On HU
We finished our epic Comics and Music roundtable. It was really great fun; a chance for folks to talk about things we don’t get to chat about here too much. Thanks to all for participating, reading and commenting!
Featured Archive Post: Kinukitty on the mangled sexual metaphors of Kiss.
I draw a comic while listening to Kraftwerk.
Ng Suat Tong on how Daredevil stole Bob Dylan’s girl.
Russ Maheras on Kiss and comics fandom.
Subdee on Phonogram and the magic of pop.
Me on the album art of Led Zeppelin’s Presence.
Domingos Isabelinho on Pamplemoussi by Genevieve Castree
Sean Michael Robinson on making music rather than comics.
Utilitarians Everywhere
At the Center for Digital Ethics I talk about the ethics of fashion photo manipulation (with a shout out to Rubens.)
At the Atlantic I talk about:
—the awesomeness of the Melvins (even if their recent album isn’t so great.
— what men get from books by women.
—wishing Game of Thrones and Mad Men would leave me alone.
At Splice Today I talk about —
—men and the male gaze and my history with crushes.
—Jen Kirkman’s condescending take on motherhood.
Other Links
Sarah Jaffe on care workers and organizing.
Peter Frase sneers at wonks.
Scott Benson with an animated sneer at MRAs.
Ken Parille on the surprisingly good comics criticism of Frederic Wertham.
C.T. May sneers at Dear Prudence.
This Week’s Reading
Read the Great Gatsby, a short story by D.H. Lawrence, started Ian McEwan’s Atonement and started Stephanie Coontz’s Marriage a History.
Mad Men is probably the most Critical Theory-like TV show of all time. At least the first 2 seasons were; afterwards, it kind of morphed into something else … and by ‘something else’ I mean a typical TV drama. It went from being about the nothing to being the nothing.
The nothing that is there to the nothing that is not…or vice versa I guess.
That photoshopping stuff makes me unbelievably angry. Apparently there was a big meeting between all the fashion magazines once, and everybody really wanted to change things but they all ended up chickening out, scared that their magazines would fail.
I have a friend who had sometimes expressed a desire to get cosmetic surgery and I met her for the first time in years and since I take these things more seriously now, I recently bombarded her with reasons not to do it. She agreed with all my points, but still had these nagging feelings but said she probably would never be able to afford it and it probably wouldn’t make her happy.
I sometimes thought I could never be friends with a person who had cosmetic surgery, but now I’m not so sure because I wouldn’t know where to draw the line. I have some friends who got a new tooth put in because they were scared of how they might look with a missing tooth. And in the case of transgender people, it is infinitely more complex. So I feel I could be compassionate friend towards them but I’d still despise anyone who made their living off cosmetic surgery or shitting all over people’s photos with the blandifying powers of photoshop.
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I actually think the popularity of Mad Men and Breaking Bad are some of the few things right with the world right now. I despair about culture, wondering if Star Wars will finally fuck off before I die, keeping my fingers crossed that people will get bored of superhero films sooner than later. I’m astonished by the amount of people who call themselves film fans yet cant stop talking about Iron Man films even though they are lukewarm about them.
But there is only so much time I can spend praying for the death of the fanboy. I don’t mind that you are not interested in these shows and are fed up of hearing about them, but I really like Mad Men and the fourth series of Breaking Bad made me more excited than I ever remember being about anything else on tv. The current blockbuster films make me think of drugs for mistreated asylum patients, to send them into a drooling stupor. But several of these tv shows actually stimulate people. I remember a number of months ago telling you how I was slightly touched that my dad (who lives on a diet of shit movies and tv) was genuinely excited by Breaking Bad.
I just wish Oz got the attention it deserved. As you probably know, it has many of the actors and creative team of The Wire, some people view them as companion pieces.
I think I let tv ruin me. I vow every week to stop watching it forever, but my weak will sucks me back in to watching shows I barely even enjoy. And every now and then a new season of something starts and I’m often tempted. I’m sticking with Mad Men and Breaking Bad on dvd, but shows like Walking Dead and Girls had me undecided if I wanted to keep watching, so I kept watching tv before and after those shows time slot. The main reason I think I might watch the third season of Game Of Thrones is because I adore one of the supporting actresses (Hannah Murray).
I Once considered totally giving up on all films because I was frustrated that I felt the rewards were too rare. Funnily enough, one of the main reasons I kept up with films in addition to occasional brilliance like Inland Empire, Love Exposure, Tokyo Fist, Possession, Vital, The Shout, Lisztomania, Valerie And Her Week Of Wonders, Lemora and Bad Boy Bubby; was that I love gazing at beautiful people so much. I recently was overjoyed to discover Meg Tilly and Elizabeth Berridge, I have no idea if the quality of their acting has anything to do with my attraction. I’ve also fallen in love with a journalist called Camilla Long, I saw her on a tv panel show this week. She looks astonishing to me.
http://www.fright.com/edge/index.htm
…this site is one of the best things I’ve ever seen on the internet. It does exactly what I always complain other sites do too rarely: It focuses on obscurities deserving attention. I’ve learned about so many writers and filmmakers from this site, it has fascinating lists of underappreciated things. The site mainly focuses on horror but includes all sorts of oddities. The sole writer is Adam Groves, he praises gorey shlock that others would be embarrassed to admit to liking but he also praises lots of intelligent sophisticated writers that even a lot of proud elitists have never heard of. As well as the writers of Weirdfictionreview, this guy is another hero fighting for justice in culture. He does write a bit about popular things, but he mostly promotes obscure delights.
Noah, several times I have criticized HU for being too zeitgeisty. But I understand you often want to talk about media that has an influence on gender and race politics, so it makes sense that you should discuss things I’m sick of hearing about. But since you are getting more fed up with a lot of things, I hope you’ll make a more active effort to change culture for the better; I’ve long been planning to write on EatenByDucks a piece about the need for people to take responsibility for their influence on culture, however small their influence is. We should not be defeatist and resigned to blockbuster sludge.
Again, I’m surprised you never written about Sam Kieth. His work is overflowing with feminist stuff, especially My Inner Bimbo, which includes arguments between famous feminists and a monster that represents Kieth’s desire for female approval called something like “Female disapproval monster”. I’ve got mixed feelings about his work. I try to stay away from self loathing comics but I like other things about him. I’ve been reading Dave Cooper recently and I vastly prefer him when he lets go of all feelings of inadequacy.
I find it utterly bizarre reading that you have had manly ambitions and have felt like a failure for not living up to them. I’ve read some of your pieces about this. you just never seemed to me the sort who would care about being manly.
I’m totally obsessed with sex yet it doesn’t bother me at all being a 26 year old virgin (referring to your article some weeks ago), and I don’t mind the idea of being a virgin till death, as long as I don’t fail as an artist (which is my greatest fear I’m not doing enough to prevent coming true).
I have a fantasy of being a ghost who can go anywhere in the world, just gazing forever at anyone or anything I want, it would be painful to see people getting hurt without being able to intervene, but I’d love watching people take showers and have sex, as long as no other ghosts were there, but considering how many earthlings have died, the world should be overcrowded with trillions of ghosts. But this is just my fantasy, so I’m the only ghost. Or maybe ghosts cant see each other. But I don’t believe in an afterlife anyway.
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To follow up on an old argument, you talked about Batman been felt up by Joker as being unjustly taken more seriously than Orion slapping Wonder Woman’s ass.
However much I might dislike with that Wonder Woman depiction, I still think this is a bad comparison. Joker in Arkham Asylum depicted by Dave Mckean looks more nightmarish than ever, he looks like what conservatives will imagine the vilest pedophiles look like. In this book you sense Batman is afraid of Joker and that this version of the Joker might go further than other versions. He is a far more disturbing threat than the dumb jock depiction of Orion.
Quite often, the rape or sexual harassment of men by animals, old women and gay men is played for laughs. There used to be an old popular comedy sketch show that regularly had old ladies raping handsome young men, I remember finding this more disturbing than anyone else seemed to. I’ve been told Homer Simpson has been raped by a dolphin. I’ve seen many films with bad guys getting raped by gay men.
I don’t know how to feel about these comedy situations. Obviously there are homophobic elements and some ageism in there too. I have seen the rape of women played for laughs, but much less often.
I’d like to hear anyone’s observations about this.
Hey Robert. Just quickly to some of your points:
— I certainly don’t have that visceral a feeling about photoshop or cosmetic surgery. I’m definitely not into judging people who get cosmetic surgery. I don’t think that’s really any more helpful than setting up these crazy ideal bodies in the first place.
— HU writes about all sorts of things? We’re not very zeitgeisty at all…at least as far as I can tell from my hit counter…
—I think most guys (and other people too) have some relationship to masculinity. It’s a pretty big deal…and not entirely unrelated to discourses around success in art….
And yet I agree with Robert. I totally see the need to discuss trash’s ideology, but I completely fail to see the need to write about trash just to say that it is trash. Some writers sound like old fanboys venting their frustration because they can’t stop reading what they know from the start will be just another piece of junk added to their trashy collection.
Well…I like pieces with theses, but sometimes it can be fun/entertaining/cathartic just to sneer at something to sneer at it….
I lost patience with Mad Men as soon as it seemed like Don Draper was going to be more hero than villain. That they didn’t get around to fleshing out the Betty character over the course of the first 2 seasons didn’t give me much hope for the future of the series, though I stuck it out thorough season 4.
Noah: “Well…I like pieces with theses, but sometimes it can be fun/entertaining/cathartic just to sneer at something to sneer at it….”
To sneer means that you care. It means that you are part of the subculture that you are sneering at.
I don’t have a problem with caring per se. Nor really with subcultures qua subcultures. They can be bad, they can be good. One way maybe they can get better is by people calling bullshit when they see it.
That’s completely impossible. The only thing you get in return is hatred. Believe me, I know…
Yeah…you can certainly get blowback. I’m maybe being overly idealistic. But again, I don’t think idealism is a bad reason to write something….
Nate- Don seems less like a hero again in the most recent season. I think Betty was pretty well fleshed out, season 2 gave her more attention than any other.
Not that I’m trying to convince anyone, I don’t care if lots of people don’t care, because it isn’t hurting for lack of viewers. I’ve honestly had less problems with this show than any other drama I think of.
Noah- I agree it is wrong to shun people who have had cosmetic surgery, a couple of years ago I just started thinking how shitty most of them must feel to get this stuff done, and then for people to treat them differently and show them no compassion would be really shitty too.
Since when is sneering idealistic? I know what I said above isn’t too flattering to certain fans but insulting people for liking something doesn’t tend to get them in the mood for change. You have to be more persuasive and constructive and show you genuinely care about them. I care about fanboys because I have enough in common with them and I know being a fanboy is depressing, I don’t want people to live like that. I don’t hate people who passively soak up anything put in front of them, I feel sorry for them. Partly reinforced because I’m often a weakling who cant switch off the tv and I hate being like that. We only live ONCE!
Anger can be a good motivator for change but Hate is poisonous and makes thing worse for everyone. I don’t know how anyone can say they love hating, it makes me feel disgusting.
Yes, I still think HU is often too zeitgeisty or too populist. I appreciate your writing about Wonder Woman because it seems like something you genuinely care about. But articles about how bad recent Marvel and DC comics are seems like a dead end. I think we should just ignore the stuff and not let it waste our time. I’m not against buying their stuff if something interesting pops up. I recently read a DC Vertigo book called Cuba: My Revolution which is a good memoir by a woman who initially supported Castro but so many horrific things happened that she had to change. I think it is a really good antidote to Spain’s Che book and many other pro Che/Castro books.
I’m seeing horribly inane crap everywhere, this is reaching scarily apocalyptic levels of garbage and I seriously think anyone who cares about art has a responsibility to promote only what they think is worthwhile and stop being so passively accepting of how things are. Constructive criticism will help bad art become better, sneering will probably make things worse.
Active responsibility for Culture!
In other news, I just watched Friedkin’s Killer Joe, I liked it, but I not sure I was supposed to laugh at the insane misery, because I did find the end quite funny.
Also finished a comic called Cursed Pirate Girl by Jeremy A Bastian. Incredible ornate fairy tale art with very distinct comedic writing. Highly unusual.
Hate and love often go together. And if love isn’t alwys good, hate isn’t always bad.
Folks like Jonathan Swift and Mark Twain did a good bit of sneering in their day. Better that by far than just about anybody else’s praising.
I guess just don’t read the stuff you don’t want to read, maybe? We don’t do superhero takedowns that often, but if somebody wants to, I’m certinly not going to stop them.
But I think a lot of people like to mock while pretending the anger and insults have no consequences. When someone ridicules another person, however intelligently they do it, one always gets the feeling that they want to hurt someone’s feelings more than they want to improve a situation.
If someone ridicules you, do you get the feeling they really care about you and your betterment?
I like quite a few haters but I always feels extremely conflicted about it, because mocking always seems to have some level of mean spiritedness.
Charlie Brooker is famous for his hating and I often find him hilarious. As he got more famous and more connected, he started meeting and working with and even marrying some of the people he mocked. He said he regretted a lot of the insults because a lot of it just hurt people without much insight. He still ridicules, but is more careful about how he does it.
A similar associated comedian videogame critic called Yahtzee ridicules everyone to the degree that it is harder to take it personally. It helps that he is one of the most insightful critics I’ve ever encountered, he changed the way I thought about games. I barely play games now but I’m still interested in debate about them and their future.
But a lot of people wont listen to him because he savages everything they like. I don’t entirely blame them for disregarding him even if I like him. Again, what incentive do you have to listen to someone who thinks you and all your favourite stuff is idiotic?
I also like Doug Stanhope, but again, I’m conflicted about enjoying his bile. But unlike a lot of other comedians, I saw him do this part where he said that if something he said really offended you, just to stay and not take it too personally, admitting that he is probably wrong about a lot of things.
I’ve said before that I think The Comics Journal might have been a revolution if it hadn’t repelled so many people by insulting them. I can completely understand the how Groth must have been feeling all that time. The comics biz still has abundant reasons to drive you insane, but unconstructive hating is like junk food that makes you feel good for a second, but is addictive because you are never really satisfied by it.
I’ve always found it infinitely more satisfying to be able to put in the most rational and constructive terms why you don’t like someone’s work as if you were face to face with them and really wanted to help them (because we should want to help!).
I’ve never read Swift or Twain yet, but I think the desire to ridicule tends to keep an argument going in one direction without more open minded considerations. However much I might laugh along with sneering, it always leaves a bitter taste with me, like a destructive disease is being kept alive but we like to ignore it because we enjoy the violence and pretend it isn’t violence.
I like those above mentioned haters probably for a lot of reasons despite the bile. If all they had was bile I would have disregarded them.
I think more generous criticism has more “aha!” revelations, because lack of sneering puts you in a more exploratory mood, I think.
So you are sick of hearing about certain tv shows, and are sad that some things never get written about because nobody is in the mood for a lonely conversation about hidden treasure. What were you hoping people would take away from that? Do you think people might have taken your point better if you had avoided offense more? (I know it wasn’t a very offensive article, and some people are extremely easy to offend by any type of criticism at all) Is there a little part of you that really wanted to stick fingers up at fans of these tv shows? I think more people would have sought out your suggested book if you had been more considerate in your argument.
The guy in the above Fright site does do a bit of mocking (he wrote articles about being sick of certain franchises and trends, which I agreed with laregely) but what has kept me obsessively reading for the past few months is finding out about amazing bizarre stuff. Did you know there was a Roland Topor book about people giving piggybacks for transport for obnoxious people? Did you know there was an unreleased black comedy film by Jerry Lewis about a clown who lures children into the deathcamps in the holocaust? I’d rather find out about this rather than hear for the millionth time that Michael Bay isn’t very good.
Nobody would have sought out the book, because nobody would have read about it if I hadn’t talked about Mad Men. Which is pretty much the only way I could have been less mean, I think — that is to not talk about it altogether. I’ve written bile filled articles, but that really wasn’t one of them.
Re “The Ethics of Fashion Photo Manipulation” ( http://digitalethics.org/essays/the-ethics-of-fashion-photo-manipulation/ ), the following comes to mind, from H. L. Mencken’s “Puritanism As A Literary Force,” collected in his 1917 “A Book of Prefaces”:
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Save where Continental influences have measurably corrupted the Puritan idea—e.g., in such cities as New York, San Francisco and New Orleans, the prevailing American view of the world and its mysteries is still a moral one, and no other human concern gets half the attention that is endlessly lavished upon the problem of conduct, particularly of the other fellow. It needed no official announcement to define the function and office of the republic as that of an international expert in morals, and the mentor and exemplar of the more backward nations. Within, as well as without, the eternal rapping of knuckles and proclaiming of new austerities goes on. The American, save in moments of conscious and swiftly lamented deviltry, casts up all ponderable values, including even the values of beauty, in terms of right and wrong. He is beyond all things else, a judge and a policeman…
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(Emphases added)
What is particularly absurd is that this photo-manipulation is taking place in the context of advertising, fashion, and movie-star glamor photography. What, we’re not getting documentary realism? The horror!
I’m reminded of an “Advertising vs. Reality” poster showing contrasting images of hamburgers. Along that vein, a series of images at “Food advertising v reality”: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/gallery/2009/sep/22/food-advertising-v-reality#/?picture=353131463&index=0
And… http://brassmonkeyshow.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/hamburger-advertised-vs-reality.jpg
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Natalie Portman’s sultry new mascara ad for Dior has been banned in the UK. The Advertising Standards Agency, a watchdog organization for adverts in the UK, has banned it because editing has made Natalie’s eyelashes look unrealistically good.
The ASA has ruled that the retouching is “directly relevant to the apparent performance of the mascara product being advertised,” and that the ad “must not appear again in its current form.”
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http://www.sodahead.com/entertainment/natalie-portmans-dior-ad-banned-in-uk-should-it-have-been/question-3292411/?link=ibaf&q=Natalie+Portman+Dior+Ad+Banned+in+UK:+Should+it+Have+Been%3F+Natalie+Portman+Dior+Ad+Banned+in+UK:+Should+it+Have+Been%3F
Now here — as with the grossly unrealistic food shots — I thoroughly agree with legal sanctions against deceptive distortion. The effectiveness of a product or the visual lusciousness of some food we are purchasing, should not be dishonestly exaggerated.
But what about women wearing makeup to minimize skin blemishes, push-up bras? Shall we morally condemn the “ethics” of this deception?
Not that males, as told by Mencken in his 1918 “In Defense of Women,” would care much:
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…But this lack of genuine beauty in women lays on them no practical disadvantage in the primary business of their sex, for its effects are more than overborne by the emotional suggestibility, the herculean capacity for illusion, the almost total absence of critical sense of men.
Men do not demand genuine beauty, even in the most modest doses; they are quite content with the mere appearance of beauty. That is to say, they show no talent whatever for differentiating between the artificial and the real. A film of face powder, skilfully applied, is as satisfying to them as an epidermis of damask. The hair of a dead Chinaman, artfully dressed and dyed, gives them as much delight as the authentic tresses of Venus. A false hip intrigues them as effectively as the soundest one of living fascia. A pretty frock fetches them quite as surely and securely as lovely legs, shoulders, hands or eyes.
In brief, they estimate women, and hence acquire their wives, by reckoning up purely superficial aspects, which is just as intelligent as estimating an egg by purely superficial aspects. …All the tricks may be infantile and obvious, but in the face of so naive a spectator the temptation to continue practising them is irresistible.
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BTW, would not these models and movie stars, used (indeed, needing to) to “packaging” themselves as products, overwhelmingly want to have their public images be as inhumanly glamorous s possible? (Needless to say, what the stars and models — overwhelmingly women — wanted is not even taken into account.
Is this “girls will become anorexic because they don’t know fashion models are Photoshopped into unnatural perfection” argument any different than “teenage boys will turn into killers from violent comics/first-person-shooter computer games?
“Is this “girls will become anorexic because they don’t know fashion models are Photoshopped into unnatural perfection” argument any different than “teenage boys will turn into killers from violent comics/first-person-shooter computer games?”
One difference, at least in my understanding, is that there’s almost no good evidence that violent video games lead to violent actions, but there’s quite a bit of evidence linking the reading of fashion and women’s magazines to low self esteem and body image issues in girls.
That seems like it makes intuitive sense as well. There’s a pretty big leap from playing a violent game to actually committing violent acts. Much less of a leap from looking at images of beautiful people and feeling you don’t measure up.
Mencken’s awesome in many ways, but I think his statements on gender relations should probably generally be taken with a giant honking grain of salt.
Cosmetic surgery is so weird, since it pretty much makes everyone look like the same monstrosity. Did Courtney Cox look at Joan Rivers and think, “wow! she looks amazing”? Maybe one day, like those villains who stretched their faces in the Star Trek movies, this mutant lion face will be the norm. I don’t want to be around for that.
I was talking to a teen girl about Lana Del Rey once. She was commenting on how beautiful, how perfect, the singer looked. I asked her if she knew it was due to plastic surgery. (I mean, Del Rey looks pretty plastic, so it’s fairly obvious) The girl looked at me like she was about to cry. This doesn’t bode well for the future …
Noah- Would you be allowed to write an article about that book for those sites? I’m sure with an enticing enough article title, people would read about it.
Mike- one half of my problem about photomanipulation and cosmetic surgery is the self-esteem issue. The other half is that it ruins beauty and almost always makes everything look worse. I want to see beautiful people, not blandified vandalized so-called improvements. There are some models who intrigued me, but I cant seem to find any good pictures of them, because they only pose for magazines that polish beauty till it turns into a turd.
These people are disturbed by real bodies and haven’t learned to appreciate the fascinating nuances of nature, so they try to improve on the sublime beauty they don’t understand by making a dull sanitized version of it. Like a hack rewriting genius subtle writing and turning it into simple charmless clumsy fare that will easily be forgotten.
I can be fooled by photoshop too, but I’d always rather see the real thing. Of course, I’ll accept distortions like purposefully making a person look like a demon, giving them scary eyes, or some obvious fakery designed for an artistic effect. I love Jan Saudek’s painting he does over photos, he turns normal environments into dreamworlds; but when I pay to see a beautiful person, I want to see that person and not some inferior, apparently “idealised” version of them.
“Our magazine shows you the most beautiful women in the world!… yet they still aren’t pretty enough so we had to improve them”
I know I was preaching above about being nice, but I want to strangle these philistines to death.
“Noah- Would you be allowed to write an article about that book for those sites? I’m sure with an enticing enough article title, people would read about it. ”
Nope; that’s what I was saying in the article. I pitched a review of that book to the Atlantic, to Slate, to Wired, to Salon…even threw a hail mary pass to the NYT. I framed it in comparison to Harry Potter and Twilight and Hunger Games in a desperate effort to make it hooky. Didn’t matter; no takers.
People don’t really care about the obscure thing you’re excited about. They want to read about what they care about…and the most popular things are what most people care about, which is why they’re popular.
I guess it’s possible that if I was a sufficiently important critic, or had a big enough audience of my own, I could swing it. But I’m not, alas.
Oh…and it’s probably worth noting that plastic surgery almost surely has real economic benefits a lot of the time. Sex workers who get breast enlargements aren’t deluded; they’re making a straightforward economic calculus (Jenna Jameson talks about this in her autobiography.) The same is true to some extent for singers/actors/models or others whose income depends on appearance.
I’m not sure that’s really all there is to it with Hollywood. Does Mickey Rourke get more roles with that new face of his? He looks scary, which can work, but I can’t imagine his playing a normal dramatic role nowadays (everyone expects wrestlers to look off, for example). I’m sure many are trying to hang onto their youth with the surgery, which does have economics tied into it, but does it work in the actor’s favor? It probably does for awhile (Nicole Kidman), but there’s that point of going too far, where they don’t even look human any longer (Liam Neeson is on the cusp of looking like a restructured burn victim). Is Billy Crystal getting work because he looks like a freak now? I kind of doubt it. It’s probably that people around him just kind of ignore what he looks like, because he’s Billy Crystal. In terms of porn, Jameson was really popular without the new face. Her restructured nose and chin had more to do with her own desire to look a certain way (I remember this from a Howard Stern interview). But obviously fake tits gross me out, too.
And, granted, classic Hollywood used to alter looks, but not past the human limit (e.g., Rita Hayworth and Marilyn Monroe looked like pretty humans … although Jack Palance was a bit off).
Maybe this will be the solution to the uncanny valley; making humans look like video game creations is easier than vice versa.
Noah says “Oh…and it’s probably worth noting that plastic surgery almost surely has real economic benefits a lot of the time. Sex workers who get breast enlargements aren’t deluded; they’re making a straightforward economic calculus (Jenna Jameson talks about this in her autobiography.) The same is true to some extent for singers/actors/models or others whose income depends on appearance.”
That is just as depressing as any other aspect of it. How could modifying yourself to be more popular and make more money possibly be a brighter side of it?
When I play devil’s advocate, I’ll point out some people seem to love the blatantly fake look; I guess I can accept that, but a lot of people get surgery then gradually realise how it looks like unconvincing dated cgi next to real actors. They can never get their old body back. People grow to appreciate the natural body over time and many people regret that they didn’t appreciate what they had before they made a decision they cant go back on.
I’ll admit Nicole Kidman looks good, but I’d rather see her how she really would have looked.
If in the future there were methods to seamlessly organically manipulate the dimensions of the body, make parts grow, shrink and stretch, it would look a lot better and all the natural contours would be unspoiled. Like how hormones can change the body but still stay more or less natural.
It would look better but it would still stop people appreciating bodies that were unexpectedly pleasing and unusual. And all the self-esteem issues would still be there.
The idea of a future where all bodies were customised terrifies me. Everyone would probably be white and look like manikins, nobody would learn about the beautiful surprises of the natural body anymore.
Charles, as much as I agree with your eyeballs, these people are insecure and vulnerable, and being so blunt probably really hurts.
I once saw an interview with Rachel Weisz where she said she had no desire to get surgery but wasn’t totally against the idea of doing it someday. The idea of her face being tampered with horrifies me.
If everyone’s face was customized, you’d never see faces like Anne Hathaway’s. I think mother nature is probably an unsurpassable artist that fewer and fewer people have the patience to appreciate.
I’m not saying it’s a bright side. I’m just saying it doesn’t make much sense to blame folks for it.
” I’ll admit Nicole Kidman looks good, but I’d rather see her how she really would have looked. ”
But…should her goal in any way be to make herself look the way you want? That’s kind of the thing. I’m not really sure that the sort of disgusted hand-wringing about the artificiality of women (or of men) is really all that different than the desire to see thin, perfect people in the first place….
Can’t say I was a fan of C.T’s take on the Dear Prudence article. Seemed more like an inability to reconcile moral differences than an argument that Prudence misread the letter. (She didn’t, not really.)
Re: Male Gaze article…
Women get aroused by attractive men, but we don’t (usually??) blame them for being smoking hot. I have to ask why this difference exists.
While I recognize that masculinity is script-based, feeling aroused by a woman isn’t a particularly good reason to blame them for one’s alleged “powerlessness,” especially when masculinity and feelings of incompetence are the result of competition with other men. (You’re not good enough as compared to whom? Another dude. But the resentment is then turned on the woman.) Men aren’t just being manipulated by the gaze of the camera, but by promises they’ve been given since birth.
So a movie dissects women in a particular way, and suddenly men feel like they can’t fulfil their aspirations of hegemonic masculinity? “I can’t have you because I’m not hot enough, so I’m a failure.” But…who promised you that having a woman was a sign of success in the first place and on par with the accumulation of other goods and services? In the end, this attitude just reaffirms male power and patriarchal expectations that men should have access to a woman’s body and that anything less is a cause for resentment. So men might feel powerless, but this actual act of resentment indicates, to me anyway, that there’s a sense of entitlement when it comes to watching women. That’s power, even if it doesn’t feel like it.
Men are promised power and access to women and the male gaze in movies complicates that promise. The lie was enticing. But the fact also remains that the male gaze promises men that they can have power–and they can– in a way that women can’t. So men might FEEL powerless, but the potential is always there to reclaim their “manliness.” Women aren’t given that promise at all. So basically, I’m resentful of male resentment.
I really do think that borrowing some self-love strategies from women coping with not being size two and boobalicious would work wonders for men who aren’t feeling 100% about themselves. There are loads of tumblrs dedicated to girls & women posting selfies of themselves in acts of self-love. And–I’m not saying this as a joke–I’d love to see some for boys & men.
Also, please feel free to ignore the less-than-pleasant tone of my previous comment. I blame caffeine. And my resentment at other people’s resentment. Mostly the latter. The tone isn’t directed at you, Noah, but at the doofus and co. who told me that women had more sexual power than men because they could say “no” to men who wanted them. They felt powerless because women had a legal right to not get raped. SO MUCH POWER. UGH.
“I’m not really sure that the sort of disgusted hand-wringing about the artificiality of women (or of men) is really all that different than the desire to see thin, perfect people in the first place….”
You don’t see the difference between saying people shouldn’t look artificial and that they should look artificial? I’m not sure how to clear that one up, since they’re opposing preferences. I guess they’re both preferences, so they have that connection. Why not apply this to that girl crying on cue in Japan: what’s the difference between wanting her to behave as a product and wanting her not to behave as a product? Again, both preferences.
Charles, the issue is that the woman’s body isn’t yours. There’s just lots of misogynist discourse (in rap for example) linking women to artificiality and expressing disgust for the way they dress, act, etc. It’s the visceral sense that you have the right to make women be what you want that’s at issue. And saying, “hey, I like women to look natural” doesn’t necessarily put you in that much of a different place than saying, “I like women to all look like fashion models.”
The issue with the woman having her head shaved is somewhat different, I think. People shouldn’t be tortured. That’s not about my personal preference. That’s as much of a moral absolute as there is, I think.
Sarah, no worries! I didn’t even think you were disagreeing with me. And your points are well taken.
Noah says “But…should her goal in any way be to make herself look the way you want? That’s kind of the thing. I’m not really sure that the sort of disgusted hand-wringing about the artificiality of women (or of men) is really all that different than the desire to see thin, perfect people in the first place…”
The point is, I’d rather everyone just accepted what they have, make the best of it and not have to worry or pay incredible amounts of money for something totally unnecessary. They don’t know yet how much of a good thing they have.
I’ll admit there is a selfish element, that I feel everyone is shitting all over my art gallery (as well as cutting down too many trees and building functional but spiritually damaging architecture), but I still feel I have a fairly strong ground to believe that people who look long enough and genuinely care about aesthetics prefer unedited bodies.
I’ll admit there are things I’m still undecided on. I’m closer to fine with the guy who made himself look like a cat, because no-one pressured him to look like that. He was fulfilling a highly personal fantasy.
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And yes, there is not nearly enough naked men and worship of the male body on the internet. Yes, this frustrates me too. I’ve always found it odd that heterosexual women often tend to prefer drawing sexy girls.
I’m not massively into men, but I feel I need to draw sexy men to make up for the supreme lack of good drawings of sexualised men.
If anyone comments further, I wont be able to see them till the coming Friday, so I’m not ignoring your answers.
“the issue is that the woman’s body isn’t yours.”
It’s her choice to shave her head and be in that band, isn’t it? Why are you bothered about it, then? It’s her head, not yours. Torture, of course, has nothing to do with any of this.
I like the “of course” in parentheses.
Being forced to humiliate yourself publicly in order to avoid losing your job sounds like torture to me.
You really don’t see why responding to the compulsive fetishization of women by saying, “the main problem here is that they are not catering to my particular fetishes” might not be an especially thoughtful or useful response?
I see something wrong with an industry that makes people feel they need to get body modification to succeed in it. I have similar problems with that girl crying and shaving her head, even if she’s a willing participant. It’s all kind of gross.
You don’t have much of an idea what torture is, if shaving your head is an example for you. We should try that on suspected terrorists.
Well, I agree with that. I’m just saying when “It’s all kind of gross” becomes “these women’s bodies are kind of gross to me,” — that’s a significant slip, and one that maybe detracts from the main point in ways that aren’t entirely ideal.
One of the things they do to torture terrorists is humiliate them. Strip them naked, piss on them, etc. Tormenting people isn’t just about physical damage.
How is not wanting to see the manufactured homogeneous look being forced into pop culture as a norm an example of “my fetish”? What’s not a fetish at that point? Is Anne Wilson being fat not a problem for you simply because that’s your fetish? (Hey, I like the zaftig look, too.)
It’s a fetish when you turn women’s bodies into an aesthetic preference.
I didn’t say anything about what body type I would prefer Ann Wilson to have. Nor am I going to. I said the treatment of her was a problem because she experienced it as humiliating and debilitating, and because it’s insulting to focus on her physical appearance rather than her art.
I really don’t think this is an especially difficult distinction to figure out?
I think we’re agreeing (the last comment was written before I read your last ones).
As for torture, really, you know that you were using the term figuratively. Reality TV puts people through all kinds of humiliating encounters, but they participate in it willingly. I remember one show that had people eating all kinds of fucked up shit and doing really humiliating stuff for a chance to win some prize. Now, former stars humiliate themselves on camera for another shot at the spotlight. Trying to apply ‘torture’ to this stuff in a literal manner would only weaken any resolve against using real torture in the future. (“How bad could it be if stars do it for fame and fortune?”)
This is sort of why I can’t watch reality television. Watching people get humiliated like that makes me really uncomfortable.
The Hunger Games makes the connection between reality tv and torture. It’s somewhat overstated, but not insane, I don’t think.
All attraction to others is now a fetish? What’s not a fetish then?
If focusing on a pop star’s appearance rather than her art isn’t supposed to be done, then why are there so few ugly pop stars? Fact is, appearance and art aren’t easily separated in the world of the spectacle. I can’t imagine why a guy who so readily dismisses authenticity in music would now have a problem with the destruction of that boundary. You regularly celebrate pop stars who are what they are in large part because of their appearance/image/spectacle and defend their emptiness. Didn’t it ever occur to you that you’d be undermining your own ability to criticize others for being equally enthralled by these images? What do you think you’re celebrating when you defend the emptiness of pop stars? That’s fetishism. And it’s why the critical theorists are still relevant, even though you don’t like them.
But if someone willing endures pain for whatever reason, I can’t see calling that torture. Are boxing and other contact sports torture? What about S&M? Not quite the same thing as putting people in a field and making them murder each other. Also, murder and torture aren’t the same thing.
Most folks like to look at pretty people (variously defined.) I certainly do. Nonetheless, responding to, “Ann Wilson is being tormented and ridiculed because women in pop are treated as fetish objects,” by saying, “hey! I like hefty women! There aren’t enough hefty women in pop” — doesn’t actually change the dynamic of the conversation the way that you seem(?) to be arguing it does.
I don’t necessarily even think fetishism is wrong in every case…or avoidable. (I wrote a whole book about Wonder Woman, after all.) I think it’s useful to be clear about what one’s investment is, and where you’re coming from. Viscerally condemning fetishization in the name of authenticity has little to do with the way pop culture constricts women, I don’t think. As I said, there’s no necessary contradiction between authenticity and misogyny, and very often discourses about authenticity are used to denigrate women, whether by condemning the artificiality of femininity, or elevating Robert Johnson over Ma Rainey, or what have you.
Re torture/humiliation/s&m. I’d agree these things are fairly complicated. Recent revelations about football and concussions, for example, seem like they’d be relevant to the discussion.
I didn’t respond to Anne Wilson’s weight issues at all. What I responded to was your attempt to dismiss my own problems with a world ruled by images as being a matter of my own fetish. As if I only had a problem with people trying to alter themselves to look like something conjured up by advertising because it didn’t appeal to my preferences. Thus, I used the same sort of reasoning on you: you’re opposed to the treatment of Anne, because it didn’t fit your own fetish. If it’s still not clear, I’ll just let it stop there, anyway.
I think you have to believe there’s something authentic about Anne Wilson’s music, it’s appeal or whatnot, in order to make any sense of an argument that states one should pay attention to it and not the way she looks. It can’t be all about the performance of images and has to be about the quality of the art itself. That necessarily involves a question of what is truly art and what is superflous to the art. Dismiss that, and what you have is an inability to criticize someone else for focusing on her image and not her art. That seems pretty clear to me.
I don’t see what point you’re trying to make by saying authenticity doesn’t necessarily contradict misogyny. Misogynists can be authentically misogynist and be true to their art. If it’s all image, all performance, etc., then what should it matter if someone’s a misogynist as long as he doesn’t play one for your entertainment? And not every claim of authenticity is true — it’s just that you have to assume it to criticize others for not focusing on the proper aspects of art (like you did with Anne and her weight or others do with finding Robert Johnson more valuable to the Blues tradition than Ma Rainey).
Maybe this’ll help?
The problem with binding women’s feet in China wasn’t that it made women’s feet ugly. The problem was that it crippled women.
If you start saying that the problem is that women’s bound feet are viscerally ugly, you move to a place where (a) the issue becomes how women appear to you, rather than how they are treated, and (b) women who don’t fit your beauty standards (because they were crippled in some other way, perhaps) end up being a source of disgust.
I’m willing to make authenticity claims on occasion. I think in general that there’s something authentic about suffering, and that that authenticity can ground moral claims, for example. I don’t think the appeal to authenticity as a way to criticize fashion is very helpful, though. You just end up saying that people should conform to their preference, more or less regardless of what that means for them.
Are you not disgusted by the thought of women being crippled? I’m not so sure that’s all that different from an aesthetic reaction, or that an aesthetic reaction can be completely divorced from a moral reaction in such cases. The reason why we see it as ugly is because it disgusts us (and vice versa), and the reason it disgusts us is because we find it morally reprehensible (and vice versa). The people doing it didn’t find it morally reprehensible, disgusting or ugly. These qualities are all dialectically intertwined, yes? I’d say my reaction to cosmetic mockery in Hollywood is somewhat similar, but it involves more of a choice for the people undergoing the body modification. I mean, if people wanted to shrink their own feet, they should be allowed, I guess. Nor is my reaction quite as visceral: I love watching Joan Rivers even if she’s fairly freaky looking; the foot binding stuff provides no entertainment for me (although it might be effectively used in a horror film). But I think I can still criticize the society that makes such options (foot binding or entertainment-based cosmetic surgery) a preference for some without it being reducible to my (or your) sexual preference.
There’s moral disgust. I’m not saying that the issues have to be super clear cut. I’m saying that when a conversation about a woman being publicly humiliated, or about anorexia turns into folks talking about what female body types they prefer, or which disgust them, that’s not necessarily ideal.
” I think I can still criticize the society that makes such options (foot binding or entertainment-based cosmetic surgery) a preference for some without it being reducible to my (or your) sexual preference.”
I think you can too. My point is that you need to put some effort in to prevent it from being reducible, that’s all.
People possess instinctual feelings of horror and pity at evidence of physical damage that they don’t need to be socialized to suppress unless they’re medical professionals. Foot-binding incites visceral feelings of disgust because it’s a crippling deformation of a functioning human appendage. Foot-binding was not primarily done for aesthetic reasons but for the purpose of reducing women’s physical liberty, which was aestheticized according to an ideal of female subservience. I would argue that a foot-binding society does engage in a trained suppression of negative reactions to the practice as part of its pursuit of female subservience. Beauty modifications can capitalize on a viewer’s hardwiring to find certain bodily proportions attractive, but those modifications can also tip into pity/revulsion when they become too extreme or betray evidence of physical damage: tightly cinched corsets, bad breast implants, bruised, blistered feet from high heels. A gait achieved by footbinding might have been attractive owing to some combination of socialization and even hardwiring (if the walk is similar to the effect of high heels) but the evidence of deformation and physical incapacity is not and can easily invert that reaction.
Bad plastic surgery is disturbing because it betrays evidence of carving the face. However, successful plastic surgery conceals itself, making the overall effectiveness of the practice difficult to judge. There are people who need it: accident victims, severely deformed people. And there are cases of problems the people arguing here don’t face and can’t judge; for example, not every woman who gets breast modification is a case of going from modestly sized breasts to massive, plastic implants. Women can have size and shape problems that the men arguing here, and many women, don’t have. Likewise, it’s one thing to argue against homogeneity of beauty on general principle, another to have a dramatic facial defect that could be fixed by surgery. In other words, there are physical problems a person doesn’t have to be narcissistic or socially gullible to want to go to those lengths to fix.
However, a person considering surgery, or a person practicing or witnessing surgery still feels an instinctual horror and revulsion at the physical invasion involved, which is part of a healthy psyche that keeps people from casually damaging themselves or others.
I think it’s really dicey to attribute anything humans do or feel to instinct. Folks in China weren’t horrified by foot binding. Folks in Nazi Germany weren’t horrified by the Holocaust.Infanticide has been a pretty regular practice throughout human history.
Again, naturalizing feelings of disgust often ends up as a way to justify mistreatment of people who are marginal for one reason or another.
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Noah Berlatsky says:
“Is this “girls will become anorexic because they don’t know fashion models are Photoshopped into unnatural perfection” argument any different than “teenage boys will turn into killers from violent comics/first-person-shooter computer games?”
One difference, at least in my understanding, is that there’s almost no good evidence that violent video games lead to violent actions, but there’s quite a bit of evidence linking the reading of fashion and women’s magazines to low self esteem and body image issues in girls.
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Do girls (or boys) these days even read much of anything, except what they’re forced to in school? Watch TV and movies; listen to tons of music, sure…
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That seems like it makes intuitive sense as well. There’s a pretty big leap from playing a violent game to actually committing violent acts. Much less of a leap from looking at images of beautiful people and feeling you don’t measure up.
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With your concern about prejudices, exploitation and censorship, shouldn’t anything which “makes intuitive sense” set your alarm bells ringing?
All manner of racist/sexist/classist prejudices “make intuitive sense” too. You drive through the ghetto, see scores of black youth sitting aimlessly about instead of studying or being productive at jobs. So it would “make intuitive sense” to assume the reason for their community’s economic difficulty is that they’re lazy, aimless; and so forth…
Farther down the thread, we read:
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Noah Berlatsky says:
I think it’s really dicey to attribute anything humans do or feel to instinct. Folks in China weren’t horrified by foot binding. Folks in Nazi Germany weren’t horrified by the Holocaust. Infanticide has been a pretty regular practice throughout human history.
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As opposed to the utterly rational “intuitive sense,” that is…
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According to the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders, nearly 70 percent of girls in grades five through 12 said magazine images influence their ideals of a perfect body. In so-called “pro-anorexia” forums, posters write about watching fashion shows and combing magazines for “thinspiration.”
Yet little hard data exists about whether or not the ubiquity of ultra-thin models causes people outside the industry to develop disordered eating or full-blown eating disorders.
“In general, when I’m working with patients, this concept of a ‘thin ideal’ does come up,” said Dr. Allegra Broft, a psychiatrist in the Eating Disorders Program at Columbia Psychiatry, who explained that eating disorders are very complicated in terms of their etiology.
“It’s reasonable to say that exposure could be a factor in the development of eating disorders,” she continued. “But has a causal link been established? No.”
…Becker’s work has concentrated on Fiji, where she found the arrival of the television corresponded with, among other things, an increase in disordered eating, including vomiting to lose or control weight. A follow-up study found that second-hand or peer exposure was particularly powerful, with friends discussing, copying and internalizing media images…
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Emphases added; from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/13/fashion-eating-disorders-industry-responsibility_n_955497.html
While possible, it’s exceedingly expensive to “computer-thin” models and actresses in TV and movies, as opposed to magazines.
So what you “protectors” want to do, then, is ban skinny models and actresses.
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On January 1, Israel passed a law banning fashion models with a Body Mess Index (BMI) lower than 18.5 and requiring magazines to indicate when an image has been graphically adapted (aka Photoshopped to make the models looks skinnier)…
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http://greatist.com/health/israel-model-law-anorexia-011113
But (SARCASM ALERT) why draw the line at banning skinny models? Think of all the distress caused by trying to live up to images of ultra-beautiful models and actresses; or in the male side, hunky chaps with “six-pack” abs.
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Noah Berlatsky says:
Mencken’s awesome in many ways, but I think his statements on gender relations should probably generally be taken with a giant honking grain of salt.
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Certainly; but I wasn’t quoting “his statements on gender relations” in general, but a specific area. His “Men do not demand genuine beauty, even in the most modest doses; they are quite content with the mere appearance of beauty. That is to say, they show no talent whatever for differentiating between the artificial and the real” ties in with the fact that, some years back, the top sex symbol in Brazil was a drag queen. That it was publicly-known that “she” was a “he” had no effect on males’ appreciation of the image. I could give example after example…
And if we’re so concerned about “low self esteem…issues,” what about the psychological dimensions of featuring characters who intelligent, witty, courageous, resourceful? Doesn’t that make the average insecure schlump of both genders feel like a total loser?
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Charles Reece says:
Cosmetic surgery is so weird, since it pretty much makes everyone look like the same monstrosity. Did Courtney Cox look at Joan Rivers and think, “wow! she looks amazing”? Maybe one day, like those villains who stretched their faces in the Star Trek movies, this mutant lion face will be the norm…
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Hah! And let us not forget Katherine Helmond in “Brazil”: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_i-FANGtrZCk/TTTwvt-gCNI/AAAAAAAAAEo/woGiuZdrlEs/s1600/Khel15.jpg . (Why, that looks like Kenneth Mars attending to her.)
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Noah Berlatsky says:
Oh…and it’s probably worth noting that plastic surgery almost surely has real economic benefits a lot of the time. Sex workers who get breast enlargements aren’t deluded; they’re making a straightforward economic calculus (Jenna Jameson talks about this in her autobiography.) The same is true to some extent for singers/actors/models or others whose income depends on appearance.
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Which surely serves as an extension of my earlier argument:
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Mike said:
…would not these models and movie stars, used (indeed, needing to) to “packaging” themselves as products, overwhelmingly want to have their public images be as inhumanly glamorous s possible? (Needless to say, what the stars and models — overwhelmingly women — wanted is not even taken into account.
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Robert Adam Gilmour says:
Mike- one half of my problem about photomanipulation and cosmetic surgery is the self-esteem issue. The other half is that it ruins beauty and almost always makes everything look worse. I want to see beautiful people, not blandified vandalized so-called improvements…
These people are disturbed by real bodies and haven’t learned to appreciate the fascinating nuances of nature, so they try to improve on the sublime beauty they don’t understand by making a dull sanitized version of it.
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I totally agree! (And have earlier approvingly mentioned this Dan Clowes story: http://singleape.com/stuff/ug.html ) But we’re unfortunately in the minority; embedded in a culture where empty, plasticized looks, infantile versions of what constitutes heroism are lionized…
(In all fairness, I recall seeing a “big boobs” girlie magazine where the “all natural” condition of the women therein was a selling point; where correspondents spoke disparagingly of “plastic tits,” with one expressing appreciation of the “sexy stretch-marks” above one well-endowed model’s bosom.)
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The idea of a future where all bodies were customised terrifies me. Everyone would probably be white and look like manikins, nobody would learn about the beautiful surprises of the natural body anymore.
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Just remembered this superb, exceedingly timely 1964 “Twilight Zone” episode: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_12_Looks_Just_Like_You . (Why, the storyline would make a fine basis for a YA novel…)
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Noah Berlatsky says:
…saying, “hey, I like women to look natural” doesn’t necessarily put you in that much of a different place than saying, “I like women to all look like fashion models.”
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With uber-feminists, you just can’t win! And that’s the way they want it; as with right-wingers complaining somebody is “too liberal,” the point is to keep the despised enemy frenziedly trying to attain an impossible goal.
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It’s a fetish when you turn women’s bodies into an aesthetic preference.
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So, having an “aesthetic preference” about a body-type is one of those sick-and-twisted “fetishes.” (Notice how it’s always those poor, helpless, perpetually victimized girls and women who are the objects of concern here. Those pure and enlightened women would never be concerned about a guy’s body-shape…)
As Mencken put it earlier, “the prevailing American view of the world and its mysteries is still a moral one…The American…casts up all ponderable values, including even the values of beauty, in terms of right and wrong. He is beyond all things else, a judge and a policeman…”
And:
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fet·ish
3. Psychology . any object or nongenital part of the body that causes a habitual erotic response or fixation.
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c : an object or bodily part whose real or fantasied presence is psychologically necessary for sexual gratification and that is an object of fixation to the extent that it may interfere with complete sexual expression
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People don’t have to read fashion magazines, you know? They just look at the pictures.
I’m not sure if I want to derail this argument, but I think it’s important to point out this debate between natural versus plastic is a bit silly considering that NO ONE IS NATURAL.
I shouldn’t say “no one,” but certainly a huge segment of the female population wear mascara, dye their hair, use moisturizer etc. etc. What you’re seeing is an illusion of what you think a natural woman looks like. But “natural” is just as carefully constructed as any woman with breast implants. In fact, considering the amount of money women might spend on shaving, it might be more economically beneficial to laser the hair off permanently. Goodness knows that the consequences are the same.
Or, someone can tell me that being natural is beautiful and that they can’t wait for the day that women don’t shave their armpits or legs. Funny, I don’t see that argument coming very often from people who think that “natural women” are beautiful.
Also, this comic strip: http://media-cache-ec2.pinimg.com/550x/8e/7f/76/8e7f7610b6d2c60e6926c7280ed9d564.jpg
There are plenty of folks who fetishize women’s armpit hair.
But yes, this is what I was trying to say. It’s pretty basic Judith Butler, right? No origin, only artifice. I don’t agree with her about everything, but when you’re talking about fashion, she seems pretty relevant.
For sure, there are people who fetishize every body part. The point that I was sort of trying to make (I was more just trying to quash a fallacy, but I’ll expand) is that to lionize “natural” women is a fairly mainstream reaction whenever confronted by the notion of plastic surgery. Inevitably, two sides emerge debating what is more beautiful etc. etc. Except, it’s a false dichotomy. Plastic surgery often simply creates permanence to what women do to themselves every day. You hate boob jobs? Well, if you’re going to be consistent, then I hope you hate push up bras, too. VS has bras that increase female breast size by two cups, and they’re quite popular, but they’re not met with the same kind of mainstream disgust as plastic surgery.
I think it’s totally legitimate to criticize social incentives that pressure women to spend time and money on their appearance. The only thing is that it’s not consistent to say “plastic surgery is bad,” and then ignore the amount of time women spend in front of the mirror to perfect their “naturalness.” The conversation can be extended to include men and their body projects.
Yeah, I don’t disagree…though I think maybe you’re underestimating the extent to which female artificiality provokes (or is used as the excuse for) disgust, at every level. That includes push up bras and laser hair removal, or what have you. Hating women because they’re artificial is as prevalent, and of as long-stnading, as hating women because they’re instinctual/animalistic.
I don’t disagree. Hating women for using a push-up bra tends to be related to a belief that they’re frivolous or self-involved and are therefore not meant to be taken seriously. However, I think the revulsion associated with plastic surgery is more complicated because it hasn’t been normalized like wearing a push-up bra.
Susan Bordo’s book “Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and The Body” is very good on these issues…despite being 20+ years old. She does have an update that’s only 10+ years old in the newer additions which is also very good. She notes that most young girls are well aware that women in mags are airbrushed and augmented, yet they see those bodies as an (impossible) ideal to strive for anyway. Knowing that it’s “fake” doesn’t necessarily prevent it from being desirable. She also gives troubling statistics about this phenomenon…Basically, almost no pics in women’s/girls’ mags are NOT airbrushed or computer manipulated in some way. It’s almost impossible to find “real” women’s bodies in mainstream publications…because of plastic surgery and digital manipulation.
Granting that everything to do with the way we look and our norms for the way we look is artificial and has nothing to do with biology (ignoring any research) …
Racism rests on artifice, too, so are we supposed to accept that? I suppose that the conclusion we’re supposed to draw from the premise that every view rests on the artificial is that only tolerance should be allowed. Racists aren’t tolerant, so we shouldn’t allow them. But that sets up tolerance as the normative absolute. Yet it’s already been stated that all views rest on the artificial, so that would have include tolerance as any normative moral claim. How does one distinguish between good artifice and bad artifice when distinction itself has already been dismissed as artifice? To wit: shaving one’s leg hair might as well be the complete restructuring of one’s face to supposedly look 25 at age 80, because they don’t exist on a continuum, but are exactly the same — i.e., they’re “artifice.” Hell, what’s natural about the way 25 year olds look and 80 year olds — it’s an artificial distinction. (How can I tell that all these people have had work done? Judith Butler can’t see a difference, evidently, so I must be fooling myself. Anyway …) Racism is no less artificial than any other view, so we’re left with accepting it along with everything else, plastic butchery and tiny little feet on adult Chinese women.
“no less nor more artificial”
Charles, I’ve got problems with Butler too. But pointing out that there are problems doesn’t really get around the problems that she points out with reifying authenticity. Those problems are both logical and moral.
I mean…if you need to have an authentic real, why not make it suffering or oppression? Why do you need to start naturalizing your particular aesthetic preferences in women’s bodies or pop music or whatever?
Maybe there is a point. But I’d feel less skeptical if you were willing to acknowledge some of the downsides of your position, rather than just blasting away at everyone else’s glass house.
Maybe more constructively…Charles, it’s sort of odd but interesting the way you bring racism into the discussion. Traditionally, of course, claims of authenticity and naturalness have been deployed on behalf of racist theories. Racism is very much about arguing that there are natural differences. So pointing out (with Butler) that there is no origin — that constructions of race rest on other constructions of race, not on biological truths, is generally a reaction against the use of authenticity to categorize people morally.
I actually think you’re right that you tend to need some concept of presence in order to make moral claims. This is why I think Christianity tends to be more intellectually consistent than atheism…though that’s not all that helpful if you don’t believe in god. But anyway.
But just because some concept of authenticity can be helpful, it doesn’t follow that every concept of authenticity can. Making moral claims on the basis of poorly theorized supposedly natural visceral reactions to fashion just doesn’t seem coherent to me.
The funny thing is, folks over at the Atlantic are always screaming at me because they think I’m an essentialist….
Well, if I were arguing with conservatives, then I’d maybe need to argue about race being artificial, but I figured that would be a truism here.
I don’t buy that about Christianity: as the argument goes, if God is moral because He’s acting moral, then morality is greater than He; but if He is moral simply because His actions define what’s moral, then morality is ultimately arbitrary (so who cares what He says?). It’s irrelevant to morality, in other words. What you assume in a moral argument (regardless of how post structuralist relativistic social constructionistic or liberal namby pamby you are) is that there’s some truthful, factual or objective basis for your claim. Otherwise, why think the other person incorrect? An atheist and Christian depend on the same sort of basis, regardless of their position on divine mediation. The former is just more likely to talk about moral facts or whatnot, rather than the mediator. That’s what you’re calling presence, isn’t it?
I suppose my objection to frivolous cosmetic surgery is part aesthetic and part critical theory in that it’s another sign of the totalizing movement towards the commodification of everything under the sun (e.g., Brazil). Normalizing these artificial beauty standards means that it’s another aspect of our being that will eventually have to be bought. That’s not to say it just started, or that there’s nothing to criticize in old standards we now presume. But it does seem to be worse, though, unless you can’t see a difference between shaving and having your face permanently reconstructed.
And I don’t think these stars or reality TV celebrities are hapless victims; they’re actively part of the problems created through the entertainment industry. I think you tend to treat them as such, which probably explains the difference in our reactions to these sorts of things.
I might be losing the thread of the argument, or we’re not understanding each other when you’re asking me: “I mean…if you need to have an authentic real, why not make it suffering or oppression? Why do you need to start naturalizing your particular aesthetic preferences in women’s bodies or pop music or whatever?” To me, you have to assume some fidelity to the truth in order to get anywhere in a discussion about anything. (I think Badiou’s right about this.) This could be seen in your discussion of Anne Wilson’s weight. Authenticity is always up for negotiation and debate, but it’s just not something you can get rid of the way Butler evidently wishes to do. The view that everything is artificial is inherently self defeating, so can be summarily dismissed. That view will only serve capital and amorality, despite the best intentions of the person holding it.
Right; I agree that the view that everything is artificial is problematic. But it seems like you run into real difficulties when you start to make sweeping statements about who is real and who isn’t as well. Especially,as I said, when those statements aren’t especially well theorized, but just seek to naturalize aesthetic preferences and what amount to cultural prejudices.
Commodification isn’t always bad either. There are good parts to capitalism. Railing against decadence can take you some bad places.
And…one of the things that happens when you default to a too eager authenticity is that you just end up setting up one commodity as more authentic than another, so that authenticity itself becomes commodified.
Even if you think there is authenticity, looking for it in commodified music or in the supposedly natural appearance sold to you in the entertainment industry just seems naive. This is how the worry about everything being commodified leads to greater commodification, it seems like. You don’t really get to authenticity by saying, hey, I like the White Stripes because they’re authentic. That’s just another consumer preference at that point.
The point about God is that it provides you with a transcendent basis to make moral claims. This is the problem you’re having. You want there to be authenticity so you can make truth claims. But your authenticity is just a bunch of handwaving; you don’t really have anywhere to stand, except a kind of naive biological essentialism which pretty much falls apart as soon as you actually talk to or consider anyone who happens to be human.
I mean, what is authenticity? You know it when you see it, right? But why should anyone else take your word for it when they see it differently? It’s just not a very convincing argument, it doesn’t seem like.
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Noah Berlatsky says:
There are plenty of folks who fetishize women’s armpit hair.
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Never mind “fetishizing”; in much of the world it’s appreciated as a sign of sexual maturity, as is that “nether hair,”
(What does it say about our society that it’s practically de rigueur for hipster women to infantilize themselves by shaving “down there”? Saw a Suicide Girls magazine with members from all over the world posing in the buff. (Obviously, “The Patriarchy made them do it!”) Not a bush in sight…
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Noah Berlatsky says:
This is why I think Christianity tends to be more intellectually consistent than atheism…
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Uh? Do you know how many versions of Christianity there are, some of which have slaughtered others? Why, look at the Bible; do you see “intellectual consistency” there? And what we think of as Christianity is but the survivor of a Darwinian struggle between different early “Christianities”…
And racism is more “intellectually consistent” than liberalism. A simplistic lie or dumbass Theory or ideology is more “intellectually consistent” than messy ol’ reality….
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Sarah Shoker says:
I’m not sure if I want to derail this argument, but I think it’s important to point out this debate between natural versus plastic is a bit silly considering that NO ONE IS NATURAL.
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(Swoons in shock) But, seriously; as something of an anthropology buff, I’m exceedingly well aware of how even the most “primitive” cultures delight in enhancing their appearance in a myriad of fashions.
Why, tattoos have been discovered in mummies thousands of years old:
http://siberiantimes.com/culture/others/features/siberian-princess-reveals-her-2500-year-old-tattoos/
http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/kids/stories/history/tattooed-mummy/
http://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/researchers-in-museums/2012/12/10/tattooed-mummy-amunet/
Moreover, as Edgar Poe had argued, if being “unnatural” — i.e., wearing clothes, making art, growing crops, decorating one’s body, etc. — is the primary quality distinguishing humans from animals, is it not then actually natural for us, as it is for a fish to swim?
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a huge segment of the female population wear mascara, dye their hair, use moisturizer etc. etc. What you’re seeing is an illusion of what you think a natural woman looks like. But “natural” is just as carefully constructed as any woman with breast implants. ..
…to lionize “natural” women is a fairly mainstream reaction whenever confronted by the notion of plastic surgery. Inevitably, two sides emerge debating what is more beautiful etc. etc. Except, it’s a false dichotomy. Plastic surgery often simply creates permanence to what women do to themselves every day. You hate boob jobs? Well, if you’re going to be consistent, then I hope you hate push up bras, too. VS has bras that increase female breast size by two cups, and they’re quite popular, but they’re not met with the same kind of mainstream disgust as plastic surgery.
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Puh-leeze. So if a parent is amused when Junior uses Mom’s eyebrow-pencil to draw a mustache above his lip, they should be just as indulgent if they have it permanently tattooed on?
And if you see a difference between a PERMANENT PHYSICAL ALTERATION OF THE BODY (don’t tattoos qualify as surgery?) and a TEMPORARY COSMETIC ONE, you’re not being “consistent”?
No, you’re simply not being an idiot.
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Noah Berlatsky says:
Yeah, I don’t disagree…though I think maybe you’re underestimating the extent to which female artificiality provokes (or is used as the excuse for) disgust, at every level. That includes push up bras and laser hair removal, or what have you. Hating women because they’re artificial is as prevalent, and of as long-stnading, as hating women because they’re instinctual/animalistic.
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Sarah Shoker says:
I don’t disagree. Hating women for using a push-up bra tends to be related to a belief that they’re frivolous or self-involved and are therefore not meant to be taken seriously
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Yeah, the ol’ feminist malarkey over how this misogynistic society — a “rape culture” — “hates” women. In this instance, ’cause they’re “artificial.”
Why, women are terrified to wear make-up, or dye or “do” their hair, get spray-on tans or tat’s, wear bras, lest public condemnation and revulsion sweep over them!
When you get into plain ol’ reality, men today are like those in Mencken’s day: “Men do not demand genuine beauty…they are quite content with the mere appearance of beauty….they show no talent whatever for differentiating between the artificial and the real. A film of face powder, skilfully applied, is as satisfying to them as an epidermis of damask. The hair of a dead Chinaman, artfully dressed and dyed, gives them as much delight as the authentic tresses of Venus…”
Aside from some frothingly fundamentalist cultures, isn’t that “women are afraid to artificially glamorize their appearance” hardly the case here? Wasn’t the excuse for this tangent “The Ethics of Fashion Photo Manipulation,” where somebody now arguing…well, see for yourself:
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Noah Berlatsky says:
…you’re underestimating the extent to which female artificiality provokes (or is used as the excuse for) disgust, at every level.
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Noah Berlatsky says:
First, it’s not at all clear that women, or especially girls (who Fortini rather callously dismisses in the article), know the full extent of image modification…
Even if people do know that the images in magazines aren’t real, that doesn’t necessarily mean that knowledge will lead to power. Just because you know something is fake doesn’t mean that it doesn’t affect you…
[with] Most Photoshopped fashion images…The goal is not to capture individuality, but to erase it, and to turn every woman into one woman with the same skin tone, the same body shape, the same legs…
The fact that Photoshop creates fantasies of women’s bodies isn’t in itself unethical. What’s unethical is the fantasy that is created…
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http://digitalethics.org/essays/the-ethics-of-fashion-photo-manipulation/
“Holy intellectual inconsistency, Batman!”
To belabor the obvious; here we have a ton of moral condemnation and “What about the children?” hand-wringing over the awfulness that is “female artificiality,” and its pernicious effects upon those “callously dismissed” infantile masses, who Must Be Protected.
Isn’t this Photoshopping just a variation of what women routinely do each day, to conform to fashion style, striving to have “the same skin tone, the same body shape, the same legs” as the current “look” dictates? Don’t women with charmingly freckled faces — I think they’re lovely as a leopard’s spots — seek to mask them with makeup, as any photo retoucher ( http://www.bjp-online.com/british-journal-of-photography/news/1732463/anthropics-offers-portrait-professional-discount ) would? Alter the contour and color of their lips, the tone of their legs with colored stockings, their curvature with painfully uncomfortable high heels?
Oh, are you saying that it’s fine when women do this for themselves, but BAD when the awful ol’ Patriarchy forces it upon their images via Photoshop? (Outraged feminist: “Why, it’s…visual rape!!!”)
I can just imagine the reaction of this lady — http://media.npr.org/assets/img/2011/09/28/fashion-e5bc011f4df913b5c68a0912089cba2b66409f72-s6-c10.jpg — being told that before publication, her photos will be digitally “enhanced”: “That’s outrageous! It’s so…unnatural! They should just show me as I really am!”
Mike, you seem to have an inability to express your ideas without being rude. No one likes the sound of a flailing trumpet, especially when the player can’t read the notes.
Noah wrote: “This is sort of why I can’t watch reality television. Watching people get humiliated like that makes me really uncomfortable.”
The first time I saw “organized” hazing was when I was in technical training at Keesler Air Force Base, Miss., circa late 1978. All of us students were standing in morning formation, and on that particular day, the “Red Rope” was getting ready to graduate and move on to his first duty assignment (senior student leaders wore different color ropes over their shoulder to differentiate them from the newer students). After the pleasantries, those in the know steeled themselves for what they knew was coming next: the Red Rope was going to get doused under a water spigot on the building in front of us. This hazing was not officially condoned, as there were no sergeants or other senior military people present, but it apparently occurring nonetheless.
But this time, there apparently was a problem. The Red Rope didn’t WANT to get wet, and fought back as his fellow ropes pulled him towards the running water. In the ensuing melee, the Red Rope’s peers finally forced him underneath the spigot with one mighty thrust, but I cringed as it happened because the Red Rope’s skull very nearly was crushed against the spigot in the process.
At that point I knew that if I was ever in a supervisory position, there would be no such hazing. Ten years later, and half a world away, I was a shop chief, and some of my technicians approached me about hazing a fellow technician who was getting ready to rotate back to the States because his tour of duty was up. They’d seen some aircraft crew chiefs duct tape one of their departing troops to a chair and throw junk and liquid concoctions all over him, and my guys wanted to do the same. Without hesitation, I said firmly, “Absolutely not,” and it never happened.
Good-natured ribbing or a gag gift on departure was one thing, but physical humiliation where someone could get hurt? Not on my watch. Uncle Sam spent too much time, effort and money to train its people. My electronics technicians took several years to become fully qualified, so what supervisor in their right mind would want to lose even one because of some stupid frat-boy shit?
My swim coach in college actually had an organized hazing event. Freshman had to swim a lap with inner tubes around their feet while everybody else made waves with kickboards.
If that doesn’t sound especially onerous or humiliating…yeah, it wasn’t especially onerous or humiliating. Everybody did it, there were congratulations all round, and that was that.
I think it was actually pretty smart in that case. Groups like that tend to want to do some sort of initiation. Making it official and doing it in a way where nobody was actually hurt prevented anything worse from happening.
It’s a bit different when you’re dealing with high schoolers vs. dealing with adults, though, I’d guess. Not least because you’d really hope adults would be over such nonsense….
Right, getting upset at a commodity who has to shave her head or cry on cue seems pretty ridiculous. And why should it matter if one pays more attention to the size of a product rather than her sound? It’s all just commodities, right? Assuming any sort authentic self in former case or authentic art in the latter is naive to you. Thus, you just made hash of your essay. I would agree with the implications of your current stance that we shouldn’t feel any pity for someone who willingly sells herself as a commodity for fame and fortune when her status as product requires her to do something that’s degrading to a human. I would, however, say you were originally correct in criticizing people who wanted to treat Anne Wilson as nothing more than a body (even though this really only had an impact where her looks had previously been used to sell her music).
And I gave you an argument why that’s bullshit. It doesn’t help atheists find a ground, but it does mean we’re all in the same boat as finite creatures. Positing a god does nothing to solve the problem of moral foundations. It’s the problem of the transcendental ego, a seemingly infinite regress. Christian moralists just stop thinking about it when they hit God. That would be a prime example of “hand waving.”
And you’re really over-emphasizing authenticity, trying to make it fit every point in this thread. It would take too long to try to disentangle what’s dependent on authenticity and what’s not in our discussion. (What does it have to do with whether atheists have less of a moral basis?) To me, it’s about trying to find what’s true about something, which is clearly opposed to commodification. There are two Noahs I’m arguing with here, the defender of women’s self hood and the postmodern-ish constuctionist. You seem quite happy just celebrating the empty when you’re in your pomo sort of mode, and will occasionally use it to defend women who willingly reduce themselves to product. But, as seen above, that can wreak havoc on your white knighting mode when some women want to be seen as something more, but others insist on commodifying them. I mean, it’s kind of hard to be a feminist who defends the use of women as mere body parts, but that’s precisely what the blonde dipshits of crass culture are selling. Music is an accoutrement to fame. So, big surprise, when the entertainment industry worries about the size of their asses instead of the quality of their tunes.
Finally, commodification isn’t reducible to a problem with artifice, which maybe I should’ve stated earlier. This argument has become real messy, because we’re talking about authenticity, then switching to artifice, but art is “artificial,” and we’re arguing about an authentic relation to that and then somehow that’s supposed to relate to cosmetic surgery. I don’t put much stock in what people wear in general. “Fashion” becomes a problem when it begins to dominate reality (as in appearance gets substituted for reality). There can be truth in what’s artificial and just because something is artificial doesn’t mean it’s just a commodity.
“Right, getting upset at a commodity who has to shave her head or cry on cue seems pretty ridiculous.”
That doesn’t even make any sense, man. She’s not a commodity, she’s a human being.
Do you really not see a difference between saying, “this human being should not be made to suffer for our pleasure,” and “this music is offensive because it’s too plastic?”
I keep saying, I don’t object to all authenticity. I’m saying that you need to be smarter about using it than you seem to be.
My points about the pop void are generally kind of ambivalent. You see them as automatically celebratory…and I’m not really sure why. Maybe because that fits the polemic better? Maybe because the idea that somebody might enjoy Britney’s music causes you to experience some sort of existential moral panic? I dunno.
Again, artificiality and moving away from authenticity are tricky in terms of misogyny. You’re unwillingness to acknowledge this makes it appear that you care more about sneering at music you don’t like than about the feminist arguments you are strategically deploying.
Claims of authenticity are very, very often used against women and marginal groups. You don’t seem to understand why I mention this history, but it’s extremely relevant. It’s why smar people like Butler criticize authenticity. It’s because notions of the real and the artificial and the true have historically been used to marginalize and destroy gay people’s lives. Again, some vague acknoledgement on your part that there may possibly be a downside to your argument would be helpful in demonstrating your good faith here.
The downside to Butler’s argument is that capitalism is very happy artificiality and lack of authenticity. Again, capitalism is often a boon for certain marginalized groups in some ways. Not in all certainly. Is a bikini better than a burka? The answer isn’t actually all that clear one way or the other. But the burka is very much about authenticity and truth and resisting commodification.
Along those lines, you still haven’t told me what authenticity is, or how to find it. All you’ve got it this
“To me, it’s about trying to find what’s true about something, which is clearly opposed to commodification.”
Which manages to be vague, useless, and subjective all at the same time. Also, it assumes the thing that you actually need to demonstrate, which is that truth is opposed to commodification.
There’s no logical reason that truth can’t be commodified. Pick up a math textbook someday. Setting aside for a moment the question of how you can even tell what truth is. 2+2=4, I guess we all agree on, but once you start labeling different segments of the market as truer than others, you just start looking silly pretty much.
“It’s because notions of the real and the artificial and the true have historically been used to marginalize and destroy gay people’s lives.”
Now we’re talking about homophobia. Just seeing what sticks …
At best, as if arguments over authenticity and truth were all used to promote bigotry, this is once again the genetic fallacy. Biology has often been used for nefarious purposes — do we ignore biology? Evidently, yes, in the case of Butler. That’s silly. What do you want me to say about it? Gays aren’t less authentically human? Okay, gays aren’t less authentically human. I firmly believe this. I’ve already argued how making everything artifice makes any opposition to bigotry pretty much impossible, thus I’m opposed to this position and assume we need some attempt to find the truth about things.
“you still haven’t told me what authenticity is, or how to find it.”
How did you find authenticity when complaining about how people focused on Anne Wilson’s weight? Authenticity is trying to find what’s true about the subject being investigated. For example, the authentic self in existentialism, the treatment of something as end rather than a means. I don’t think it’s something that’s so definite it leaves no room for argument if that’s what you’re asking for. I just think it’s quite clear that trying to dismiss it leads one to some really problematic places. I’ll gladly put my defense of it up against your acceptance of the pop void.
Truth is opposed to commodification: the moment you can buy 2+2=5 and that becomes the prevalent ideology, you don’t have truth, you have the spectacle.
What the fuck, Charles? They’ve been used against women, too.
I’m sorry; I’m at a place where it feels like you’re pretty much just trying to make your dislike of contemporary pop into a biological truth. Which is perhaps unfair, but be that as it may, I think I need to bow out.
I’m not sure what you’re referring to with “they’ve”? Nor do I get where biological truth of how shitty contemporary pop is comes from. But I’m cool with stopping there.
In order to potentially undermine my own position on pop culture, I’ll leave you with a summary of Adorno’s critique of Heideggerian authenticity. I think it deserves to be mentioned, since it’s about the problems of making authenticity into an end, rather than a disposition. (I need to read Jargon of Authenticity rather than about it.)
“It’s because notions of the real and the artificial and the true have historically been used to marginalize and destroy gay people’s lives.”
Er, for as long as I can remember the intolerant and tolerant cultural positions on homosexuality have painted it as a choice/lifestyle/weakness/perversity/product of trauma/mutable, “curable” condition vs. an innate, authentic self.
Things have arguably shifted around recently…but I think there’s still a very strong sense that homosexuality is unnatural and therefore wrong.
For example, I was just looking at a comment on an Atlantic article where someone argued that gay people weren’t evolutionarily adapted to bear children, therefore they shouldn’t be allowed to have kids, basically. Arguments about gay marriage also often turn on the idea that marriage is naturally built around the ability to bear children or some such.
Basically what happened, I think, is that arguments about authenticity were used to marginalize gay people; to create an identity of “homosexuality” in opposition to natural heterosexuality, so that the identity could then be targeted. One of the ways gay people responded was by embracing the identity, insisting it was natural, and so plugging into a discourse of rights. Bigots have responded in part by backpedaling, and saying that the identity is constructed and doesn’t exist. But you don’t need to dig too far below the surface to find what are essentially arguments from nature or evolution or what have you.
Also…the fact that gay identity is seen as fake actually is a continuity of the tradition of seeing gay people as artificial, unnatural, and inauthentic, it seems like.
And…the virulence of claims that certain kinds of pop music (like disco and its descendents) are artificial is also very much tied into that discourse about queerness being fake, since those kinds of pop are historically associated with gay subcultures.
You’re definitely right to point out that queer people have used a discourse of authenticity in recent years to solidify claims for equal treatment, though.
If we found a murder gene, murder wouldn’t then be justified, so the argument over the naturalness of homosexuality has always been pointless.
Arguments about the naturalness of homosexuality have been hugely consequential in terms of both oppressing gay people and fighting for them to have equal rights. It may not logically make any difference…but history and identity and how people live with each other don’t always have a ton to do with logic, for better and worse.
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Sarah Shoker says:
Mike, you seem to have an inability to express your ideas without being rude. No one likes the sound of a flailing trumpet, especially when the player can’t read the notes.
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When someone makes an utterly absurd (oops, I’m being “rude” again) argument like “if you don’t like women surgically implanting bags of silicone in their chests, you shouldn’t like women wearing push up bras; there’s no difference between the two!”, yes, I don’t believe that merits “kid gloves” treatment.
Should I have let that “this debate between natural versus plastic is a bit silly considering that NO ONE IS NATURAL” pronouncement — which didn’t come out of nowhere, but was intended as a dismissal of another’s position — pass without comment, or with an innocuous remark? If we’re trying to suss out a truth, instead of engage in idle chitchat, in what way would that be beneficial?
And “no one likes” that? The horror, that one’s argument or position should not be “liked”! ‘Scuse me if I don’t dissolve into tears at the thought that an opinion of mine should not be popular.
Re “flailing,” I thoroughly nail down the ridiculousness in others’ arguments. Lest this be thought bragging, it’s usually about as challenging as shooting fish in a barrel. And I can’t “read the notes”? What people say comes through all too clearly. I just attack what clearly is malarkey, rather than join in swooning over the gorgeosity that is the Empress’ New Clothes.
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Charles Reece says:
…Positing a god does nothing to solve the problem of moral foundations.
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Indeed, it serves to justify all manner of immoral philosophies and resulting behavior: “Because Eve sinned, God said women must be the servant of men forever!” “The Bible is the direct revealed Word of God, and it says homosexuals should be put to death!”
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Noah Berlatsky says:
“Right, getting upset at a commodity who has to shave her head or cry on cue seems pretty ridiculous.”
That doesn’t even make any sense, man. She’s not a commodity, she’s a human being.
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…And the two are supposed to be mutually contradictory? Welcome to the real world…
Re that particular instance, what could be more “self-commodifying” than to be a marketed member of a boy/girl pop band, handpicked for cuteness and to provide an assortment of “types,” your image — makeup, clothing, persona — shaped and crafted according to focus-group testing, the songs and music chosen for you to fit the overall image, your public behavior circumscribed,and when you get too old, are rotated out.
And in return, you get fame, adulation, popularity, money…
(1990’s BBC Documentary “The Making of a Boyband”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJMfW_8sSJQ )
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Noah Berlatsky says:
Things have arguably shifted around recently…but I think there’s still a very strong sense that homosexuality is unnatural and therefore wrong.
…arguments about authenticity were used to marginalize gay people; to create an identity of “homosexuality” in opposition to natural heterosexuality, so that the identity could then be targeted. One of the ways gay people responded was by embracing the identity, insisting it was natural, and so plugging into a discourse of rights. Bigots have responded in part by backpedaling, and saying that the identity is constructed and doesn’t exist…
Also…the fact that gay identity is seen as fake actually is a continuity of the tradition of seeing gay people as artificial, unnatural, and inauthentic, it seems like.
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Certainly “gayness” is utterly natural; it’s just that, like left-handedness or greater-than-average intelligence, it’s not the prevailing norm.
An “unforeseen consequence” came about when some gay-rights activists, echoing the “anatomy is not destiny” line of feminists, started arguing that being gay was a “lifestyle,” a “choice.” This was considered that much-abused word, “empowering”; “You’re not being a helpless victim of your biological programming, but a daring free agent who critiques what is ‘normal’ and resists the way society tries to make you!”
That “identity is constructed and doesn’t exist” line sure reeks of Theory-speak. Indeed, it wasn’t just “bigots” that said that:
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LGBT movements have often adopted a kind of identity politics that sees gay, bisexual and/or transgender people as a fixed class of people… arguing that sexual orientation and gender identity are innate and cannot be consciously changed…
However, others within LGBT movements have criticised identity politics as limited and flawed, elements of the queer movement have argued that the categories of gay and lesbian are restrictive, and attempted to deconstruct those categories…
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_social_movements
If they’re trying to “deconstruct” them, that means those activists consider LGBT identities to have been “constructed,” right?
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Queer theory is a field of post-structuralist critical theory that emerged in the early 1990s out of the fields of queer studies and women’s studies….queer theory builds both upon feminist challenges to the idea that gender is part of the essential self and upon gay/lesbian studies’ close examination of the socially constructed nature of sexual acts and identities…
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queer_theory
Well, it sure seems to me that these “notes” I’m not capable of “reading” say some feminists are arguing that “gender is notpart of the essential self,” therefore NOT innate.
And, in this spirit — https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d6/Pieter_Bruegel_the_Elder_-_The_Parable_of_the_Blind_Leading_the_Blind_-_WGA3511.jpg — certain Theory-addled gay activists then maintained that sexual identity was “socially constructed”; therefore likewise notpart of the essential self,” NOT innate.
That article continues:
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Queer theory’s main project is exploring the contesting of the categorisation of gender and sexuality; identities are not fixed – they cannot be categorised and labeled – because identities consist of many varied components and that to categorise by one characteristic is wrong. Queer theory said that there is an interval between what a subject “does” (role-taking) and what a subject “is” (the self).
…queer is less an identity than a critique of identity…
Queer theorists focus on problems in classifying individuals as either male or female, even on a strictly biological basis…
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(Emphases added)
Well, that dumbass tactic sure aided arguments by right-wingers; “If they chose to be gay, then they can choose to be straight., and it’s just delight in being sinful/criminal behavior that keeps them that way” “Being gay is what they do, not what they are, so we can ‘cure’ them by preventing them from having gay sex!”
At least not everything in the news is soul-crushingly depressing. A truly heartening piece in “The New Yorker”:
“The most remarkable thing about the N.B.A. player Jason Collins’s coming out last week is the support he immediately received from teammates and other athletes…” (The whole at http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2013/05/13/130513taco_talk_talbot )
Mike, you seem rather determined to not understand my position and while I usually applaud determination, I’m afraid that from this point onwards it will have to be a solitary activity on your part.
I took your point to be that if one hates cosmetic surgery, then one has to hate push up bras and shaving. That’s not it? And you made it about women, when I brought up as many examples of men fucking up their faces. To me, cutting one’s toenails or hair isn’t the same as actually permanently altering the way one looks regardless of how toenails or hair are cut. It’s not hard to see in the position as you stated it the lumping of anything from bodily hygiene to making oneself look like a human lizard. It’s all artificial and disliking any of it leads to the hatred of women (even though many examples were about men in this thread).
Charles, I think you misread? She was talking to Mike, not you.
That Mike understood her point just fine was my point. I took her to mean the same thing, and you seemed to, too, so ….
I was referring to Mike’s inability to tell the difference between a firm argument and a rude argument that crosses into personal attack. I’m not going to bother with someone like that.
Charles: You do a great disservice when you label the tedious, repetitive, time-consuming ritual of the average woman’s daily beauty routine as “hygiene.” Perhaps you’re unaware of the extent and range of products that women use to maintain the illusion? We’re talking more than tooth paste. You talk a lot about truth and, maybe I’m being uncharitable, but you seem more intent on placing your own social constructions of beauty on other people and labelling it as “natural.”
The gist of my argument is that placing an arbitrary line between the authentic and the fake will fail an empirical examination. The authentic is often used as a code word for “desirability.” Consequently, many people won’t recoil when they see the pressures women face (oh there I go, making it about those pesky women again!)on a daily basis because it’s normative. Plastic surgery isn’t acceptable yet, so: revulsion.
I did not make a personal moral judgement on the rightness or wrongness of plastic surgery, high heels, etc. etc. I simply stated that your reasons for opposing plastic surgery were wrong. I didn’t give you my actual opinion on the matter.
“Plastic surgery isn’t acceptable yet, so: revulsion.”
Oh, rubbish. Stop a representative sample of people in the street and ask them: the overwhelming majority have no problem whatsoever with elective plastic surgery.
Plastic surgery? Not to judge, but I still can’t figure out why anyone would even want to get a friggin’ tattoo. Ditto for adorning one’s face and ears with what looks like miscellaneous parts from my home repair fix-it jar.
Ah, but what can I say? I’m just a bloody dinosaur.
“Plastic surgery? Not to judge, but I still can’t figure out why anyone would even want to get a friggin’ tattoo. Ditto for adorning one’s face and ears with what looks like miscellaneous parts from my home repair fix-it jar.”
I don’t think there’s a problem with having an aesthetic preference. I personally wouldn’t want a tattoo either. My issue is with theoretical consistency re: authenticity.
“Oh, rubbish. Stop a representative sample of people in the street and ask them: the overwhelming majority have no problem whatsoever with elective plastic surgery.”
Since you asked: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/371/1/Body_Projects_final.pdf
Limitations: The article’s a few years old. I first read it a few years back when I was a TA for a masculinities course, but I find the responses fairly interesting. The sample is only men, but I do notice that HU is tilted that way in its commenter demographic anyway, so perhaps that’s not too much of a limitation in this regard.
Sarah, do you live in the 1950s? “Mama’s holding us up, because she’s got to put on her face.” Many women don’t take any longer than men to get ready. Women even go out of the house with hairy legs and no makeup! The horror. But I shed dry skin like a snake, so I’m very sympathetic to a range of lotions that have to be applied in a tedious daily ritual.
“I did not make a personal moral judgement on the rightness or wrongness of plastic surgery, high heels, etc. etc. I simply stated that your reasons for opposing plastic surgery were wrong.”
The problem here is that you never addressed my reasons , you just inserted the artificiality versus naturalness of women as if that was my reason despite my comments being just as much about men and saying nothing about their being unnatural (there I go again making it difficult to reduce what I’m saying to your own biases). If everyone could look just like Jon Hamm or Ryan Gosling, I’d still be repulsed by this prospect, despite thinking both are beautiful example of males. How could this be when it’s all about repulsion to what’s artificial? Well, it has something to do with homogeneity and commodification …. I did, however, dispute your artificial argument above, which is still up there for you to read. For example, that everything is artificial becomes problematic when you want to condemn genital mutilation or wrapping little girls feet or any condemnation for violating people’s selfhood.
“The gist of my argument is that placing an arbitrary line between the authentic and the fake will fail an empirical examination.”
That’s interesting reformulation: “placing an arbitrary line,” meaning that a line that was placed somewhere without any factual regularity will fail an empirical examination trying to find such a regularity. Why would anyone disagree with this? The dispute is whether the line should have any substantial import for regulating our views, i.e., that it’s not placed there willy nilly by fiat. Your original formulation was, in all caps, “NO ONE IS NATURAL,” so we can dismiss any concern for what’s natural in considering the treatment of people, because there is no line between the natural and artificial.
Charles,there are a couple of ways to show there is a line between the natural and artificial. One is denounce those who say there is none. Another, perhaps, would be to explain where the line is. It seems like the second would be more effective?
If a beaver dam is natural, it’s just not clear why anything humans do is unnatural. If cats sharpening their claws is natural, it’s not clear why anything humans do to their bodies is unnatural.
Body alteration is a hugely prevalent cross-cultural phenomena. I bet it’s hard to find a culture that doesn’t practice some form of it.
Do you have anything to offer other than “I know it when I see it”, or appeals to your own visceral disgust? Or, again, denunciations of your interlocutors?
And…the suggestion that women’s fashion and beauty regimes is no more extensive than men’s is…the sort of thing that makes it seem like you don’t actually know any women? Which I’m sure is not the case. Possibly you’re just not paying attention, I guess.
1. The natural vs. artificial was your and Sarah’s deal, not mine. So feel free to explain the difference. It’s clear that you’re mixing a lot of shit up with your animal behavior example, though, which is why I wouldn’t and didn’t put my initial objection to cosmetic surgery in terms of the violation of what’s natural. I mean, there’s the question of human nature, which involves certain dispositions and expectations of behavior, which perfectly allow humans to do “unnatural” or “artificial” stuff, like build ships and paint a picture, while disallowing other “natural” behaviors like murder and rape. The use of this division is so all over the map in this thread, that I have no idea what response you’re expecting of me.
2. I said nothing about all body modification.
3. Do you have anything more to offer than “I know it’s wrong to make a girl cry on camera or shame a fat singer about her weight”? I’ve made plenty of arguments in this thread about why a norm or truth or “line” is needed, but I can’t imagine going through it again will result in anything more than your once again shrugging your shoulders, asking “hunh?”
4. I know that the women I hang out with can leave the house without preparing for hours. Maybe you know more stereotypes or maybe you just stereotype …
4.It’s nice that you move seamlessly to insulting women who aren’t sufficiently natural for your taste in that last one. You should be a rapper.
3. Sure. As I said, I think you can make a line on human dignity and human suffering, without making some argument about how human beings who don’t look a certain way or who make the wrong kind of music aren’t sufficiently authentic.
2. Indeed. So what is the line re: good body modification vs. bad body modification? (Cue more outraged moral denunciations and handwaving.)
1. If authenticity isn’t naturalness, then what is it? I’ve asked you this like 20 times. You don’t appear to have a response other than “if I don’t like it, it isn’t authentic.” Which is pleasingly tautological, but isn’t likely to convince anyone of anything except that you really believe in your own prejudices, whatever they may be.
I’m expecting a response which explains what authenticity is and why it matters. If you insist that authenticity doesn’t have anything to do with naturalness, then explain to me what it has to do with.
And it seems odd to blame me for not having a consistent description of naturalness or artificiality when my point is that those categories are arbitrary. You’re the one arguing that authenticity makes some sort of consistent sense. You’re the one who needs to provide a consistent definition. I eagerly await your response.
“Sarah, do you live in the 1950s? “Mama’s holding us up, because she’s got to put on her face.” Many women don’t take any longer than men to get ready. Women even go out of the house with hairy legs and no makeup! The horror. But I shed dry skin like a snake, so I’m very sympathetic to a range of lotions that have to be applied in a tedious daily ritual.”
It seems that you’re unaware of what women go through on a daily basis and have associated makeup etc. with the “1950s.” That is, frankly, very very wrong. I may have seen a few things that you haven’t–my name might be an indicator that I’m a female human. So unless you sneak into the women’s change room on a regular basis (I hope not)please don’t assume that you somehow have more authority on the daily lives of women than a woman does. And please also note that women are different, yes, and some won’t wear a lick of make-up. But we’re talking about aesthetic modifications and the female population that DOES wear make-up. Most women will wear some make-up when they leave the house, even to go on a simple grocery run. Many will even refuse to leave the house without it. This is not an anomaly. Even the barest women will usually spend more time on their appearances than men. Those are my experiences with other women. They happened. These experiences are not theory. And for the life of me, I can’t understand why you would defend this illusion if you’re pro-authenticity and then condemn plastic surgery.
“The problem here is that you never addressed my reasons , you just inserted the artificiality versus naturalness of women as if that was my reason despite my comments being just as much about men and saying nothing about their being unnatural (there I go again making it difficult to reduce what I’m saying to your own biases).”
That’s because you didn’t provide any reasons for distinguishing between the authentic and the fake, you’re simply asserting that there’s truly a difference.
“That’s interesting reformulation: “placing an arbitrary line,” meaning that a line that was placed somewhere without any factual regularity will fail an empirical examination trying to find such a regularity. Why would anyone disagree with this? The dispute is whether the line should have any substantial import for regulating our views, i.e., that it’s not placed there willy nilly by fiat. ”
Except…that’s kind of what you did. You didn’t justify the division between the authentic and the fake. And that’s what I’m opposed to.
“For example, that everything is artificial becomes problematic when you want to condemn genital mutilation or wrapping little girls feet or any condemnation for violating people’s selfhood.”
I’m not making an argument for moral relativism. You defend the natural based on your aesthetic preferences. The problem with FGM has nothing to do with “looks” or the fact that it’s not natural. In fact, defining FGM as problematic because it’s “unnatural” is potentially offensive because whether something is natural or unnatural is not a determinant of oppression. In this case, it has much more to with torture, pain, and misogyny. That’s why heart attacks, even though totally natural, are considered to be undesirable. Like I said earlier, I haven’t actually given you my opinion on plastic surgery. I’m just saying that your reasons for opposing it are problematic because they simply reformulate some artificial aesthetic preferences and label them as “natural,” which creates the same kinds of pressures that cause women (because more women than men opt for plastic surgery) to opt for surgery.
” you just inserted the artificiality versus naturalness of women as if that was my reason despite my comments being just as much about men and saying nothing about their being unnatural (there I go again making it difficult to reduce what I’m saying to your own biases). ”
1. I have now mentioned men twice, though I’m going to assume you ignored the very substantial peer-reviewed journal article that I linked to above. 2. There’s nothing wrong with focusing on women, anyway. The argument won’t deteriorate if men are ignored for a few posts.
Maybe to try to be a little conciliatory — I actually very much acknowledge the difficulty you’re wrestling with, Charles, which is that, in modernity, after Nietzsche killed God, it’s hard to ground morality. Why should we do things one way and not the other? Why is one person right and another wrong? There aren’t good answers to that, really.
The way people try to get around this is through appeals to tradition (conservatism), to reason (liberalism, broadly defined), or sometimes to naturalness and/or authenticity (Marx, various bastardized religious discourses.) All of those have serious problems, not the least of which is that they tend to get mashed together in ways that people have trouble separating or acknowledging. None of those problems really makes relativism any more appealing, though.
Wow! This is still going!
This week I saw a quote from Gemma Arterton saying she thought actresses who went skinny under the pressure were letting down the acting profession and women in general.
As I’ve said above, I can offer some good arguments about some of these alterations but I cant say anything that really proves anything beyond the potential downsides of doing certain things.
I liked that saying “adjust to nature, don’t fight it” (or it went someway similar). But then what constitutes “nature” or a “fight”? I still like the sentiment even if it isn’t air tight. But I do believe people do get a lot of strength for accepting certain things (it might not be a good idea to accept obesity that could kill you).
I do identify with the “natural” persuasion even though the label doesn’t make 100% sense ((the word “real” is also used even more confusingly in the media; a lot of flattery of “real people” and “real women”, sometimes used to be vague, congratulating anyone who thinks of themselves as real in any way. Sometimes real means ordinary, sometimes it means of natural unaltered flesh, like in the Dove commercials seem to imply)). I suppose we cant think of anything better to call ourselves.
“natural” fans differ immensely, just like any subculture…
– I don’t mind hair dyeing and tattoos because I see it as more of a little addition (that can be taken away anyway, tattoos harder to get off obviously) that doesn’t sufficiently disrupt anything. A lot of natural fans really hate tattoos.
– I don’t mind leg, armpit and facial hair on women. I could conceive of a moustache being too big, but try me!
– I don’t see fake limbs or injuries as a violation but I’m sure others would.
– I hate the way a lot of gel hairstyles look, I feel a lot of them look “fake” but I cant really offer a coherent argument about it. Some hairstyles just personally strike me as overly artificial, even if they aren’t technically any more artificial than another one I do like.
– I do wish women worn less makeup, and that it was worn with a slightly different attitude. I think makeup should be more like a fun decoration than “this is how my face should look and I wont be seen without this stuff on”. More men should have fun with makeup too.
-As I said above, I have a friend who got a new foreign tooth to fill the space left by an unbroken tooth. I would not do this myself, even if I got treated shittily for having missing teeth, I wouldn’t do it. But it doesn’t bother me a whole lot when other people do it, because there is less reasons I can think for objecting to than a nosejob.
…I’ll state again, these are NOT my divine commandments, just some examples of where people who have similar aesthetics could differ.
As uncertain as I am about a lot of this stuff, I do think people should be extremely concerned about where all this photo manipulation and bodily alterations are going. I’d like to be able to argue this with better compassion. People should know the potential downsides very well. Surely I’m not the only one who finds it all terrifying for the self-esteem reasons and a sense of the beauty of people being spoiled?
I’ve started to really notice how nearly every group feels marginalised and somewhat threatened and oppressed. I’ve seen a lot of people who I thought were a political majority express fear and say they are a struggling minority.
I feel threatened by a certain type of artificiality but it isn’t really even close to dominating the world, and some cultures are far more resistant to it.
I feel threatened by people who like art to be purely cerebral, austere, ascetic and realist in a literal way; yet these people are actually a rarity. But every now and then I do see people who use “lush prose” as a negative criticism, and some who are embarrassed by extravagant beauty. I shudder and have irrational fears of people trying to deny me my baroque fantasies. But I still think it should be obvious that certain parts of the art world have marginalised beauty and other fine qualities they wrongly underestimate.
I saw an interview with Dita Von Teese where she admitted feeling marginalised by a movement towards natural beauty, because I think she didn’t feel she could be a natural beauty. I was surprised she thought that this preference was big enough to threaten her. I do like her image, but I’d hate to think that she couldn’t go out without makeup.
I’ve seen lots of fanfare for nearly every sort of woman, but little fanfare for fat men and none for small penises. Maybe I just need to see more gay porn.
Charles, not trying to be a dick, or sneer at your music or anything, but I’m surprised that you seem to like glam metal a lot. Since it was famously reviled for being perceived as fake in every sense. I saw a documentary about the genre a while ago and was shocked that some of them didn’t care for a lot of their own songs and some said the image was far more important than the music.
I can only add my little bits of speculation and feelings, I really don’t have any good grounding on the stuff you guys read a lot of.
Oh yes, I forgot to say that stretch marks are often very beautiful, they have a lovely texture, and it takes a shitload of cellulite before it starts to look offputting to me.
Around the nudie sites and magazines I like, there is an uncomfortable aggression towards thinner women sometimes, which is just stupid. I can understand the appeal of wearing a “no skinny chicks” t-shirt, but I still think it is a bad idea.
Another thing I forgot to say about people feeling marginalised: voluptuous and any other type of bigger women often feel excluded from the fashion world and a lot of skinny girls feel unwomanly.
I wonder how people could start feeling okay about there being numerous very different good ways to be.
Robert,
I’m more of a fan of a groups like Hanoi Rocks and Dogs D’Amour than glam/hair metal, although all that stuff kind of gets lumped together. Someone like Tyla is pretty committed to the song. Still, a concern for fashion is definitely part of these groups. I wouldn’t deny performance as being a central feature to rock music in general and that it’s something one might take enjoyment from. I also wouldn’t deny that I can’t draw a clear line between growing up with pop culture while later coming to the view that the culture industry is something akin to a distributive network version of Damien from The Omen. I do think there’s a difference between Tyla and some kid from the Mickey Mouse club being picked to be in a boy band. (And I agree with you about stretch marks and cellulite.)
Noah,
“It’s nice that you move seamlessly to insulting women who aren’t sufficiently natural for your taste in that last one.”
Right, it’s not a stereotype, if it’s true. You have a bad habit of believing your opinion the voice of women. I insulted no women for not being sufficiently natural. I might’ve criticized your opinion.
What’s human dignity without a self? How can one treat the self in a undignified manner without expectations of a truth about the human Being. That’s exactly what I’ve been calling authenticity, a disposition or fidelity to the truth of something. Yet, you still don’t seem to understand that, or act if it’s not something I’ve made an argument about. To suggest human dignity is simply about believing what humans do is “natural” (like eating) and not “artificial” (like making art) doesn’t cut it, because that Japanese girl sold herself as a means, treated her self as a commodity and then, in return, was treated in an undignified/inauthentic way. To which I said, big surprise. You’ve simply stopped at “dignity”, as if your commitment to it doesn’t involve a belief about what’s authentic to the human (since you don’t bother asking what dignity is). That’s a normative expectation, much like “human nature,” regardless of whether you decide to face it.
Torture requires similar belief about the truth of a normal/”natural” way to treat humans. It requires a self or consciousness being really there that’s really experiencing pain that is not desired. Otherwise, you get something like Descartes’ justification for vivisection. Once again, I’m happy calling this fidelity to a truth, “authenticity” because that’s pretty close to the dictionary definition. You can argue why it’s not, but stop acting like I haven’t argued about what authenticity is or why it’s necessary.
And I never said authenticity makes consistent sense. I explicitly stated that it’s up for negotiation on repeated occasions. I’m not likely to be able to state the necessary and sufficient conditions for every instance of someone being authentically committed to something any more than we’ll be able to name every criterion for human nature or dignity here. But I can put behind me any simplistic view like everything is artificial, because there is a difference between treating people like commodities or like human beings. And I can safely conclude that there has to be something like an authentic self to make that distinction. All I hear from you is that because we don’t have a definite, absolute theory of truth and an authentic commitment to that absolute, then there aren’t such things (except when you need to assume them).
Sarah,
Regarding makeup: I don’t know what to say, my experience doesn’t fit your generalization. Friends and girlfriends regularly get ready to leave pretty fast, don’t have to wear makeup to go to the grocery store or gym (even though I do see a few women at the gym who do wear makeup, and more at the grocery store). That is, the ones who don’t, who think it’s ridiculous to subject themselves to such an expectation, are the kind of women I wind up being around — their views on life probably go along with my own and that’s related to how much time they spend on something that isn’t really necessary. And, obviously, it does take longer to apply makeup than to not use any, so when friends and girlfriends do put on makeup, they take longer than me. But, honestly, it’s a matter of minutes, not some torturous ritual in the way you described it. Maybe my life has always been filled with white trash and bohemians, so this bourgeois ritual isn’t something I experience regularly. I don’t deny that there are women (superstars, for example) who do spend hours on their appearance. They probably look fine without the makeup, too. (Using lotions to keep one’s skin in good shape however is a matter of hygiene, and I’ve certainly learned from women in that regard.) Anyway, I’m opposed to any stereotype that requires women needing to spend hours just to go the grocery store just like I’m opposed to any requirement of aging women (and now even young women) to get plastic surgery to look normal. I don’t want that last expectation to be normal and I’m glad that the women I know are largely free of feeling they have to put on a face just to leave door and scoff at tit jobs.
“That’s because you didn’t provide any reasons for distinguishing between the authentic and the fake, you’re simply asserting that there’s truly a difference.”
“You didn’t justify the division between the authentic and the fake. And that’s what I’m opposed to.”
Why would’ve I done that when it wasn’t my argument? You want to argue that it’s okay if it becomes de rigueur that everyone starts looking like Joan Rivers or Billy Crystal, then you’ll be disagreeing with my view.
Regarding FGM: you’re using the same slippery terminology that Noah was above. A heart attack is natural because it involves physiology. Like the morality of homosexuality, it’s unimportant whether “torture, pain and misogyny” are natural in the way a heart attack is. But that’s not the “nature” one is violating with the use of torture or misogyny, is it? No, what one is violating is selfhood, an expectation of what humans have by their “nature.” Either people have it with certain moral entailments, or it’s “artificial” and how we treat it can be arbitrarily changed. I don’t see how you can be opposed to something like ‘misogyny’ of FGM without a belief that there’s a non-arbitrary truth about womanly selfhood that demands of us a certain moral treatment. If we’re all just “artificial” then what separates those poor girls from Descartes’ machines moving as if they’re in pain?
Yes, you’ve mentioned men, but not in your interpretation of what I said. And, of course, there’s nothing wrong with a discussion being solely about women. There is a problem with making out like that’s all I was focusing on in my criticism when it’s not true, though.
“Right, it’s not a stereotype, if it’s true. You have a bad habit of believing your opinion the voice of women. I insulted no women for not being sufficiently natural. I might’ve criticized your opinion.”
Actually, I’m going to have to agree with Noah on this one. Labelling some women as “stereotypes” reduces their personhood to facets that you approve or disapprove of. Further, you were using the word “stereotype” to prop up your argument by signalling that the women you knew were more representative (and because “stereotype” is usually used negatively, you’re also indicating that the QUALITY of the women you know are better) than the women that we knew. It is very problematic terminology. There are better neutral words out there.
“Regarding makeup: I don’t know what to say, my experience doesn’t fit your generalization.”
Charles, you’re not the one with “experiences” and I’m not the one with “generalizations.”
“Anyway, I’m opposed to any stereotype that requires women needing to spend hours just to go the grocery store just like I’m opposed to any requirement of aging women (and now even young women) to get plastic surgery to look normal. I don’t want that last expectation to be normal and I’m glad that the women I know are largely free of feeling they have to put on a face just to leave door and scoff at tit jobs.”
So…are you saying that makeup is inauthentic then? Would you disagree with its use? Because it seems to me that you’re now trying to argue that some makeup is good, but too much is bad, which is an even more difficult position to defend than saying that makeup is good and plastic surgery is bad.
It seems that you’re arguing that “too much” makeup is inauthentic. Except, you’re leaving yourself to become the grand arbitrator of what is or isn’t too much makeup, what is natural/inauthetic, and what’s right or wrong when it comes to makeup application.(You mention that stars who spend hours putting on makeup probably look good without it, as though your opinion on how they look has anything to do with right or wrong.)You keep talking about truth, but we’re now down to arguing about, in practical terms, how many mascara strokes are permissible before women become inauthetic. While I do believe in truth, I’m not so sure that it’s an asshole micro-managing boss from hell.
I guess I have to wonder why you’re okay with women wearing some makeup, which is the result of social pressure, but are against plastic surgery, which is also the result of social pressure. You mention below that you don’t want everyone to look like Joan Rivers. But surely, there has to be something more to this than your eyeballs being displeased. That’s not a morally defensible position.
“But, honestly, it’s a matter of minutes, not some torturous ritual in the way you described it”
Sometimes people enjoy the ritual, actually, no torture required.
“No, what one is violating is selfhood, an expectation of what humans have by their “nature.” Either people have it with certain moral entailments, or it’s “artificial” and how we treat it can be arbitrarily changed. I don’t see how you can be opposed to something like ‘misogyny’ of FGM without a belief that there’s a non-arbitrary truth about womanly selfhood that demands of us a certain moral treatment. ”
When did I say there’s no non-arbitrary truth? Obviously, I believe in selfhood. That’s why I mentioned misogyny. But it’s not true that selfhood is universally tied to natural law. Liberals, for example, will tie personhood to reason. Further, I find it very odd that you’re now bringing up selfhood while opposing plastic surgery and, now, excessive makeup use. I find your reasoning odd because personhood usually means that a person should have autonomy over his or her life and you’re offering arguments that would regulate and control beauty. You don’t think people argue that women should be subservient to men because it’s natural? “Nature” has been used to crush claims of personhood, so it’s not as though they’re obvious allies.
“There is a problem with making out like that’s all I was focusing on in my criticism when it’s not true, though.”
I didn’t make out like you were doing anything. I used women as an example because it’s a good one and relevant to the discussion. You responded to it.
I’ll also point out that enacting a decision and claiming “personhood” isn’t enough to render a person immune from criticism, but I just don’t think you can criticize people based on what is natural and unnatural.
But at this point, I really don’t think anyone’s changing their mind so I think I’ll shift my productivity elsewhere.
RE: beauty regimes; I give you the Pistol Annies Being Pretty Ain’t Pretty, from their new album.
No way am I going to listen to that.
Here’s the grooming times I could find: For men and women in the US, the latter spends about 15 minutes more. But in England, the former spends about 4 minutes more.
The Pistol Annies are pretty good! If you’re a fan of old school country, I think you could like them…definitely in the Loretta Lynn tradition.
15 minutes more is pretty significant, it seems like….
I guess it depends on what it’s significant for …. Is it significant enough to support the view that the illusion of a woman’s look is just incomprehensible or unknown to men? Not so much, it seems ….
Alright, I’ll try it. If I hear anything that resembles the Dixie Chicks … I’ll come back here and complain.
Nah, they’re way better than the Dixie Chicks.
” Is it significant enough to support the view that the illusion of a woman’s look is just incomprehensible or unknown to men?”
I really don’t think anyone said that or anything like it. The much more limited point was that women tend to have a more extensive beauty regimen than men do. Which appears to be supported by both the Pistol Annies and your statistics.
“Charles, you’re not the one with “experiences” and I’m not the one with “generalizations.””
I guess tell my friends ‘hello’ when you’re braiding their hair at the next sleepover. No use of stereotypes here. My mistake. How about ‘presumption’, then?
“So…are you saying that makeup is inauthentic then? Would you disagree with its use?”
I would disagree with it’s mandated, normalized use, yes. If a woman wants to use it, then she should be allowed to use it. There are examples of women who don’t know how to apply it and put way too much on, though. Other women share this kind of view, believe it or not. They are individuals, not a homogeneous model (aka stereotype), which brings me to:
“Obviously, I believe in selfhood. That’s why I mentioned misogyny. But it’s not true that selfhood is universally tied to natural law. Liberals, for example, will tie personhood to reason. Further, I find it very odd that you’re now bringing up selfhood while opposing plastic surgery and, now, excessive makeup use. I find your reasoning odd because personhood usually means that a person should have autonomy over his or her life and you’re offering arguments that would regulate and control beauty. You don’t think people argue that women should be subservient to men because it’s natural? “Nature” has been used to crush claims of personhood, so it’s not as though they’re obvious allies.”
Well, first liberals esteem reason because it points to what’s significant about human nature, so reason is most certainly not a counterexample to what I was saying.
And again with this Theory T has been used by asshole for asshole purposes, so T should be dismissed. Has any T not been used in some fucked up way? I mentioned biology above — we shouldn’t consider evolution ever, because of eugenics? I’m aware that human nature has been used for some horrendously bigoted purposes, but it’s also thought to be necessary by people like Noam Chomsky. The reason is that you can’t really decry stuff like FGM without some belief in a human nature, reason being one criterion typically cited.
Individual will is another such criterion, which I’ve been here supporting by not wanting people to be treated as or for them to give themselves over to an assembly line version of culture. Yet, you find my being opposed to commodification of humans by a heavily administered society to be about my desire to regulate and control beauty? Baffling. You’re arguing with models in your head, not me.
Artificiality qua commodification is opposed to individualism (again, note the qua — I’m not speaking of all things that might be considered artificial). There is something like Delany’s Triton where people can go into a machine and have their body completely remade in an individualist fashion as any gender or mix thereof. That might be a future possibility (even though I can see some possible troubling issues with it), but it’s not the same as multiple people getting the same nose, forehead and chin to look like the same model of media-derived beauty.
Nor does makeup have much to do with this, since (1) both people with plastic surgery and without wear makeup and you can still tell the difference, (2) makeup isn’t a physical alteration of one’s facial structure (excluding tattooed makeup — but I’ve left out tattoos and other body mod it will only take me farther into the briar patch) and, relatedly (3) it doesn’t make every one look the same. People can it use makeup in a variety of imaginative and idiosyncratic ways. Yay for them.
But I’m opposed to any aesthetic that’s generally rooted in someone having to look or behave like everyone else. People hold these views themselves, which is problematic, and I guess might be an issue with an inadequate sense of positive liberty. And society often mandates, however implicitly it might sometimes be, a constraint on what people might choose to do by negatively inhibiting their freedom. The less of both constraints, the better, it seems to me.
And one last clarification before I bury this discussion forever and ever in my memory graveyard:
“But, honestly, it’s a matter of minutes, not some torturous ritual in the way you described it”
Sometimes people enjoy the ritual, actually, no torture required.
Um, yeah. Here’s the description I referred to:
“the tedious, repetitive, time-consuming ritual of the average woman’s daily beauty routine”
I hope it should be clear from my debate with Noah above about the figurative use of the word ‘torture’ not entailing real torture, so what you described does make it sound fairly torturous (in the figurative sense, I mean).
Man, I’m sick of this discussion, so that does it for me. I really should watch making flippant remarks here, as they tend to turn into all of this.
Yep, better than DC, but still pretty dull. Not offensive, though.
“I really don’t think anyone said that or anything like it. The much more limited point was that women tend to have a more extensive beauty regimen than men do. Which appears to be supported by both the Pistol Annies and your statistics.”
I said it was like a matter of minutes (for my friends and loved ones), so what were we disagreeing about?
Anyway, consider that rhetorical, I really am so sick of this discussion, no offense to you or Sarah’s contributions. just … no … more ….
i didn’t check that post before hitting add. most confusing is:
“I’ve been here supporting by not wanting people to be treated as, or for them to give themselves over to, an assembly line version of culture.” (Commas good.)
And I should’ve put who the quotes were from towards the end:
I said: “But, honestly, it’s a matter of minutes, not some torturous ritual in the way you described it”
Sarah said: “Sometimes people enjoy the ritual, actually, no torture required.”
The “um, yeah” following that is me in the present.
Okay, bye for now.
It’s Miranda Lambert’s group. I sometimes really like her, sometimes find her just so-so. She’s definitely one of the best things I’ve heard that gets country radio play, though. (Miles better than the Band Perry, for example…blech.)
“But I’m opposed to any aesthetic that’s generally rooted in someone having to look or behave like everyone else.”
Everybody should be an individual! Individuality for all!
Good thing that idiosyncrasy and personal suchness haven’t been an obsessively marketed ideological commodity for the last 50 years or so. Because then your argument might be incoherent.
“And again with this Theory T has been used by asshole for asshole purposes, so T should be dismissed. Has any T not been used in some fucked up way? I mentioned biology above — we shouldn’t consider evolution ever, because of eugenics?”
Most theories have in fact been used for bad purposes. That’s why it’s important to acknowledge the downsides of the ideologies you’re propounding. When you tout the virtues of authenticity, for example, it can behoove you to note that authenticity has often, and is still, used as a rhetorical lever to marginalize groups like women and homosexuals.
Refusing to acknowledge that, or insisting that wrongs done in the past can’t possibly have anything to do with your own use because, hand-waving, makes it seem like you’re either not intellectually serious, or like you care more about winning the argument, and/or seeing your own views victorious, than about the actual effects of those views on the people you claim to think are real.
Authenticity, naturalness, and reality, human dignity and individualism, are all really important ideas, that have been used for lots of good purposes. Liberalism has a lot going for it. But you’ve got to be pretty careful about how you define your terms, or you end up with liberal societies that condone slavery, or treat women like crap, or, say, bomb other countries at random, all in the name of naturalness and universal human values.
This is why making some effort to define what you mean by “authenticity” is important. Defining it as opposed to commodification is insufficient, since that assumes the thing you’re trying to demonstrate — i.e., that authenticity is necessary and indeed sufficient to oppose commodification. Saying that it’s up for negotiation is fine, but insufficient without some acknowledgement of what’s at stake in that negotiation…namely the treatment of the human beings you claim are real, but who tend to disappear before your insistence on an ill-defined abstract real which is somehow realer than the experiences of anybody in particular — except, perhaps, your own group of friends, who appear to attain normative status simply by being your acquaintances.
The issue isn’t that we shouldn’t consider evolution ever because of eugenics. The issue is that we should think very hard before establishing public policy, or even moral appeals, on the basis of ill-defined appeals to evolutionary biology. Just like we should think very hard before establishing public policy, or moral claims, on ill-defined appeals to authenticity, or individuality, or any other abstraction that claims for itself the normative and moral weight of reality.
I was ready to abandon this thread; but since the comments are still comin’ in…
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Sarah Shoker says:
I was referring to Mike’s inability to tell the difference between a firm argument and a rude argument that crosses into personal attack. I’m not going to bother with someone like that.
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As I’ve regularly pointed out in the past, I have no interest whatsoever in attacking the person, but their arguments, or rhetorical approaches. Having through my life held and discarded many foolish beliefs (starting with growing up in Castro’s Cuba and — surprise — believing that Communism was the Best of All Systems), I think there’s more to a person than some absurd point of view they may be currently championing.
If I were interested in “personally attacking” you, then I’d have gone on to razz your “Jailers Hate Escapism” article, no? But since I react to arguments on a case-by-case basis, I found this piece admirable, perceptive and well-wrought, and praised it accordingly.
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Noah Berlatsky says:
Charles……the suggestion that women’s fashion and beauty regimes is no more extensive than men’s is…the sort of thing that makes it seem like you don’t actually know any women?
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Ah, the classic “accuse somebody of making some outrageous/absurd statement which they in fact did not make, then attack them for making an outrageous/absurd statement” tactic!
What he actually said was, “do you live in the 1950s? ‘Mama’s holding us up, because she’s got to put on her face.’ Many women don’t take any longer than men to get ready. Women even go out of the house with hairy legs and no makeup!”
(Emphasis added)
Oh, but is the Patriarchy forcing women to do “extensive…fashion and beauty regimes”? And if they don’t, they’re persecuted? Those poor, utterly helpless victims!
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Sarah Shoker says:
[Charles] “Right, it’s not a stereotype, if it’s true…. I insulted no women for not being sufficiently natural…”
…Labelling some women as “stereotypes” reduces their personhood to facets that you approve or disapprove of.
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Hardly. Does a doctor’s referring to those under his care as “patients””reduce their personhood to medical conditions that he is to deal with”? Or if a film critic slings brickbats at a “bad actor’s” lousy performance, is she “reducing their personhood to facets that she approves or disapproves of”?
What is going on here is focused criticism; indeed, facets are being dealt with, but there is no grand attack made upon the entirety of their being. (Uh, that’s why they’re facets.)
Because don’t we all have a multitude of facets, some worthy, some rotten? Are we not to tolerate criticism of our worst qualities, or prejudices, or mistaken beliefs, or inefficient ways of performing a task, because that supposedly would then mean the entirety of our selves was utterly worthless?
Hmmm: http://upstart.bizjournals.com/resources/author/2013/01/10/male-versus-female-behavior-at-work.html?page=all
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Noah Berlatsky says:
Most theories have in fact been used for bad purposes. That’s why it’s important to acknowledge the downsides of the ideologies you’re propounding. When you tout the virtues of authenticity, for example, it can behoove you to note that authenticity has often, and is still, used as a rhetorical lever to marginalize groups like women and homosexuals.
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So, can we look forward to your noting that feminism has been used to demonize men, smear even the most civilized societies as “rape cultures,” infantilize women as helpless victims? (I’m not holding my breath…)
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But you’ve got to be pretty careful about how you define your terms, or you end up with liberal societies that condone slavery…
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Um? Examples, please…
“Um? Examples, please…”
The United States from Revolution to Civil War! For pity’s sake…
Mike,
Although Noah makes it sound like treating people as individuals possessing liberty resulted in their enslavement, I think what he means (he can correct me) is something like a dialectic of liberalism, the negation of the negation that gave meaning to liberal values by denying they exist in others. Individual liberty, misconstrued or otherwise, wasn’t exactly the basis for slavery (the negation of liberty), but the negation of slavery (double negation) helped define individual liberty. So a bunch of slaveowners could fight for freedom, because they knew what a lack of freedom entailed.
Noah,
I’ve played Josef K long enough, so I’m going to stop trying to get through. However, regarding
“Good thing that idiosyncrasy and personal suchness haven’t been an obsessively marketed ideological commodity for the last 50 years or so. Because then your argument might be incoherent.”
perhaps you’ll recall this word I occasionally use during our discussions: pseudo-individualism. However, it needs a belief in individualism to make much sense of it.
Charles, arbitrating to yourself what is real individualism and what is not just ends up being a way of defining other’s individuality by your own standards, right? So how it that then individualism? And why do you get to make up the rules for everyone anyway?
Re slavery; the US was based in natural rights, but defined personhood in such a way as to exclude slaves. This is the sort of thing that should make folks relying on their own arbitrary definitions of personhood, authenticity, and individualism maybe question themselves occasionally.
I don’t ever deny that individualism is a useful and often even liberatory concept. I’m merely suggesting that your certainty that you know its boundaries, and your refusal to acknowledge that it has intrinsic downsides, involves you in helpless floundering.
Oh, and I understand you fine. I just think your argument is simplistic and, as a result, kind of arrogant. But not in any way confusing.
Actually, I’ve been researching individualism in light of my upcoming series (which I hope you’ll accept, Noah, for HU). My take is that it essentially was born in the 18th century, at the same time as Romanticism and Sentimentalism, with extremists such as De Sade, and meliorists such as the framers of the Bill of Rights.
Personal opinion?
Individualism has gone amok in America. The far fringes are often ideologically driven, as is the case with worshippers of Ayn Rand.
But the mass of individualists are often passive, even torpid, subject to manipulation: most advertising flatters the individual, whether through appeals to selfish hedonism (“You deserve a break today!”) or to fake rebellion (“Think Different”).
I’m for community.
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Noah Berlatsky says:
Mike: “Um? Examples [of liberal societies that condone slavery], please…”
The United States from Revolution to Civil War! For pity’s sake…
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Hum. You’ve got a more…generous idea of what constitutes a “liberal society” than I do…
(Fox News would love that thinking: “Those liberals condoned slavery!!”)
Oh, and you think this is a “rape culture” too, right? Thus, “Those liberals condone RAPE!!”
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[to Charles] Oh, and I understand you fine. I just think your argument is simplistic and, as a result, kind of arrogant.
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Pot, meet kettle. You’ve got many virtues, but your misreading, oversimplifying, and grossly distorting arguments you disagree with, the better to ride the morally-superior high horse, are a painfully predictable phenomenon. So much so that I’ve learned to save time by just copy-and-pasting “Ah, the classic ‘accuse somebody of making some outrageous/absurd statement which they in fact did not make, then attack them for making an outrageous/absurd statement’ tactic!” when appropriate.
I blame it on Ideology; which necessitates seeing the world in the approved-of, reductionistic fashion; which puts things in simplistic moral grounds.
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An ideology is a system of ideas which attempts to explain reality. Ideologies are developed because reality is often too complex to be understood. They also, almost always, reflect a bias and serve the interests of a particular group. Some ideologies are well grounded in reality, while others are completely divorced from reality and can only be explained in terms of the emotional and psychological motivations of its adherents. Ideologies tend either to over-simplify reality or to completely distort it. Nevertheless, it is sometimes useful to speak generally in ideological terms in order to make a point. On balance, it is probably true that the use of ideology has created more difficulties than it has solved….
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http://www2.sunysuffolk.edu/westn/Ideology.html
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AB says:
…Personal opinion?
Individualism has gone amok in America. The far fringes are often ideologically driven, as is the case with worshippers of Ayn Rand.
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Indeed so! Whether it’s those groups of professional victims who gum the gears of any larger liberal cause unless their unique Victimhood (always worse than everyone else’s) is properly made obeisance to, or the attitude, as the loathsome Thatcher put it, that “there is no such thing as ‘society’,” the social compact, concern with anything beyond your self or little group, is rapidly crumbling.
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But the mass of individualists are often passive, even torpid, subject to manipulation: most advertising flatters the individual, whether through appeals to selfish hedonism (“You deserve a break today!”) or to fake rebellion (“Think Different”).
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Re that last, consider those noxious commercials which show an officeful of cubicle drones eating a candy bar, or having a Coke, then erupting into wild-and-crazy dance…
“Nextel Office Dance Commercial”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRqWcvIduTg
“Tapatio Commercial Office Mariachi Party”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yept85CPV00
“Health First Health Plans Office TV Commercial”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1rVwiwSN4w
“Hershey’s Simple Pleasures Commercial”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKiOdTxaYpI
Just use the right product, and your dreary workday will be a…par-TAY!!
More Mencken:
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The American is marked, in fact, by precisely the habits of mind and act that one would look for in a man insatiably ambitious and yet incurably fearful, to wit, the habits, on the one hand, of unpleasant assertiveness, of somewhat boisterous braggardism, of incessant pushing, and, on the other hand, of conformity, caution and subservience. He is forever talking of his rights as if he stood ready to defend them with his last drop of blood, and forever yielding them up at the first demand. Under both the pretension and the fact is the common motive of fear — in brief, the common motive of the insecure and uncertain man, the average man, at all times and everywhere, but especially the motive of the average man in a social system so crude and unstable as ours.
“More than any other people,” said Wendell Phillips one blue day, “we Americans are afraid of one another.”…
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It’s not generous. Liberal isn’t a compliment. It’s a description of societies based on liberal enlightement ideas. The US is one, and was during slavery as well.