Beauty
1) Beauty in Ancient Greece:
For both men and women in ancient Greece, beauty was of utmost importance. Numerous depictions of the human form in art and ancient philosophical treatises on the nature of beauty attest to the fact that beauty was highly regarded in ancient Greece. In reality, the ancient Greeks thought that external beauty was directly related to internal beauty, which meant that attractive people had strong moral character while those who were called “ugly” lacked it.
Similar to modern men, the Greek male aesthetic ideal was muscular and masculine. Because of toxic masculinity throughout history, men have tried to demonstrate their dominance through their external appearance. This might be accomplished by having enormous muscles, wearing pricey apparel, or sporting a gigantic codpiece. In ancient Greece, a man was considered lovely if he had large lips and a chiselled face. Many men spent all of their free time at the gym working on their gains because they wanted to be perceived as athletic and physically strong.
But the preference for tiny penises in ancient Greece was a stark contrast to modern norms. Males should have “a gleaming chest, bright skin, broad shoulders, tiny tongue, strong buttocks, and a little prick,” according to the ancient Greek playwright Aristophanes. Big penises were regarded as impolite and foolish. Ancient Egypt also exhibits this. Simply put, a little, flaccid penis stood for morality and self-control. The fact that the penis displayed character is another reason why many male statues are shown in the nude.
Ancient Greek women were expected to have delicately shaped bodies with rounded buttocks, long, wavy hair, and a kind face. In an era when many people lived in poverty, being bigger and having more body fat indicated that you were wealthy and could afford to eat as much as you wanted. Aphrodite was revered by women and was portrayed as having a round face, huge breasts, and a pear-shaped figure. She was the goddess of love, sex, beauty, and fertility. This then evolved into the ideal of Greek beauty. It’s noteworthy to remember that in ancient Greece, ginger hair was associated with bravery and honour, while redheads were seen as the pinnacle of beauty. Ancient Greek heroes Menelaus and Achilles are both referred to as having red hair in Homer’s Iliad. Greek mythology claims that Helen of Troy was the most beautiful woman in the entire world and that she had red hair. Redhead slaves were frequently sold for more money because they were believed to bring luck. Given that ginger people have been subjected to prejudice for thousands of years, Ancient Greece appears to be the outlier for those who admire redheads. Due to the colour of their hair, the ancient Egyptians—biggest Greece’s foe—thought redheads were unlucky and were to be sacrificed and buried alive.
2) Beauty in the Renaissance:
Men argued the so-called “woman question” from the 15th to the 17th centuries. They pondered what a woman ought to be. What was the nature of a woman? Compared to men, were they more pious? More foolish? more sentimental? Another hotly contested subject was beauty, with many claiming that women should work to improve their looks purely for male admiration. Being pretty was no longer regarded as a characteristic that only some women possessed, but rather as something that all women should strive to obtain. Men considered it a grave failure of the marriage if she didn’t uphold norms. Even though modern beauty standards weren’t as subtly pushed on Renaissance women as they are today, societal pressure was still very much a factor.
The standards for female beauty in the Renaissance were just as strict as those today. The ideal woman was intended to have a high white forehead, long, wavy golden blonde hair, and dark brown eyes. White skin was in style, however it should have pink undertones, such as rosy cheeks or something similar. Thinness was something of an issue in Renaissance Italy, thus fleshy arms and legs, broad hips, and a round stomach were all viewed as acceptable.
There was a wealth of advice available, some of it ranging from sound advice, but most of it had the potential to be quite harmful to a woman’s health. Physicians were on hand to offer helpful tips on how to achieve these desired attributes, from putting ink in your eye to change the colour of your iris to the foods to eat to fatten yourself up. Books for ladies to purchase were prepared with advice and recipes for various types of shampoo, conditioner, moisturiser, anti-wrinkle cream, and makeup.
3) Female beauty and the Industrial Revolution:
Women were asked to step up and fill in for the men who went to war throughout the industrial revolution and World War II, and for the first time, women’s periodicals were igniting the flame with motivating Heroine-like content. In the spirit of patriotism, these women had never before had the chance to work in factories, drive trucks, and do more than just be the ideal housewives. Women took up the jobs that kept the economy and society running when the males left, and they enjoyed it.
Due to higher levels of literacy, lower production costs, and other economic and social changes in the second half of the nineteenth century, print culture spread into all aspects of British society. Mass publication of periodicals contributed to the expansion of print advertising, and technological advancements made it possible for publications to incorporate top-notch fashion plates, clothing designs, and illustrations. Magazines started to specifically target girls and women as readers, and stories on fashion, health, and beauty were frequently covered, while advertisements, plates, and images offered helpful tips for copying the season’s trends. Concurrently, innovations in the fashion industry and retailing, such as the opening of department stores, led to cyclical fashion trends and elevated shopping to the status of a middle-class leisure activity.
The growing cosmetics and fashion industries created a link between consumerism and beauty, which raised social concerns about how they would affect feminine morality. These changes played a crucial role in the transition to a modern society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as consumer goods were increasingly linked to self-perceptions.
4) Female Body and Capitalism:
In the process of capitalist progress, women have been mechanised twice. They have been stripped of their bodies and transformed into sexual objects and breeding machines in addition to being subjected to the discipline of labour, both paid and unpaid, in plantations, industries, and households. Marx recognised that labour accumulation is what constitutes capitalist accumulation. It has been claimed that this was the driving force behind the witch hunts that occurred in Europe and the “New World,” the establishment of the plantation system, and the slave trade. Women who wanted to limit their reproductive capacity were labelled “witches” and subjected to a demonization that has persisted to the present through the persecution of “witches.”
Advocates of “free love,” such as Victoria Woodhull, were labelled satanic and depicted with devil’s wings in the American newspapers during the nineteenth century. Thanks to a decision by the Supreme Court, women who visit a clinic to have an abortion must now navigate through throngs of “right-to-life” activists who are yelling “baby killers” and pursuing them to the clinic’s door. Slavery was the most methodical, cruel, and accepted method of turning women’s bodies into machines. After England outlawed the slave trade in 1807, enslaved women in the US were compelled to have children in order to support a breeding industry with its hub in Virginia, despite being subjected to ongoing sexual assaults and the excruciating grief of having their children sold as slaves.
Although no group of women in US history has ever been directly forced to have children, outside of slavery, institutionalised compulsory procreation and state control over the female body have resulted from the criminalization of abortion. The introduction of the birth control pill hasn’t significantly changed this circumstance. Restrictions have been put in place even in nations where abortion is legal, making it challenging for many women to get the procedure. Because of this, capital’s enhanced technological capability does not in any way impair pro-economic creation’s value.
In reality, it is incorrect to believe that the capitalist class’s desire to control women’s reproductive abilities may be waning as a result of its power to replace employees with robots. Capital accumulation still necessitates human labour despite its propensity to eliminate jobs and produce “surplus populations.” Machines don’t produce value; only labour does. According to a recent argument made by Danna (2019, 208ff), social inequality and widespread worker exploitation in the “Third World” are what enable the very rise of technology production.
Not the work itself, but the payment for labour that was undertaken in the past, is disappearing today. Along with employees, capitalism also requires consumers, soldiers, and workers. Therefore, the population’s real size is still a topic of enormous political significance. This is the reason abortion is restricted, as Jenny Brown has demonstrated in her 2018 work Birth Strike. As we have seen, even in the US, where abortion was allowed in the 1970s, efforts to undo this decision are still being made today. This is because the capitalist class places such a high value on controlling women’s bodies. In other nations, like Italy, the loophole allows doctors the option of becoming “conscientious objectors,” which prevents many women from having abortions in the area they live in. Controlling a woman’s body, however, has never been solely a quantitative issue. State and capital have always sought to decide who is and is not permitted to procreate. For women who are projected to have “troublemakers,” we simultaneously restrict the access to an abortion while also making pregnancy illegal.
For example, it is no coincidence that during the post-colonial era, between the 1970s and the 1990s, as new generations of Africans, Indians, and other decolonized subjects reached political maturity and demanded the return of the wealth that Europeans had stolen from their countries, a massive campaign to control what was termed a “population explosion” was mounted, promoting sterilisation and contraceptives like Depo Provera. International capital has attempted to stifle a global battle for reparations by sterilising women in the former colonial countries, much as succeeding US administrations have attempted to stifle the liberation struggle of black people by locking up large numbers of young black men and women.
Reproduction, like all other forms of reproduction, is racialized and has a distinct class character. Today, only a small percentage of women globally have the ability to choose whether to have children and under what circumstances. In contrast to white, affluent women, whose desire to have children is now elevated to the status of an unconditional right that must be upheld at all costs, black women, for whom it is more challenging to have some financial security, are shunned and punished if they have children.
However, the prejudice that so many black, immigrant, and proletarian women experience before giving birth shouldn’t be interpreted as evidence that capitalism has lost interest in population expansion. Capitalism cannot do without employees. The workerless factory is a mythical construct used to intimidate workers into servitude. Labour being removed from the industrial process would likely lead to capitalism’s demise. Since population growth is a growth driver in and of itself, no sector of the economy can be indifferent to whether women choose to have children.
It is conceivably the reason why medical professionals are working to create life outside the uterus under the pretence of combating infertility and providing women more choices. No easy task, this. Even though “test-tube babies” are frequently discussed, “ectogenesis” is still a medical fantasy. However, reproductive technologies like in vitro fertilisation (IVF), genetic testing, and others are opening the door to the development of artificial wombs. Shulamith Firestone and other feminists of the 1970s celebrated the day when women would be freed from procreation, which she saw as the root of a long history of oppression. But taking this position is risky. It is troubling to consider that future capitalist planners could be able to develop the type of people they require if capitalism is an unfair, exploitative social order.
5) Beauty as a Market Product:
It is first useful to consider the past of cosmetics in order to better comprehend the phenomenal rise of the beauty business. Think of the Ancient Egyptian pharaohs with their thick, dark outlines around their eyes when you picture the use of beauty and cosmetics items, which historians believe dates back to 4,000 B.C. This prehistoric eyeliner was formed of pulverised stibnite and was known as kohl. Early beauty and cosmetic regimens made extensive use of organic components, such as berries, insects, and charcoal to produce a range of colours.
As European soldiers returned from the Crusades in the Middle East with fresh, exotic goods and knowledge, cosmetic styles went west. Numerous varieties of cosmetics, which at first were solely available to royalty and upper-class inhabitants, were among those goods. The beauty and cosmetics sector eventually saw substantial breakthroughs thanks to advances in chemistry and medicine in the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries.
The Victorian era in England saw an increase in the demand for beauty and cosmetic products, though they were still out of reach for the average person. This was due to new expectations placed on ladies at court to present themselves as beautiful and frail, with elaborate clothing and clearly defined facial features. This led to the popularity of eye shadows, lipsticks, nail polishes, and other beauty and cosmetic products.
The beauty and cosmetics sector saw an even bigger boom in the twentieth century. Every home in the western world now had access to beauty and cosmetic products thanks to the development of film, photography, and innovation. Cosmetic businesses created products such as lipstick, lip gloss, mascara, eyeliner, bronzer/blush, foundation, and powder throughout the first decades of the 20th century, which fundamentally altered the face of contemporary civilization. With each decade that has passed, improvements in the calibre and use of cosmetic and beauty products have been observed as women increasingly try to adhere to the ever-changing beauty standards especially in the social media age.
