"'Ugliness' is a very personal but also a highly political book with revolutionary potential. [...] There is a lot of beauty in the way Moshtari Hilal writes about ugliness, particularly in how she succeeds in deconstructing the concept of ugliness and the standards that purportedly underpin this concept. [...] Hilal's central aim is to understand how prevailing beauty norms came about, meticulously dissecting their entirely arbitrary, Eurocentric origins chapter by chapter and exposing their relentless pressure toward self-punishment as absurd. [...] 'Ugliness' provides the intellectual tools to resist these norms."
Marlene Halser, Berliner Zeitung
"Moshtari Hilal surprises. She is not a body activist, not a preacher of body positivity who wants to expand our idea of beauty. She can never be completely inclusive, for we can never all be considered beautiful. Instead, Hilal wants to acknowledge and embrace ugliness. Making peace with ugliness takes endurance, resilience, and courage. Those who want to take this path will find an inspiring companion in Moshtari Hilal."
Alexandra Friedrich, NDR Kultur
"Beauty needs ugliness. Her book is a revelation, an eye-opener, a slap in the face."
Mithu Sanyal, WDR 5 Book of the Week
"Moshtari Hilal's search begins personally and ends with all of us. The author transitions from the most intimate and vulnerable to the political, just as she stylistically shifts from poetry to fiction, drawings, and Instagram screenshots to discourse analysis. We follow Moshtari Hilal's pen like a knife that dances over hairy arms, angular chins, and lady beards, circles around non-conforming noses, and then, with sudden, precise cuts, dissects our society like a dead body and reveals our innermost colonial gaze. [...] Here, an artist writes: Moshtari Hilal creates texts like pictures. They start to overlap, merge, and in the overlap, reveal surprising insights."
Sarah Murrenhoff, DLF Kultur
Linus Schöpfer reviews 'Ugliness' in comparison with Gabriele von Arnim's 'The Consolation of Beauty' and says: “As different as their backgrounds and perspectives are, the motives of the authors are similar. Both are searching for inner peace in a world they perceive as a burden. Gabriele von Arnim finds some weak consolation, at least, and with Moshtari Hilal, reconciliation becomes conceivable towards the end. Both books are worth reading in their own way."
Linus Schöpfer, NZZ am Sonntag
"She takes the readers on her own life journey, a confrontation of her own ugliness."
Lena Pinto, taz
"Universally relatable. When we read 'Ugliness,' it is like looking into a mirror that reflects our own insecurities . . . Anyone who engages with this text will be met with the faceless ideal they carry around with them."
The Michigan Daily