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Changing western concepts

Of course, the slim, firm, and muscular body ideal for women which prevails in the West today, along with the tall thinness of models, are only the latest in the history of Euro-American body ideals. The rise in the sixteenth century of Neoplatonism, which saw concrete forms as expressions of divine ideas, and, as a corollary, saw the body as an expression of the soul, led to higher appreciation of beauty and a change in the ideal. As intelligence and force were divine gifts of the male body, beauty was the divine gift of the female body. Thus female beauty changed from being dangerous to being divine, and the previous ethereal female was succeeded by large, opulent beauties. During the eighteenth century this majestic type was superseded by a more slender and younger ideal for women, while the former, maternal type was denigrated to the status of ‘peasant’ beauty. This sylph-like early Victorian woman was followed by the voluptuous mid Victorian woman and the Edwardian woman of the late nineteenth century. Where the Victorians stressed a curvaceous hourglass figure, with a full bosom, small waist, and wide hips, the Edwardian woman was taller, weighed more, and had a larger bosom, but somewhat slimmer hips. Thinness was out of vogue and thin women were told to cover their ‘angles’.

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Spiritual significance

 The importance of bodily beauty has also varied through times and across societies. In Western culture the distinction between the material and the immaterial body, body and soul, and the values that have been attached to them have been central to how beauty was regarded. To the ancient Greeks a beautiful body reflected a beautiful soul and proximity to the gods. To the Gnostics (largely covering the first three to four centuries ad) the divine psychic body was caged in a physical body made by beastly creatures from the underworld. They renounced the material body and sexual drives, and strove for asceticism. In the early Christian era, where a dualism between soul and body prevailed, beauty was considered good if its appeal was spiritual and internal, but evil if its attraction was sexual and carnal. In medieval times the body and the flesh were associated with sin and women, and the immaterial soul with the divine.

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Cultural variations in ideals

Neither the psychological nor the anthropological approaches above can explain the variety over time and between different societies as to what is considered beautiful. All in all, this variation makes a strong case against the idea of some universal components of beauty.

Ideals of beauty vary between and within societies: values, norms, and tastes differ from group to group; the different sexes are used for constituting different genders; and relations of power, e.g. between genders, ethnic groups, and classes, make one ideal of beauty dominant over others. Western cultures have attributed beauty to women to the point where it is difficult to talk of the beauty of men's bodies. The nineteenth-century term for describing a pleasant appearance in a man was neither ‘handsome’ nor ‘good-looking’, but ‘manly’, since beauty was reserved for women, and today ‘real men’ might be ‘handsome’ or ‘good-looking’, but ‘beautiful’ is considered too effeminate. The ancient Greeks were especially attentive to the beauty of young men's bodies, and the Nuba of Sudan and the Wodaabe men in Niger also have no difficulty in associating men and beauty. Indeed, the latter stage a beauty contest for men, gerewol, to express their special birthright of beauty and their true identity among African people.

The male beauties of the Wodaabe people in Niger challenge any Euro-American attempt to argue for the universality of beauty criteria, and point to the importance of ethnicity. To beautify themselves, the men apply yellow colour to their faces in order to lighten them, draw a line from the forehead to the tip of the nose to make the latter appear longer; blacken their lips; and, at the height of their striving for beauty, squint at the women. Taking the ethnic perspective further, the Nuba of Sudan found little beauty in the appearance of the English anthropologist James Faris; he had a beard, hair on his arms, and white skin. All were appalling features to a people to whom well-groomed hair, a smooth body, and a deep, rich black colour are central ingredients of the body beautiful. Indeed, to the Nuba it was shaving that distinguished humans from animals, and he appropriately got the nickname wõte — monkey.

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