Semiotics of Ideal Beauty
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The Semiotics of Ideal Beauty examines whether there can ever be an objective measurement of beauty or whether the concept and appreciation of beauty will always remain in flux as cultures evolve and establish new standards of physical attractiveness.
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[edit] Semiotics
This is the study of signification, i.e. the process whereby signs communicate meaning to the observer and allow that person to understand the way the world works. As we grow up or live in a culture, we learn to understand both the surface objective realities (the denotative meanings) and all the hidden, implied or assumed meanings that underpin what we see (the connotative meanings). Hence, we might see a person wearing a particular uniform. Because of our experience, we have a set of rules which predict who will wear this type of uniform and in what circumstances. We therefore take these rules of expectation, apply them to the immediate instance, and base our social actions on that judgement. For example, if we encounter someone wearing a nurse's uniform, we might judge the wearer to be:
- a nurse if the context is a hospital;
- an actress if we see the person on the stage of a theatre and there is no suggestion that a real injury has been sustained.
[edit] Idealisation
Ideal in this context means a "perfect form of". Plato was the first philosopher in the Western tradition to consider which standards determine when any given form was perfect or ideal. He distinguished between:
- the visible world, i.e. what we see and hear, and opinion and experience which change and are uncertain; and
- the intelligible world, i.e.:
- reason which is well-developed but still less than perfect knowledge, e.g. science and mathematics may contain some assumptions and postulates that cannot be fully justified; and
- intelligence which is knowledge of the highest and most abstract categories and forms of concepts and things.
Belief stands between the two as a practical and relatively reliable guide to life. It does not require analysis and calculation to the point of certainty, so it may be true most of the time but, because the visible world changes, it may equally be wrong. In the visible world, we meet the imperfect and changing manifestation these ideal forms. For example, the abstract form or idea of a dog is intelligible, i.e. it enables us to construct a model that can be used to verify the existence of dogginess in each quadruped we meet. This idea never changes, even though there are several hundred pure breeds, an infinite number of crossbreeds, and a host of other animals that resemble dogs, e.g. wolves, jackals, foxes, etc. Equally, we can construct ideals for truth, virtue, perfection, and beauty.
[edit] Beauty
When we attribute the label "beautiful" to a person, object, place or idea, we are not only commenting on the appearance of what is seen, but also judging its worth according to a set of culturally determined values. Hence, a painting may have objective qualities of technique and brush-stroke control, and depict its subject matter well according to the prevailing aesthetic standards. It may have different values at an auction house depending on the intangibles of collectibility. Similarly, we may judge a person by appearance and this form may have utility in picking a mate with a good genetic heritage. Or we may judge the quality of a person's character and find a different idea of beauty.
[edit] Application of principles
Beauty, physical attractiveness and sexual attraction are determined by the prevailing culture, i.e. each group within a society will have its own consensus of ideas, beliefs, and behaviours and it is constantly changing over time. Children quickly learn who among them is considered attractive, although this will change as the peer group ages. More often, these evolving judgements are based on appearance, personality and behaviour. Those who win friends, enjoy popularity and achieve high status through sport or employment will be associated with qualities that may match the forms of virtue, beauty, nobility, etc. Those who inspire fear and loathing will often be characterised as unattractive or ugly but, if they nevertheless wield power and accumulate wealth within society, they may be considered sexually attractive. It depends on the qualities the partners wish to see in their children.
People use signs to associate themselves with the most successful groups within their society. In cultures where pale skin is valued, people modify their behaviour to avoid acquiring a tan or use face paints and whitening creams (e.g. in Europe in the Middle Ages and in China, peasants and other outdoor workers had dark skin; the aristocracy therefore valued pale skin as an indicator of their wealth and often relied on lead or other poisonous ingredients in cosmetics to create the lustrous white complexion seen in portraits from the sixteenth-century onward). In cultures where being fat is considered a sign of success, health, and beauty, people modify their diets to achieve a body image reflecting the consensus of thought among those within the social group they aspire to join (e.g. in China, the fat male belly symbolises happiness, luck, wealth, and generosity; in Europe, the Dionysian aesthetic associates fatness with cheerful and relatively innocent decadence; in modern Ghana the popular view is that “the thicker and heavier, the richer and more attractive a woman is."). In cultures where certain body parts or athletic forms are desirable, clothing is modified to enhance or disguise a feature (e.g. ancient Greek men exercised in the nude in the gymnasium following the Apollonian ideal, Minoan dresses were usually topless in this matriarchal society, and padded codpieces enhanced a European man's reputation).
[edit] An example of semiotic analysis
In her book,Things of Darkness: Economies of Race and Gender in Early Modern England, Kim Hall studies the concepts of blackness and colonialism, and the construction of race in England of the seventeenth century. By examining the juxtaposition of black and white images in literature, poetry and art, she highlights a provocative historical and symbolical theme. For example, the painting "Louise Renée de Kéroüalle, Duchess of Portsmouth Sitting with a Black Servant at her Lap" is not untypical of portrait art in showing an upper class white woman with one or more black servants who are often depicted holding out pearls, coral, or other valuables to their mistresses. Both the servants and their offerings come from Africa and they are all signs in the social construction that would have marked the women as fair and beautiful.
There were only a handful of African men in England at this time, so to be able to advertise such a person as an employee was to demonstrate membership of an elite and powerful group. Then, as a matter of artistic composition, the contrast of black and white complexions was used to enhance the luminous quality of the pale skin, while also reinforcing the ideal of beauty as being ‘fair’ skinned. The offered tokens are not only valuable in monetary terms but, when worn next to the skin, pearls and corals are enhancements to pale beauty and, when ground to a powder, they were the base of whitening cosmetics. The style and design of the clothing, the furniture and other objects included in each composition would also enable contemporary viewers to calibrate precisely the degree of wealth and the social status of those portrayed. It should be remembered that women at this time were little more than possessions, unable to own any property and without any of their modern rights. So, this depiction is also an objectification in that it speaks of the status of the husband who demonstrates the richness of his wife and other assets in this artistic context.
To modern eyes, such art may also be premised on white supremacism in general and on the specific gender superiority of white women over black men. There is doubt as to whether such a racialisation is justified. The early history of black experience in England shows examples of both respect and abuse — two sides of the coin of exploitation when people with skills were employed as servants by members of the upper class hierarchy. While these paintings were certainly presenting an idealised image of female beauty as it was understood at the time among the English aristocracy (which happened to be exclusively white), it is not so clear that the representation of black men in this context was anything other than as one more sign in the set of signs necessary to demonstrate ultimate wealth. Nevertheless, it is fruitful to reflect on:
- the certainty that, as servants in the prevailing class system, all workers were of lower status than their Lords and Ladies;
- the probability that the artists and their patrons were, at the very least, patronising and reifying the black men as servants, and
- the possibility that, while the statement might not have been explicit, the artists were assuming the lowest social status for the men because of their colour.
[edit] References
- Hall, Kim, Things of Darkness: Economies of Race and Gender in Early Modern England: "An Object in the Midst of Other Objects: Beauty, Colonialism, and Female Subject," Cornell University Press, 1995, pg. 53-247.
