It’s time to dismantle the myth of beauty as a physical entity and embrace the concept of beauty as a state of being; one of Ireland’s foremost sociopolitical thinkers is here to show us how.

We’ve all been taught to hate ourselves in one way or another. And as a result, we spend a lot of time trying to improve our so-called ‘defects’ and a lot of money on products that promise to transform us into the picture of perfection. But whose idea of perfection are we chasing? And how do we escape ideals that are often reductive, tyrannical and tangled up in capitalism and other oppressive systems?

Disobedient Bodies encourages unruliness, subversion, and rebellion against the current system. Offering alternative ways of seeing beauty, drawing on other cultures, worldviews, times, and places, as well as looking beyond the capitalist model, Emma Dabiri’s latest is a clarion call to reconnect with our right to love our disobedient bodies.

Emma Dabiri is an Irish-Nigerian academic, author and broadcaster. She is the author of the Sunday Times bestseller What White People Can Do Next and Don’t Touch My Hair. In 2023 she was appointed as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She is a Contributing Editor at Elle and runs the Instagram account, Disobedient Bodies.

Maeve Higgins is a comedian, writer, columnist, and actor. She hosts comedy shows, is a columnist with The Guardian US as well as various other media outlets and hosts/co-hosts a number of podcasts.