The break with institutionalized beauty, the beauty in which the whole of society recognizes itself, took place a long time ago already in modern art, at least as early as the “Demoiselles d’Avignon” by Picasso. The preponderance of flesh is already present in Bacon and others. Ethnology reminds us, moreover, that beauty and ugliness are arbitrary values varying with different human societies and the era in which they took root in place.. Far from conveying objective data about ugliness or indifference, the women presented by Stéphane Chavanis refer to a sample of humanity where desire and its absence both have a role, alongside weariness and boredom. Are they beautiful or ugly? The answer is the affair of each one of us, beyond the brutality of the question posed by the images. But the answer often belies the question, as Maurice Blanchot put it so neatly. One has to know, therefore, how to leave the question in suspense, allowing it to pursue its work of undermining the fabric of our certainties.