Two Concepts of Beauty

Sometimes the following things are true:

1) Person X is beautiful;

2) Feature A of person X is not irrelevant to 1.;

3) If person X had feature B instead of feature A, they would be no more or less beautiful – or equivalently,

3a) Feature A is not beautiful considered in isolation from any particular person.

As examples of ‘feature A’ I’m thinking of ‘the particular pattern of freckles on person X’s right arm’ or ‘the way person X smiles’. These are not things which are simply unimportant (i.e. that satisfy 3. but not 2.) – they are integral parts of person X’s beauty.

On the other hand, sometimes the following things are true:

1) Person X is beautiful;

2) Feature A of person X is not irrelevant to 1.;

3) If person X had feature B instead of feature A, they would no longer be beautiful – or equivalently,

3a) Feature A is beautiful considered in isolation from any particular person.

Obviously ‘feature A’ might be a whole group of features taken together. I’m thinking of things like rock-hard abs, pouty lips, large breasts, a well-groomed moustache, etc.

The conclusion follows that there are two concepts of beauty in people. The first (beauty1) works by the initial judgement that person X is beautiful being used to directly imply the beautiful character of their particular features: their features and their body and their movements, are beautiful precisely insofar as they are theirs.

The second (beauty2) works by the initial judgement that feature A is beautiful being used to evaluate the beauty of the people who either have or do not have that feature: a person is beautiful insofar as their features and their body and their movements are beautiful independently.

The two concepts, one might suspect, can only be distinct because people are more than the sum of their parts: the beauty of a collection of pre-packaged body parts and mannerisms is not the same as the beauty of an individual person. This fact is, indeed, also the requirement for there to be individuals at all.

Obviously these two sorts of beauty are mixed up to various degrees in practice – it is easier to “love someone insofar as they are the person they are”, when the person they are is not the elephant man. Nevertheless they are distinct and ultimately, I think independent – the beauty of the elephant man is not impossible.

Neither can really be praised or condemned: people’s feelings are what they are. But beauty2 is, of course, a vector through which racism, classism*, and endless gendered body-hatred can be propagated. So a society that strengthens and reinforces it, for example by the presence of a vast ‘beauty industry’, is likely to not be fantastic.

*NB: classism is the analogue to racism – prejudice and discrimination against individuals based on their accent, mannerism, wealth, and general ‘cultural class’. The real issue with class of course is not classism, but the very presence of (antagonistic) classes at all – in a way that differs from racism.

The Patriarchy Gets Everywhere

So fairly recently, I cast the bones and they told me, I think, to go to a blood donation session. So I went along, got vampirised a little, and sat down at the tea table to eat crisps and replenish my fluids.

On the table, underneath the biscuits, was a charming mat-poster affair, showing a large cartoon blood donation session, filled with various stereotyped people donating blood and making jokes – a sort of Where’s-Wally style panorama, obviously designed to showcase the diversity of people who give blood.

Note that: the purpose as far as I could tell was to show an array of human diversity.

Yet something was a bit non-diverse. I noticed that of the medical staff, there were some in white coats, doctors, who seemed to be male, and others in blue outfits, nurses, who seemed to be female. I could only see one counter-example, a solitary female doctor. This perturbed me, but I was sure it must just be in the one area I was looking at. There had to be more variety present in the rest of the scene, surely?

Alas there was not, and don’t call me Shirley. Of the roughly 25 medical staff, 24 four of them obeyed the Iron Law: nurses are female, doctors are male.

At this point I shook my fist at the ceiling and shouted ‘Damn you, Patriarchy!’ As one does.