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Eyeshadow, aesthetics and morality
Women’s Studies hr. Forum. Vol. 7. No. 5. pp. X5-313. Printed in Great Britain.
1984.
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0277-5395/&I Wxl+.oJl 1984 Pergamon Press Ltd.
EYESHADOW, AESTHETICS AND MORALITY HELEN HEISE* Philosophy Department, San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA 94132, U.S.A.
It was not a philosophical book or paper that prompted me to write this paper, but rather a conversation among some women philosophers. They commented on their women students in philosophy of feminism courses. Some women began coming without make-up. Some women reported that they didn’t wear make-up to class but wore it at week-ends. The attitude of the women students, an attitude expressed in other feminist group discussions and writings, seemed to be that women who are aware of the oppression of women, including their being treated as sex objects, and who are roused to counter it, could not consistently wear make-up. More generally the principle seems to be that enlightened women wouldn’t tart themselves up in ways prescribed by our culture since that culture is sexist and the intent of the personal adornment is to attract favorable attention to appearance and body, to invite being viewed as female sex object. One acquiesces in being a sex object by making oneself as sexually attractive, as sexy, as possible, in accordance with the views of manufacturers, advertisers, and all those who stand to profit economically or sexually from women’s concern with being sexy. If a woman comes to see herself as a person with other aspects as least as valuable as her physical appearance, she may think she is asserting herself and rejecting sexism and exploitation by not wearing make-up, by not concerning herself with clothes or other kinds of self-beautification. Rumpled clothes that don’t fit too closely, undone hair, unmade face, etc. may all be seen by a feminist as defiance of a sexist and exploitative attitude toward women in our society. Closely related is a widespread attitude that an interest in self-beautification is frivolous. This common view has it that if a person shows anything more than a minimal interest in presenting a pleasing appearance, s/he will be judged to be less serious about intellectual matters or occupational competence than if s/he did not. When I was an undergraduate, I was around a number of men who * I want to express my warm thanks to friends, colleagues, and women in the Society for Women in Philosophy-Pacific Division who provided helpful discussion of this paper.
said that women (they probably said ‘girls’) who intended to be serious about developing their minds could not concern themselves with clothes and make-up. Their attitude was either/or, either intellectual substance or aesthetic froth, and they left little doubt that the aesthetic interest in appearance was frivolous, far less worthwhile than intellectual or occupational involvements. Though art was important and humanly worthwhile, the aesthetics of everyday life and the aesthetic aspect of the everyday world were not. Certainly they paid little attention to their own appearances. The defiant feminists and the anti-aesthetic men are revealing this culture’s general suspicion of selfbeautification, bodies, and sex. I’ll discuss what I think might be given explicitly as some (nonexhaustive) parts of this outlook. But first let me make a position statement and a few terminological points. Though it may sound as if I’m criticizing defiant feminists, my disagreement is not their rejection of male chauvinism. I take sexism to be the position holding that males and females are different not only anatomically and physiologically, but also, a priori, psychically, and furthermore that they ought to be different. This last value judgment may be disguised. I take male chauvinism to be the sexist view that men are better than women, and female chauvinism to be the sexist view that women are better than men. Feminism is the view that women are as good as men. The term I rather prefer is ‘egalitarianism’, which is perhaps less likely to be understood to mean ‘female chauvinism’ as ‘feminism’ sometimes is. It also seems that some people think that only women can be feminists. It is more obvious that men and women could equally well be egalitarians. I do not use ‘feminist’ such that only a woman could be one but ‘egalitarianism’ emphasizes the equality which I believe obtains among persons ontologically. The meaning of ‘ontological’ can best be understood here by contrasting it with some term like ‘conventional’, ‘ontological’ then referring to a fundamental, given aspect and ‘conventional’ referring to what is acquired in social groups. The difference might be difficult to make out in all cases, but for some characteristics criteria could be
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devised. One criterion I shall use below is presence in widely differing societies. Such a distinction allows us to say, e.g. that men and women are now, in America and Western Europe at least, typically conventionally different with respect to psychical traits, but that it is not necessarily the case that men and women are ontologically different with respect to psychical traits. If there are psychical differences claimed, they must be established by reliable evidence and/or arguments, and not merely baldly asserted to be self-evident or part of the meaning of the concepts ‘male’ and ‘female’. The importance of egalitarianism, the view that persons are ontologically equal, is that what I shall say about persons and their obligations I mean to apply to males and females equally. Now to lay out and discuss the various views regarding self-beautification I think mistaken. First. The exclusivity claim: people who are interested in self-beautification can’t have other well-developed interests and competencies. My first response to this position would be to point out an obvious fact, namely, that most people do have more than one interest. Why not self-beautification along with other interests? People I know doing philosophy are also severally interested in birdwatching, tennis, chess, gourmet cooking, politics, parenting, volleyball. I think the denigrator of selfbeautification does not deny that people can have more than one interest. It’s rather that selfbeautification is peculiar. The second mistake regarding attitudes toward self-beautification I want to point out could be expressed as a response to my first objection, in, the following way: people can, as a matter of fact, have numerous interests, but if a person is concerned very much with his or her appearance, it lessens that person’s significance because the interest in one’s appearance will be seen as wanting to be sexually attractive. ‘So? Why shouldn’t a person want to be would be my question. sexually attractive?’ Because, the answer might go, if there is the emphasis on sexual attractiveness, all else is obscured and the sexually attractive person becomes a sex object. ‘Sexy’ is a word in ordinary language. I think I am not revising its meaning if I use it to mean ‘promptly arousing sexual interest’. By ‘sex object’ I mean ‘an entity arousing sexual interest in the viewer and looked on only or primarily as a means to the viewer’s sexual ends and not as a person who also has sexual interests as well as an array of other interests’. A sex object is seen as limited in two ways. First: a sex object is limited by being a means to someone else’s sexual ends, including whatever additional ends that user has for sex, such as, ego gratification. Second: a sex object is limited to having no further significance, no accomplishments, abilities, traits, besides those relevant to the user’s sexual
purposes. The first limitation might be called the ‘instrumentalist restriction’; the second, the ‘reductivist intent’. There are two ways I would counter the diffusely denigrating view of the interest in self-beautification. First: I want to deny that the interest in selfbeautification necessarily amounts to wanting to be sexy. Second: I want to deny that wanting to be sexy amounts to wanting to be a sex object. To begin, let us consider this last point first: what is wrong with wanting to be sexy? One may want to appear sexy in order to have as many opportunities as possible to have sex. In addition sexiness might be used for further purposes, say, educational ones. We can imagine or perhaps we think we have known a feminist woman who is aware of women being treated as sex objects, and therefore chooses to look as sexy as possible while intending never to be sexually available to men. A sexual tease, we might say, meaning that with malice aforethought she plans to rouse men for the sake of frustrating them. But she might say that her behavior is just: the men who respond to her solely as sex object are themselves eager to use her; for her part, she only aims to give them hard evidence that she is not merely sexy but is also a mind with intentions, and therefore not a sex object. Probably nowadays most people would like to think that sex is good, even if they don’t actually think so, revealing rather a view of sex as degrading unless sanctified by marriage, love, commitment, etc. (More on this below.) But if we think that sex is good, then we ought to think that sexiness is good. Further, at our most reflective and morally conscientious we probably do not think that an interest in sex precludes having other interests. Appreciation of someone’s sexiness, including one’s own, does not have to incapacitate all other appreciative faculties. So I want to emphasize as strongly as possible that I am not denigrating sexiness when I argue that not all concern with self-beautification is directed to being sexy. One might want to heighten one’s aesthetic effect without also aiming at being sexy, and one might even be aiming at being more aesthetically pleasing and less sexy. Being aesthetically pleasing and being sexy are not the same. To argue for this distinction, I’ll give first the meaning of the terms. As I’ve said, ‘sexy’ is an ordinary language word I take to mean ‘promptly arousing sexual interest’. By ‘self-beautification’ I mean ‘trying to improve the aesthetic effect one makes’, or equivalently, ‘trying to improve one’s effect as an aesthetic object’, or equivalently, ‘trying to increase one’s aesthetic pleasingness’. By ‘aesthetically pleasing’ I mean ‘giving aesthetic pleasure’. The comparison suggested by ‘improvement’ is between what one would look like without the aesthetic effort and what one would look like
Eyeshadow, Aesthetics and Morality with the aesthetic effort. There is no comparison between one person and another person required. Though ‘aesthetically pleasing’ is not a familiar ordinary language expression and perhaps sounds both jargonish and affected, I think it preferable to the familiar word ‘beautiful’ because ‘beautiful’ suggests a high degree of aesthetic success, and is, perhaps for this or other reasons, a word that makes us uneasy. (How many of us could say, ‘I am trying to be more beautiful?’ Easier I think is saying, ‘I am trying to be more aesthetically pleasing.‘) ‘Aesthetically pleasing’ can be used even when the kind of aesthetic success is not so serious and lofty or when the degree is not so perfect as ‘beautiful’ would suggest. ‘Aesthetically pleasing’ might be specified by, among other terms, ‘cute’, ‘dainty’, ‘elegant’, ‘good-looking’, ‘pretty’, ‘stunning’, ‘handsome’, ‘lovely’, ‘natty’, ‘chic’, or even ‘beautiful’. ‘Aesthetically pleasing’ then allows a range in degrees and kinds of aesthetic success. No doubt there are subtle, complex, tantalizing relations between being aesthetically pleasing and being sexy. But being sexy and being aesthetically pleasing are not the same. How can it be shown that there is a distinction? One way is with paradigm cases. As an instance of the sexy woman, I give you Raquel Welch. As an instance of the aesthetically pleasing woman, I offer you the Queen of England. Though some may say Raquel Welch is not sexy, and some may say the Queen is not aesthetically pleasing, I think almost everyone would agree that there are striking differences between the two women, and further, that the aim of Raquel Welch is to be sexy, and that the aim of the Queen is something quite different, made up of careful likely, regal seemliness, grooming, discreet enhancement of her best features, and clothes of suitable quality, but quiet rather than suggestive. She and her advisors would no doubt think it inappropriate to turn observers’ thoughts to carnal pleasures. When one makes a judgment of sexiness, that judgment may be based on others’ reports, or on inferences from properties taken to be sexy, as well as one’s own immediate feelings. A heterosexual woman is not so likely to be roused sexually at the sight of a sexy woman as she might be at the sight of a sexy man. But the judgment that the woman is sexy might all the same be one which she could make. We understand the effect, even if it is not in a particular case one occurring mostly in the relevant sexual class of which we are members. So we might enlarge the concept ‘sexy’ to ‘promptly arousing sexual interest in a significant proportion of the appropriate class’. The judgment of sexiness though possibly based mediately on report or inference depends at bottom on someone’s experiencing the sexy person as sexually arousing. Experiencing a person as sexy
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consists in being sexually roused. One would like to do something with the sexy person. One’s thoughts are directed to sexual activities which one would like to be engaging in with the sexy person. Of course, thinking of a person as sexy is not the same as thinking of the person as a sex object. Part of the thinking of what one would like to do with the sexy person could certainly be thinking of her/his sexual pleasure. The arousal by the sexy person does not preclude the aroused person thinking of the sexy person as having sexual (or other) ends in her- or himself. One may be sexy to oneself; as I am using the concept of sex object, one could not be a sex object to oneself, at least not normally. Though the thoughts roused by the sexy person may not be, and probably most often are not, acted on, still that a sexy person, as sexy, right off invites a certain range of actions is, I think, what makes the sexy person different from the aesthetically pleasing person. In contrast to the response to the sexy person, the response to the aesthetically pleasing person is like, at least initially, the response to any aesthetic object, enjoyment in mere contemplation without considering the further use of that object. This contemplative attitude in response to the aesthetic object contrasts with the roused attitude in response to the sexy person. Or in any case, the ‘pure’ responses would offer quite a clear contrast. In the actual world responses may not be so pure, because being sexy and being aesthetically pleasing are not mutually exclusive in the same person. We can certainly imagine a sexy person who isn’t aesthetically pleasing. And we can imagine a sexy person who is aesthetically pleasing. It may be harder to imagine a person who is aesthetically pleasing but not sexy at all. What I would expect is that if we got aesthetic enjoyment, among other benefits, pleasures, and rewards, from a person we associated with, that would be a reason, a good reason, for trying to prolong the association with the person. And if a person gives pleasure, including aesthetic pleasure, unless the person is offputting on other grounds, we begin to be sexually turned on, sooner or later. But later than in the case of a person we right off thought sexy, where that is our immediate response. So now we are in a position to say to someone who claims that any interest in self-beautification is an interest in being sexy that the relevant contrast between Raquel Welch and the Queen of England tells against his view. And furthermore being sexy and being aesthetically pleasing are distinguishable on the basis of responses evoked. It is tempting to begin at least to say something about the relations between other properties of persons, say, moral ones, and aesthetic pleasingness. For example, does slenderness please us more when we learn it is maintained only with selfdiscipline? But those issues cannot be explored
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here. It should be clear that I am not using aesthetic terms to describe the person as a whole, as the current expression, ‘S/He’s a beautiful person,’ does. Though ordinarily moral, intellectual, OCCUpational, and other traits interact when we respond to a person we can, I think, focus on aesthetic responses. If anyone doubts that this can be done, I suggest a thought experiment. Imagine being able to only look at a group of persons, while receiving no services, intellectual stimulation, social ‘strokes’, etc. from them. Would there be any immediate pleasure in perceiving the group, and would there be differences in degrees of pleasure given by the different members of the group? Or can one imagine changes which would increase the pleasure provided by the appearance of one or more of these persons? That immediate, intrinsic, disinterested pleasure is from contemplating those persons as aesthetic objects. But the women students who left off wearing eyeshadow because they became aware of the oppression of women might ask whether it is any better to be an aesthetic object than a sex object, granting that being aesthetically pleasing can be distinguished from being sexy. If being a sex object is being a means to someone else’s sexual ends, isn’t being an aesthetic object being a means to someone else’s aesthetic ends? If we look at the ways in which I’ve analysed ‘sex object’, two differences between sex objects and aesthetic objects appear. First: a sex object is seen only as a means to someone else’s ends; this is what I’ve called the instrumentalist restriction. In contrast, a person who is an aesthetic object for others is also an aesthetic object for her- or himself. One is, admittedly, means because one uses oneself as material which one shapes and adorns, to accomplish one’s aesthetic ends. But these ends are one’s own. One judges one’s success by the degree of aesthetic pleasure one gets from one’s product. One’s own pleasure is, in part, the measure of success, so one must aim at it in improving one’s aesthetic effect, as well as being a means to the aesthetic pleasure of others. Second. I’ve said that for the user a sex object is limited to having no further significance, no accomplishments, abilities, traits besides ones relevant to the user’s sexual puposes. This is what I’ve called the ‘reductivist intent’. In the case of a person as aesthetic object, the aesthetic object is necessarily an artifact, not a work of nature. Given that a person can appear as person in a social setting only by doing certain cleaning, grooming, clothing operations, for which an adult person is held responsible, a person cannot as aesthetic object be a natural object, like a sunset or a pebble on the beach. A person aesthetic object is necessarily an artifact. I say ‘artifact’ rather than ‘art object’ because ‘art object’ like ‘beautiful’ may suggest a
high degree of success, which I would rather not require. The person aesthetic object is an artifact produced by that very person. (Let us leave on the side, persons, if the concept is appropriate for those, probably few, who cannot be said to be responsible for the aesthetic effect they produce.) So the person aesthetic object giving aesthetic pleasure has the further important property of being the producer of that aesthetic object with all the knowledge of materials, skills, taste, sensitivity, self-discipline, etc. that that artifact required. So the person aesthetic object by being necessarily also the producer is more than the aesthetic object. O.K., says the woman wondering whether to wear eyeshadow, I see that being an aesthetic object is better than being a sex object, because as aesthetic object one is not only a means to another’s ends but also an end for oneself, and one is not only object but also producer. But is the interest in selfbeautification good? My answer is that the interest in self-beautification is first of all not bad, and furthermore is positively good in two kinds of ways, instrumental!y as a means to further ends, and intrinsically as a good in itself. It seems to me that the interest in selfbeautification has to be defended as being not bad since the interest in self-beautification may be suspect, being viewed as not merely trivial and frivolous but as wrong. The suspicion of and opposition to the interest in self-beautification runs very deep in our culture, since wanting to be as aesthetically pleasing as possible requires using the body as one of the aesthetic materials and invites the beholder and producer to delight in the product. It may be all but impossible for us to think of the body as good and to encourage delight in it. From Christian ideas of sinfulness of the flesh and the wrongness of sex (sexual indulgence was at best excusable, marriage a less bad alternative than suffering the evils of lust, one of the seven deadly sins), we get a pervasive feeling that our embodied selves are sinful. One does not need to claim that this is the only view of the body and sex contained in Christianity, but that it is one of the dominant attitudes influencing our culture seems to obvious to need lengthy, detailed support. I have already argued that sex and sexiness are not in themselves morally dubious, and I want to urge a similar suspension of a likely related moral disapproval of self-beautification. How does one argue that the body is not in itself bad? For those for whom it is not self-evident a great deal of argument would probably be needed, and here it would too much take us away from the main issues of the paper. So instead I limit myself only to pointing out that disapproval of self-beautification may be based on the ancient belief in the wickedness and shamefulness of the body, and asking someone
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who disapproves of the interest in self-beautification whether that disapproval is based on the disapproval of the body, and if so, whether that is a wellfounded, carefully reflected on view. Opposition to self-beautification may also take the form of opposition to interferring with what is ‘natural’. This opposition to interference with what is natural has been offered to me with such fervor, I was reminded of a Puritanical disapproval of the body but I would not claim that all persons disapproving of aesthetic interference are necessarily Puritans. What I doubt is that any criterion of what is natural can be devised which will let in all and only those practices which the person in favor of naturalness wants. How will one allow combing the hair but not curling or straightening it? Or how can the defender of naturalness allow piercing the ears for earrings but not allow nail polish? But even if such a criterion of naturalness could be devised which would suit the ‘natural is best’ proponents, I would still ask why interfering with nature is wrong, or in some way, blameworthy? Let us rule out at first practices directed to aesthetic ends which are dangerous to one’s health, so far as informed opinion can say, and consider only the issue of innocuous interference. Suppose one takes a rather more extreme sort of interference, say, polishing one’s nails, rather than a kind of interference which is so common it may not be thought of as interference, say, combing one’s hair. Putting nail polish on one’s nails is probably not actually harmful to one’s health. Some people think it adds to their aesthetic pleasingness. Do nails have some sort of sacred status such that they must not be defiled, and putting nail polish on them defiles them. I myself do not see it at all in that way. As I see it, God Herself might polish Her nails. But perhaps someone will say one ought to take a slightly less innocuous case, say, piercing one’s ears for earrings (which may give rise to an infection), or wearing high heels (which it is said gives rise sometimes to back problems or foot problems). If someone wants to run this slight risk, shouldn’t s/he have that choice without being viewed as frivolous? The more extreme kinds of interference which seriously hinder one’s functioning, say, binding one’s feet such that walking is painful, or constricting a waist with a corset, seem to me different enough to make a difference. To restrict a person from a broader range of activities also appropriate to persons for the sake of an aesthetic effect seems oppressive, probably intended to hinder the person from flourishing. But if the person can function in a broader range of activities though interferring with nature, what is the harm of interferring for an aesthetic end? I do not see that there is any harm. Now I do not imagine that I have persuaded all my interlocutors that the interest in self-beautifica-
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tion is not bad, but even those who have misgivings, feeling that the interest in self-beautification is somehow dubious, may be willing to consider how interest in aesthetic pleasingness could be seen as good. The first way that I want to consider is as means. The interest in being aesthetically pleasing is good as a means to knowledge, including self-awareness. One becomes more aware of the aesthetic effect one makes, and keeps alert by persistently trying to improve one’s aesthetic effect. Further, that interest will contribute to acquiring knowledge of concepts and materials relevant to making one’s best aesthetic effect. That knowledge is not unlike the knowledge one gets when one develops one’s talents in any artistic or material medium. A painter comes to understand and be able to handle paints and canvas, and concepts like perspective, contrast, harmony. A person trying to make her/himself more aesthetically pleasing will similarly come to understand and be able to handle the body (say, through exercise and attention to posture), materials (fabrics, colors, make-up, etc.), and tools (like hair dryers, emery boards, razors, brushes) used to enhance the body as well as concepts like contrast, harmony, proportion, etc. Could the attention to one’s aesthetic effect produce an aesthetically less pleasing product? No doubt on particular occasions it does. But effort in personal aesthetic matters will pay off with greater pleasingness for the most part. Knowledge, attention, mindfulness will give better results than ignorance, indifference, mindlessness. The parallel to intellectual and artistic (thinking now of ‘high art’, e.g. painting) effort may be illuminating. Teachers and students cannot but think that making an effort produce a better intellect and artistic ability. Is this necessarily so? No. Learning might produce pretentiousness, circumlocution, pedantry, self-importance, dogmatism, etc. Effort directed to one’s personal appearance might result in comparable excesses. But on the whole effort works an improvement. One needs to suit the effect to the activity and to the audience. One kind of knowledge one is acquiring from interest in aesthetic pleasingness is what suits the circumstances and the intended audience. Though the interest in the aesthetic aspect of things is not merely conventional (as I shall argue just below), it may be that the criteria for aesthetic pleasingness are largely conventional. So what pleases one audience may not please another. One way of seeing the defiant feminist’s view is as a rejection of some standards of what counts as aesthetically pleasing, not as a rejection of the interest in aesthetic pleasingness for women. Enlarging our appreciation of aesthetic effects is eminently worthwhile. Constricting alternatives by proscribing some as ‘politically incorrect’ on the
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other hand seems aesthetically and politically dubious. One of the aims of feminism has been and ought to be to increase the array of alternatives for people. Aesthetic preferences are one thing; political proscriptions are another. With respect to aesthetic standards it is clear that if some people prefer aesthetically shocking, outrageous effects, those people will not be aesthetically pleased by quiet, ‘well-bred’ effects. So one chooses one’s audience. This requires that one be alert to what is aesthetically pleasing to the person(s) one wants to please. In this way one’s knowledge of particular persons as well as people in general will be increased. This is knowledge, awareness, that for the most part men in recent times have not had to any high degree, though this may be changing. These kinds of aesthetic knowledge have mostly not been emphasized for men, and so, most people, women as well as men, have not thought of these kinds of knowledge as high human accomplishment. Men have had certain kinds of power allowing them to determine what is valuable and for whom; what is a value for women under such an arrangement is not really valuable. So one way of revising the social world will be to consider revising the value given to aesthetic pleasingness in persons. The first way then that the interest in aesthetic pleasingness is good as means is as a means to knowledge of materials, tools, concepts, persons, etc. The second way that interest in aesthetic pleasingness is good as means is as a means to power. For even though aesthetic pleasingness is not one of the highest human accomplishments in present ways of thinking, it is a desideratum. Most people would rather be with someone they consider more aesthetically pleasing than with someone less aesthetically pleasing, all other things being equal. And all things are pretty well equal if it is the same person who has made himself more aesthetically pleasing. The aesthetically more pleasing person is therefore more sought after, more in demand than the aesthetically less pleasing person, and therefore has this kind of power in relation to persons. Becoming more aesthetically pleasing then is one way to increase one’s power, though obviously it isn’t the only way. Looking one’s best is conducive to feeling one’s best, to giving one a feeling of well-being and selfconfidence, and this cannot but have an effect on one’s behavior. This positive effect is in addition to the immediate effect of the aesthetic pleasingness. This consideration of power is important especially to women who may feel themselves comparatively powerless. Powerlessness no less than power corrupts. Quite generally it is desirable for people to feel that they have power, that they can bring about ends they choose. So if being more aesthetically
pleasing does give power, as I have argued, in that respect it is good. So far I have tried to show that the interest in aesthetic pleasingness is not pernicious and is useful as a means to knowledge and power by way of showing that the interest in aesthetic pleasingness is good. Though I would like there to be, I do not think there actually is, a knockdown argument to show that aesthetic pleasingness is not only instrumentally but also intrinsically good. Aesthetic pleasingness is one of the fundamental values, or equivalently, intrinsic goods. If I were to try to show that it is good intrinsically because it possesses some other property which is good, that would be to show that aesthetic pleasingness is (only) instrumentally good in bringing about the other property. Quite generally one cannot show that intrinsic or fundamental goods are good; one can try to show that they do not have certain failings, and show how they connect with other issues, and in this way aim at making the goodness of one’s own fundamental goods appear as plausible and attractive. One aims to justify a claim regarding intrinsic goods, such as, aesthetic pleasingness is intrinsically good, even if a knockdown argument cannot be given. At this point I want to try another tack in my of aesthetic consideration of the goodness pleasingness. As a person one has to be embodied,at least in one’s everyday life. As philosopher one may want to ask whether a person has to be embodied, or in what sense a person has to be embodied, and why. But the vast majority of people, I am willing to say, nearly all, believe that there is no way for them to be in the world without being embodied. That means among other things that we have to make some aesthetic effect or other on all those persons susceptible to aesthetic effects. Not all persons seem to be equally susceptible to the aesthetic aspect of persons. But probably most persons are affected in some degree by the aesthetic appearance of others. Keeping in mind the suspicion of convention a feminist is likely-with good reason-to feel, I want to point out that this aesthetic responsiveness is not merely a conventional aspect of persons, one developed in a society like ours. It is rather an ontological given in persons. How can this ontological claim be supported? This first kind of defense I would use is the existence of aesthetic objects in virtually all societies. It is not only advanced societies but socalled primitive ones as well in which useful objects are worked on to produce aesthetic effects beyond what is needed for purely utilitarian purposes. In addition there may be artifacts intended solely for aesthetic purposes. The effort directed to aesthetic ends in many if not all societies seems to me evidence of the fundamentalness of aesthetic sensibilities in persons.
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A second kind of support for the ontological claim is the strength of aesthetic labels. To call something ‘ugly’ or ‘exquisite’ is very strong indeed. What I take the power of aesthetic labels to signify is persons’ deep interest in the aesthetic aspect of things. This deep interest in the aesthetic aspect of things can hardly be the result of Madison Avenue hype only since young children too feel the strength of ‘ugly’. Not all of that strength is derived from social convention which might be humanly pernicious, like slavery. One might want to say, however, that even if the interest in the aesthetic aspect of things is ontologically given, it is pernicious to human beings, and so should be countered. This is a possible view, and probably has actually been held at least with respect to the aesthetic aspect of person by a fair number of Christians. That condemnation or misgiving for Christians is likely associated with the moral wrongness of questionableness of sex. But since I have gone into that above, let us leave that and go onto a different case, the case in which it is granted that the aesthetic interest in things is ontologically given, but it is argued that this aesthetic interest is not on that account good. Perhaps it is not trivial because not conventional but not necessarily good. My interlocutor might argue that the interest in the aesthetic aspect of things is like the taste for violence which also seems to be so common in so many different cultures that it too must be an ontological given. Even if we limit the discussion of violence to force used against persons by persons intentionally, I think it is not a promising tack for me to try to deny the taste for violence in light of wars, wife beating, child battering, violent crimes, and sports such as boxing and football. The gratification of this taste for violence evidently gives pleasure (or relieves a kind of pain, say, frustration, anger, resentment) or the media (films, television, press, etc.) would not find it so profitable to present. One could argue that even if the taste for violence is in some sense given, whether or not it appears behaviorally depends on further factors. I am told, for example, that there are four per cent as many murders per capita in Britain as in the United States. Further I would argue that aesthetic interest is much more a part of more persons’ lives than violence is but I think showing that would be long and complicated. Rather I shall proceed conceptually. What I want to show is that the interest in the aesthetic aspect of things is good; my interlocutor and I agree that this interest is not trivial because ontologically given but opposing my view the interlocutor says the taste for violence is also ontologically given, and it is not good. So not everything ontologically given is good. Though a taste for violence rather common in persons as an instance of a human trait both ontologically given and not good may keep me from
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claiming that the interest in aesthetic pleasingness is good because ontologically given (so I mean to claim only that givenness in persons precludes its being trivial), still the contrast between violence and aesthetic pleasingness can be of use in showing that the interest in aesthetic pleasingness is good. Violence is something like the use of force against people, among other things. Aesthetic pleasingness is that which gives immediate pleasure of the sort I have tried to characterize roughly above. But aesthetic pleasure is pleasure as violence is at least the threat of pain. By producing something aesthetically pleasing, the producer aims to give aesthetic pleasure to at least one person, the producer even if no one else; this is, as I have argued above, necessary to being a producer at all. Pleasure is not the only good but it is a good. That we use, naturally, the expression ‘aesthetic pleasure’, is an indication that experiences of what I have been calling aesthetic pleasingness are good. I should perhaps repeat the caveat relevant when the expression used is ‘beauty’, namely, that the aesthetic effect may not be beautiful in the ordinary sense but may be startling, provocative, meant to rouse the aesthetic consumer from his aesthetic slumbers. So with aesthetic pleasingness. Still the aim is a kind of experience seen by the producer as desirable, i.e. good. Those entities which more or less fail to count as aesthetically pleasing will thereby likewise fail in all probability to give the consumer the kind of experience s/he will count as good. The person using violence against his victim does not intend to give pleasure to his victim; his concern is not the well-being of his victim. The producer of aesthetic pleasingness does intend to give pleasure to the consumer; though the producer may have further aims in addition to giving aesthetic pleasure, giving aesthetic pleasure to someone has to be an aim. There are no doubt many kinds of pleasure and many kinds of violence. But to the extent one aims to give pleasure, one is intending something morally good. To the extent one aims to give pleasure one is intending something morally good. To the extent one is aiming to do violence to someone, one is not intending something morally good. To succeed at either means one has power; to give pleasure in the first case, to do violence and harm in the second. One way to put one of my aims in a feminist way is: knowing how to produce aesthetic pleasure is a power one has. Let us call this aesthetic power. Aesthetic power is more human that the power to do violence. Let us call this violent power. Traditionally men have valued violent power much more than aesthetic power. Aesthetic power ought to be seen as one of the highest powers a person can have. Men in most settings are not aesthetically in the running. Their clothes and grooming may be
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important to each other (let us leave out women) emphasize a man’s actual or potential wealth and but not aesthetically important. Clothes and power, giving less emphasis to looks and charm. But grooming are important in indicating conformity to if a self-supporting woman who does not intend to conventions, compliance, adherence, and loyalty to have children is looking for a sex partner, she may the rules of the institution. There may well be not care as much about money and power as about competition among men, say, in a bank, or trimness, cleanliness, taste, personality traits that university administrative hierarchy, to have the count in immediate interactions. So it may be that most impressive, i.e. costly, clothes. But would a because of the change in sexual practices, man may vice-president of a bank or university commend a have to become more concerned with matters other subordinate with ‘He’s always a pleasure to behold?’ than power and money in order to compete with Besides fearing that this might have homosexual other males in the sexual arena. Aesthetic concern overtones, the vice-president probably would not may be among those matters they have to concern want to appear so interested in aesthetic matters. themselves with more. It may be that aesthetic Power is what men have been socialized to be awareness is oneaof the quickest clues to a man’s interested in. This power has nothing to do with sexual awareness; a man unaware of a hole in his being able to give pleasure to the persons on whom sleeve is less likely to be aware of which strokes a it is used. Though it may not at every moment be woman enjoys. The obliviousness to the hole in this actually violent, at bottom it likely consists in the sleeve may also bespeak an obliviousness to any wielder being able to do to the victim something the feelings other people are having. victim would not like. Perhaps many men fall short aesthetically, not But if this power must be based on something because the aesthetic effect is frankly ugly, but other than oneself, say, a bureaucracy (like a because it is boring, unfresh, uniform, uninspired, university administration, or a financial institution, showing no thought or originality. What exhortation or a military organization, or an hereditary can wake the mindless from their aesthetic monarchy), one cannot feel that the power is one’s slumbers? What can be said to induce people to own entirely. It may be that only in noncontribute their fair share of aesthetic pleasure to institutionalized relationships can one’s power be the community? one’s own. And here if the power that one has over The contrast between doing violence to someone people is physical, again we must look down on it or and providing aesthetic pleasure for someone is in any case not applaud it. If a husband gets probably sufficiently clear and distinct so that we do compliance from his wife and children solely by , not have to think that difference will be conceptually physical force, we feel he is a bully and victimizes inaccessible to any who would care to note it. But them. We do not admire him though we may not what would bring about a rank-ordering of values admire the victims either. such that a person would prefer to provide aesthetic On the other hand, we can admire the producer of pleasure (or other pleasure) rather than causing aesthetic pleasingness for his skill, knowledge, etc. pain? and the aesthetic wnsumer for his awareness and If intrinsic goods are those good in themselves appreciativeness. No one is victimized. The power such that they are not means to some further good, to provide us with aesthetic pleasure is a power we then just for this reason they are fundamental and would freely give to anyone. no knockdown reasons can be given for preferring This power to give aesthetic pleasure is one way to them. If aesthetic pleasure is an intrinsic good, as I get favorable attention. Since it is probably the case take it to be, as well as an instrumental good, for that more people are seeking new relationships example, in acquiring power, then there would no more of the time now than, say, even 40 years ago, reasons to be given which would conclusively show because so many marriages end in divorce and then that aesthetic pleasure is intrinsically good. one is again looking around, as well as probably How then does one decide which values will count having been looking at more different persons as fundamental, intrinsically good? It may be one before marriage, people have to think about how to does not decide. One wmes to hold certain values as fundamental, let us say, truth, beauty, justice, get favorable attention, and keep on getting it since productivity. There may be no deciding or choosing, the ties that bind can more easily be undone. One result or cause of the greater fluidity of in the sense of having an array of values before one relationships is the insistence on sex as not only for which one then self-consciously attends to, selects from, and then rank orders one’s selected values. procreation but for recreation and affiliation as well. With more reliable birth control methods available On the other hand, even though as persons we may never be without values so that our ‘initial’ and the changes in attitudes about sexual activity, women have an eye out for different traits in men, at acquisition of values may not take place in the selfconscious way I have just described, still it may be least some of the time compared to what they might have had 40 years ago. If a woman is looking for a that we can become self conscious and revise our fundamental values. That for which we are good husband and father for her children, she may
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responsible, actions, character, products (houses, shoes, poems, paintings, essays, missiles, etc.), are shaped by our values. Even though there is always something given, ‘raw material’, not made by us, still if it were not in any way shaped by us, we could hardly be held responsible for what we do and make. Actions are aimed at actualizing a possibility seen as valuable in terms of our values. So what we are responsible for is or depends on our values. If our values can be at least revised in response to our most enlightened thinking, then we shall embody in our actions our best values and make ourselves our best selves. Best according to which criteria? Each person must judge for him- or herself. The criteria can only be aesthetic, if there are any at all. The judgment of what constitutes the highest human qualities, again, can be only an aesthetic judgment; certain traits are immediately seen as intrinsically good. A heightening and sharpening of one’s aesthetic awareness in relation
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to one’s own aesthetic pleasingness may help one to make the ultimate decisions of values, more farreaching but, in character, like making particular aesthetic judgments regarding one’s appearance. There are no guarantees that trying to consider one’s own and other persons’ aesthetic sensibilities will produce a better set of rank-ordered values for a person. But the aesthetic aim, to please aesthetically, is better than doing violence to persons which plays a part in many of the harmful values. SO aesthetic pleasingness, far from being a trivial, frivolous matter is connected with deep, farreaching issues. I would not say that aesthetic pleasingness is the only virtue. It may be that it is dispensable in emergencies, as intellectual productivity, artistic productivity, other high accomplishments that persons can live without, are. But in the best and most civilized life aesthetic pleasingness is not superfluous, but rather necessary, both in itself, and in its use for reflecting on values.
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EYESHADOW, AESTHETICS AND MORALITY HELEN HEISE* Philosophy Department, San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA 94132, U.S.A.
It was not a philosophical book or paper that prompted me to write this paper, but rather a conversation among some women philosophers. They commented on their women students in philosophy of feminism courses. Some women began coming without make-up. Some women reported that they didn’t wear make-up to class but wore it at week-ends. The attitude of the women students, an attitude expressed in other feminist group discussions and writings, seemed to be that women who are aware of the oppression of women, including their being treated as sex objects, and who are roused to counter it, could not consistently wear make-up. More generally the principle seems to be that enlightened women wouldn’t tart themselves up in ways prescribed by our culture since that culture is sexist and the intent of the personal adornment is to attract favorable attention to appearance and body, to invite being viewed as female sex object. One acquiesces in being a sex object by making oneself as sexually attractive, as sexy, as possible, in accordance with the views of manufacturers, advertisers, and all those who stand to profit economically or sexually from women’s concern with being sexy. If a woman comes to see herself as a person with other aspects as least as valuable as her physical appearance, she may think she is asserting herself and rejecting sexism and exploitation by not wearing make-up, by not concerning herself with clothes or other kinds of self-beautification. Rumpled clothes that don’t fit too closely, undone hair, unmade face, etc. may all be seen by a feminist as defiance of a sexist and exploitative attitude toward women in our society. Closely related is a widespread attitude that an interest in self-beautification is frivolous. This common view has it that if a person shows anything more than a minimal interest in presenting a pleasing appearance, s/he will be judged to be less serious about intellectual matters or occupational competence than if s/he did not. When I was an undergraduate, I was around a number of men who * I want to express my warm thanks to friends, colleagues, and women in the Society for Women in Philosophy-Pacific Division who provided helpful discussion of this paper.
said that women (they probably said ‘girls’) who intended to be serious about developing their minds could not concern themselves with clothes and make-up. Their attitude was either/or, either intellectual substance or aesthetic froth, and they left little doubt that the aesthetic interest in appearance was frivolous, far less worthwhile than intellectual or occupational involvements. Though art was important and humanly worthwhile, the aesthetics of everyday life and the aesthetic aspect of the everyday world were not. Certainly they paid little attention to their own appearances. The defiant feminists and the anti-aesthetic men are revealing this culture’s general suspicion of selfbeautification, bodies, and sex. I’ll discuss what I think might be given explicitly as some (nonexhaustive) parts of this outlook. But first let me make a position statement and a few terminological points. Though it may sound as if I’m criticizing defiant feminists, my disagreement is not their rejection of male chauvinism. I take sexism to be the position holding that males and females are different not only anatomically and physiologically, but also, a priori, psychically, and furthermore that they ought to be different. This last value judgment may be disguised. I take male chauvinism to be the sexist view that men are better than women, and female chauvinism to be the sexist view that women are better than men. Feminism is the view that women are as good as men. The term I rather prefer is ‘egalitarianism’, which is perhaps less likely to be understood to mean ‘female chauvinism’ as ‘feminism’ sometimes is. It also seems that some people think that only women can be feminists. It is more obvious that men and women could equally well be egalitarians. I do not use ‘feminist’ such that only a woman could be one but ‘egalitarianism’ emphasizes the equality which I believe obtains among persons ontologically. The meaning of ‘ontological’ can best be understood here by contrasting it with some term like ‘conventional’, ‘ontological’ then referring to a fundamental, given aspect and ‘conventional’ referring to what is acquired in social groups. The difference might be difficult to make out in all cases, but for some characteristics criteria could be
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devised. One criterion I shall use below is presence in widely differing societies. Such a distinction allows us to say, e.g. that men and women are now, in America and Western Europe at least, typically conventionally different with respect to psychical traits, but that it is not necessarily the case that men and women are ontologically different with respect to psychical traits. If there are psychical differences claimed, they must be established by reliable evidence and/or arguments, and not merely baldly asserted to be self-evident or part of the meaning of the concepts ‘male’ and ‘female’. The importance of egalitarianism, the view that persons are ontologically equal, is that what I shall say about persons and their obligations I mean to apply to males and females equally. Now to lay out and discuss the various views regarding self-beautification I think mistaken. First. The exclusivity claim: people who are interested in self-beautification can’t have other well-developed interests and competencies. My first response to this position would be to point out an obvious fact, namely, that most people do have more than one interest. Why not self-beautification along with other interests? People I know doing philosophy are also severally interested in birdwatching, tennis, chess, gourmet cooking, politics, parenting, volleyball. I think the denigrator of selfbeautification does not deny that people can have more than one interest. It’s rather that selfbeautification is peculiar. The second mistake regarding attitudes toward self-beautification I want to point out could be expressed as a response to my first objection, in, the following way: people can, as a matter of fact, have numerous interests, but if a person is concerned very much with his or her appearance, it lessens that person’s significance because the interest in one’s appearance will be seen as wanting to be sexually attractive. ‘So? Why shouldn’t a person want to be would be my question. sexually attractive?’ Because, the answer might go, if there is the emphasis on sexual attractiveness, all else is obscured and the sexually attractive person becomes a sex object. ‘Sexy’ is a word in ordinary language. I think I am not revising its meaning if I use it to mean ‘promptly arousing sexual interest’. By ‘sex object’ I mean ‘an entity arousing sexual interest in the viewer and looked on only or primarily as a means to the viewer’s sexual ends and not as a person who also has sexual interests as well as an array of other interests’. A sex object is seen as limited in two ways. First: a sex object is limited by being a means to someone else’s sexual ends, including whatever additional ends that user has for sex, such as, ego gratification. Second: a sex object is limited to having no further significance, no accomplishments, abilities, traits, besides those relevant to the user’s sexual
purposes. The first limitation might be called the ‘instrumentalist restriction’; the second, the ‘reductivist intent’. There are two ways I would counter the diffusely denigrating view of the interest in self-beautification. First: I want to deny that the interest in selfbeautification necessarily amounts to wanting to be sexy. Second: I want to deny that wanting to be sexy amounts to wanting to be a sex object. To begin, let us consider this last point first: what is wrong with wanting to be sexy? One may want to appear sexy in order to have as many opportunities as possible to have sex. In addition sexiness might be used for further purposes, say, educational ones. We can imagine or perhaps we think we have known a feminist woman who is aware of women being treated as sex objects, and therefore chooses to look as sexy as possible while intending never to be sexually available to men. A sexual tease, we might say, meaning that with malice aforethought she plans to rouse men for the sake of frustrating them. But she might say that her behavior is just: the men who respond to her solely as sex object are themselves eager to use her; for her part, she only aims to give them hard evidence that she is not merely sexy but is also a mind with intentions, and therefore not a sex object. Probably nowadays most people would like to think that sex is good, even if they don’t actually think so, revealing rather a view of sex as degrading unless sanctified by marriage, love, commitment, etc. (More on this below.) But if we think that sex is good, then we ought to think that sexiness is good. Further, at our most reflective and morally conscientious we probably do not think that an interest in sex precludes having other interests. Appreciation of someone’s sexiness, including one’s own, does not have to incapacitate all other appreciative faculties. So I want to emphasize as strongly as possible that I am not denigrating sexiness when I argue that not all concern with self-beautification is directed to being sexy. One might want to heighten one’s aesthetic effect without also aiming at being sexy, and one might even be aiming at being more aesthetically pleasing and less sexy. Being aesthetically pleasing and being sexy are not the same. To argue for this distinction, I’ll give first the meaning of the terms. As I’ve said, ‘sexy’ is an ordinary language word I take to mean ‘promptly arousing sexual interest’. By ‘self-beautification’ I mean ‘trying to improve the aesthetic effect one makes’, or equivalently, ‘trying to improve one’s effect as an aesthetic object’, or equivalently, ‘trying to increase one’s aesthetic pleasingness’. By ‘aesthetically pleasing’ I mean ‘giving aesthetic pleasure’. The comparison suggested by ‘improvement’ is between what one would look like without the aesthetic effort and what one would look like
Eyeshadow, Aesthetics and Morality with the aesthetic effort. There is no comparison between one person and another person required. Though ‘aesthetically pleasing’ is not a familiar ordinary language expression and perhaps sounds both jargonish and affected, I think it preferable to the familiar word ‘beautiful’ because ‘beautiful’ suggests a high degree of aesthetic success, and is, perhaps for this or other reasons, a word that makes us uneasy. (How many of us could say, ‘I am trying to be more beautiful?’ Easier I think is saying, ‘I am trying to be more aesthetically pleasing.‘) ‘Aesthetically pleasing’ can be used even when the kind of aesthetic success is not so serious and lofty or when the degree is not so perfect as ‘beautiful’ would suggest. ‘Aesthetically pleasing’ might be specified by, among other terms, ‘cute’, ‘dainty’, ‘elegant’, ‘good-looking’, ‘pretty’, ‘stunning’, ‘handsome’, ‘lovely’, ‘natty’, ‘chic’, or even ‘beautiful’. ‘Aesthetically pleasing’ then allows a range in degrees and kinds of aesthetic success. No doubt there are subtle, complex, tantalizing relations between being aesthetically pleasing and being sexy. But being sexy and being aesthetically pleasing are not the same. How can it be shown that there is a distinction? One way is with paradigm cases. As an instance of the sexy woman, I give you Raquel Welch. As an instance of the aesthetically pleasing woman, I offer you the Queen of England. Though some may say Raquel Welch is not sexy, and some may say the Queen is not aesthetically pleasing, I think almost everyone would agree that there are striking differences between the two women, and further, that the aim of Raquel Welch is to be sexy, and that the aim of the Queen is something quite different, made up of careful likely, regal seemliness, grooming, discreet enhancement of her best features, and clothes of suitable quality, but quiet rather than suggestive. She and her advisors would no doubt think it inappropriate to turn observers’ thoughts to carnal pleasures. When one makes a judgment of sexiness, that judgment may be based on others’ reports, or on inferences from properties taken to be sexy, as well as one’s own immediate feelings. A heterosexual woman is not so likely to be roused sexually at the sight of a sexy woman as she might be at the sight of a sexy man. But the judgment that the woman is sexy might all the same be one which she could make. We understand the effect, even if it is not in a particular case one occurring mostly in the relevant sexual class of which we are members. So we might enlarge the concept ‘sexy’ to ‘promptly arousing sexual interest in a significant proportion of the appropriate class’. The judgment of sexiness though possibly based mediately on report or inference depends at bottom on someone’s experiencing the sexy person as sexually arousing. Experiencing a person as sexy
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consists in being sexually roused. One would like to do something with the sexy person. One’s thoughts are directed to sexual activities which one would like to be engaging in with the sexy person. Of course, thinking of a person as sexy is not the same as thinking of the person as a sex object. Part of the thinking of what one would like to do with the sexy person could certainly be thinking of her/his sexual pleasure. The arousal by the sexy person does not preclude the aroused person thinking of the sexy person as having sexual (or other) ends in her- or himself. One may be sexy to oneself; as I am using the concept of sex object, one could not be a sex object to oneself, at least not normally. Though the thoughts roused by the sexy person may not be, and probably most often are not, acted on, still that a sexy person, as sexy, right off invites a certain range of actions is, I think, what makes the sexy person different from the aesthetically pleasing person. In contrast to the response to the sexy person, the response to the aesthetically pleasing person is like, at least initially, the response to any aesthetic object, enjoyment in mere contemplation without considering the further use of that object. This contemplative attitude in response to the aesthetic object contrasts with the roused attitude in response to the sexy person. Or in any case, the ‘pure’ responses would offer quite a clear contrast. In the actual world responses may not be so pure, because being sexy and being aesthetically pleasing are not mutually exclusive in the same person. We can certainly imagine a sexy person who isn’t aesthetically pleasing. And we can imagine a sexy person who is aesthetically pleasing. It may be harder to imagine a person who is aesthetically pleasing but not sexy at all. What I would expect is that if we got aesthetic enjoyment, among other benefits, pleasures, and rewards, from a person we associated with, that would be a reason, a good reason, for trying to prolong the association with the person. And if a person gives pleasure, including aesthetic pleasure, unless the person is offputting on other grounds, we begin to be sexually turned on, sooner or later. But later than in the case of a person we right off thought sexy, where that is our immediate response. So now we are in a position to say to someone who claims that any interest in self-beautification is an interest in being sexy that the relevant contrast between Raquel Welch and the Queen of England tells against his view. And furthermore being sexy and being aesthetically pleasing are distinguishable on the basis of responses evoked. It is tempting to begin at least to say something about the relations between other properties of persons, say, moral ones, and aesthetic pleasingness. For example, does slenderness please us more when we learn it is maintained only with selfdiscipline? But those issues cannot be explored
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here. It should be clear that I am not using aesthetic terms to describe the person as a whole, as the current expression, ‘S/He’s a beautiful person,’ does. Though ordinarily moral, intellectual, OCCUpational, and other traits interact when we respond to a person we can, I think, focus on aesthetic responses. If anyone doubts that this can be done, I suggest a thought experiment. Imagine being able to only look at a group of persons, while receiving no services, intellectual stimulation, social ‘strokes’, etc. from them. Would there be any immediate pleasure in perceiving the group, and would there be differences in degrees of pleasure given by the different members of the group? Or can one imagine changes which would increase the pleasure provided by the appearance of one or more of these persons? That immediate, intrinsic, disinterested pleasure is from contemplating those persons as aesthetic objects. But the women students who left off wearing eyeshadow because they became aware of the oppression of women might ask whether it is any better to be an aesthetic object than a sex object, granting that being aesthetically pleasing can be distinguished from being sexy. If being a sex object is being a means to someone else’s sexual ends, isn’t being an aesthetic object being a means to someone else’s aesthetic ends? If we look at the ways in which I’ve analysed ‘sex object’, two differences between sex objects and aesthetic objects appear. First: a sex object is seen only as a means to someone else’s ends; this is what I’ve called the instrumentalist restriction. In contrast, a person who is an aesthetic object for others is also an aesthetic object for her- or himself. One is, admittedly, means because one uses oneself as material which one shapes and adorns, to accomplish one’s aesthetic ends. But these ends are one’s own. One judges one’s success by the degree of aesthetic pleasure one gets from one’s product. One’s own pleasure is, in part, the measure of success, so one must aim at it in improving one’s aesthetic effect, as well as being a means to the aesthetic pleasure of others. Second. I’ve said that for the user a sex object is limited to having no further significance, no accomplishments, abilities, traits besides ones relevant to the user’s sexual puposes. This is what I’ve called the ‘reductivist intent’. In the case of a person as aesthetic object, the aesthetic object is necessarily an artifact, not a work of nature. Given that a person can appear as person in a social setting only by doing certain cleaning, grooming, clothing operations, for which an adult person is held responsible, a person cannot as aesthetic object be a natural object, like a sunset or a pebble on the beach. A person aesthetic object is necessarily an artifact. I say ‘artifact’ rather than ‘art object’ because ‘art object’ like ‘beautiful’ may suggest a
high degree of success, which I would rather not require. The person aesthetic object is an artifact produced by that very person. (Let us leave on the side, persons, if the concept is appropriate for those, probably few, who cannot be said to be responsible for the aesthetic effect they produce.) So the person aesthetic object giving aesthetic pleasure has the further important property of being the producer of that aesthetic object with all the knowledge of materials, skills, taste, sensitivity, self-discipline, etc. that that artifact required. So the person aesthetic object by being necessarily also the producer is more than the aesthetic object. O.K., says the woman wondering whether to wear eyeshadow, I see that being an aesthetic object is better than being a sex object, because as aesthetic object one is not only a means to another’s ends but also an end for oneself, and one is not only object but also producer. But is the interest in selfbeautification good? My answer is that the interest in self-beautification is first of all not bad, and furthermore is positively good in two kinds of ways, instrumental!y as a means to further ends, and intrinsically as a good in itself. It seems to me that the interest in selfbeautification has to be defended as being not bad since the interest in self-beautification may be suspect, being viewed as not merely trivial and frivolous but as wrong. The suspicion of and opposition to the interest in self-beautification runs very deep in our culture, since wanting to be as aesthetically pleasing as possible requires using the body as one of the aesthetic materials and invites the beholder and producer to delight in the product. It may be all but impossible for us to think of the body as good and to encourage delight in it. From Christian ideas of sinfulness of the flesh and the wrongness of sex (sexual indulgence was at best excusable, marriage a less bad alternative than suffering the evils of lust, one of the seven deadly sins), we get a pervasive feeling that our embodied selves are sinful. One does not need to claim that this is the only view of the body and sex contained in Christianity, but that it is one of the dominant attitudes influencing our culture seems to obvious to need lengthy, detailed support. I have already argued that sex and sexiness are not in themselves morally dubious, and I want to urge a similar suspension of a likely related moral disapproval of self-beautification. How does one argue that the body is not in itself bad? For those for whom it is not self-evident a great deal of argument would probably be needed, and here it would too much take us away from the main issues of the paper. So instead I limit myself only to pointing out that disapproval of self-beautification may be based on the ancient belief in the wickedness and shamefulness of the body, and asking someone
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who disapproves of the interest in self-beautification whether that disapproval is based on the disapproval of the body, and if so, whether that is a wellfounded, carefully reflected on view. Opposition to self-beautification may also take the form of opposition to interferring with what is ‘natural’. This opposition to interference with what is natural has been offered to me with such fervor, I was reminded of a Puritanical disapproval of the body but I would not claim that all persons disapproving of aesthetic interference are necessarily Puritans. What I doubt is that any criterion of what is natural can be devised which will let in all and only those practices which the person in favor of naturalness wants. How will one allow combing the hair but not curling or straightening it? Or how can the defender of naturalness allow piercing the ears for earrings but not allow nail polish? But even if such a criterion of naturalness could be devised which would suit the ‘natural is best’ proponents, I would still ask why interfering with nature is wrong, or in some way, blameworthy? Let us rule out at first practices directed to aesthetic ends which are dangerous to one’s health, so far as informed opinion can say, and consider only the issue of innocuous interference. Suppose one takes a rather more extreme sort of interference, say, polishing one’s nails, rather than a kind of interference which is so common it may not be thought of as interference, say, combing one’s hair. Putting nail polish on one’s nails is probably not actually harmful to one’s health. Some people think it adds to their aesthetic pleasingness. Do nails have some sort of sacred status such that they must not be defiled, and putting nail polish on them defiles them. I myself do not see it at all in that way. As I see it, God Herself might polish Her nails. But perhaps someone will say one ought to take a slightly less innocuous case, say, piercing one’s ears for earrings (which may give rise to an infection), or wearing high heels (which it is said gives rise sometimes to back problems or foot problems). If someone wants to run this slight risk, shouldn’t s/he have that choice without being viewed as frivolous? The more extreme kinds of interference which seriously hinder one’s functioning, say, binding one’s feet such that walking is painful, or constricting a waist with a corset, seem to me different enough to make a difference. To restrict a person from a broader range of activities also appropriate to persons for the sake of an aesthetic effect seems oppressive, probably intended to hinder the person from flourishing. But if the person can function in a broader range of activities though interferring with nature, what is the harm of interferring for an aesthetic end? I do not see that there is any harm. Now I do not imagine that I have persuaded all my interlocutors that the interest in self-beautifica-
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tion is not bad, but even those who have misgivings, feeling that the interest in self-beautification is somehow dubious, may be willing to consider how interest in aesthetic pleasingness could be seen as good. The first way that I want to consider is as means. The interest in being aesthetically pleasing is good as a means to knowledge, including self-awareness. One becomes more aware of the aesthetic effect one makes, and keeps alert by persistently trying to improve one’s aesthetic effect. Further, that interest will contribute to acquiring knowledge of concepts and materials relevant to making one’s best aesthetic effect. That knowledge is not unlike the knowledge one gets when one develops one’s talents in any artistic or material medium. A painter comes to understand and be able to handle paints and canvas, and concepts like perspective, contrast, harmony. A person trying to make her/himself more aesthetically pleasing will similarly come to understand and be able to handle the body (say, through exercise and attention to posture), materials (fabrics, colors, make-up, etc.), and tools (like hair dryers, emery boards, razors, brushes) used to enhance the body as well as concepts like contrast, harmony, proportion, etc. Could the attention to one’s aesthetic effect produce an aesthetically less pleasing product? No doubt on particular occasions it does. But effort in personal aesthetic matters will pay off with greater pleasingness for the most part. Knowledge, attention, mindfulness will give better results than ignorance, indifference, mindlessness. The parallel to intellectual and artistic (thinking now of ‘high art’, e.g. painting) effort may be illuminating. Teachers and students cannot but think that making an effort produce a better intellect and artistic ability. Is this necessarily so? No. Learning might produce pretentiousness, circumlocution, pedantry, self-importance, dogmatism, etc. Effort directed to one’s personal appearance might result in comparable excesses. But on the whole effort works an improvement. One needs to suit the effect to the activity and to the audience. One kind of knowledge one is acquiring from interest in aesthetic pleasingness is what suits the circumstances and the intended audience. Though the interest in the aesthetic aspect of things is not merely conventional (as I shall argue just below), it may be that the criteria for aesthetic pleasingness are largely conventional. So what pleases one audience may not please another. One way of seeing the defiant feminist’s view is as a rejection of some standards of what counts as aesthetically pleasing, not as a rejection of the interest in aesthetic pleasingness for women. Enlarging our appreciation of aesthetic effects is eminently worthwhile. Constricting alternatives by proscribing some as ‘politically incorrect’ on the
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other hand seems aesthetically and politically dubious. One of the aims of feminism has been and ought to be to increase the array of alternatives for people. Aesthetic preferences are one thing; political proscriptions are another. With respect to aesthetic standards it is clear that if some people prefer aesthetically shocking, outrageous effects, those people will not be aesthetically pleased by quiet, ‘well-bred’ effects. So one chooses one’s audience. This requires that one be alert to what is aesthetically pleasing to the person(s) one wants to please. In this way one’s knowledge of particular persons as well as people in general will be increased. This is knowledge, awareness, that for the most part men in recent times have not had to any high degree, though this may be changing. These kinds of aesthetic knowledge have mostly not been emphasized for men, and so, most people, women as well as men, have not thought of these kinds of knowledge as high human accomplishment. Men have had certain kinds of power allowing them to determine what is valuable and for whom; what is a value for women under such an arrangement is not really valuable. So one way of revising the social world will be to consider revising the value given to aesthetic pleasingness in persons. The first way then that the interest in aesthetic pleasingness is good as means is as a means to knowledge of materials, tools, concepts, persons, etc. The second way that interest in aesthetic pleasingness is good as means is as a means to power. For even though aesthetic pleasingness is not one of the highest human accomplishments in present ways of thinking, it is a desideratum. Most people would rather be with someone they consider more aesthetically pleasing than with someone less aesthetically pleasing, all other things being equal. And all things are pretty well equal if it is the same person who has made himself more aesthetically pleasing. The aesthetically more pleasing person is therefore more sought after, more in demand than the aesthetically less pleasing person, and therefore has this kind of power in relation to persons. Becoming more aesthetically pleasing then is one way to increase one’s power, though obviously it isn’t the only way. Looking one’s best is conducive to feeling one’s best, to giving one a feeling of well-being and selfconfidence, and this cannot but have an effect on one’s behavior. This positive effect is in addition to the immediate effect of the aesthetic pleasingness. This consideration of power is important especially to women who may feel themselves comparatively powerless. Powerlessness no less than power corrupts. Quite generally it is desirable for people to feel that they have power, that they can bring about ends they choose. So if being more aesthetically
pleasing does give power, as I have argued, in that respect it is good. So far I have tried to show that the interest in aesthetic pleasingness is not pernicious and is useful as a means to knowledge and power by way of showing that the interest in aesthetic pleasingness is good. Though I would like there to be, I do not think there actually is, a knockdown argument to show that aesthetic pleasingness is not only instrumentally but also intrinsically good. Aesthetic pleasingness is one of the fundamental values, or equivalently, intrinsic goods. If I were to try to show that it is good intrinsically because it possesses some other property which is good, that would be to show that aesthetic pleasingness is (only) instrumentally good in bringing about the other property. Quite generally one cannot show that intrinsic or fundamental goods are good; one can try to show that they do not have certain failings, and show how they connect with other issues, and in this way aim at making the goodness of one’s own fundamental goods appear as plausible and attractive. One aims to justify a claim regarding intrinsic goods, such as, aesthetic pleasingness is intrinsically good, even if a knockdown argument cannot be given. At this point I want to try another tack in my of aesthetic consideration of the goodness pleasingness. As a person one has to be embodied,at least in one’s everyday life. As philosopher one may want to ask whether a person has to be embodied, or in what sense a person has to be embodied, and why. But the vast majority of people, I am willing to say, nearly all, believe that there is no way for them to be in the world without being embodied. That means among other things that we have to make some aesthetic effect or other on all those persons susceptible to aesthetic effects. Not all persons seem to be equally susceptible to the aesthetic aspect of persons. But probably most persons are affected in some degree by the aesthetic appearance of others. Keeping in mind the suspicion of convention a feminist is likely-with good reason-to feel, I want to point out that this aesthetic responsiveness is not merely a conventional aspect of persons, one developed in a society like ours. It is rather an ontological given in persons. How can this ontological claim be supported? This first kind of defense I would use is the existence of aesthetic objects in virtually all societies. It is not only advanced societies but socalled primitive ones as well in which useful objects are worked on to produce aesthetic effects beyond what is needed for purely utilitarian purposes. In addition there may be artifacts intended solely for aesthetic purposes. The effort directed to aesthetic ends in many if not all societies seems to me evidence of the fundamentalness of aesthetic sensibilities in persons.
Eyeshadow,
Aesthetics and Morality
A second kind of support for the ontological claim is the strength of aesthetic labels. To call something ‘ugly’ or ‘exquisite’ is very strong indeed. What I take the power of aesthetic labels to signify is persons’ deep interest in the aesthetic aspect of things. This deep interest in the aesthetic aspect of things can hardly be the result of Madison Avenue hype only since young children too feel the strength of ‘ugly’. Not all of that strength is derived from social convention which might be humanly pernicious, like slavery. One might want to say, however, that even if the interest in the aesthetic aspect of things is ontologically given, it is pernicious to human beings, and so should be countered. This is a possible view, and probably has actually been held at least with respect to the aesthetic aspect of person by a fair number of Christians. That condemnation or misgiving for Christians is likely associated with the moral wrongness of questionableness of sex. But since I have gone into that above, let us leave that and go onto a different case, the case in which it is granted that the aesthetic interest in things is ontologically given, but it is argued that this aesthetic interest is not on that account good. Perhaps it is not trivial because not conventional but not necessarily good. My interlocutor might argue that the interest in the aesthetic aspect of things is like the taste for violence which also seems to be so common in so many different cultures that it too must be an ontological given. Even if we limit the discussion of violence to force used against persons by persons intentionally, I think it is not a promising tack for me to try to deny the taste for violence in light of wars, wife beating, child battering, violent crimes, and sports such as boxing and football. The gratification of this taste for violence evidently gives pleasure (or relieves a kind of pain, say, frustration, anger, resentment) or the media (films, television, press, etc.) would not find it so profitable to present. One could argue that even if the taste for violence is in some sense given, whether or not it appears behaviorally depends on further factors. I am told, for example, that there are four per cent as many murders per capita in Britain as in the United States. Further I would argue that aesthetic interest is much more a part of more persons’ lives than violence is but I think showing that would be long and complicated. Rather I shall proceed conceptually. What I want to show is that the interest in the aesthetic aspect of things is good; my interlocutor and I agree that this interest is not trivial because ontologically given but opposing my view the interlocutor says the taste for violence is also ontologically given, and it is not good. So not everything ontologically given is good. Though a taste for violence rather common in persons as an instance of a human trait both ontologically given and not good may keep me from
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claiming that the interest in aesthetic pleasingness is good because ontologically given (so I mean to claim only that givenness in persons precludes its being trivial), still the contrast between violence and aesthetic pleasingness can be of use in showing that the interest in aesthetic pleasingness is good. Violence is something like the use of force against people, among other things. Aesthetic pleasingness is that which gives immediate pleasure of the sort I have tried to characterize roughly above. But aesthetic pleasure is pleasure as violence is at least the threat of pain. By producing something aesthetically pleasing, the producer aims to give aesthetic pleasure to at least one person, the producer even if no one else; this is, as I have argued above, necessary to being a producer at all. Pleasure is not the only good but it is a good. That we use, naturally, the expression ‘aesthetic pleasure’, is an indication that experiences of what I have been calling aesthetic pleasingness are good. I should perhaps repeat the caveat relevant when the expression used is ‘beauty’, namely, that the aesthetic effect may not be beautiful in the ordinary sense but may be startling, provocative, meant to rouse the aesthetic consumer from his aesthetic slumbers. So with aesthetic pleasingness. Still the aim is a kind of experience seen by the producer as desirable, i.e. good. Those entities which more or less fail to count as aesthetically pleasing will thereby likewise fail in all probability to give the consumer the kind of experience s/he will count as good. The person using violence against his victim does not intend to give pleasure to his victim; his concern is not the well-being of his victim. The producer of aesthetic pleasingness does intend to give pleasure to the consumer; though the producer may have further aims in addition to giving aesthetic pleasure, giving aesthetic pleasure to someone has to be an aim. There are no doubt many kinds of pleasure and many kinds of violence. But to the extent one aims to give pleasure, one is intending something morally good. To the extent one aims to give pleasure one is intending something morally good. To the extent one is aiming to do violence to someone, one is not intending something morally good. To succeed at either means one has power; to give pleasure in the first case, to do violence and harm in the second. One way to put one of my aims in a feminist way is: knowing how to produce aesthetic pleasure is a power one has. Let us call this aesthetic power. Aesthetic power is more human that the power to do violence. Let us call this violent power. Traditionally men have valued violent power much more than aesthetic power. Aesthetic power ought to be seen as one of the highest powers a person can have. Men in most settings are not aesthetically in the running. Their clothes and grooming may be
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important to each other (let us leave out women) emphasize a man’s actual or potential wealth and but not aesthetically important. Clothes and power, giving less emphasis to looks and charm. But grooming are important in indicating conformity to if a self-supporting woman who does not intend to conventions, compliance, adherence, and loyalty to have children is looking for a sex partner, she may the rules of the institution. There may well be not care as much about money and power as about competition among men, say, in a bank, or trimness, cleanliness, taste, personality traits that university administrative hierarchy, to have the count in immediate interactions. So it may be that most impressive, i.e. costly, clothes. But would a because of the change in sexual practices, man may vice-president of a bank or university commend a have to become more concerned with matters other subordinate with ‘He’s always a pleasure to behold?’ than power and money in order to compete with Besides fearing that this might have homosexual other males in the sexual arena. Aesthetic concern overtones, the vice-president probably would not may be among those matters they have to concern want to appear so interested in aesthetic matters. themselves with more. It may be that aesthetic Power is what men have been socialized to be awareness is oneaof the quickest clues to a man’s interested in. This power has nothing to do with sexual awareness; a man unaware of a hole in his being able to give pleasure to the persons on whom sleeve is less likely to be aware of which strokes a it is used. Though it may not at every moment be woman enjoys. The obliviousness to the hole in this actually violent, at bottom it likely consists in the sleeve may also bespeak an obliviousness to any wielder being able to do to the victim something the feelings other people are having. victim would not like. Perhaps many men fall short aesthetically, not But if this power must be based on something because the aesthetic effect is frankly ugly, but other than oneself, say, a bureaucracy (like a because it is boring, unfresh, uniform, uninspired, university administration, or a financial institution, showing no thought or originality. What exhortation or a military organization, or an hereditary can wake the mindless from their aesthetic monarchy), one cannot feel that the power is one’s slumbers? What can be said to induce people to own entirely. It may be that only in noncontribute their fair share of aesthetic pleasure to institutionalized relationships can one’s power be the community? one’s own. And here if the power that one has over The contrast between doing violence to someone people is physical, again we must look down on it or and providing aesthetic pleasure for someone is in any case not applaud it. If a husband gets probably sufficiently clear and distinct so that we do compliance from his wife and children solely by , not have to think that difference will be conceptually physical force, we feel he is a bully and victimizes inaccessible to any who would care to note it. But them. We do not admire him though we may not what would bring about a rank-ordering of values admire the victims either. such that a person would prefer to provide aesthetic On the other hand, we can admire the producer of pleasure (or other pleasure) rather than causing aesthetic pleasingness for his skill, knowledge, etc. pain? and the aesthetic wnsumer for his awareness and If intrinsic goods are those good in themselves appreciativeness. No one is victimized. The power such that they are not means to some further good, to provide us with aesthetic pleasure is a power we then just for this reason they are fundamental and would freely give to anyone. no knockdown reasons can be given for preferring This power to give aesthetic pleasure is one way to them. If aesthetic pleasure is an intrinsic good, as I get favorable attention. Since it is probably the case take it to be, as well as an instrumental good, for that more people are seeking new relationships example, in acquiring power, then there would no more of the time now than, say, even 40 years ago, reasons to be given which would conclusively show because so many marriages end in divorce and then that aesthetic pleasure is intrinsically good. one is again looking around, as well as probably How then does one decide which values will count having been looking at more different persons as fundamental, intrinsically good? It may be one before marriage, people have to think about how to does not decide. One wmes to hold certain values as fundamental, let us say, truth, beauty, justice, get favorable attention, and keep on getting it since productivity. There may be no deciding or choosing, the ties that bind can more easily be undone. One result or cause of the greater fluidity of in the sense of having an array of values before one relationships is the insistence on sex as not only for which one then self-consciously attends to, selects from, and then rank orders one’s selected values. procreation but for recreation and affiliation as well. With more reliable birth control methods available On the other hand, even though as persons we may never be without values so that our ‘initial’ and the changes in attitudes about sexual activity, women have an eye out for different traits in men, at acquisition of values may not take place in the selfconscious way I have just described, still it may be least some of the time compared to what they might have had 40 years ago. If a woman is looking for a that we can become self conscious and revise our fundamental values. That for which we are good husband and father for her children, she may
Eyeshadow,
Aesthetics and Morality
responsible, actions, character, products (houses, shoes, poems, paintings, essays, missiles, etc.), are shaped by our values. Even though there is always something given, ‘raw material’, not made by us, still if it were not in any way shaped by us, we could hardly be held responsible for what we do and make. Actions are aimed at actualizing a possibility seen as valuable in terms of our values. So what we are responsible for is or depends on our values. If our values can be at least revised in response to our most enlightened thinking, then we shall embody in our actions our best values and make ourselves our best selves. Best according to which criteria? Each person must judge for him- or herself. The criteria can only be aesthetic, if there are any at all. The judgment of what constitutes the highest human qualities, again, can be only an aesthetic judgment; certain traits are immediately seen as intrinsically good. A heightening and sharpening of one’s aesthetic awareness in relation
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to one’s own aesthetic pleasingness may help one to make the ultimate decisions of values, more farreaching but, in character, like making particular aesthetic judgments regarding one’s appearance. There are no guarantees that trying to consider one’s own and other persons’ aesthetic sensibilities will produce a better set of rank-ordered values for a person. But the aesthetic aim, to please aesthetically, is better than doing violence to persons which plays a part in many of the harmful values. SO aesthetic pleasingness, far from being a trivial, frivolous matter is connected with deep, farreaching issues. I would not say that aesthetic pleasingness is the only virtue. It may be that it is dispensable in emergencies, as intellectual productivity, artistic productivity, other high accomplishments that persons can live without, are. But in the best and most civilized life aesthetic pleasingness is not superfluous, but rather necessary, both in itself, and in its use for reflecting on values.