PARADIGMATIC BEAUTY
Reflections about the Ineffable Nature of Female Beauty and its Display

By Beatrice Basso

At the origins of Western civilization lies paradigmatic beauty. It's Helen.

Paris chose "beauty" as his prize (offered by Aphrodite), rather than the "glory" and "power" that the other two goddesses presented. What he found irresistible, even before laying eyes on his wife-to-be, was the idea of beauty.

Female beauty has been recognized, adored, offered, displayed, represented, celebrated, denigrated, rebelled against, fought for, and commercialized from the beginning of time. Now more than ever, there is continuous experience of and exposure to it, and yet its ultimate explanation escapes us.

A question comes to mind: Is beauty subjective or objective? In other words, is it in the eyes of the beholder, as it were, or is it intrinsic to the person itself?

According to a dictionary definition, beauty is "the quality present in a person that gives intense pleasure or deep satisfaction to the mind," thus implying that beauty is inherent to the woman in question as long as it translates into what pleases the viewer . . . but isn't that dependent upon taste - typically a domain of subjectivity?

If we look at the history of aesthetics and the works of art throughout the centuries, beauty has not remained a constant concept. Each epoch and geographical reality has tended to gravitate towards certain models of beauty.

It's almost as if the ephemeral nature of human beauty also applies to what is considered beautiful, so that new paradigms that respond more directly to the needs of a new time easily supplant the old ones.

Female beauty has been alternatively associated with the earth and the ether. There are instances where the child-bearing/earth-mother aspect of a woman has prevailed: the Greek and Roman periods, but also the mid to late Victorian times.

That model is still celebrated in the Fiji islands for example, where a corpulent figure represents healthy care-taking and satisfying family relationship.

The current Euro-American model clearly privileges a slim and toned body - a demonstration of a woman's productivity and inner control.

Medieval times also favored less corpulent dimensions but for completely different reasons: because of sin's association with the flesh, the "ethereal body" was proof of closeness to the divinity. The less earth-bound the woman looked, the closest to the Virgin Mary she was.

Whatever is needed and valued at a certain historical or geographical conjunction becomes apparent in what is considered beautiful.

It is important to remember that within the same time and place, though, different models of female beauty can coexist, so that the blondness and curves of Marilyn Monroe could live side by side with the androgynous grace of the brunette Audrey Hepburn.

I once read that Monroe and Kate Moss are both considered icons of their respective times because, even if their sizes are different, their proportions are exactly the same. And that takes us to the issue of proportion and symmetry versus unpredictability and surprise.

Typically, beauty has been identified with proportion and symmetry, but again if a time like the Renaissance privileged the classical grace that comes from proportion, the 17th century that followed leaned towards a more "disquieting, nebulous, and surprising Beauty," as Umberto Eco writes in his History of Beauty.

Whether the rules are strict or loose, whether it's about the earth or the heavens, symmetry or dissymmetry, examples of beautiful female bodies have always been on display.

And with different functions: as a memento of what's holy (the Madonnas in Medieval times); as a promise of immortality (the woman caught at the apex of her beauty, in her most invincible youthful moment); as models for the taste and fashion of the time (in paintings and pictures and catwalks); to titillate or satisfy male desires (courtesans, geishas, pornographic websites); to be sold (prostitution of all times).

From "goddess" to "slut," and all the steps in between.

While beauty and visibility have always gone hand in hand, never has the mass distribution of beauty been so pervasive as in recent decades. It's beauty for global consumption. So much so that since the '70s, and more dramatically through the '80s and '90s, female beauty has acquired a "super" status.

The definition "super-model" was coined to identify a "fashion model who has acquired the status of a celebrity," and is associated with the top fashion designers, commanding multi-million dollar contracts.

Now - with the exception of a few super-models like the British Kate Moss and the Brazilian Gisele Bundchen - the functions that were once exclusively a model's domain are attributed to actresses and singers as well.

The rules for being a modern icon in North America are not always clear and shift quickly, yet the dominant model has been and still is the youthful white Euro-American slender (sometimes anorexic) look, even as more African-American and African models have become part of the current beauty industry.

In that industry, the association with a cosmetics company is a big goal. Claudia Schiffer argues that an exclusive contract "represents an enormous amount of money for many many years because they are not just using your face for their advertising campaigns. You become their spokesperson, going to corporate events, talking about the product, even charity work."

She followed in the footsteps of Lauren Hutton, the first model to obtain an exclusive contract with a cosmetics company, and Veronica Webb, the first African-American model to do the same.

As the examples of both Hutton and Webb show, beauty can be used as a vehicle for ventures beyond fashion and cosmetics.

Given the ephemeral nature of beauty, many models have begun their own businesses like lines of cosmetics or chain of restaurants. Others have used their celebrity as a launching pad for their creativity, starting acting or writing careers; or for philanthropic purposes.

That said, the models' fundamental association with the fashion and cosmetics industries responds to a consumer's need. We are being promised to partake of their beauty by having a chance to purchase some of the models' external ornaments.

That is, of course, an illusion. But the obsession with image is something that - to different degrees - every woman experiences. The outside bombardment becomes inner compulsion, even in the face of catastrophic events, when what's inside of us should scream louder that what's on the outside.

Anna Deavere Smith recounts: "I remembered a cancer surgeon telling me, 'When you tell people they've got cancer, the first thing they want to know is, 'Will I lose my hair?' And here they are-dying.'"

Even if the current exposure to female beauty has reached dimensions larger than ever before, it seems that the attraction and investigation of the beauty of others and one's own, has roots deeper than any current trend. Our image is what we most evidently display every day.

At its healthiest we are in search of the best version of ourselves; at its worst, we cultivate the wish to look like somebody else, like a Helen. Is the promise of beauty - in all its inexplicability - still the most attractive gift?

Another installment of FEMALE BEAUTY will appear in the Offstage audience guide for The Bluest Eye later this season.