We are delighted to share the runner-up essay from this year’s Brian Darling Memorial Essay Prize Competition, organised by the Association for the Study of Modern and Contemporary France (ASMCF). Written by recent John’s graduate Maisy Hicks, the piece explores artist Sophie Calle’s exhibition d’Aveugles (The Blind), in which Calle asked blind participants what they considered beautiful. Maisy’s essay reflects on the implications of such a project in an ocularcentrist culture, where sight dominates the hierarchy of the senses, and where beauty is often framed through patriarchal norms.