Module 7: Beauty and the Good Life

A Duty to be Beautiful Unpacked

• The history of beauty and morality

  • for plato, beauty is the only spiritual thing we love by instinct

    • only beautiful women were allowed to speak

  • ugliness is equated to evil

  • our stories capture this connection (disney)

• Weren't we told that it's what's on the inside that counts for our moral character?

  • widdows argues that in an increasingly virtual and visual culture, its often the outside that counts

    • beauty is not a moral agent but its perceived as such

  • “judgements about the inside, about the person, are made on the evidence of the outside”

• What four elements feature in the beauty ideal as put forward by Widdows?

  • Thin and Slim

  • Firm and Buff

  • Smooth and Luminous

  • Young and Youthful

• How does the beauty ideal function as an ethical ideal?

  • moral frameworks provide the background that determines what’s right and good or wrong and bad

  • these frameworks are action guiding and require use to align our values with our actions

  • beauty success is now deemed moral success

  • gym behavior seen as doing something good in general rather than just doing something for their bodies

  • beauty is valued more and more, and beauty is accepted as a value

  • daily achievements of beauty ideal are embedded into our everyday habits

  • as the ideal becomes more dominant, beauty becomes an ethical duty (like promises are)

• What are two important points Widdows wants us to know about beauty as an ethical ideal?

  • its a collective ideal (a large amt of the collective follow the ideal)

  • as beauty functions as an ethical ideal, it becomes more dominant than a social norm

  • transgressions for violating moral norms are more severe in nature

• What is the difference between a social norm vs an ethical norm?

  • widdows argues that there are no clear line between the two

  • social norm: mints are supposed to be consumed after your dessert not before your dessert

    • no one at the table judged professor walsh as a terrible person for eating the mint

  • if the mint eating was akin to lying, it would’ve been an ethical norm and professor walsh wouldve been seen as a bad person

• Why does Widdows argue that failures to live up to the beauty ideal result in moral shaming?

  • failure in beauty are now being viewed as ethical failures

    • not just a failure to beauty, but failure that colors every part of your life

  • involves a failure of the self

  • “she has let herself go”

  • moral language is invoked by ideal

    • you ought to do X otherwise Y

    • you ought to look after your body, otherwise your partner may leave you for someone else who does

  • most potent example of beauty becoming an ethical ideal is fat shaming

  • shame is closely connected with moral responsibility

    • we feel ashamed when we know in our hearts we could have acted differently and we should’ve

    • widdows argues that shame is invoked by the beauty ideal

    • “you should be ashamed showing up like that” is akin to “you should be ashamed of lying”

• Why does she think that failing to tidy your room is different than failing to engage in the practices required of the beauty ideal?

  • compare failing to tidy your room to failure to conform to the beauty ideal

  • widdows argues in the latter the failure is attributed to the whole self, in the way the former is not

• What is a summary of Widdow's core argument?

  • Beauty is no longer a social norm

  • It functions as an ethical ideal

  • Ethical ideals are unique because they make performing certain actions duties

  • They are also unique because you are often shamed for failing to live up to a moral framework

  • Beauty in these ways delivers the goods: material goods, relational goods, lifestyle goods, and happiness

A Defense of the Unmodified Body

• not against tattoos, shaving, being transgender

• the “unmodified body” isn’t a body devoid of change bc everything changes our body

• the unmodified body is a body that’s allowed to be how it is

• we deserve to be in a society that’s not constantly telling us our body is wrong

• these demands to change serve a political purpose

  • reflect class, age, gender, race and disability

• very visual culture with social media

  • epidemic of appearance anxiety

• 70% of women feel pressure to have a perfect body and 2/3 of men feel ashamed of their body

• often times changing to our body is good to be demanded

  • want to be healthy, avoid illness, aid disability

  • the idea of a normal body (reference class)

    • can do what other bodies can do

    • bodies are very different in what they can do (male and female)

• people who have disabilities in their bodies from birth, their body is normal to them

• being born with an additional finger could be seen as an ability rather than a disability

  • what is viewed as an ability or a disability is all cultural

• “get your body back” after pregnancy implies your current body is an imposter, abnormal and inauthentic

  • thought of as post puberty, pre pregnancy

• some body modification may enhance peoples quality of living, and there is nothing wrong with that

• shametinence

  • common to keep menstruation as tattoo

  • makeup and body building