Do Texas cities have the power to regulate the design of private homes and other buildings, purely to enforce aesthetic standards? In a ruling involving a San Marcos case, the U.S. Fifth Circuit ...

I feel that aesthetic standards there are dictatorship,” the sociologist tweeted from her home in Barcelona, as a way to do catharsis, without realizing that her comment would go viral.

The language around these elevated aesthetic standards reveals the values that inform them: “clean”, “glowing”, “expensive”, “quiet luxury”. This new era of beauty is about ...