“Our culture is a trap and makes women feel terrible about themselves,” she wrote in January 2021. “How our culture defines beauty makes it impossible to keep up with. Women are overly sexualized. I know from the worst kind of experience. … To this day I need to write reminders of why I’m worthy that have nothing to do with my physical appearance to convince myself that I’m enough.” //

But notice that, while Hefner’s turtleneck is certainly modest, it’s still striking and it certainly isn’t ugly. That’s because — as she seems to sense — the opposite of hypersexualization isn’t frumpiness, it’s beauty! //

True beauty has a confidence that doesn’t seek validation in naked sex appeal or in self-congratulatory ugliness. It’s dressed in the clothing equivalent of what Edmund Burke called the “decent drapery of life,” which renders beauty by both revealing and concealing. //

Not only is beauty real, it’s a good, desirable thing. Defined rightly, it’s part of the lovely vocation of womanhood and femininity. It’s something to be curated, not rejected (or injected). And that is empowering.