A Refined Palate
Ashanti turns 45 in the Bahamas
The response to Ashanti’s new photos shows how conditioning shapes how we see others and ourselves.
Ashanti Then and Now
Ashanti’s birthday photos dropped this week. In true Ashanti fashion—fly, glowing, celebrating on a beach in the Bahamas. At 45, Ashanti’s new photos show a familiar confidence shaped by years of evolution. Her vacation photos now include her one-year-old son, Kareem, who she shares with rapper Nelly.
Predictably, the internet had a lot to say about her body. Some admired her curves. Many were critical. Everyone took notice. The comments swarmed with discourse. The average woman’s body still provokes controversy, especially when she dares to live in it without apology.
These reactions send a message to us all: as we shift within our bodies through time, struggle, and change, the world takes note. And in this GLP-1 era of weight-loss injections and Ozempic at Costco—where a gaunt frame has become the new aspiration—Ashanti’s natural build has an air of rebellion.
A Refined Palate
The world often looks at women through a misogynistic gaze of consumption. That’s why not even Ashanti’s new child, the Bahamas, or her turning 45 could shift the discourse away from her body or the judgments attached to it.
People find countless ways to naturalize their sense of beauty. But contrary to popular belief, it isn’t innate, unchangeable, or beyond our control. Attraction, like an appreciation for art or gastronomy, grows through exposure, curiosity, and reflection. You don’t walk into a museum for the first time and instantly get it; you learn how to see.
Taste is a skill to be cultivated.
The same goes for attraction and desire.
Cultivation also involves confronting the systems that teach us to recognize only one form as beautiful. It’s an exercise that we do for ourselves more than anything else. Ideally, in that process, we would come to transcend seeing others only through our narrow definitions and come to value ourselves beyond those same limits.
Learning to see beauty more broadly opens space for a fuller life.
These images remind me to appreciate how my body changes through different life stages.
To keep refining my vision.
And to belong to myself, first and foremost, through those changes.