Justice & Law Quote by Margaret Cho

Cho comes in with a blunt instrument - "Ugly". - and then immediately exposes the rigged game hiding behind it. The point isnt simply that beauty standards are unfair; its that "ugly" is a social charge that does double duty. First, its deployed as an "immeasurable insult" from the outside, a way to police womens bodies in public. Then Cho flips it: it becomes "the worst crime you can commit as a woman", meaning women are trained to internalize the verdict and treat it as moral failure. Appearance gets recoded as ethics.

The rhythm is classic stand-up logic turned into critique: short sentences, hard stops, a prosecutorial cadence that mimics the snap judgments people make about women. "Irrelevant" lands like a dare - not a gentle reassurance, but a refusal to litigate the terms. Cho is less interested in self-esteem than in power: who benefits when women spend their lives auditioning for "acceptable"?

Calling both ugly and beautiful "an illusion" is the slyest move. She doesnt romanticize beauty or just ask for kinder standards; she questions the entire measurement system. That matters coming from Cho, a comedian whose body, race, and sexuality have been treated as material by audiences and media. The subtext is survival: if the categories are hallucinations, you can stop treating them like a sentence. The joke isnt that beauty is fake; its that society insists its real, then punishes you for not conforming to a mirage.