Meandering Towards Truth

I’ve been reading an article by Roger Scruton which has a few things to say about female beauty.

His argument is that female beauty is not just an accidental genetic trait which should be treated with the same importance as whether one’s father was a lord or peasant, but rather that it is a symbol, a “mark of the inherent meaning and purposefulness of human life.”

He draws on examples in history of how the symbolization of female beauty has apparently catalyzed great events — war, peace, the redemption of a male. Indeed, he is correct that female beauty has been symbolized for a long time. The oldest sculpture known to exist was a familiar Venus sculpture (Venus of Hohle Fels), which symbolized a woman (or a woman’s fertility).

But what of objective beauty, an objective, human ideal?

Though the symbolization of female beauty has a lasting history, the definition of what female beauty is does not. If, especially, one looks outside of Western art, there are an array of idealized body types, facial features, and skin tones to a wide array of female beauty ideals. So wide, in face, that the one thing they all seem to have in common is that the particular ideal in question is inherently tied to their historical and cultural context.

There are as many symbols of what the ideal female “should” look like as there are permutations of general colors, body shapes, and facial features.

Then there is the question of confusion between beauty and sexual attraction by the opposite sex. One could argue that the common theme in feminine beauty is the male gaze and its interest in sexual activity. Features on a woman that remind them of sex (in a cultural context) are considered beautiful by many men. However, is this a basis for a theory of objective feminine beauty? It seems doubtful, considering the opinion of the majority of the population (women and non-straight men) is ignored in this theory.

That’s not to say there isn’t anything objective to say about female beauty. Indeed, some theories are based on perceived health and fertility driving the female beauty trend. Quite understandable, though a bit primitive, and reducing what I consider a higher question into one about appetites and reproduction. It is certainly not lasting, since what to Westerners was considered healthy- and fertile-looking two hundred years ago has nearly flipped to its opposite today (with no rigorous medical evidence to explain the flip).

A more close-fitting curve to the history of what has been considered the feminine beauty ideal is status endowed by women who appear a certain way. That is, female beauty as a function of what status a particular-looking woman gives to a man at any given time in history. Objectified, but not objective. It explains why in time of scarcity, larger women were considered more beautiful, perceived as healthier, and so forth, and why in time of plenty smaller women are considered more beautiful, perceived as healthier, etc. In times of scarcity, it was much more difficult to be a larger woman. Like very thin idealized women today, you had to be born predisposed to that body in order to “have” it more than temporarily, or have access to wealth in order to push oneself away from a particular predisposed body type.

So what is objective female beauty? Scruton:

In the presence of beauty, therefore, we are inclined to adore, to worship, to sacrifice. For this reason beauty is a powerful stimulus to marriage, and beautiful women who marry do a lasting service to their sex. They cease to be competitors, and at the same time set an example. All women can take hope from them, knowing that, in the light that shines from a face that is both beautiful and devoted, they too may exhibit some reflected glow.

It would follow that the most coveted trait of womanhood is being considered beautiful, whatever that might mean in cultural context. So that she might serve as an example to less-beautiful women by taking herself off the market.

But what is beauty? Scruton has made no mention of specific features – not even the old classics tied to physical symmetry, particular proportions, or youth. He seems to hand over the responsibility for the creation of the moral value system of looks to which a good woman should adhere to different historical periods. And indeed, within that context, his following argument about how beauty is dangerous if in the “wrong” (otherwise immoral) hands, goes through — to a point. The point at which I’m stopped is that his definition of female beauty itself is inherently changeable, flowing through history. It would seem that the potential danger in misused female beauty has a natural enemy: time. Or, that is, changing cultural perceptions. Or, if you want to get more individual about it, changing personal perceptions of what it means to be beautiful.

Ah, so we’re getting somewhere interesting. Scruton himself, says:

And by behaving in this way [whoring] she would also degrade the idea of beauty: No woman could easily be set on a pedestal in a world where the fiscal benefits of beauty are fully exploited. And it would be a world full of anger, a world as threatened as Troy was threatened, once Helen was brought within its walls.

So a beautiful woman can degrade the idea of beauty by behavior? Is not, then, beauty at least in equal part behavior as it is satisfying arbitrary conventional standards of appearance?

Scruton then goes on to describe a medieval way of imprisoning beautiful women’s bodies so that they do not wreck havoc, etc, that I’ll leave it up to you to read if you wish. My appraisal is that it’s the same misogynist fear of strong (which has been interpreted as beautiful in some places) women which has been the direct cause of our worth as humans being reduced to who our parents were (ah, modern males would recoil in horror at the idea of genetic royalty affecting their status, to women it is our adopted lot!).

So, in my estimation, Scruton did not make any solid claims about what female beauty actually is, and especially, human beauty. Any solid claims made were about how history has symbolized female beauty and placed importance on who a woman’s parents were (who are the true root of her appearance) above who the woman is, herself. Indeed, a woman’s “self” — apart from meeting the approval of the male gaze, or winning the right husband, or having the right parents — seems to be sorely lacking from his argument about female beauty.

But it is self, I claim, which endows a woman with her greatest beauty. I shall have more to say about this later.