Portrait of a Young Woman, Gaetano Gandolfo

GUILAIN writes in response to this previous discussion:

A woman’s looks are definitely a priority for most men when it comes to finding a girlfriend or a wife. But I think a man living on a desert island would have different priorities. If such a man could choose a single woman to share his life, her looks would not matter as much as they do in human societies.

Many men want their wives or girlfriends to look good in order to see other men gazing at them with envy. It gives men a feeling of superiority. That’s why they like exhibiting their “beautiful” women in crowded (and ugly) areas such as the streets of a big city. They’re not that much interested in romantic walks in the beautiful (but quiet) countryside. The same phenomenon exists with sports cars, or expensive clothes. You would think that Ferrari owners would want to drive their cars on empty roads, where they can actually use the engine’s power. But actually they often prefer being blocked in the traffic jams of trendy town centers because there they can show the world how important they are.

Even if they do not realize it, I think that most men desire good-looking women, mainly because they wish to be envied by other men. It gives them feelings of importance and superiority (that’s where the “rush” mentioned by Mathew H. comes from). It follows that “good-looking” is for a large part socially defined. Nowadays, no man would enter a restaurant with a woman dressed like Madame de Pompadour, but any man will gladly enter a restaurant with a woman wearing jeans, as long as she is in good shape with long legs. With such a woman at his side, a man can be sure he will be envied. With Madame de Pompadour he would be laughed at. The contrary would have been true in the 18th century. Which of these two women is actually good-looking is another question.

On a desert island there’s no other men to be envied by, that’s why a woman’s looks wouldn’t matter much there.

Concerning women who think they are unattractive, like Lily, in the previous thread, I must say something. Usually, when a man shows some interest in such a woman, she immediately turns him down. She says to herself: “How unfortunate am I. For once, I have attracted a man, but I really have no desire for him.” There is a reason why she has no desire. For that same reason, she will never have any desire for a man interested in her. She has so much internalized the idea that she is unattractive that when a man’s behavior shows that he is attracted to her, she immediately and invariably labels him as a desperate looser. That’s why she has no desire for him. She can only despise a man that is interested in an unworthy (that’s how she sees herself) person like her.

I’m not saying that’s how Lily reacts when she receives signs of interest. But most women who think they are not attractive react that way.

Lily also expressed a profound disappointment in men, because of their seemingly obsession for women’s “beauty.” I’d like to provide a quotation from Stendhal for her consideration. It comes from De l’Amour, his essay published in 1822.

“Beauty is nothing other than the promise of happiness.”

It means that a man will find any woman “beautiful,” as long as he strongly believes that she has the power to make him happy. When a man says, “I find this woman beautiful,” one should understand, “I’m convinced this woman can provide me with happiness.” Thus, even women who are generally considered unattractive look “beautiful” to some men, because, for various reasons, they see them as a “promise of happiness.”

That is not to say that feminine beauty (notice the absence of quotation marks) does not exist. But I’m not sure that men are capable of evaluating the beauty of women, because their perception is distorted by their desire. I trust them more when it comes to judging the beauty of a landscape or a tree, because there is no possession desire involved. In my opinion, men can assess the “beauty” of women, but not their beauty.

Personally, I’m a man, I’m twenty-six and I’m fed up with “beauty.” It is everywhere, on TV, in movies, on billboards, in magazines. It is sold to every woman, and every man, every day, all over the world. Women spend huge amounts of time and money in order to be “beautiful,” men spend huge amounts of time and money in order to get a “beautiful” girl. I wonder what percentage of human activity revolves around “beauty.” A large one for sure. And all that energy is wasted on the most deceitful thing: “beauty” also known as “the promise of happiness.”

“Beauty” in a woman is the last thing I care about. It’s a cherry on top, no more.

— Comments —

Joe A. writes:

Guilain is on to something bigger than he realizes.  Substitute “tax accounting” or “statutory and regulatory compliance” for “beauty” and we realize almost all modern life is artificial and devoted to chasing its own tail.

The Amish are on to something too, you know.  Life as one of the Plain Folk clearly offers something or they would have been (excuse the phrase) out of business long ago.

Sven writes:

I’ve been reading the comments about how men prefer beautiful women to attract the envy of other men. Forgive my strong contradiction, but this is absurd. Did Jacob labor fourteen years just for a trophy wife? Did Paris seduce Helen to impress the Trojans? Of course not. They saw beautiful women and were willing to do anything to possess them. It’s a thread running through at least every other myth, legend or folk tale from ancient to modern across cultures; men throwing away kin and even whole kingdoms for a pretty face. Samson and King David come to mind as handy Biblical examples. Beautiful women, and especially perfectly beautiful women, can drive men to all sorts of acts of treachery and violence, and so it will it be as long as men remain men. This has nothing to do with wanting other men to covet a woman.

A reader writes:

The older I get, the more I appreciate the Plain People and their lack of obsession with beauty, youth, and ever-changing fashion, which fill so much of the media.

Laura writes:

The Amish disdain for beauty is barbaric.

John G. writes:

I’m rather surprised that you would agree with the viewpoint which denigrates the fundamental nature of female beauty. Beauty is a good in its own right – a bona – as Aquinas would say. It is desired for its own sake. It is a terrible error to conflate beauty and envy.

In the Silmarillion the elves fought a war for a thousand years to recover a thing of beauty. The desire for beauty is more elemental than desire for sex.

C.S. Lewis acknowledged this reality in That Hideous Strength:

“The beauty of the female is the root of joy to the female as well as to the male, and it is no accident that the goddess of Love is older and stronger than the god.  To desire the desiring of her own beauty is the vanity of Lilith, but to desire the enjoying of her own beauty is the obedience of Eve, and to both it is in the lover that the beloved tastes her own delightfulness.  As obedience is the stairway of pleasure, so humility is the …

[The protagonist Jane reads the above passage in a book but is then interrupted before she can read any farther.]

Being beautiful is an essential element of a woman’s nature. It plays an important role in the essence of femininity which consists of being rather than doing. A woman who doesn’t consider it important to be beautiful is unnatural in the same way that homosexuals are unnatural.

Feminine beauty plays an important part in the natural order of creation. Without it relationships between men and women would never form in the first place, or would quickly break down.

Ugliness in women is the sign of a fundamental breakdown of society. When Bella Abzug appeared on the scene, then you knew that the revolution was entering into a scary and dangerous phase.

Laura writes:

Guilain spoke of envy, not I. I do agree with him that envy or status can be a factor and that certainly appearance, which is secondary to the spiritual qualities of a woman though it often corresponds to them, counts too much in a vain and shallow world. Men sometimes savor the attention of others when they are with beautiful women. But that can’t possibly be the sole reason for the male attraction to beauty. That defies common sense. Both men and women are drawn to the beautiful. Something can only spark envy if it has intrinsic merit. Feminists make the argument that beautiful women are only objects of status for men and beauty is entirely artificial.

John wrote:

Being beautiful is an essential element of a woman’s nature. It plays an important role in the essence of femininity which consists of being rather than doing. A woman who doesn’t consider it important to be beautiful is unnatural in the same way that homosexuals are unnatural.

That is a very important point. And, as I said in previous discussions on this subject, every woman can enhance whatever natural qualities she has. Beauty is an art.

Women highly value beauty in their surroundings. Some of that is to please others and may even be desired to spark the envy of others, but the beauty they spend so much time cultivating is intrinsically good and gives pleasure and harmony.

Guilain makes an important point, though, about the over-promotion of beauty. The women also all look the same and even though the women in ads are often half-naked there is a Puritanical quality to the clothing they wear because it is entirely lacking in ornamentation. In contrast, the heavily ornamented Madame de Pompadour (below) does indeed look ridiculous.

An age of non-ornamentation is hard on women who are not naturally beautiful because they are left with their faces and the outlines of their bodies alone. The austerity of yoga pants and tank tops is brutally ugly on most women. Aristocratic ages often produced clothes that were relatively beautiful for poor women too.

Madame de Pompadour

Guilain responds:

I do not denigrate female beauty. I’ve mostly written “beauty” with quotes. I make a difference between “beauty” and beauty. The latter one is an intrinsic quality whereas “beauty” is the appearance that a woman has when she is seen through the eyes of a desiring man.

Have you noticed that in the previous discussion, WH defined prettiness as an attribute that turns heads in the streets? He could have wrote, “I mean pretty in the filling-my-heart-with-joy kind of pretty”, but he did not.

Also, in the same discussion Matthew H. explained that he was interested in female beauty only as long as he felt a rush when showing himself with his beautiful date in front of other men. That suggests that he was interested in the rush (i.e. in heads turning), not in beauty.

Do men have an interest in beauty in general? Most men (at least Westerners) live in cities made of concrete, filled with billboards, litterbins, noisy cars and it doesn’t seem to bother them that much. Personally, I never see men (nor women) stopping by in the street to contemplate the sky, or a burgeoning tree, or flowers. I’ve not noticed that they pay attention to the birds singing or the bees flying. From what I’ve seen, I find it hard to believe that modern men have the least interest in beauty. Am I wrong? Are they looking at beautiful things on their smartphone’s screen? I’m told that those men are fascinated by female beauty. That’s not serious. Why would they be blind to beauty in general and be obsessed with female beauty. That’s not beauty that they seek in women. “Beauty”, maybe?

A reader writes:

To me, Plain People are no more disdainful of beauty than are nuns or monks in their habits.  I see both groups as showing their desire for more of an emphasis on inward, spiritual beauty than on outward adornment.

Laura writes:

The difference is that Amish culture as a whole rejects feminine beauty. Nuns and monks have taken vows of poverty and asceticism that help to counter an over-emphasis on temporal things in the larger culture, but do not encompass the whole culture.

Simplicity is important, but the Amish over-value it and have no higher culture at all. Perhaps it is harsh to say it is barbaric, but it is an extremely egalitarian ethic that is homogenizing and dull. The basic problem is religious. Puritans have a hard time accepting beauty and seeing nature as exalted in a characteristically Christian way. I understand that it is a relief to encounter people who reject the over-emphasis on appearances in the larger world, especially since there are none of the great religious orders that once served that purpose, but the Amish way is so limited and dangerous.

WH writes:

 Guilain,

I hope you can understand the difficulty one might have in trying to distinguish your notions of “beauty” from, well as you say, beauty. As I said in a follow up comment, I may have written too spontaneously or unthinking in my initial comment. Mrs. Wood’s always wise and sensible rejoinder that a Catholic lady should avoid showing her legs in public was spot on, and I so wish I could remove that from my comment. I just want to point out though that I essentially said: “Gee, I would like a pretty Catholic girl for a wife.” And look at the ensuing comments! I can’t help but think that in a saner time, my comment would have been shocking for how utterly mundane it was. You take issue with the fact that a pretty girl might turn a head – that I should have said instead how joy-filled my heart now is that I’ve seen a pretty girl. I mean this in all sincerity that you might just be on a higher spiritual plane than I. But to impute my turning my head to modernism or billboards or disorders or smartphones or “beauty” or whatever is a bit presumptuous (if not scrupulous?), friend. A man’s inclination to enjoy a woman’s beauty used to be considered natural; now it apparently garners comments, explanation, frustration, de-romanticizations, etc. I strongly disagreed with Lily’s first response, for much the same reason I disagree with yours. Although you appear to be railing against modernism, I must wonder just how untainted of modernism you really are? Friend, I spent many dark years in atheistic postmodernism (it was my reward for being a Puritan). And it was my fellow secularists (of the feminist variety) who told me that beauty was just one more social construct (perpetuated by the white patriarchy, of course) that should be eschewed for “character.” Of course physical beauty does not add one drop of moral worth to our soul. Of course character is important. But let’s be careful with that word, character. Lily’s advice to me was seemingly that after I checked the “Catholic” box then I could get on to the really important stuff like, you know, character. At best that’s an inversion of priority I feel. Brother, we can join hand-in-hand denouncing modern life’s demeaning of women and femininity. But must we join hands with the Amish to do it?? I happen to feel that the “Amish” (of all varieties) are an enemy of sorts as well. To me one of the beauties of the Catholic faith (and surely a mark that it is the true faith) is its unapologetic common sense. I now view that common sense as the natural law exhibited in human interaction.

Lily, if you’re still out there reading these comments. You suggested I caused scandal or the de-romanticization of men. I do not claim to be romantic, but I do claim to be a gentleman. Despite our disagreements, to whatever degree I caused scandal I sincerely apologize. You seem like a wonderfully interesting and intelligent young lady. As your elder : ), may I suggest that if our Lord is calling you to the vocation of wife and mother then don’t sweat the jerks like me (I mean that in all sincerity). Your husband is out there.

Laura writes:

Thank you.

Regarding this difference between Catholics and Puritans, it really does boil down to the Eucharist. The Real Presence, Christ’s entrance into nature, elevates matter. The sanctifying graces of this sacrament destroy the shame of enjoying earthly things. Notice that the Novus Ordo sect has created uglier buildings (and uglier women). That’s because it has taken on the Puritan attitude and denigrated the Real Presence in the Eucharist.

March 23, 2015

Guilain writes:

I’ll try to explain the difference between “beauty” and beauty in a few words.

My desire for women was very similar to the desire of a child for a gift. The view of a woman’s exterior would put me in a state of intense excitation, just like the view of wrapping paper puts a child in a state of intense excitation. It is not the paper in itself that excites the child, but the idea that he will find “the greatest thing on earth” inside the paper. I came to the realization that it was not the appearance of a woman that produced my desire and my excitation. They were produced by the belief that behind her physical aspect I would find “the greatest thing on earth.” As it became clear for me that I had been wrong, as I became conscious that the paper had never contained the gift I had expected, I began to see women differently. I’m still in the process of getting rid of my illusions. I hope in the future I will be able to appreciate the paper’s beauty in itself without feeling the need to tear it apart.

Please follow and like us: