looksmaxxing,” a completely innocent and harmless practice focused on maximizing one’s physical attractiveness to achieve an ideal of beauty according to a set of prescribed criteria, would be wasted on a wretch like me. like a paraplegic winning a jet ski on the “price is right” - the thought of it is laughably absurd.

that’s because i regret to inform you, dear readers, that i’m well below “mid.” i’m a 7.0 on the ugly richter scale, i’m over 10 million scoville ugly-heat units, and i’m a horseshoe-horseshoe-lemon on the ugly slot machine (worst combination). my entire life has been a slog, my very existence consumed by the ironic, constant proccupation with my appearance (dare i say vanity?) that attends being painfully aware of the fact that i don’t look like the movie stars from the big screen or the seemingly flawless people i see on the even smaller rectangles inside my magic pocket rectangle.

and despite my efforts to keep the amateur cubist painting that is "My Face” under tight wraps, the almighty algorithm has somehow learned that i look like the lizzie mcguire cartoon had sex with the crazy frog ringtone thing and someone stepped on it with a big shoe. because each day i get bombarded with targeted instagram ads for the swiss sarco suicide pod despite that it’s not even legal U.S. the ads even say “free airfare for qualifying uglies like father_karine” to try to coax me into flying to Switzerland to do this dark deed. unfortunately the fine print says you need to connect in amersterdam, and i vowed i would never pass through the netherlands ever again because i fucking hate dutch people with a passion. so i continue on.

oh, what’s that? you think i’m being dramatic, self-pitying, trapped in a mental cage of my own construction? only an attractive-identifying person (AIP) would think that. you have no idea what it’s like to live as an Ugly Girl. what it’s like to be denied what i am entitled, my birthright as a female: that ambrosiac substance known as male attention. without it, what is even the point of existing as a woman? what is the point of enduring this wicked life? here are just a few of my ugly girl experiences from the last 15 years, though i continue to have such experiences every day (and if this list looks familiar to you from another platform…just roll with it & let a bitch repost her shit):

• in 2014 i was denied entrance to a showing of Shen Yun even though i had valid tickets because they didn’t want to “spook the children” despite there being 6-8 children in the audience max. a lowly popcorn vendor took pity on me and let me listen to the show from the sewers beneath the theater like the phantom of the opera & dropped some unpopped kernels down through the floor hole for me to eat for free. i immediately fell in love with him but he told me he was moving to another city in 10 weeks and didn't want to start something before he left (probably a lie)

• like 3 weeks ago i watched Tod Browning's “Freaks” (1938) with my friends & halfway thru the film they grabbed me by my ankles, shouted “go be with your people!!” and tried to shove me through the tv into the movie. when it didn’t work they got frustrated and left. i venmo’d them for the pizza we split & they declined it with the note “gooba gobble get lost” and blocked me

• when walking to work last week some construction workers told me to STOP smiling. i wasn't sure i heard correctly so i said “i’m sorry, i didn’t catch that?” and one of them said “catch THIS” and threw a wet brick at me. it hit me in the ankle because he threw it really low

• last year i got a job an interview at Penguin Press and when i was walking into the building a bunch of good looking guys wearing suits trapped me in the revolving door and spun me around for 23 minutes. when i finally escaped and tried to explain the situation, my interviewer said “i don’t care that you’re 23 minutes late i CARE that you’re ugly as sin.”. after that he pressed a big red button on his desk but nothing happened. then he panicked and said “uhh i think we’re through here” like he didn’t know how to end the meeting because whatever the button was supposed to do didn’t work i guess

• i went to india for a wedding and wasn’t acknowledged by any man the entire two weeks i was there. my last night there i ordered butter chicken from a food stall in Goa and the guy said “butter chicken for a butterface” and when i said “huh” he reached into his pockets and flung vindaloo sauce in my eyes and flopped a naan bread over my face. then he said “there, that’s better" & we kissed through a hole in the naan (my first and probably last kiss ever)

• my senior year of high school i got voted "most likely to post on reddit about being ugly" and one of the lunch ladies gave me an award shaped like an Oscar, except this one was made out of chicken bones, straw, guano, feathers, and twine. every night i brush his head with a small, soft-bristle toothbrush as we scroll through the tedious content together. sure, we have a laugh as he tells me which posts to upvote or downvote, but deep down i know i am suffocating him and he yearns to be rid of me.

• last year i went on a date from a guy i met on hinge at the philadelphia zoo. i thought my pics were pretty accurate but when we met in person he said "holy shit you're ugly", put his leg behind mine and tripped me into the gorilla enclosure. when i called out to the zookeeper to neutralize the alpha silverback that was approaching, he just shouted "we've been instructed to let this one play out" the alpha charged me but got disgusted when it got like 5 feet away from me and retreated. nobody helped me get out of the enclosure, all the people and like 4 gorillas watched me try to shimmy up the wall for 45 minutes. when i finally got out the zookeeper said the whole thing was such a big hit, the zoo wanted to hire me to do the bit twice a week. i asked about the pay and he said it was room and board (1 bucket of whatever fish they feed the penguins and i get to sleep on a small pallet of hay in the supply shed). i immediately accepted without negotiating, even though i’m pretty sure i could have gotten 2 fish buckets. (i have an art history degree with honors from sarah lawrence college). 1 thing you'll come to learn about us ugly girls is that we're conditioned to accept less than we deserve, even though we deserve nothing (because we are ugly).

• i tried out for my local community theater production of “Beauty and the Beast” and they told me i was too ugly to play any of the talking furniture but said i could be the understudy for one of the 5 dozen eggs that gaston eats for breakfast. but they literally had multiple containers of eggs on set at any given time, so yeah…that was fake and cruel

• i tried to adopt a cat to cure my loneliness but the rescue lady gave the kitten i wanted to a random hot chick who said “i don’t even like animals lol” and whipped the kitten out the window. within seconds a hawk swooped down and grabbed the baby cat with its talons and the hot chick said “good.” the rescue lady just said “that was crazy” like it was no big deal and then said “i guess we can let you adopt an iguana.” the iguana died two months later because, according to the emergency veterinarian, it looked at me too much. they wouldn’t even cremate it for me…the vet tech just threw it in the regular trash on top of some takeout containers and started talking about vanderpump rules

• in 2016, i started dating a legally blind man that was working in a sink factory like bjork in “Dancer in the Dark.” i thought i had a real shot at love for once in my life because shortly after we started dating, around 78% of his hands got chopped off in one of the hydraulic drill presses so he couldn't run his hands over my face (the way blind people can tell if people r hot). sometimes after sex he would caress my face with his his lobster-claw like hand but because he just had a pinky/thumb combo left he couldn't piece it all together (that i was ugly). but then one day some cunt waitress at the outback steakhouse pulled him aside and said that he was much better looking than i was. he broke up with me the next day, he married the outback waitress, and now he writes h.p. lovecraft fanfiction about me and it's not misogynist against any other women except me?

• when i graduated from SL college over a decade ago (again, with honors) the school administration snapped a photo of me and my friends for the new website but when i logged on to look they had photoshopped me out and put in a ginkgo biloba tree in the spot where i was standing, like with my friend’s arm wrapped around the ginkgo tree and everything...i called my friend when i saw it and i was like “can you believe it?” but she pretended to not know who i was and said the ginkgo tree was always there, and everyone else started saying the same thing until my perception of reality was shattered. then when i went to my 10 year reunion the gingko tree was there organizing the raffle and i thought i was losing my mind. eventually all my “friends” admitted that they paid a landscaping company $10k to ship one in for the weekend. what's even worse though was that everyone at the reunion talked about how good the gingko tree looked & smelled compared to me, even though it was a just tree and its berries smelled like excrement

• in may 2014 i was traveling to zurich switzerland and was waiting in line for a crepe at Crêperie Hirschenplatz. i couldn't figure out what i wanted so i turned around to tell the man behind me that he could skip in front of me & order. upon seeing my face, the man screamed "der horror!", clutched his heart, and died on the spot. i was sentenced to 5 months of hard labor (making speculoos in an underground 10x8 cell with no windows or human contact for 14 hours a day) and upon my release the police told me the creperie man was actually h.r. giger and that he died of extreme fear

so yeah, guys. life as a really real authentically Ugly Girl is pretty tough out here. i’m not asking for monetary donations or anything (yet). as of today, i’m just asking that you make a promise to me, and to yourself. a promise to be a bit gentler. a bit kinder. to hold space for me. and of course to smash that “like and subscribe” button a little bit harder than you would smash it for one of the 9,000+ Hot Girls with their Big Hot Pussies on this platform.