Welcome to Reclaim UGLY

Upcoming Events!

For Us With Love is BACK!!

Are you a Black MaGe? (MaGe= marginalized genders, or any gender that’s not a cis man)

Do you like poetry, music, and storytelling?

Do you have a story to tell or a desire to be heard by YOUR people?

Do you crave a space to commune with other Black MaGes and indulge in our collective dreams?

Reclaim UGLY’s founding director Vanessa Lewis has a Patreon!

Do you want to work directly with our founder, Vanessa Rochelle Lewis, to Reclaim Your UGLY and enjoy the magical ways she claims and reclaim all of hers? Join her personal patreon for access to exclusive content, attend healing workshops and events, and get direct feedback on your reclaim ugly literary (he)art.

Investing in Vanessa’s Patreon provides consistent, stable support and allows her to invest in more than just her art or work, but in herself as well. Let’s pour into Vanessa with the same passion she pours into her community! For more information on what Patreon is, see HERE.

“Ugly is the opportunity to truly indulge in yourself, in your desires, in your body, and the way you want to express yourself and the way you want to exist in the world – while abstaining from the patriarchy….It’s freedom from feeling like you have to conform.”

– Vanessa Rochelle Lewis at the 2020 Explore More Summit

What is uglification?

Uglification consists of personal and cultural beliefs, behaviors, practices, and laws that dehumanize people as ugly, undesirable, immoral, and unworthy. It feeds, maintains, and depends on oppression, such as lookism, racism, ableism, sexism, and homo-, trans-, fat-, and xeno- phobia. Unchecked, it facilitates, normalizes, and validates hatred, childhood bullying, workplace exclusion, criminalization, medical neglect, violence, exploitation, and more. Practicing Self Love in a world so rooted with uglification is a powerful act of healing and resistance. But we want more than self love, we want to create a world where we intentionally strive towards the transformative inclusivity that will support people to love themselves and each other more. To do that, we have to fight the urge to uglify ourselves and other people within our families, friendships, work places, organizing spaces, creative expression, media, religious institutions, and politics.

More about Reclaim UGLY

We think of ourselves as a community organization that is a spiritual and ideological healing movement. We are doing the healing side of activism, and activism needs healers.

We create educational materials, literature, events, and performances to educate diverse communities about how lookism and uglification collaborate to justify (racialized, gender-based, fatphobic, homophobic, transphobic, and ableist ) violence, hatred, criminalization, and discrimination.

We spread the word about how Reclaiming UGLY can joyfully heal and save lives by creating safer, more inclusive, and more welcoming communities, schools, work places, families, and movements. We invite people to reclaim their body, their communities, and their imagination from the impacts of uglification.

We host events, workshops, and activities, and produce literature and art to help people understand what uglification is, and to imagine a world where we can all be free from it, especially those who experience it the most impactfully.

We are the people we serve. Collective healing & liberation cannot happen without deep self love. Welcome to our Beloved Community! This is a love revolution and we’re so excited to be on this journey with you.