In Greek mythology, Paris was called to judge who of three goddesses, Aphrodite, Hera, and Pallas Athene, was the fairest. Eris, the goddess of discord, started the trouble when she appeared at a wedding, and threw a golden apple inscribed ‘For the Fairest’. The result was a disrupted wedding and later a war, as Paris abducted Helen to Troy. The gods were unable to make the decision, and Paris' task was not easy. Hera offered him wealth and power, and Athene promised honour and glory, but the ultimate bribe came from Aphrodite: with the promise of Helen, the most beautiful woman on earth, for his wife, Paris ended this beauty contest in favour of Aphrodite.
Like the ancient Greeks, we moderns ascribe high value to beauty and, like them, we have been unable to determine the concept of beauty, despite the fact that Miss Universe, Miss World, and a variety of other beauty contests are staged annually. With the contest still undecided, almost everybody is involved in the pursuit of beauty, and the huge profits of the beauty industry testify to its economic importance. Its significance for the individual can be judged by the time spent in the gym and in front of the mirror, and by the problems that arise from experiencing failure in this pursuit.
Bodily beauty can be defined as the deeply pleasurable experience of someone else's or one's own body. While the beauty of a person might include the person's character, spiritual quality, intelligence, and morals, the beauty of a person's body generally will not. Bodily beauty can be perceived through any of the five senses, and may be concerned with parts of the body, the whole body, or movements. Usually, however, beauty of the body refers to the visual impression of someone's body as a whole.
The origins of interest in bodily beauty were explained by Sigmund Freud, the founder of modern psychology, as being sexual drives: through a transformation, sexual attraction is moved away from the primary sexual characteristics (reproductive organs) and instead to the secondary sexual characteristics (e.g. women's more rounded forms and breasts; men's facial hair and deeper voices).
An anthropological explanation for the human interest in beauty has been offered by Robert Brain: human beings want to set themselves apart from non-humans, and therefore make alterations to the body that animals would not be capable of making. Admiration turns these alterations into marks of beauty. Exactly which alterations are admired depends on cultural preferences. Beautification strategies of one culture might, in another culture, be perceived as mutilations and as marks of ugliness. Body decorations can also mark the successful initiation or the identity of a person. But making a difference between humans and non-humans is, according to Brain, basic to those scarifications, tattooings, and colourings of the body that are associated with beauty.
Cultural variations in ideals
Neither the psychological nor the anthropological approaches above can explain the variety over time and between different societies as to what is considered beautiful. All in all, this variation makes a strong case against the idea of some universal components of beauty.
Ideals of beauty vary between and within societies: values, norms, and tastes differ from group to group; the different sexes are used for constituting different genders; and relations of power, e.g. between genders, ethnic groups, and classes, make one ideal of beauty dominant over others. Western cultures have attributed beauty to women to the point where it is difficult to talk of the beauty of men's bodies. The nineteenth-century term for describing a pleasant appearance in a man was neither ‘handsome’ nor ‘good-looking’, but ‘manly’, since beauty was reserved for women, and today ‘real men’ might be ‘handsome’ or ‘good-looking’, but ‘beautiful’ is considered too effeminate. The ancient Greeks were especially attentive to the beauty of young men's bodies, and the Nuba of Sudan and the Wodaabe men in Niger also have no difficulty in associating men and beauty. Indeed, the latter stage a beauty contest for men, gerewol, to express their special birthright of beauty and their true identity among African people.
The male beauties of the Wodaabe people in Niger challenge any Euro-American attempt to argue for the universality of beauty criteria, and point to the importance of ethnicity. To beautify themselves, the men apply yellow colour to their faces in order to lighten them, draw a line from the forehead to the tip of the nose to make the latter appear longer; blacken their lips; and, at the height of their striving for beauty, squint at the women. Taking the ethnic perspective further, the Nuba of Sudan found little beauty in the appearance of the English anthropologist James Faris; he had a beard, hair on his arms, and white skin. All were appalling features to a people to whom well-groomed hair, a smooth body, and a deep, rich black colour are central ingredients of the body beautiful. Indeed, to the Nuba it was shaving that distinguished humans from animals, and he appropriately got the nickname wõte — monkey.
The ethnic component also emerges in the Miss America, Miss World, and Miss Universe contests, which have been strongly hampered by the fact that the finalists and winners are predominantly women with white skin and Caucasian features. Women from other ethnic groups have had little chance of winning these contests, organized by white Euro-Americans, until recently.
Spiritual significance
The importance of bodily beauty has also varied through times and across societies. In Western culture the distinction between the material and the immaterial body, body and soul, and the values that have been attached to them have been central to how beauty was regarded. To the ancient Greeks a beautiful body reflected a beautiful soul and proximity to the gods. To the Gnostics (largely covering the first three to four centuries ad) the divine psychic body was caged in a physical body made by beastly creatures from the underworld. They renounced the material body and sexual drives, and strove for asceticism. In the early Christian era, where a dualism between soul and body prevailed, beauty was considered good if its appeal was spiritual and internal, but evil if its attraction was sexual and carnal. In medieval times the body and the flesh were associated with sin and women, and the immaterial soul with the divine. Thus an ethereal body ideal prevailed for women. Today, Euro-Americans seem to have gone back to an intense interest in beauty, but with a reversal of its significance: work-outs, jogging, and body-building do not any longer reflect a healthy soul, but are assumed to produce one. Further, whereas the ancient Greeks included ethics and cosmological harmony in their beautiful soul, Euro-Americans generally assume the healthy soul to be one that is up to the task of meeting the daily requirements of productive living.
A contrast to Western ideals of beauty and the importance assigned to them can be found in the study on body ideals for women in Fiji, in the South Pacific, by anthropologist Anne E. Becker. She found that the disparity between what Fijian women themselves identified as the most attractive body shape, and their actual robust appearance, did not pose a problem to them. Most women either thought that they should maintain their present weight, or actually increase it. Anne Becker explains the difference by distinguishing between an ideal of attractiveness, mainly concerned with sexuality and youth, and an ideal based on norms for what women and society ought to be like. In Fiji a robust body indicates a woman, or a man for that matter, who is embedded in a well-functioning network of family and friendship relations. This body, taken to indicate the successful practice of caring and sharing, is more important than the body of attractiveness.
Furthermore, since the Fijian body is primarily seen as constituted through the network of social relations in which the person takes part, beauty is the result of a collective effort and not, as in Western societies, an individual achievement. As a corollary, the body in Fiji was not seen as something that could be worked on and moulded. It is almost unnecessary to mention that no cases of eating disorders, such as anorexia or bulimia, were found in Fiji.
Changing western concepts
Of course, the slim, firm, and muscular body ideal for women which prevails in the West today, along with the tall thinness of models, are only the latest in the history of Euro-American body ideals. The rise in the sixteenth century of Neoplatonism, which saw concrete forms as expressions of divine ideas, and, as a corollary, saw the body as an expression of the soul, led to higher appreciation of beauty and a change in the ideal. As intelligence and force were divine gifts of the male body, beauty was the divine gift of the female body. Thus female beauty changed from being dangerous to being divine, and the previous ethereal female was succeeded by large, opulent beauties. During the eighteenth century this majestic type was superseded by a more slender and younger ideal for women, while the former, maternal type was denigrated to the status of ‘peasant’ beauty. This sylph-like early Victorian woman was followed by the voluptuous mid Victorian woman and the Edwardian woman of the late nineteenth century. Where the Victorians stressed a curvaceous hourglass figure, with a full bosom, small waist, and wide hips, the Edwardian woman was taller, weighed more, and had a larger bosom, but somewhat slimmer hips. Thinness was out of vogue and thin women were told to cover their ‘angles’.
Shortly before World War I a slender and serpentine type with smaller breasts, slimmer hips, and long legs was fashionable. This ‘boyish’ and youthful ideal reigned during the 1920s, succeeded by a sensual and voluptuous ideal in the 1930s. The ‘boyish’ and the 1930s fuller figure persisted throughout the 1950s until the thin look of the 1960s came to dominate. Since then thinness has reigned, with no come-back of the maternal ideal. Changes have taken place within the ideal of thinness, however. Today a woman does not only have to be slim, she has to have a compact, muscular look only achievable through weekly hours of exercise.
The above outline of the changing ideals of women in Europe concentrates on dominant ideology, and suggests a linear succession of different ideals, but the situation is, in reality, more complex. At any given point in time, there will be several competing ideals of beauty. One example, also providing an opportunity to make a small note on the opposite sex, could be mid-nineteenth century North America, where a number of alternative beauty ideals for men coexisted. There was the Byronic man, sensitive and heroic — especially popular amongst young men of the 1830s and 1840s, and modelled after Lord Byron with his leonine head, fair skin, and a body which was regularly subjected to dieting. At the same time, the muscular man of height and physical prowess existed; and a third ideal developed in the 1860s with the portly, rotund man, partner of the voluptuous female beauty, signalling maturity after the dislocating experiences of the Civil War in America and displaying his success in business. By the end of the century, however, the dominant ideal again became youthful, and now associated with the well-trained bodies of sportsmen. Classifying these ideals into the Byronic, the Muscular, and the Solid Man, these models of maleness are also found today.
The changing ideals of both men's and women's beauty is linked to society's perception of appropriate gender roles. The shifts from the maternal, robust body of the mid and late Victorian ages, to the slender ideal of the 1920s, to the compact, slim body of the present reflect changes in the perception of the proper role for women: from mother and caretaker of house and home, through the independent young women of the 1920s, to the active professional and disciplined women of the present.
Beauty, however, does not only relate to the ideal roles ascribed to men and women, but is part of ongoing social identification processes: a person might strive towards a certain ideal to signal man- or motherhood, or independence, but might also be judged differently by others. Furthermore, the interpretation of a body also changes with the context: a woman's thin, muscular body might be seen as representing the disciplined, independent, and professional woman of the 1990s, but seen next to the muscular body of a man she could still represent the fragility and vulnerability of woman.
The ideals of beauty today are defined through different perspectives as the healthy body, the athletic body, the muscular body, the natural body, the aesthetically pleasing body, etc. These ideals do not necessarily overlap. Eating healthy food, getting enough sleep, and having a daily walk might result in a healthy body, but would not produce a muscular body. Doing sports and being fit might result in an athletic body, but would not necessarily produce a healthy or a muscular body. The ideals might even be contradictory, since it is questionable to what extent it is ‘natural’ to spend hours in the gym to achieve a muscular body, and since the aesthetically pleasing body might be so thin as to threaten health. This is a crucial current issue where ‘Even Thinner-ness’ has become the ideal.
Bringer of happiness, enchantress, or femme fatale? In the intricacies of beauty are promises of happiness and prospects of disruption. Politics of power, gender, ethnicity, and culture are still, millennia away from the Greek gods, part of the indulgence that beauty incites.
— Claus Bossen
Bibliography
- Banner, L. W. (1983). American beauty. Alfred Knopf, New York.
- Becker, A. E. (1995). Body, self, and society. The view from Fiji University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia.
- Brain, R. (1979). The decorated body. Hutchinson and Co., London.
- Lakoff, R. B. and Scherr, R. L. (1984). Face value. The politics of beauty. Routledge and Kegan Paul, Boston
See also beauty contests; body building; body decoration; eating disorders; female form.
