To the Temne, the Igbo, and many other West African groups, beauty is inseparable from refinement so that it is said that a homely but well-groomed Temne woman with refined ways would be more likely to attract male attention than a fine-featured woman who appears disheveled. In such societies, beauty, like morality, comes by acquisition, and is achieved by manipulating nature: it is not a natural endowment.
This reminded me of a conversation I'd just been having with someone about how funny we thought it was that certain naturally-unattractive women will dye their hair, put on lots of makeup, dress up a certain way, and still (to us) be obviously hideous--but that to plenty of men and other women, they look attractive because of how they're done up. We discussed how we thought this was bizarre; but in fact, culturally speaking, of course it is we who are bizarre. Even though our modern culture does place value on natural beauty, it still places a great deal of value on cultural, "artificial" beauty. People really pay a lot more attention to the signification of others' appearances than they do to their actual aesthetics. And Dissanayake seems to think that this is evidence of a healthy engagement in the meaning-giving power of shared culture.
She really thinks postmodernism sucks, and that its whole aesthetic is symptomatic of our bankrupt culture: "It seems worth asking whether the confusing and unsatisfying state of art in our world has anything to do with the fact that we no longer care about important things." I guess that could apply, also, to the postmodern standard of beauty, which my friend and I have, which looks right at someone's actual body and face and judges their beauty based on that. That, culturally, is bizarre and alienated. And yet until now I unquestioningly assumed that I was "correct" to think I knew what beauty was. And I did--but not in a cultural sense. And I'm not sure I can, at this point, appreciate cultural beauty, because I'm not used to looking in that way.
2 comments:
As an older woman, I might have a slightly different perspective. I see natural beauty and cultural beauty as being separate from attractiveness. Attractiveness comprises a bundle of attributes that in combination are alluring. Natural and cultural beauty are only two components of a complex array of qualities that make a woman attractive. I have observed that a woman who makes an effort (through grooming and attention to current styles) to look good powerfully communicates her desire to be appealing and/or alluring and agreeable to others. The fact that she is consciously (or unconsciously) telegraphing this information about herself to others makes her more attractive than one might imagine, and flaws in her appearance fade away.
That's true! and I think part of the reason attractiveness works that way is that we do all have these cultural ideas of how to look good (grooming, stylishness) and subconsciously take those into account when we look at someone. Another interesting point that I think you suggest is that often people have more power than they think to ASSERT that they're attractive just through how they dress and groom themselves, because most people who view them will accept that assertion.
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