【人类美貌史A History of Human Beauty】_上海肖涛

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【人类美貌史A History of Human Beauty】

(2013-12-21 20:35:08)

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【人类美貌史A <wbr>History <wbr>of <wbr>Human <wbr>Beauty】

This book makes a fundamental distinction between what I refer to as the 'traditional' and the 'modern' evaluation of beauty. Beautiful human beings (men as well as women) have always been objects of fascination to the less well-favoured majority but, up to the nineteenth century and even beyond, views about beauty were deeply confused.

Status and wealth were still the major criteria upon which people were judged; beauty was recognised, but was seen as dangerous and disruptive,fomenting lust, tempting young people into socially disastrous marriages. Beautiful women could rise in society, but only by first falling on their backs as concubines, mistresses, courtesans, or as, in the nineteenth century, members of the select group known in France as Grandes Horizontales. Beautiful women became consorts to Kings, but

seldom ever became their Queens; for that, regal status and exploitable dynastic connections were required. There were jobs (as footmen, for instance) for which beautiful men were particularly well qualified.Occasionally a beautiful man could do well out of sexual services rendered - where the King was gay, or where the head of the Empire was Catherine the Great. Only in recent times has the 'modern' view of

beauty emerged. This sees beauty as a purely physical quality, embodying sex appeal, but no longer having to be parlayed into actual sexual congress; an independent characteristic whose value rivals that of status and wealth. Everywhere today, on film, on television, in public relations, in the whole celebrity circus, we are surrounded by evidence that good looks can readily be converted into hard cash. How far was that true in the past? How did we get to where we are today? In the 19805 I published a massive and extensively illustrated tome, Beauty in History: Society, Politics and Personal Appearance, c. 1500 to the Present.

Fundamentalist feminism was then at its height: accordingly the book was blasted into oblivion by reviewers (not all female) who decided in advance that mine was the sort of book which imposes standards of beauty on women in order to oppress them, without pausing to read that what I was actually saying was that women are fully entitled to judge men by their looks in exactly the way that men have always judged women. It: A History of Human Beauty is a shorter, better and different book, drawing, however, upon research and reflection spread over a quarter of a century. As such, it owes much to the help I have received from curators, archivists and librarians, and the advice given by colleagues and friends.

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