Changing Understandings of Body Image

This post is by Heather Widdows, who reports on the first workshop of the BeautyDemands network. 

The workshop took place earlier this month at Warwick University. It considered changing body image and looked at how ‘normal’, ‘healthy’ and ‘perfect’ function as concepts in the beauty debate. For instance, how they function as people perceive themselves and others in terms of what is normal and beautiful, and in terms of what women and girls (and to a lesser extent men) feel is expected of them. 

The papers given covered a wide range of topics, including, on choice, on revenge porn, on ‘tanorexia’, on skin-lightening, on feminism and beauty, on cosmetic surgery scandals, and from very different perfectives including, law, psychology, sociology, philosophy and critical theory. 

These were the types of issues which were discussed were:

• Whether and how choice or consent is relevant in the debate, for instance, can one ‘freely’ consent to cosmetic procedures or does social construction reduce the very possibility of choice. 
• The extent to which such ‘requirements’ are more demanding than in previous generations and over time. 
• The connection between these debates and previous feminist debates and the need to return to older discussions. 
• The relationship between the philosophical debate and the law and policy debates and how to create not only dialogue between but to use the different debates in ways which might be useful to inform policy and practice intervention. 
• Possible pathways to regulation in areas which are little regulated. 
• The relationship between health, beauty, sexual attractiveness and identity. 

Perfect Me Again!

This week, Professor Heather Widdows continues her discussion of contemporary conceptions of beauty and considers the shared nature of such ideals.

In my post last week I said a little about Perfect Me! the book I'm currently working on. I said that beauty, appearance, and body image are not trivial issues, but ones that matter. This of course is a different issue from whether it should matter – currently it does and does for most people, much of the time. For some the ideal of ‘being perfect’ has become all encompassing. For some this ideal is a standard against which individuals judge their own and other’s progress, success and failure. People feel ‘happy’ or that they are ‘successful’ if they have attained some aspect of their ideal (reached their goal weight, erased their wrinkles or firmed their thighs). This view, which connects being physically perfect (having the best body) with ‘the self’, is a common one. We are often told once we move towards our ‘perfect self’ we will be able to be our true selves (‘the best you’). The assumption is ubiquitous in the language of value which surrounds talk of beauty: You should live up to the ideal and strive to be more perfect because ‘you’re worth it’, ‘you owe it to yourself’; if you don’t strive for perfection and ‘let yourself go’ then, presumably ‘you’re not worth it’. In this dominant ideal of ‘perfect me’ beauty, happiness and success begin to merge. The more perfect you are the more you will succeed: you’ll get a better job (‘look the part’, ‘dress for the job you want not the one you have’); better relationship (‘if I’m thinner, prettier, sexier s/he’ll love me more’); and better life in general (‘if I was ten pounds lighter, I’d be happier’). In these ways the beauty ideal is thought to provide rewards to the successful devotee – rewards of jobs, relationships, respect, love and happiness. It gives standards – to aspire to, and to judge ourselves and others by.

The shared nature of the ideal is crucial. The fact that it is shared matters. For a start it makes problematic claims that beautifying – in the form of routine beauty regimes or interventions (such as surgery) – is individual. You can’t choose your own beauty ideal, you can only choose to conform to it, to embody it or to reject it. If you reject it – as some do – then you are standing outside the norm and will be judged accordingly. (Remember the politicians, even though beauty isn't necessary for a politician as you might think it is for an actor or a singer, they are judged on appearance.) Standing outside the ideal isn't easy for most people – as the barefaced selfies show – most women wear make-up at least some of the time in most walks of life, and employers and others expect it. Gradually what is ‘normal’ – what is required to attain minimum standards of acceptable appearance – has extended. Not very long ago make-up and hair dye was unacceptable for most women (for respectable women). I'm not defending this division of types of women or these norms – but rather just pointing out that what is required by the beauty ideal to be ‘normal’ is changing and expanding. Body hair is a particularly good example of this – and very current if we think of the column inches written only a few weeks ago when Madonna showed underarm hair. It is now the ‘norm’ to be increasingly hairless. In public – at the beach/pool/on a night out – most women think ‘de-fluffing’ is ‘routine’, like washing or teeth-cleaning. But it’s not so long ago (days I remember from when I was at University) when underarm hair was normal, even attractive. And the changes in norms with regard to pubic hair are striking in the last 20 years. In the future what will be required? The de-fuzzing of all body hair (except on the head where the trend is the opposite and in some groups hair extensions are almost a requirement)?

These are the types of issues I will spend the next two years teasing out and writing about – as well as discussing at the Hay Festival. 

Perfect Me!

This week and next, Professor Heather Widdows writes about the philosophy behind notions of ideal beauty and perfection.

One of the books I'm currently working on is about beauty. Called Perfect Me! From October I will be full time working on this – thanks to the award of a Major Research Fellowship from the Leverhulme Trust.

Perfect me! explores the ideal of perfection as exhibited in contemporary, and increasingly global, ideals of beauty. It considers whether being perfect is something that individuals really choose, or whether it is an increasingly constraining and dominating ideal.  Perfect me! can be read in a number of ways: as an individual’s aspiration to perfect themselves (‘I want to be perfect’), as assertion of what being perfect is (‘this is what I would be if I were perfect’), and as a command which a woman (or man) feels she should obey (‘you should be perfect’). In the book I explore all of these meanings, with particular focus on the moral element that each reading implies: the first, that being perfect is worth having; the second, a judgement that this is what perfection is; and the third, a moral imperative to attain it.

Too often beauty – appearance and body image – is treated by philosophers as something trivial. This is borne out by the lack of research on this area in mainstream philosophy. Philosophers, especially moral philosophers, have tended to look at beauty as an abstract concept or in the context of the sublime, rather than as attached to real bodies and as influencing how real people actually feel. But beauty is not trivial. It is a dominating ideal and one which pervades nearly every aspect of contemporary life. It is an ideal by which we judge other people – and women particularly. Think about the coverage of sports women or politicians or almost any woman in the public eye. Media coverage invariably comments on how they look irrespective of the story. Whatever women are trying to do and say they will also be judged on how they look. This is not something which is only true of those in the public eye – but more and more for all of us. Through social media women – and girls – are judged and ‘liked’ according to how they look and we create ourselves by the pictures we use to represent ourselves. Whether or not you think that this should be the case it is hard to pretend that it isn't. Try telling a school girl that it’s ‘what’s inside that counts’ when she’s being ‘virtually’ bullied about pictures her ‘friends’ posted of her (there is nothing virtual about this type of bulling, it is real and devastating). Or think about the recent debate about women posting barefaced (no-make-up) selfies in order to raise money for cancer. For some this is brave, for others it is, and should be, ‘normal’. Whatever your view is it is certainly the case that how we, individually and collectively, present our physical form to ourselves and to others (and in turn how we judge others) is currently primary in our society. It matters.

My view is that if philosophy wants to continue to address core questions –  questions about ‘what are human beings?’, ‘what is the self?’, ‘what gives meaning to life?’ and ‘what makes life fulfilling and flourishing? – then thinking philosophically about how the beauty ideal functions, and how it should function, is anything but trivial.

I will say more about this is next week’s blog and if you would like to hear me talk more about this I will be talking at this year’s Hay Festival.