social conceptions of beauty
by Anwen wilkerson
In today’s society, the definition of beauty is often rather narrow; if a woman has a pretty face, keeps her hair and makeup practically perfect, and stays (very) skinny, she is beautiful. Everywhere women look, another young, petite blond is smiling down on them from a billboard selling anti-aging cream. Or another scantily-clad fantasy babe is fighting monsters in a commercial for a video game in an attempt to beckon the target audience of teenage boys. In such advertisements and media, the ranges of body types, races, ages, and sexual orientations are very small; most women portrayed are skinny, white, young, and heterosexual. Societal concepts of beauty are widely seen as unhealthy for women and can affect women’s perceptions of their own bodies. In the early 2000s, a study called The Real Truth About Beauty: A Global Report was released. One of the study’s findings was that only 2% of women worldwide are comfortable describing themselves as beautiful.
In 2004, Dove® launched a project called the Campaign for Real Beauty, an ad campaign featuring models of different body types and races. Since then, Dove has continued to launch similar campaigns in an attempt to broaden the definition of beauty. In one campaign video, women described themselves to a forensic sketch artist, who drew them based on their representations. Later, after having talked to the women, strangers described the women and the artist made a second sketch. Often, the second sketch was more beautiful. While some applauded this campaign’s message, others critiqued the lack of variation concerning the women featured in the videos. Jazz Brice noticed, “When it comes to the diversity of the main participants: all four are Caucasian, three are blonde with blue eyes, all are thin, and all are young (the oldest appears to be 40). The majority of the non-featured participants are thin, young white women as well. … Out of 6:36 minutes of footage, people of color are onscreen for less than 10 seconds." It appears Dove’s idea of beauty is limited to only one demographic. Another criticism revolves around Dove’s seeming hypocrisy. The first portraits were supposed to be unattractive, but often there were only a few small differences between the first and second portraits: a mole was slightly larger, wrinkles were more defined, a face was a little rounder. It seemed like Dove was calling those features unattractive and undesirable, which completely defeats the purpose of the project.
A useful way to put beauty in a more scholarly context (which helps to avoid the feminist rage so many spiral into) is to turn to the branch of philosophy known as aesthetics. Immanuel Kant, a German philosopher from the 1700s, wrote in his Critique of Aesthetic Judgment that he believed beauty was a subjective judgment of taste to be determined by the viewer. He said aesthetic judgments have four features. The first characteristic is disinterest, meaning the beholder finds pleasure in something because it is beautiful, not the other way around. The second and third are universality and necessity, meaning we expect others to agree with our judgments. However, Kant says we do not act as though beauty is in the eye of the beholder; instead, humans discuss and argue about aesthetic judgments as though doing so will achieve something. His fourth feature of aesthetic judgment is purposiveness without purpose, meaning beautiful objects should affect us as if they have a purpose, even if they do not.
Kant would appreciate neither the narrow societal definition of beauty nor the exclusive concept in the video discussed above. Since he thought beauty was purely a judgment of taste, he would not like defining beauty at all. I think the situation is similar to that surrounding his argument concerning the second and third features of an aesthetic judgment. To him, each person has different perceptions of what is and isn’t beautiful, so it would be absurd to argue in an attempt to define beauty. However, I believe Kant would appreciate Dove’s mission to broaden the definition of beauty, even though they don’t seem to have been very successful in that mission.
In 2004, Dove® launched a project called the Campaign for Real Beauty, an ad campaign featuring models of different body types and races. Since then, Dove has continued to launch similar campaigns in an attempt to broaden the definition of beauty. In one campaign video, women described themselves to a forensic sketch artist, who drew them based on their representations. Later, after having talked to the women, strangers described the women and the artist made a second sketch. Often, the second sketch was more beautiful. While some applauded this campaign’s message, others critiqued the lack of variation concerning the women featured in the videos. Jazz Brice noticed, “When it comes to the diversity of the main participants: all four are Caucasian, three are blonde with blue eyes, all are thin, and all are young (the oldest appears to be 40). The majority of the non-featured participants are thin, young white women as well. … Out of 6:36 minutes of footage, people of color are onscreen for less than 10 seconds." It appears Dove’s idea of beauty is limited to only one demographic. Another criticism revolves around Dove’s seeming hypocrisy. The first portraits were supposed to be unattractive, but often there were only a few small differences between the first and second portraits: a mole was slightly larger, wrinkles were more defined, a face was a little rounder. It seemed like Dove was calling those features unattractive and undesirable, which completely defeats the purpose of the project.
A useful way to put beauty in a more scholarly context (which helps to avoid the feminist rage so many spiral into) is to turn to the branch of philosophy known as aesthetics. Immanuel Kant, a German philosopher from the 1700s, wrote in his Critique of Aesthetic Judgment that he believed beauty was a subjective judgment of taste to be determined by the viewer. He said aesthetic judgments have four features. The first characteristic is disinterest, meaning the beholder finds pleasure in something because it is beautiful, not the other way around. The second and third are universality and necessity, meaning we expect others to agree with our judgments. However, Kant says we do not act as though beauty is in the eye of the beholder; instead, humans discuss and argue about aesthetic judgments as though doing so will achieve something. His fourth feature of aesthetic judgment is purposiveness without purpose, meaning beautiful objects should affect us as if they have a purpose, even if they do not.
Kant would appreciate neither the narrow societal definition of beauty nor the exclusive concept in the video discussed above. Since he thought beauty was purely a judgment of taste, he would not like defining beauty at all. I think the situation is similar to that surrounding his argument concerning the second and third features of an aesthetic judgment. To him, each person has different perceptions of what is and isn’t beautiful, so it would be absurd to argue in an attempt to define beauty. However, I believe Kant would appreciate Dove’s mission to broaden the definition of beauty, even though they don’t seem to have been very successful in that mission.