shopping for beauty
most of my recent posts have focused on politics, broadly defined. i now intend to shift gears a bit, and begin a series of reflection that are, in one way or another, about beauty and the beautiful.
shortly before christmas last year, i was walking along michigan avenue in downtown chicago. the street was packed with people doing their christmas shopping, going in and out of the expensive stores along the magnificent mile. the store windows were filled eye-catching product displays. many people carried packages of the things they had purchased.
as i took in this scene, the following thought occurred to me: the stores were full of beautiful things. the things for sale -clothing, jewelry, household items, etc.- were made to be beautiful, pleasing to the eye, well-proportioned, eye-catching. and all of the people crowding the stores wanted to be beautiful, to make themselves and their lives beautiful. and so they were trying to get these beautiful things from the stores, and to bring them close to themselves. they were going take the beautiful things and put them in their homes, in their offices and on their bodies, as if by doing this they might somehow become more beautiful themselves.
what struck me about this attempt to become beautiful is that it involves a kind of confusion, perhaps even a category mistake. the attractiveness of a shirt may be a matter of its physical proportions, or the loveliness of a dress might be a matter of its color. but the beauty of a human being is the beauty of a human soul. and what makes a soul beautiful is not its physical shape or color, just as what makes a symphony beautiful is not a matter of how it looks and what makes an oil painting beautiful is not a matter of the way it sounds. trying to become beautiful by hanging beautiful things on one's body is like trying to become virtuous by putting books about virtue on one's bookshelf.
of course, one might think that physical shape and color are what make a human body beautiful, and that the shoppers on michigan avenue were just trying to get beautiful bodies and not beautiful souls. to some extent, this is probably the case. i think, however, that something more than this was going on, and is typically going on when we buy things for ourselves and for our material environment. moreover, even our attempts to get beautiful bodies -by going to the gym, or eating well, or using any of the innumerable number of lotions now available- seem to be motivated by more than the desire to have a beautiful body. the desire for a beautiful body is somehow connected to a more basic desire to be beautiful people, to have our selves be beautiful, to personally partake of beauty in some deep way. and insofar as our goal is to have beautiful selves or to live beautiful lives, then both shopping and working out (those two symbols of contemporary american culture) seem poor means to this end, because the kind of beauty they can give us is not the beauty proper to a human soul.
shortly before christmas last year, i was walking along michigan avenue in downtown chicago. the street was packed with people doing their christmas shopping, going in and out of the expensive stores along the magnificent mile. the store windows were filled eye-catching product displays. many people carried packages of the things they had purchased.
as i took in this scene, the following thought occurred to me: the stores were full of beautiful things. the things for sale -clothing, jewelry, household items, etc.- were made to be beautiful, pleasing to the eye, well-proportioned, eye-catching. and all of the people crowding the stores wanted to be beautiful, to make themselves and their lives beautiful. and so they were trying to get these beautiful things from the stores, and to bring them close to themselves. they were going take the beautiful things and put them in their homes, in their offices and on their bodies, as if by doing this they might somehow become more beautiful themselves.
what struck me about this attempt to become beautiful is that it involves a kind of confusion, perhaps even a category mistake. the attractiveness of a shirt may be a matter of its physical proportions, or the loveliness of a dress might be a matter of its color. but the beauty of a human being is the beauty of a human soul. and what makes a soul beautiful is not its physical shape or color, just as what makes a symphony beautiful is not a matter of how it looks and what makes an oil painting beautiful is not a matter of the way it sounds. trying to become beautiful by hanging beautiful things on one's body is like trying to become virtuous by putting books about virtue on one's bookshelf.
of course, one might think that physical shape and color are what make a human body beautiful, and that the shoppers on michigan avenue were just trying to get beautiful bodies and not beautiful souls. to some extent, this is probably the case. i think, however, that something more than this was going on, and is typically going on when we buy things for ourselves and for our material environment. moreover, even our attempts to get beautiful bodies -by going to the gym, or eating well, or using any of the innumerable number of lotions now available- seem to be motivated by more than the desire to have a beautiful body. the desire for a beautiful body is somehow connected to a more basic desire to be beautiful people, to have our selves be beautiful, to personally partake of beauty in some deep way. and insofar as our goal is to have beautiful selves or to live beautiful lives, then both shopping and working out (those two symbols of contemporary american culture) seem poor means to this end, because the kind of beauty they can give us is not the beauty proper to a human soul.
posted by micah at 12:20 PM
2 Comments:
Amen my brother! Though, I don't necessarily give people as much credit as to think that in wanting to be beautiful people are really wanting to partake in beauty or be beautiful just because they value or enjoy beauty. I think for a lot of people it's more pragmatic: be beautiful to attract romantic partners, be beautiful to get attention and approval, be beautiful to feel better about oneself. I think that's why the definition of beauty many of these people are ascribing to is the one pushed by culture, since that's the type of beauty that "gets you places" in this country. And that type of beauty can be bought. But maybe I'm just cynical. [P.S. somewhere in your posts on beauty i hope you mention the crudeness of "beauty" today vs. the subtlety of beauty in literature. i mentioned that observation you had made to several friends.]
So there's clearly something right in thinking that people do something like mislocate the source of their own value by thinking that beautiful clothes, bodies etc. will do the trick in making them good people. But it seems far too strong to infer from this that there is no connection between a beautiful soul and a beautiful body, though it is true that in many cases they come apart. All I'm suggesting is that talk of a category mistake probably isn't right. First, even if one thinks that what passes as beautiful in mass culture is totally wrong, the fact remains that there is such a thing as someone looking beautiful, carrying themselves in a beautiful way, having a beautiful face etc. And it's not clear that wanting this kind of beauty is illegitimate even if it is true that people often prize this kind of beauty over and above beauty of soul; or worse mistake this kind of beauty for beauty of soul. I know you weren't saying that desiring this kind of beauty is illegitimate simpliciter and, of course, we agree that there are all kinds of wrong reasons for wanting it. But now for a stronger claim, (and this seems most true to me when it comes to wanting a good looking body): we think, not illegitimately, that there is a connection between beauty of soul and *health* of body, though again the two can obviously come apart. That is, our notion of what it is to lead a good life does (or ought to include) notions of living healthily and being active. And if you think this is right, then it's really not a far jump to the even stronger claim that there is some connection between health of body and beauty of body though, once again, these two often come apart. My point once again, is that talk of a category mistake is too strong. While it might be true that people really miss the mark, I think they're right to see some connection between a beautiful soul and a beautiful body, even if their conception of the latter is out of wack (though i don't think it's totally out of wack). It seems more reasonable to think that what we should be after is a conception of a beautiful body that is *inseperable* from that of a beautiful soul - that is, the criteria for what a beautiful body is is partly defined in terms of what it is to be a beautiful person. Put this way, primacy is given to beauty of soul, in terms of which beauty of body is defined. In any case, in addition to doing a better of job explaining people's behaviour, my account just seems right. It strikes me as far too strong to think that *in principle* there can be no relationship between beauty of soul and beauty of body. But how, one might ask, could beauty of soul act as the grounds of criteria for beauty of body? Well, in a move that I would have thought you more inclined to initially make, one could appeal to human *telos*. Needless to say, I'm not sure how the details would work but it doesn't seem unreasonable to think that once you have in view the kinds of ends and activity that constitute human excellence, some general features of an excellent human body would follow (i.e. the link between courage and strength say).
And I'm not just saying this because I'm stunningly beautiful...
DG
Post a Comment
<< Home