There is something about astounding beauty that sets me back a step and makes me rethink this somewhat cynical view I’ve adopted of the world. I sit here, after a long day of watching people prance past and act out the myriad social dysfunctions that make me wonder what race I find myself a part of — and I see a young woman, J—’s daughter, sitting twenty feet away.
Now, I don’t know her. I know her mother, and based on that can assume she is an intelligent, kind, passionate young woman. But I don’t really know any of that. All I have to go on, empirically speaking, is my aesthetic appreciation for the form she has and the manner in which she carries it. And yet I like her; it restores some fundamental faith I have in humanity that flickers on and off in my life.
If I were to mention it to someone, they would most likely think I’m talking about some sort of sexual attraction — and of course to some degree I am, as our sexual desires and aesthetic sensibilities are inexorably connected. But more than that, I cannot help but feel that a beautiful person — much like a beautiful painting or piece of music — helps stir the soul towards some greatness that verges on religion. It is an objectification of some sort, undoubtedly, but I am unsure I can find fault with something that brings so much joy.
I think, therefore, it is important for us to be able in our discourse to distinguish between a purely sexual objectification, and an aesthetic objectification. People are, after all, objects we interact with in the world. To remove them from this class is to act out a fundamental denial of reality. I am grateful that beautiful people like this young woman exist — though I am certain she has many things to offer the world beyond her physical beauty.
She has stirred in me the feeling I get when gazing on Waterhouse’s Lamia, listening to Stravinski’s Rite of Spring, or tasting a truly mouthwatering Bordeaux Cab. The excitement of the senses beyond the realm of the banal we so often inhabit, this is something that should be striven for, not disparaged as a reduction of worth. Can’t we be progressive-thinking, feminist, proponents of respect, and also have an appreciation of the simple beauty of another human being? I certainly think so.
one of the things i like so much about you is how much you enjoy the world. probably more than anyone i have ever met, and what’s even better-you can relate that love so well. i don’t think there’s anything wrong with pure, simple pleasure, weather it’s food or sex or simply something beautiful (which the vast majority of the wriggling larvae in the warm bellies of thier trusts funds i work with would hang me for)
but… love, you compared a young girl to wine. that throws me a little for some reason. maybe because it seems that viewing a young girl is put on the same level as other rather carnal, hedonistic pleasures. i’m all for appreciating beauty, and maybe this is just a knee-jerk predjudice, but i don’t think i would want to be viewed that way. i for one would be uncomfortable to know that such a comparison (jimmi-vision sees the girl being rolled in the mouth like the bordeaux)was going on in the minds of passerby in public. perhaps i’m silly, but i feel like viewing me, for example, in such a way is a priviledge, and there’s something about the implication that anyone has a right to view a girl that they don’t even know in this way offends me.
or maybe i’m a prude. the issue, to me, is consent and etiquette. it just doesn’t seem polite to me.
i think that’s why objectification is frowned upon, and i can’t disparage that feeling in someone. but i still disagree.
i think beauty is meant to be public. as something of an analogy, there are artists who don’t want their work to be public. after death, often, that work is made public nonetheless. it is a horrible appropriation of their work, using it for a purpose they would never want it to be used for — art, like the body, is profoundly personal. but still, i think it should be used that way. i don’t think beauty should ever be hidden, and my entire point is that i think it should be enjoyed in the same way a fine wine is.
that puts me on the wrong side of the objectification debate. it puts me on the side with those who would degrade and exploit women. but nonetheless, it’s the side i’m on. for men too, of course. form is form is form, and if form is beautiful, it should be appreciated as such. to me it is less the objectification of a person and more the abstraction of that person. in their own right i am certain they have much to offer outside of their aesthetic, but in that particular moment that is what i am relishing.
it is voyeuristic, and it is intrusive, but it is also profoundly personal, and profoundly awakening.
so, while i respect what you’re saying, and i respect your right not to want to be objectified in a total stranger’s eyes like that… well, i still believe there is something beautiful about the abstract appreciation of beauty in any form.
ultimately it comes to this — i’m sure highly contentious — viewpoint: a person’s body belongs to themselves, and i think they have the right to approve or deny anyone’s access to that body, and do what they will to that body. the visual representation of that body, however, i would say is a public space, as all manifestations of aesthetic in the world are. while it is certainly reasonable to limit the way in which another person reacts externally to our physical beauty — leering, making cat calls, and similar ilk are all forms of degredation and in many cases coercement and intimidation, and therefore are not something i would protect — the ways in which they might internally react to our physical beauty are sacrosanct, as is every personal experience.
i agree with you in theroy, and i do think that the body can be viewed as a purely asthetic form, although i think that honestly that seems kind of lonely to me, to view an abstracted body seperate from all the other things that make a girl. maybe it’s hard for me to seperate those things- i don’t think i could look at someone the way that i would look at a piece of art without knowing them. this is whooshy-but i could understand having permission to view someone that way, and appreciating them as a gorgeous creature in all thier facets, but i can’t see doing that with a stranger on the street. its presumptuous, i think.
art may strike you immediately, but you need to take time with it, i think, to fully appreciate it. the same could be said for a glass of wine. it’s an incredably intimate expierience, involving a certain amount of possesion, weather it’s gazing into a painting or drinking or consuming and in this day and age, that kind of intimacy unasked for is not polite.
i somehow feel that someone’s physical form, while beautiful, while sacred, is not in most cases freely avaliable to the public, however pure or impure thier appreciation of it is.
but it is freely available to the public, that’s sort of my point. the only alternative is to try to deny an aesthetic judgment of a person you come into contact with, even in passing, and that’s a patent impossibility.
i guess i would pose this question to you: without having a chance to interact with them, with nothing to go on but their physical appearance, let’s say you were hitch-hiking and two different cars pulled over to pick you up. one was a well-groomed, physically attractive male, the other was a dirty and disheveled, hideous male. can you honestly tell me that you wouldn’t make a solely aesthetic judgment on these people that would influence not only how you thought, but actually how you acted?
we are visual beings. we appraise everything in our environment aesthetically, and we form split second decisions and longer-lasting judgments based on what we see. trying to deny that fact because of some sense of propriety seems terribly misguided to me, if only because it seems to be trying to deny our very natures.
in no way is it a lonely act to abstract someone’s physical appearance from their other facets — it becomes lonely only when our aesthetic appraisal gets in the way of learning more about who they are as a person. superficiality that finds its ultimate end in the superficial is destructive and an ill i would not condone; but superficiality that simply serves as the first step in a potentially deeper and fuller understanding of a person seems in no way to me to be an ill — all things must have a beginning.
is it presumptuous to find aesthetic beauty in a person? certainly. but i would say no more so than the myriad other judgments we also make of people based on their clothing, the way they comport themselves, their accent, their job, their car, their race, their sex, their gender, or any other facet of their superficial being. it is a tragedy of the politically correct movement that it has somehow become demonized to simply process the feelings we have in response to something; the pc would seem to want us to be cold, emotionless machines until we have sufficient data to provide us with a non-superficial appraisal of a person.
personally, i think that is a sad and cut off way to live in the world. and ultimately, i think that if you honestly look at how your mind and emotions interact with strangers you see on the street, you’ll see that you too make various judgments — whether it’s admiring a particularly well-sculpted ass, mentally filing someone away as a hippy, or wondering why someone in mendocino is wearing a pair of $800 shoes. these judgments aren’t bad, they’re part of being a reactive person in a multifaceted world.