Sherri Irvin - Body Aesthetics (2016, Oxford University Press)

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 05/24/2016, SPi
Body Aesthetics
Body Aesthetics
edited by
Sherri Irvin
1
3
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This book is dedicated to the memory of Tobin Siebers

(January 29, 1953–January 29, 2015), with gratitude for his
outstanding scholarship on the aesthetics of disability.
Contents
List of Illustrations ix
List of Contributors xiii
Introduction: Why Body Aesthetics? 1

Sherri Irvin
Part I.â•‡ Representation

1. Black Silhouettes on White Walls: Kara Walker’s Magic Lantern 15
Maria del Guadalupe Davidson
2. Taste in Bodies and Fat Oppression 37
A. W. Eaton
3. From “Little Brown Brothers” to “Queer Asian Wives”: Constructing
the Asian Male Body 60
C. Winter Han
Part II.â•‡ Look

4. Appearance as a Feminist Issue 81
Deborah L. Rhode
5. A Tale of Two Olympians: Beauty, “Race,” Nation 94
Shirley Anne Tate
6. The Merrickites 110
Glenn Parsons
7. And Everything Nice 127
Stephen Davies
Part III.â•‡ Performance

8. In/Visible: Disability on the Stage 141
Tobin Siebers
9. Live, Body-Based Performance: An Account from the Field 153
Jill Sigman
10. Aesthetic Effortlessness 180
Barbara Gail Montero
viiiâ•… ï»¿c ontents
11. Misleading Aesthetic Norms of Beauty: Perceptual Sexism in Elite

Women’s Sports 192
Peg Brand Weiser and Edward B. Weiser
Part IV.â•‡ Practice

12. Body Aesthetics and the Cultivation of Moral Virtues 225
Yuriko Saito
13. White Embodied Gazing, the Black Body as Disgust, and the
Aesthetics of Un-Suturing 243
George Yancy
14. Somaesthetics and the Fine Art of Eating 261
Richard Shusterman
15. Sexual Desire, Inequality, and the Possibility of Transformation 281
Ann J. Cahill
16. Sex Objects and Sexy Subjects: A Feminist Reclamation of Sexiness 299
Sheila Lintott and Sherri Irvin
Index 319
List of Illustrations
1.1 Renée Cox. The Yo Mama, 1993. 16

1.2 Unknown maker, French. Nude study of a Black Female, about 1855. 19
1.3 Map from Henry Rider Haggard’s novel King Solomon’s Mines.23
1.4 Ernest Benecke and Louis Désiré Blanquart-Evrard. Zofia, Femme
du Caire, 1853. 25
Digital image courtesy of the Getty’s Open Content Program.
1.5 Kara Walker. Detail of Camptown Ladies, 1998. 28
Artwork © Kara Walker; Courtesy of Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York.
1.6 Kara Walker. Detail of Gone, An Historical Romance of a Civil War
as it Occurred between the Dusky Thighs of One Young Negress and
Her Heart, 1994. 32
1.7 Kara Walker. A Subtlety, or the Marvelous Sugar Baby, an Homage
to the unpaid and overworked Artisans who have refined our Sweet
tastes from the cane fields to the Kitchens of the New World on
the Occasion of the demolition of the Domino Sugar Refining
Plant, 2014. 33
Photo: Jason Wyche. Artwork © Kara Walker; Courtesy of Sikkema
Jenkins & Co., New York.
8.1 Film still of Mary Duffy in Vital Signs: Crip Culture Talks Back
(1996), directed by Sharon Snyder and David Mitchell.
Marquette, MI: Brace Yourself Productions. 150
9.1 Wafaa Bilal. Detail from Domestic Tension, performance, 2007. 157
Copyright Wafaa Bilal. Courtesy Driscoll Babcock Galleries.
9.2 Luminosity (originally performed by Marina Abramović, 1997),
as reperformed by Jill Sigman. 159
Photo: Jonathan Muzikar © The Museum of Modern Art,
New York. Digital Image © The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed
by SCALA/Art Resource, NY. © 2015 Marina Abramović. Courtesy
of Sean Kelly Gallery/(ARS), New York.
9.3 Dancers Sally Hess, Donna Costello, and Irene Hsi in the
movement section of last days/first field (2013). 162
Photo by Rafael Gamo.
9.4 Dancers planting a field of kale seedlings during a performance
of last days/first field (2013). 162
xâ•… List of Illustrations
9.5 Audience members eating kale salad and talking on the newly
planted field in last days/first field (2013). 163
9.6 Jill Sigman setting out calf brains during Brain Song (2011). 164
Photo by Julie Lemberger. © Julie Lemberger 2011.
9.7 Sigman cradles two wrapped brains as an audience member
looks on during Brain Song (2011). 165
9.8 Dancers in an improvisational movement score
in (Perma)Culture (2014). 166
Photo by Eric Breitbart.
9.9 Dancer Maria Bauman with ceramic vessels
in (Perma)Culture (2014). 166
9.10 Audience members and dancers building together onstage
with ceramic vessels in (Perma)Culture (2014). 167
Photo by Alexandra Pfister.
9.11 Hut #6 (2011) by Jill Sigman at the Oslo Opera House;
Oslo, Norway. 172
Photo by Elisabeth Færøy Lund.
9.12 Hut #9 (2014) by Jill Sigman at Godsbanen; Aarhus, Denmark. 173
Photo by L2 Lab/Alejandra Ugarte.
9.13 Hut #7 (2012) by Jill Sigman at Arts@Renaissance; Brooklyn, NY. 173
9.14 Hut #7 detail (2012) by Jill Sigman. 174
9.15 Jill Sigman in a performance of TILL at Hut #7 (2012). 175
9.16 Sigman and audience members on the lot in TILL at Hut #7 (2012). 176
11.1 Caster Semenya competing at the World Athletics
Championships in Berlin. 194
AP Photo/Anja Niedringhaus, File.
11.2 Caster Semenya appearing on the cover of YOU Magazine,
September 10, 2009. 202
Courtesy of YOU Magazine South Africa.
11.3 Phintias Painter. Attic Hydria, The music lesson. 204
Foto Marburg/Art Resource, NY.
11.4 Venere Felice with Eros.205
© Vanni/Art Resource, NY.
List of Illustrationsâ•… xi
11.5 Masaccio (Maso di San Giovanni). Expulsion from Paradise.207

Scala/Art Resource, NY.
11.6 Titian (Tiziano Vecellio). Venus of Urbino. 1538. 208
Alinari/Art Resource, NY.
11.7 Cranach, Lucas the Elder. The Judgment of Paris. Possibly c.1528.209
© The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image source: Art Resource, NY.
11.8 Edouard Manet. Olympia. 1863. 210
© RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, NY.
11.9 Eugène Delacroix. Death of Sardanapalus (Ashurbanipal
668–627 bce). 1827. 211
© Musée du Louvre, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais/Angèle Dequier/Art
Resource, NY.
11.10 Jean-Léon Gérôme. A Roman Slave Market, c.1884.212
List of Contributors
Ann J. Cahill is Professor of Philosophy at Elon University. She has written exten-
sively on the philosophy of the body. She is author of Overcoming Objectification:
A Carnal Ethics (Routledge, 2010) and Rethinking Rape (Cornell, 2001), as well as art-
icles including “In Defense of Self-Defense” (Philosophical Papers, 2011), “Getting to
My Fighting Weight” (Hypatia, 2010), “Feminist Pleasure and Feminine Beautification”
(Hypatia, 2003), and “Foucault, Rape, and the Construction of the Feminine Body”
(Hypatia, 2000). She is the co-editor of a special issue of the Journal of Social Philosophy
dedicated to the theme of “Miscarriage, Reproductive Loss, and Fetal Death.”
Maria del Guadalupe Davidson is Director of the Women’s and Gender
Studies Program and Co-Director of the Center for Social Justice at the University of
Oklahoma. Her research areas include rhetorical theory and criticism, the intersec-
tion of race and gender, black feminism, and Africana philosophical thought. Her
new book Black Women, Agency, and the New Black Feminism is forthcoming from
Routledge. Dr. Davidson’s most recent publications include the co-edited volume
Exploring Race in Predominantly White Classrooms: Scholars of Color Reflect
(Routledge, 2014). Dr. Davidson is currently working on a book project about black
women and curriculum design, and a larger academic and social project that explores
the one hundred-year anniversary of women’s suffrage.
Stephen Davies is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of
Auckland. He is the author of many articles and books, including The Artful Species
(Oxford University Press, 2013). He is a former President of the American Society
for Aesthetics.
A. W. Eaton is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Illinois-
Chicago. She received her PhD from the University of Chicago in both philosophy
and art history in 2003. She works on topics in feminism, aesthetics and philosophy
of art, value theory, and Italian Renaissance painting. Her special interests include
the epistemological and ontological status of aesthetic value, the relationship between
ethical and artistic value, feminist critiques of pornography, representations of rape
in the European artistic tradition, and artifact teleology. Professor Eaton was a
Laurence Rockefeller Fellow at Princeton’s Center for Human Values in 2005–6. She
is the editor of the Aesthetics & Philosophy of Art section of Philosophy Compass.
C. Winter (Chong-suk) Han is Assistant Professor of Sociology/Anthropology
at Middlebury College. He is author of Geisha of a Different Kind: Race and Sexuality in
Gaysian America (New York University Press, 2015) and many articles about the inter-
section of race and sexuality, including “Sexy Like a Girl, Horny Like a Boy: Contemporary
xiv list of contributors
‘Gay’ Narratives about Gay Asian Men” (Critical Sociology, 2008), “Asian Girls Are
Prettier: Gendered Presentations as Stigma Management among Gay Asian Men”
(Symbolic Interaction, 2009), and “They Don’t Want to Cruise Your Type: Gay Men of
Color and the Racial Politics of Exclusion” (Social Identities, 2007). Prior to becoming
an academic, he was an award-winning journalist and served for three years as the
editor of the International Examiner, the longest continuously publishing pan-Asian
American newspaper in the United States.
Sherri Irvin is Presidential Research Professor of Philosophy and Women’s and

Gender Studies and Co-Director of the Center for Social Justice at the University of
Oklahoma. She works on the philosophy of contemporary art, feminist aesthetics, the
nature of aesthetic experience, and the connection of aesthetics to social justice. Her
book Immaterial: A Philosophy of Contemporary Art is forthcoming from Oxford
University Press.
Sheila Lintott is Associate Professor and the John Howard Harris Professor of
Philosophy at Bucknell University. She is editor of Motherhood—Philosophy for
Everyone: The Birth of Wisdom (Wiley-Blackwell, 2011); with Maureen Sander-Staudt,
co-editor of Philosophical Inquiries into Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Mothering:
Maternal Subjects (Routledge, 2011); with Allen Carlson, co-editor of Nature,
Aesthetics, and Environmentalism: From Beauty to Duty (Columbia, 2008); and author
of a number of journal articles and book chapters on feminist philosophy, philosophy
of art and aesthetics, the aesthetics of nature, and philosophy of friendship.
Barbara Gail Montero is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the College of

Staten Island and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She has
published papers on a wide range of topics related to the mind and is author of a
forthcoming Oxford University Press book, Thought in Action: Expertise and the
Conscious Mind. Her research has been supported by fellowships from the National
Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, and
the Mellon Foundation. You can find out more about her and her research at
<http://barbaramontero.wordpress.com/>.
Glenn Parsons is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Ryerson University,

Toronto. He is the author of Aesthetics and Nature (Continuum Press, 2008),
Functional Beauty (with Allen Carlson; Oxford, 2008), and The Philosophy of Design
(Polity Press, forthcoming).
Deborah L. Rhode is the Ernest W. McFarland Professor of Law and the Director
of the Center on the Legal Profession at Stanford University. She is the former chair of
the American Bar Association’s Commission on Women in the Profession, and the
former director of Stanford’s Institute for Research on Women and Gender. She writes
primarily in the area of legal ethics and gender equity and is author or editor of
twenty-seven books and over 300 articles. Her books on gender include What Women
list of contributors xv
Want (Oxford University Press, 2014), The Beauty Bias (Oxford University Press,
2010), Women and Leadership: The State of Play and Strategies for Reform (with
Barbara Kellerman; Jossey-Bass, 2009), The Difference “Difference” Makes: Women
and Leadership (Stanford University Press, 2003), and Speaking of Sex (Harvard
University Press, 1997).
Yuriko Saito is Professor of Philosophy at the Rhode Island School of Design.
Her research fields are everyday aesthetics, Japanese aesthetics, and environmental
aesthetics, and she has published a number of articles and book chapters on these
subjects. Her book Everyday Aesthetics was published by Oxford University Press
(2008) and she is currently working on a sequel for the same publisher.
Richard Shusterman is the Dorothy F. Schmidt Eminent Scholar in the Humanities,
Professor of Philosophy, and Director of the Center for Body, Mind, and Culture
at Florida Atlantic University. He has authored several books, including Thinking through
the Body: Essays in Somaesthetics (Cambridge, 2012), Body Conscious: A Philosophy of
Mindfulness and Somaesthetics (Cambridge, 2008; translated into six languages to date),
Performing Live: Aesthetic Alternatives for the Ends of Art (Cornell, 2000; four transla-
tions), Practicing Philosophy: Pragmatism and the Philosophical Life (Routledge, 1997;
five translations), and Pragmatist Aesthetics: Living Beauty, Rethinking Art (Blackwell,
1992; 2nd ed., Rowman & Littlefield, 2000; fourteen translations), and over 200 articles,
many of which treat aesthetic and other philosophical issues related to the body. He is
known as the founder of the discipline of somaesthetics.
Tobin Siebers was the V. L. Parrington Collegiate Professor at the University of
Michigan. He is the author of ten books, most recently of two volumes in the field
of disability studies, Disability Theory (Michigan, 2008) and Disability Aesthetics
(Michigan, 2010). In 2011 he received the Senior Scholar Award of the Society for
Disability Studies.
Jill Sigman is a movement artist who works with live body and found materials.
Her work lies at the intersection of dance, visual installation, and social practice art.
Sigman has been pioneering in blurring boundaries between media and in exploring
environmental issues and themes of sustainability through live performance. She has
been honored as a Choreographic Fellow at the Center for Creative Research at NYU,
a Creative Campus Fellow at Wesleyan University, a Choreographic Fellow at the
Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography, a Movement Research Artist in
Residence, and through numerous other grants and residencies internationally.
Sigman was trained in classical ballet, modern dance, art history, and analytic philos-
ophy. She holds a PhD in philosophy from Princeton University, and has published in
The Journal of Philosophical Research, Midwest Studies in Philosophy, TkH (Journal for
Performing Arts Theory), and Contact Quarterly. Sigman is Artistic Director of jill
sigman/thinkdance, founded in 1998 and based in New York City: <http://www.
thinkdance.org>.
xvi list of contributors
Shirley Anne Tate is Associate Professor in “Race” and Culture and Director of
the Centre for Ethnicity and Racism Studies (CERS) in the School of Sociology and
Social Policy at the University of Leeds. She is also a Research Fellow and Visiting
Professor in the Institute for Reconciliation and Social Justice at the University of the
Free State, South Africa. She is author of Black Women’s Bodies and the Nation: Race,
Gender and Culture (Palgrave, 2015), Caribbean Racisms (with Ian Law; Palgrave,
2015), Black Beauty: Aesthetics, Stylization, Politics (Ashgate, 2009), Black Skins, Black
Masks: Hybridity, Dialogism, Performativity (Ashgate, 2005), and several articles
about feminism, gender, Black identity and “mixed race,” including “Playing in the
Dark: Being Unafraid and Impolite” (European Journal of Women’s Studies, 2011),
“Not All the Women Want to be White: Decolonizing Beauty Studies” (Encarnación
Gutiérrez Rodríguez et al., eds., Decolonizing European Sociology: Transdisciplinary
Approaches, Ashgate, 2010), “Translating Melancholia: A Poetics of Black Interstitial
Community” (Community, Work & Family, 2007), and “Black Beauty: Shade, Hair
and Anti-Racist Aesthetics” (Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2007).
Edward B. Weiser, MD, FACOG, FACS, is a gynecologic oncologist who is
Adjunct Associate Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Department of Obstetrics
and Gynecology, Indiana University School of Medicine. He retired from the active
practice of medicine in 2007 after more than thirty years. He is the author of many
research articles on women’s reproductive health and clinical oncology in journals
including Gynecologic Oncology, Obstetrics & Gynecology, and Radiology. He cur-
rently writes on topics in medical ethics, feminism, and aesthetics.
Peg Brand Weiser is an artist, Emerita Associate Professor of Philosophy and
Women’s Studies at Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI),
editor of Beauty Unlimited (Indiana University Press, 2013) and Beauty Matters
(Indiana University Press, 2000), and co-editor with Carolyn Korsmeyer of Feminism
and Tradition in Aesthetics (Penn State University Press, 1995). Her articles on femi-
nist art and aesthetics have appeared in The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism,
Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy, Simone de Beauvoir Studies, and various
anthologies. She currently chairs the Feminist Caucus Committee of the American
Society for Aesthetics.
George Yancy is Professor of Philosophy at Emory University. He received his BA
(with honors) in Philosophy from the University of Pittsburgh, his first Master’s
degree from Yale University in Philosophy, and his second Master’s degree in Africana
Studies from NYU, where he received a distinguished Fellowship. His PhD (with dis-
tinction) is in Philosophy from Duquesne University. He has authored, edited, or
co-edited seventeen books. His first authored book received an Honorable Mention
from the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights, and
three of his edited books have been selected as CHOICE Outstanding Academic
Titles. He is editor of the Philosophy of Race book series at Lexington Books. His
list of contributors xvii
series of interviews on race that appears in The Stone at the New York Times is well
known. He has twice won the Duquesne University McAnulty College and Graduate
School of Liberal Arts Faculty Award for Excellence in Scholarship. His most recent
edited book is entitled White Self-Criticality beyond Anti-Racism: How Does it Feel to
be a White Problem? (2015).
Introduction
Why Body Aesthetics?
Sherri Irvin
The body is a rich object for aesthetic inquiry. Bodies feature in many everyday
aesthetic experiences: our own body is always available to us for aesthetic assessment
(for better or worse), and we assess and respond to the bodily appearances of others
both consciously and unconsciously. This practice can be a source of delight for both
the subject and the object of the gaze. The body, whether depicted or actively perform-
ing, features centrally in aesthetic experiences of many art forms and sports as well.
A crucial thing about bodies is that they are not detachable from the persons whose
bodies they are. The body is deeply intertwined with one’s identity and sense of self,
and aesthetic consideration of bodies thus raises acute ethical questions. Notoriously,
the aesthetic assessment of bodies can perpetuate a variety of forms of oppression.
Women are disproportionately subject to narrowly defined standards of beauty that
are, for many, difficult, costly, or impossible to meet; and compliance with these stand-
ards is unfairly used as a criterion for the allocation of a wide variety of social and
economic goods (Rhode 2010). Standards of attractiveness in white-dominated socie-
ties are derived from norms related to white bodies, leading to judgments of exoticism
and/or ugliness for members of other racial groups (Craig 2002; Hobson 2005;
Tate 2012). People with visible disabilities may be seen as freakish and treated as asex-
ual by virtue of the ways in which their bodies differ from societal norms of attractive-
ness (Garland-Thomson 1997; Wilkerson 2002). And people whose gender expression
is thought not to fit with their presumed biological sex are sometimes subjected to
harsh aesthetic judgments that motivate social penalties ranging from shunning to
physical violence (Valentine 2007).
Aesthetic standards thus serve a disciplinary function, maintaining oppressive
norms of race, gender, and sexuality. They also condemn those judged ugly to penalties
in domains seemingly unrelated to attractiveness: worse education, parental care, and
healthcare; diminished employment prospects and earnings; harsher punishment in
schools during childhood and in the criminal justice system in adulthood; and reduced
Financial support was provided by the Office of the Vice President for Research, the Office of the
Provost, and the Department of Philosophy, University of Oklahoma.
2 Sherri Irvin
likelihood of receiving needed help, among many others (e.g. Hamermesh 2011;
Hatfield and Sprecher 1986; Rhode 2010).
Aesthetic theories focused on artworks and natural environments have tended to
strive for objective standards of beauty, linked to an expectation that apt aesthetic
judgments about particular objects will converge. Evolutionary psychologists have
sometimes promoted a similar approach in relation to the body. We have evolved, it is
suggested, to find specific bodies attractive because these bodies are the most repro-
ductively fit; apt judgments about the aesthetic value of bodies will thus converge. But
convergence of aesthetic judgments about bodies simply magnifies the unjust effects
discussed above by concentrating them on a few people. Moreover, temporal and
cross-cultural variability in standards of attractiveness may lead us to question the via-
bility of objective standards of aesthetic value when it comes to the body—and perhaps
when it comes to other objects as well. Since the nature and grounding of aesthetic
value are fundamental questions in aesthetics, thinking about the body from an aes-
thetic perspective may thus occasion a fresh look at some of the most basic theoretical
issues in aesthetics.
The aesthetics of the body goes beyond bodily attractiveness to include assessments
of the body’s performance and functioning. This is obviously true in the arts: in dance
and often in theater, the performer’s style of movement and physical presence may be
crucial to the aesthetic success of the work. In sports, aesthetic assessment of the body’s
functioning and sheer physical attractiveness can be tied up in complex ways with our
evaluation of athletic performance. And in everyday life, the way in which one deploys
the body can be more aesthetically efficacious than one’s looks narrowly construed.
The aesthetic potential of the performing body thus deserves vastly more attention
than it has received, particularly within philosophy.
The aesthetics of the body is not only about bodies assessed from the outside. It is
also about how aesthetic experience is felt “from the inside.” While philosophical dis-
cussion of aesthetic experience was long focused on the visual and auditory domains,
with other senses treated as too crude to be of interest, contemporary aestheticians
have defended the idea that deeply somatic experiences involving the tactile and pro-
prioceptive senses can also be genuinely aesthetic (e.g. Irvin 2008; Korsmeyer 2002;
Montero 2006; Saito 2007; Shusterman 2008, 2012). The aesthetics of felt bodily expe-
rience is a rich vein for further philosophical attention.
This volume is divided into four sections which offer a sampling of several intellec-
tual paths down which an aesthetics of the body may lead us, with special attention to
connections with ethics and social justice.
Representation
Representation of the body in art, media, and culture shapes identities and oppressive
practices. Representation can also be used to resist, reform, or undermine such practices.
Why Body Aesthetics? 3
As Maria del Guadalupe Davidson discusses in “Black Silhouettes on White Walls:

Kara Walker’s Magic Lantern,” photography and even cartography have long been
used didactically to propagate stereotypes about and forms of oppression against Black
women. When contemporary artist Kara Walker deploys those same stereotypes in her
work, she is sometimes accused of being complicit in white supremacy. But as
Davidson argues, Walker’s works have an antiracist didactic function: in making visi-
ble the simultaneous violence and absurdity of the objectification of Black subjects,
Walker instructs viewers that the copious residue of historical stereotyping must be
not swept aside as an irrelevant relic, but actively faced and eradicated. Walker’s most
recent work also lures viewers into expressions of racialized objectification, thereby
forcing us to confront the fact that anti-Black violence remains fully alive today and
cannot be dismissed as a mere figment of a racist past. Davidson thus demonstrates the
power of representations both to reinscribe and to expose and undermine oppressive
practices.
In “Taste in Bodies and Fat Oppression,” A. W. Eaton takes on anti-fat bias. Aesthetic
preferences for thinness are often constructed as natural and founded in evolutionary
pressures, when in fact body-type preferences are culturally variable and historically
malleable over the course of just a few decades. While concern for others’ health is
sometimes used as a justification for fat-shaming and other forms of anti-fat discrimi-
nation, these forms of oppression impose health costs of their own, and are founded on
ill-substantiated beliefs about the connection between fat and health.
Eaton advocates resistance to fat oppression via an Aristotelian strategy of alter-
ing bodily taste through the skillful selection and use of representations. As she
notes, the strategy of consciously altering the kinds of representations consumed by
an individual or a society can be extended to other forms of appearance-related
oppression based in race, disability, age, gender identity, and other visible markers
of “difference.”
Media representations are a major force in the construction of gender. As C. Winter
Han argues in “From ‘Little Brown Brothers’ to ‘Queer Asian Wives’: Constructing the
Asian Male Body,” the media shape our understanding of masculinity both by present-
ing exemplars thereof and by indicating who is excluded: particularly Asian men, who
are systematically feminized. The construction of masculinity is thus also an exercise
in the construction of gendered and racialized stereotypes. These stereotypes target
both gay and straight Asian men: from Korean pop star PSY, whose heterosexual
encounters in the wildly popular video for “Gangnam Style” are packaged as comical
and asexual, to an ad by the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, in which a gay
Asian man is presented as the loving “wife” who supports his white husband wishing to
serve in the military, Asian men are used to define the boundaries of masculinity by
their placement outside those boundaries. The issue is not that these images are problem-
atic in themselves. It is, rather, that media representations of Asian men are narrowly
circumscribed within the domain of the feminine, and that feminized self-presentations
and feminine roles are broadly stigmatized, especially when assumed by men. We thus
4 Sherri Irvin
need not only a much more varied repertoire of media representations of Asian men,
but also a dismantling of the evaluative judgments that accompany ideas of femininity
and masculinity.
Look
Aesthetic judgments of the look of bodies are deeply woven into other domains of life.
As Deborah L. Rhode argues in “Appearance as a Feminist Issue,” discrimination based
on appearance is rife, with women bearing a disproportionate burden. Norms of
appearance siphon attention away from women’s accomplishments, and attempts to
comply involve substantial financial and health costs. Because norms of attractiveness
are gendered, racialized, and classed, discrimination against those judged unattractive
tends to reinforce gender, racial, and socio-economic class disadvantage.
Resistance to the norms creates a misogynistic backlash, as Rhode herself experi-
enced through the hate mail she received after she authored a book (Rhode 2010) on
the topic. Moreover, women have internalized societal norms of attractiveness, and
may comply both because they find it pleasurable and because they wish to avoid the
penalties for non-compliance. Rhode concludes that feminist attention should focus
more on undermining appearance-based pressure and discrimination and less on
condemning women’s individual choices.
Shirley Anne Tate inquires into how looks function as a signifier, especially of
national identity and citizenship. In “A Tale of Two Olympians: Beauty, ‘Race,’ Nation,”
she examines the use of two elite athletes, Jessica Ennis and Jeanette Kwakye, in brand-
ing campaigns for commercial products and for the Great Britain Olympic team. The
body and face of Ennis, a relatively light-skinned mixed-race woman, were embraced
as signifiers for beauty and national identity, whereas Kwakye, whose skin is darker,
was selected to advertise cleaning products and to represent a campaign to clean up
London prior to the 2012 Olympics—a troubling connection given the history of
women of color as domestic workers within the power structures of white supremacy.
As Tate argues, the relative positioning of Ennis and Kwakye conveys a complex
message about Great Britain as a tolerant, post-racial nation that is willing to offer the
benefits of full belonging to some who have been previously designated as “other”—
but only some. Kwakye, with her darker skin, is not eligible to represent the nation in
the way that Ennis can. While these athletes’ deployment in branding campaigns is
meant to send a message of inclusiveness, it in fact reveals the ongoing racialization of
notions of beauty and national identity.
In “The Merrickites,” Glenn Parsons considers the viability of one possible solution
to the problem of oppressive and racialized standards of beauty. Parsons draws both on
Naomi Wolf ’s (1990, 291) idea that discourses of beauty should shift to “radiance,” or
“light coming out of the face and body, rather than a spotlight on the body, dimming
the self,” and on the wish of Joseph Merrick, known as the “Elephant Man,” to be judged
based only on his mind or soul and not on his body. Parsons asks what it would mean
to care only about the self as it is expressed through the body and to abandon attention
to beauty in the conventional sense, which he defines as “pleasing perfection.” To live
up to Wolf ’s and Merrick’s ideal, Parsons suggests, would require that we focus only on
those aspects of the body that are naturally expressive of one’s self, soul, or character
and cease to admire perfection of any other aspects of the body. If we consider a society
of “Merrickites” governed by this ideal, Parsons argues, we should find it deeply flawed:
since many aspects of bodily perfection, such as health, strength, and speed, are relevant
to survival and autonomy, to abandon the pursuit of bodily perfection is to abandon
ideals of a desirable life that are typically central to the structures of a well-formed
society. We thus do have reason to strive for, and to prize, aspects of bodily perfection
that may not be expressive of the soul or self.
In “And Everything Nice,” Stephen Davies offers a survey and critique of the current
landscape of thinking about sexual attractiveness within evolutionary psychology.
Davies argues that, in its focus on such things as facial symmetry and female hip-to-
waist ratios, evolutionary psychology has tended to overemphasize universality and
minimize the factors that promote idiosyncrasy and divergence in preferences for
sexual partners. Moreover, evolutionary psychology tends to construe sexual attrac-
tiveness as almost exclusively a matter of physical markers of appearance and scent,
and pays little attention to the way that things like a person’s behavior, intelligence, and
social interaction play into our judgments about them. Davies suggests that by evolu-
tionary psychology’s own lights, sexual attractiveness should be a matter not just of
who is genetically fit in a narrow sense, but of who will be a good parent, able not just to
contribute gametes to healthy offspring but to nurture those offspring and foster in
them the qualities that will make them into good parents themselves. Moreover, of
course, evolutionary influences on our preferences are far from decisive; both culture
and individual choices may play a very significant role in who we find sexually attrac-
tive. Davies concludes sexual attractiveness would be better understood as having less
to do with looks (and smells) and more to do with a broader range of social and behav-
ioral criteria that are associated with full personhood.
Performance
This section considers bodies in performance and how they function both aesthetically
and ethically. In “In/Visible: Disability on the Stage,” Tobin Siebers begins by interro-
gating the very notion of visibility as it pertains to disability. Disabilities that are often
spoken of as “visible” may go unnoticed in a context where observers lack experience
with disability or have been socially conditioned to expect that everyone present is
nondisabled. On the other hand, when an actor’s disability becomes visible on stage, it
may be hypervisible, obscuring attention to other aspects of the production. Most
often, however, disability is made invisible on stage by its very exclusion, because disa-
bility is understood as an aesthetic disruption or obstacle.
6 Sherri Irvin
The theater, then, may seem to be governed by an aesthetic of “passing”: disabled

actors can play nondisabled characters only if they are able to “pass” as nondisabled.
In fact, though, when nondisabled actors play disabled characters, it may be aes-
thetically crucial that they not pass: the audience’s ability to manage the disruptive
emotions associated with disability may depend on knowledge that the disability is
only performed. Through the example of Mary Duffy’s performance as the Venus de
Milo, Siebers advocates that we move beyond an aesthetics of passing and toward an
exploration of the distinctive aesthetic effects that arise through the incorporation
of disabled bodies in performance, resulting in a recognition of disability itself as a
positive aesthetic value.
In “Live, Body-Based Performance: An Account from the Field,” artist Jill Sigman
discusses why, in a society that prizes efficiency, the creation of cost- and labor-intensive
works of dance and performance art, which must be seen live and can be presented
only to a limited audience, is worthwhile. Sigman argues that live bodily presence plays
an irreplaceable role in the cultivation of empathy, something that cannot be dupli-
cated through the mediation of video. Live performance also lends itself to real-time
experiences, since it cannot simply be fast-forwarded; and such immersive, durational
experiences may lead viewers to be more connected to what is happening around
them and more willing to engage with and through their own bodies. These forms of
connection have a powerful ethical dimension, combatting forms of distance and dis-
engagement that characterize much of contemporary life.
The role of body in these effects is complex. The “look” of body, in the traditional
sense, may be of minimal relevance, and even the most specific details of bodily
movement and functioning may not be crucial. Sigman suggests that the most critical
aesthetic effect may, instead, be the performing body’s power to effect a change in the
space itself, or in how we perceive that space.
In “Aesthetic Effortlessness,” Barbara Gail Montero examines a specific feature that
is often identified as aesthetically relevant to performance. Finding neither Bergson’s
(1889/2001) nor Spencer’s (1852/1892) account of effortlessness fully satisfactory,
Montero offers a new account that considers the relationship of effortlessness with
difficulty. Often, she suggests, we particularly prize the appearance of effortlessness
because we know that the performance is in fact difficult. The full aesthetic effect, then,
may require that difficulty be simultaneously revealed and concealed. The viewer’s
epistemic position may be crucial: knowledge that the performance is difficult may
make the appearance of effortlessness more impressive; yet if one sympathizes with the
performer’s true effort too closely, one’s immersion in effortlessness, which may
involve a sympathetic experience of ease in one’s own body, may be blocked. When one
believes that the performer’s movement is genuinely without effort, this may prevent
one from experiencing the movement as aesthetically effortless, unless one is indexing
it to the level of difficulty it would have if one tried it oneself. Though effortlessness is
somewhat out of fashion in contemporary dance, Montero suggests, we find it natu-
rally rewarding; effortlessness thus deserves deeper aesthetic inquiry.
In “Misleading Aesthetic Norms of Beauty: Perceptual Sexism in Elite Women’s

Sports,” Peg Brand Weiser and Edward B. Weiser examine how race and gender
interact with standards of attractiveness to produce injustice, specifically against
female athletes. When athletes train for elite sports, their bodies undergo predictable
changes as they become stronger and faster. One might expect that these changes
would be seen as expressions of beauty, since they represent a honing of the body’s
capacities. Instead, Weiser and Weiser note, increased muscularity and other changes
in the appearance and style of movement of the female athlete’s body come to be read
as “masculine,” and thus as incompatible with both beauty and femaleness. Since
norms of beauty in white-dominated contexts are racialized white, this effect is
exacerbated for Black athletes. Many athletes, as a result, have been subjected to inva-
sive scrutiny and even excluded from competition because their bodies failed to satisfy
aesthetic norms of what female bodies should look like.
Weiser and Weiser propose a new aesthetic approach to the athlete’s body, one that
recognizes a unique form of beauty that is the result of intense athletic training and
may bear little relation to conventional gendered and racialized beauty norms. We
should reject gendered restrictions on what can count as beauty or as appropriate
appearance, they argue: if we wish to tie beauty to aspects of identity while showing
respect for persons, we should recognize that athletic identity may be far more relevant
than gender identity.
Practice
Aesthetic body practices are extremely diverse, comprising cultivation of somatic aes-
thetic experiences, forms of aesthetic self-constitution, intentional reshaping of our
aesthetic judgments of bodies, and practices of using the body aesthetically to achieve
moral ends.
In “Body Aesthetics and the Cultivation of Moral Virtues,” Yuriko Saito discusses
the moral resonance of aesthetic practices of bodily movement and performance.
The moral quality of our actions lies not just in what we do, but in how we do it—or,
to put it differently, how we do something is part of what we do, not separable from
it. The style and manner with which we act is aesthetic: it consists of the perceptible
qualities of our actions, including how they look, feel, and sound. Our style of action
can be expressive of care and respect over and above the “what” of our action as it
is generally construed. As Saito demonstrates, the separation between the “what”
and “how” of action is much less prominent in several Asian traditions than it has
often been within Western ethical and aesthetic thinking (though Schiller 1882 is a
notable exception).
Concern with the style of our actions should motivate us to engage in active, physical
cultivation of aesthetic practices of the body, Saito argues. Such practices may change
our attitudes, as Nancy Sherman (2005) has observed, and also improve the quality of
8 Sherri Irvin
our own experiences. But most crucially, they affect others by improving the experi-
ences we cause for them; and this improvement may have a rippling effect, causing
them to extend caring, respectful forms of engagement to others. Ultimately, Saito
suggests, engaging in aesthetic practices of the body is a way to make a positive contri-
bution to the world-making project in which we are all collectively engaged.
In “White Embodied Gazing, the Black Body as Disgust, and the Aesthetics of
Un-Suturing,” George Yancy takes on the complex aesthetics of race relations. White
gazing, he argues, is a perceptual practice embedded within white supremacy that con-
structs the Black body as an object of disgust and fear. Disgust, or the “white embodied
revulsive response,” is an aesthetic response (cf. Korsmeyer 2011) corresponding to
whites’ experience of the “disrupt[ion of] the harmony and symmetry of white space”
when the Black body enters it: an aesthetic response that can and does erupt into vio-
lence that has taken the lives of Jordan Davis, Trayvon Martin, and Renisha McBride,
among many others.
The practice of white gazing, Yancy suggests, is deeply woven into the fabric of the
white self. Whites must, therefore, engage in a practice of self-making—or, rather,
self-unmaking—that he terms un-suturing. Un-suturing involves embracing our
mutual entanglement and somatic vulnerability, rather than reaffirming the impreg-
nability aspired to by whiteness. White antiracism, then, necessarily involves an
ethico-aesthetic project of self-reconstruction to root out racist practices of perceiv-
ing and responding somatically to the Black body. Yancy’s account functions as both
exhortation and lament, given the many failures of white police officers and citizens
to allow themselves to become un-sutured in acknowledgment of Black dignity
and humanity.
While Saito and Yancy take on the aesthetics of world-making and self-making, the
final three chapters consider aesthetic body practices in specific domains: eating and
sexuality. In “Somaesthetics and the Fine Art of Eating,” Richard Shusterman encour-
ages us to think of eating as an aesthetic practice of the body. As Shusterman notes,
most aesthetic attention to food has focused on the act of cooking and the qualities of
the food itself. However, eating, the actual act of ingesting food, has its own aesthetic
qualities that are far from fully determined by what is eaten. Eating is a deeply multi-
sensory experience, involving, in addition to the taste, smell, and look of food, the
sound of one’s own eating, and tactile and proprioceptive experiences generated by
one’s posture, by the contact of food and eating implements with one’s body, and by
one’s own bodily movements in the act of eating. Attention to eating as an aesthetic
practice, then, is a way to hone one’s perceptual acuity, particularly regarding somatic
experiences of inner parts of the body such as the mouth, throat, esophagus, and stom-
ach. Moreover, each meal has its own structure, dependent on choices about what (and
what not) to eat, how to time one’s eating, the sequence in which things are eaten, and
choices about when to pause or stop eating. Specific aesthetic attention may be directed
toward the construction and experiencing of this structure. Shusterman also notes
that eating with others may generate a form of “communal choreography” that creates
pleasing aesthetic experiences that promote social cohesiveness. Eating itself, then, is
worthy of aesthetic attention and of cultivation as a complex aesthetic practice.
The final two chapters in the volume deal with aesthetic practices of reforming one’s
sexual tastes for certain kinds of bodies, where those tastes are found to be oppressive.
In “Sexual Desire, Inequality, and the Possibility of Transformation,” Ann J. Cahill
argues that while sexual tastes have often been treated as givens that are immune to
criticism, they should in fact be subject to ethical assessment. In the service of her
argument, Cahill expands the notion of sexual orientation beyond attraction to bodies
as sexed or gendered, to include other aspects of sexual preference that may be even
more powerful but often remain unnamed: for instance, preference for people of a cer-
tain age range, economic class, race, or range of physical or cognitive ability. Borrowing
from William Wilkerson’s (2007) account of the dynamic process by which sexual ori-
entations are formed, Cahill argues that sexual preferences are partly a product of
interpretive acts which can be assessed ethically and reformed without feeding into the
Western tendency to endorse a hierarchy of mind over body. While expressly rejecting
the ethical or practical viability of “conversion therapy” that aims to undermine homo-
sexual desire, Cahill advocates an autonomous aesthetic practice of transforming one’s
sexual desires for the purpose of undermining structural inequality.
In thinking about the process of transformation, Cahill adopts, with Karen Davis
(1990), an analogy between sexual desire and laughter. Though laughter is a somatic
phenomenon and is often experienced as automatic, it occurs in a social and interpre-
tative context and is subject to choice and reconsideration. Laughter, like sexual
desire, can function either in concert with or in opposition to oppression; and where
our laughter is oppressive, it seems we are obligated to change not just the laughter
itself but the underlying disposition to find certain things humorous. Cahill supports
her analysis through appeal to Shannon Sullivan’s (2006) and George Yancy’s (2008)
arguments that anti-racism involves a deep commitment to somatic and affective
retraining.
In “Sex Objects and Sexy Subjects: A Feminist Reclamation of Sexiness,” Sheila
Lintott and Sherri Irvin take on the idea that sexiness, as an aesthetic attribute, may be
compromised by its history of implication in patriarchal, racist, ableist, and heteronor-
mative systems of objectification. Like Cahill, Lintott and Irvin see sexual recognition
as an important affirmation of one’s humanity, and thus better reclaimed than dis-
carded in light of feminist concerns. After rejecting two oppressive notions of sexiness,
the biological and the purely prurient senses, Lintott and Irvin propose that sexiness
should be reformed through a concerted aesthetic practice. Rather than seeing sexi-
ness as an aesthetic attribute of the body alone, they argue, we should treat it as an
assessment of the whole embodied person that takes into particular account the per-
son’s expression of sexual subjectivity. Moreover, while seeing someone as sexy
involves aesthetically appreciating their body, this aesthetic appreciation should take
the form of encountering each body with wonder (as Cahill 2011 proposes) rather
than assessing it in relation to societal standards of physical attractiveness.
10 Sherri Irvin
As Lintott and Irvin acknowledge, one cannot simply think one’s way into new kinds
of aesthetic experiences of embodied persons. One must, instead, undertake a true
aesthetic practice whereby one finds respectful ways to engage with and appreciate the
embodied sexual subjectivity of others.
Conclusion
Philosophical inquiry into the aesthetic potential of the body has been sparse, even as
inquiries into the body—aesthetic and otherwise—have exploded in other disciplines.
Feminist philosophy, and particularly work by Peg Brand Weiser (Brand 2000, 2013),
has urged us to take the body in general, and standards of bodily beauty in particular,
more seriously; but the uptake by philosophers, even within aesthetics, has been quite
limited. Scholars in other areas of philosophy or other academic disciplines have
treated the aesthetics of the body much more extensively (e.g. Bordo 1993; Garland-
Thomson 2009; Hobson 2005; Siebers 2010; Tate 2005), but their work remains largely
unknown within philosophical aesthetics. By bringing philosophical aesthetics into
conversation with other disciplines, this volume points toward the rich potential of an
interdisciplinary aesthetics of the body.
Despite the great diversity of topics addressed here, this volume scarcely scratches
the surface of what a fully developed discipline of body aesthetics could be. Given the
potential of systematic inquiry into the aesthetics of the body to challenge oppression
and injustice, to enrich everyday life, to enhance social cohesion, and to deepen our
understanding and experiences of art, as well as to refine our thinking about classic
questions about aesthetic experience and value, it is puzzling that body aesthetics is
not already well established as a line of inquiry bringing philosophy together with
other fields. Fortunately, it is not too late.
References
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Consciousness. Translated by Frank L. Pogson. Mineola, NY: Dover.
Bordo, Susan. 1993. Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body. Berkeley:
University of California Press.
Brand, Peg Zeglin, ed. 2000. Beauty Matters. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Brand, Peg Zeglin, ed. 2013. Beauty Unlimited. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Cahill, Ann. 2011. Overcoming Objectification: A Carnal Ethics. New York: Routledge.
Craig, Maxine Leeds. 2002. Ain’t I a Beauty Queen? Black Women, Beauty, and the Politics of
Race. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Davis, Karen Elizabeth. 1990. “I Love Myself When I Am Laughing: A New Paradigm for Sex.”
Journal of Social Philosophy 21 (2–3): 5–24.
Garland-Thomson, Rosemarie. 1997. Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in
American Culture and Literature. New York: Columbia University Press.
Garland-Thomson, Rosemarie. 2009. Staring: How We Look. New York: Oxford University
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Hamermesh, Daniel S. 2011. Beauty Pays: Why Attractive People Are More Successful. Princeton,
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Hatfield, Elaine, and Susan Sprecher. 1986. Mirror, Mirror: The Importance of Looks in Everyday
Life. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.
Hobson, Janell. 2005. Venus in the Dark: Blackness and Beauty in Popular Culture. New York:
Routledge.
Irvin, Sherri. 2008. “Scratching an Itch.” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 66 (1): 25–35.
Korsmeyer, Carolyn. 2002. Making Sense of Taste: Food and Philosophy. Ithaca, NY: Cornell
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Korsmeyer, Carolyn. 2011. Savoring Disgust: The Foul and the Fair in Aesthetics. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Montero, Barbara Gail. 2006. “Proprioception as an Aesthetic Sense.” Journal of Aesthetics and
Art Criticism 64 (2): 231–42.
Rhode, Deborah L. 2010. The Beauty Bias. New York: Oxford University Press.
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Sherman, Nancy. 2005. “Of Manners and Morals.” British Journal of Educational Studies 53 (3):
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Pa rt I
Representation
1
Black Silhouettes on White Walls
Kara Walker’s Magic Lantern
Maria del Guadalupe Davidson
Images of naked black women or girls were deemed picturesque, not pornographic,
making the black female subjects almost entirely available for possession.
Deborah Willis and Carla Williams
Introduction
The purpose of this chapter is to explore the idea of didactic pornographic images,
especially as these images apply to black women’s bodies.1 To call an image didactic is to
say that the image functions in an intentionally instructive way. Analyzing colonial
images of black women’s usually naked and deliberately positioned bodies, this chap-
ter argues that the purpose of these images is, consequently, to instruct white, Western
society on how to treat the colonized black female body. Such treatment includes see-
ing the colonized black women’s bodies as hypersexual but also as other and therefore
as exploitable. As Patricia Hill Collins, among others, has shown, such images do not
fade with time; instead, they are a central component in the subjugation of black wom-
en’s lives and humanity. These images are also employed by the artist Kara Walker. Yet,
unlike the didactic pornographic images used by colonial photographers to objectify
the black female body, Walker’s images become a form of resistance that defies and
reflects the white gaze back onto itself. In so doing, they instruct white viewers on how
not to treat black bodies.
The Colonial Lens and the Colonized Image

In their book The Black Female Body: A Photographic History, Deborah Willis and
Carla Williams take readers through four different ways of representing black women’s
1
My deepest gratitude to Scott Davidson and Sherri Irvin for all their helpful feedback.
16 Maria del Guadalupe Davidson
bodies in photography: as colonized bodies, as cultural bodies, as beautiful bodies, and

finally as reclaimed bodies. The images in the book are all striking, but there are clear
distinctions between them with regard to their content and purpose. Some of the photos
present black women as agents exercising autonomy, as, for example, with illustration
132, a 1993 self-portrait by Renée Cox titled The Yo Mama (Figure 1.1). In this photo-
graph, a naked (except for a pair of black pumps), dark complexioned black woman
with dreadlocks holds a lighter complexioned, nude toddler. They stand in front of
Figure 1.1 Renée Cox. The Yo Mama, 1993.

Kara Walker’s Magic Lantern 17
a black backdrop. What is most striking about this photo is not the fact that the woman
is naked, but the apparent strength of her body. The viewer can see every muscle in her
arms and her proverbial “six pack” abs. She stares at the camera unsmiling and serious,
while the toddler looks perfectly content and safe in her arms. This photo is one of a
series of agential illustrations of black female subjects “claiming their womanhood and
power in the world of art and commerce.” This black woman literally “pick[s] up [her
child], put[s] on [her] heels, and keep[s] on pressing on,” as Cox has said in an artist
statement (Willis and Williams 2002, 151).
By contrast, other photos in the book present black women’s bodies as objects to be
studied and analyzed. Illustrations 56 (c.1855)2 and 57 (c.1880),3 for instance, show
African women in ways that are reminiscent of Saartjie Baartman—to some readers
known as the Hottentot Venus. Sander Gilman observes that during the nineteenth
century, when these photos were taken, “the female Hottentot comes to represent the
black female in nuce” and although “many groups of African blacks were known to
Europeans in the nineteenth century, the Hottentot remained representative of the
essence of the black, especially the black female” (Gilman 1985, 225). Compare this to
illustration 56, where an unnamed black woman stands completely nude (center right)
on what appears to be a white cloth. Her back is turned to the camera with only the
slightest profile of her face. Her hair seems to be gathered in a band, and she is wearing
a lovely pair of earrings. Unlike some of the other photos in the “Colonial Conquest”
section, this image does not seem to have the explicit intent to arouse the viewer, in
spite of the fact that the viewer’s eyes are drawn to the woman’s naked buttocks.
This woman, much like Baartman, is simply put on display as an artifact. She is not
presented as an object of erotic desire but of curiosity and perhaps even repulsion. For
this reason, this photograph might be described as an anti-erotic image, which serves
to demarcate the normative boundaries of femininity, beauty, and sexuality. Such a
description would align with other European descriptions of the Hottentot female
body that set it in contrast with the features of the white female body. For instance, as
Sander Gilman relates, the nineteenth-century physician and author J. J. Virey
described the Hottentot female body as the antithesis of the white female body:
Their “voluptuousness” is “developed to a degree of lascivity unknown in our climate, for their
sexual organs are much more developed than those of whites.” (Gilman 1985, 231–2)
Explaining Georges Cuvier’s perception of the Hottentot, Gilman goes on to note that
for Cuvier “the black female looks different (emphasis added). Her physiognomy, her
skin color, the form of her genitalia label her as inherently different” (Gilman 1985,
232). It is therefore no accident that illustration 56 foregrounds the woman’s buttocks
and draws the viewer’s eyes toward it. Like Baartman, the woman in the illustration has
steatopygia, a condition which causes “protruding buttocks” and which “European
2
Louis Rousseau, La Stinée, photograph, 1855, Collection La Photothèque du Musée de l’Homme.
3
J. Barnett and Co., Photograph of Woman, South Africa, photograph, 1880, Private Collection.
audiences” apparently “found riveting” (Gilman 1985, 232). This leads Z. S. Strother to

observe that the “Hottentot represented a fantasy creature without language or culture,
without memory or consciousness” for most Europeans (Strother 1999, 2).
There is something more going on in these images than simply an objective docu-
mentation of different body types or medical conditions. Gilman gets at this by raising
the broader question, “how do we organize our perceptions of the world?” (1985, 223).
Whereas Gilman takes this question in the direction of how “specific individual reali-
ties are thus given mythic extension through association with the qualities of a class”
(1985, 223), here I am interested in following a slightly different path. That is, I want to
examine how the photographic images of colonized black bodies came to organize
European perceptions of black women and how they continue to shape our percep-
tions today. The description of the woman in illustration 56 helps us to understand
this. Her photographic image does not simply depict her; it is framed in such a way that
it conditions how the European viewer sees and ought to see her—as different, imper-
fect, misshaped, disproportioned, etc. Such images, I contend, thus have a didactic
function in the sense that they instruct the viewer to see the world and others in a par-
ticular way.
Many of the images presented in the “Colonial Conquest” section—particularly
those of colonized women—could be said to have this didactic function. They train
European viewers to regard black women as other by emphasizing their difference
from white women. Yet, in addition, I want to call special attention to those images that
not only show black women as other but show them as sexually available and exploita-
ble others. These images are examples of what I will call didactic pornography, inas-
much as they not only present the black female body as other but do so in a way that
presents the black female body as available for sexual possession.4
For instance, illustration 39 (c.1850)5 depicts a young nude black woman reclining
on a large lace pillow (Figure 1.2). The woman’s left arm is raised above her head,
while her right hand rests on her right hip just to the inside of her thigh. Her index
finger is pointed down toward her clitoris and vaginal opening in a way that suggests
masturbation and sexual availability. Willis and Williams note that the “framing” of
this woman’s body “ . . . also brings the viewer into closer proximity to the woman’s
genitalia . . . ; the viewer is almost literally between her legs” (Willis and Williams 2002,
51). From her smile, the viewer might be tempted to believe that she is enjoying herself
and that she is “completely engaged in her own pleasure” (2002, 51). Yet, closer atten-
tion reveals that her body is situated quite awkwardly by the photographer—one leg
4
My use of the term “didactic pornography” is in line with the idea of controlling images—a phrase
coined by Patricia Hill Collins. Collins (2000) argues that there are four images found throughout
American history and culture that serve to “type” black women—the mammy, the matriarch, the jezebel,
and the welfare mother. These images define, to a great extent, the black female body, and most impor-
tantly, teach society how to interact with black women. Likewise, many of the images in the “Colonial
Conquest” section of Willis and Williams (2002) function as controlling images.
5
Unknown Artist, Nude Study of a Black Woman, photograph, 1850, The J. Paul Getty Museum.
Figure 1.2 The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.

Unknown maker, French. Nude study of a Black Female, about 1855. Daguerreotype. ½ plate. Image:
13.9 × 10.4 cm (5 ½ × 4 ⅛ in.). Object (whole): 21.1 × 17.1 cm (8 ⁵⁄₁₆ × 6 ¾ in.).
up and the other on the floor. The woman is “metaphorically unable to get up and walk
away: she is perpetually on display” (2002, 51). Because the viewer can only see part of
her right leg (up to her knee), Willis and Williams suggest that this “is a reminder
of another erotic symbol of the indentured, sexually available woman—the bound
feet of the Chinese concubine” (2002, 51). Her body in the photograph is literally
immobilized by the camera’s lens.
While the immobilization that takes place in illustration 39 might only be symbolic or
figurative, there are two particularly disturbing images (illustrations 61 and 62, unknown
photographer) of a young African girl. As described by Willis and Williams (2002, 74):
In both images the girl stands, wearing only jewelry, head wrap, and belt, with a crumpled
garment on the table beside her. In one view she is touching her breast; although she is in pro-
file she turns to the camera to display herself. . . . In the companion view she is shown from
behind, bent over the table to give the camera a better view.
There is an air of availability about this young girl, called the “Kroo Virgin,” who
holds her breast to highlight her nipple in one illustration and who bends over the
table in a suggestive way in the other image. Concerning this latter image, Willis
and Williams note that if the reader’s eye follows the curve of the young girl’s back,
down her buttocks, past her legs, and down to her feet, then the reader will see “a
very visible chain around the girl’s ankle” (Willis and Williams 2002, 74). This image
thus invites us to raise “disturbing questions” (2002, 74) about this young girl’s
social, physical, and psychological condition. Is this girl for sale? Is she a slave? Is she
a sexual slave?
The distinction that I would like to draw between the images presented here—the
nude black woman holding the toddler, the Hottentot, and the reclining black woman
and the enchained girl—is between three types of representation of the black female
body: agential, didactic, and didactic pornography.6 Of course, what all of these images
share in common is the fact of nudity. In fact, Willis and Williams relate that in their
search for early photographic images of black women, they “soon discovered that the
history of our image is deeply rooted in representations of our mostly unclothed bod-
ies” (2002, ix). While many of the women and girls featured in their book are either
partially or completely nude, this fact alone cannot determine whether these images
are pornographic or not.
While questions over the nature and scope of pornography are complex and have a
long history, here I want to indicate at least a couple of ways in which pornographic
images might be distinguished from the non-pornographic ones contained in the
book. First, there is the question of the content of the image and how it puts a body on
display. Here it can be helpful to follow Audre Lorde (1984), who considers the erotic
and the pornographic to be two “diametrically opposed uses of the sexual” (1984, 55).
Whereas pornography “emphasizes sensation without feeling” (1984, 54), the erotic
highlights a woman’s “creative energy” (1984, 55). Lorde argues that, for black women,
the erotic can itself be an act of resistance and agency, “for not only do we touch our
most profoundly creative source, but we do that which is female and self-affirming in
the face of a racist, patriarchal, and anti-erotic society” (1984, 59). Whereas pornography
reduces agency by objectifying the body, erotic nudity can be a source of empower-
ment to the extent that it presents the black female body as a source of agency. The key
difference, then, does not have to do with sexual content as much as it involves the
question of how the black female body is displayed in these images.
A second way to distinguish between different types of images has to do with their
relationship to the viewer. If pornography, to follow a widely used definition, is the
“explicit description or exhibition of sexual subjects or activity . . . in a manner intended
to stimulate erotic rather than aesthetic feelings” (Oxford English Dictionary), then the
intended purpose of the image is also relevant. It is the intention solely to sexually
6
To be clear, my use of the term “pornographic” does not imply that the subjects of pornography lack
agency. What sets the images in Willis and Williams (2002) apart is that many of the black women are
colonized subjects.
arouse that makes an image pornographic. Pornography thus implies a specific type of
relationship to the viewer. To make the white viewer of didactic pornography visible,
I will draw from Ann McClintock’s metaphor of the “magic lantern.” Developed in the
seventeenth century, the magic lantern was an early projector. Shteynberg explains
how it worked:
Originally, glass slides made from drawings or paintings were held up in a device, lit up by
lantern or candle light, and projected on a wall. The resulting projections were often animated
and accompanied by music as a form of entertainment. (Shteynberg 2009)
The magic lantern was a popular way for Europeans of that time to view images of
distant lands and peoples. For McClintock, the colonial mind is itself a “magic lantern.”
But, instead of projecting the colonial world to European viewers, it reverses this direc-
tion and projects “its forbidden sexual desires and fears” on to colonized people
(Loomba 1998, 154). This leads us to inquire into the gaze that is behind the lens. What
is its role in the production of these images? How does it relate to these images and to
their viewers? The camera lens is to the photographic image what the magic lantern is
to its contents. In other words, both conjure up the images they desire—in this case, of
the black female body—and in the way that they desire. Instead of simply illuminating
a world that is already there, its magical ability makes it deeply normative and ideolog-
ical, for it projects a viewpoint onto the world.
But the representation of the black female body in didactic pornography does not
simply belong to the colonial past. It is an issue that remains alive and well with us
today, as Willis and Williams’ book vividly documents. It is from the vantage point of
the colonial past and its critique by McClintock and others that this chapter will turn to
a consideration of the work of the contemporary American artist Kara Walker. Walker’s
depiction of the black female body has been a topic of debate. Some critics contend
that she simply perpetuates stereotypical and sexualized images from the past, but
I will employ the tools developed in this chapter to suggest a different interpretation.
This chapter borrows McClintock’s notion of the magic lantern in order to analyze how
Walker repurposes the magic lantern in her art. Recall that for McClintock, the colo-
nized world is a place onto which Europe projected its forbidden sexual desires and
fears. I would suggest that Walker, likewise, reveals the role of the white imagination in
the representation of the black female body. Instead of using the magic lantern to con-
tribute to the history of sexual and racial violence, however, she puts it to new use by
revealing the history of sexual and racial violence that has accompanied the sexualiza-
tion of the black female body. Walker’s silhouettes—especially those that feature sexual
violence by white men against black girls and women—displace the didactic and por-
nographic images produced by the white male gaze. They foreground white violence
and at the same time bear witness to the suffering of black women and girls. Before we
get to this point, we must first situate Walker’s work within the broader history of the
European construction of African people.
Black Women, Colonization, and the Didactic

A map says to you, “Read me carefully, follow me closely, doubt me not.” It says,
“I am the earth in the palm of your hand. Without me, you are alone and lost.”
Beryl Markham, West with the Night
Taking up the challenge issued by V.-Y. Mudimbe and Edward Said for postcolonial
scholars to “interpret” their own history and “reinvent Africa in [their] own terms,” Ali
Mazrui examines how Africa is a “product of its interactions with other civilizations”
(Mazrui 2005, 69). One significant interaction involves “European conceptualization
and cartography” which Mazrui credits with turning “Africa into a continent.”
Although Mazrui does not seem opposed to a “continentalized” African identity any
more than Achebe (1975) was opposed to the idea of a language that could unite
all Africans, what Mazrui does oppose is Europe’s invention of people, places, and
things—all of which had their own identities and histories prior to European contact.
Mazrui explains the power of European conceptualization and cartography in the
following way:
If Africa invented man . . . and the Semites invented God . . . Europe invented the world. It was
Europeans who named all the great continents of the world. Europe positioned the world so
that we think of Europe as above Africa rather than below in the cosmos. Europe timed the
world so that the Greenwich meridian chimed the universal hour. (Mazrui 2005, 75)
Cartography shapes spatial reality, and this gives it the ability to empower some at the
same time as it disempowers others. From Mazrui’s standpoint, European cartography
did not simply “turn Africa into a continent”; it also established “black” no longer as
“merely descriptive; it was also judgmental. Arabs alerted the black people of Sub-
Saharan Africa that they were black. Europe tried to convince Black people that they
were inferior” (Mazrui 2005, 70). Recognizing the power of European cartography,
historians like J. B. Harley, for example, have argued for an epistemological shift in how
we understand the world. Harley writes:
I believe a major roadblock to understanding is that we still accept uncritically the broad con-
sensus, with relatively few dissenting voices, of what cartographers tell us maps are supposed to
be. In particular, we often tend to work from the premise that mappers engage in an unques-
tionably “scientific” or “objective” form of knowledge creation. Of course, cartographers believe
they have to say this to remain credible but historians do not have that obligation. It is better
for us to begin from the premise that cartography is seldom what cartographers say it is.
(Harley 1989, 1)
I bring up this challenge to Western cartography by Harley, Mazrui, and many others,
because it provides insight into Anne McClintock’s project in Imperial Leather: Race,
Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest. She too challenges the imperialism that
is embedded in the science of cartography, even though her focus is not so much on the
representation of the world but on the discipline and control that such maps exercise
over colonized and gendered bodies.
McClintock’s book begins with a discussion of a rather curious map from Henry
rider Haggard’s novel King Solomon’s Mines (Figure 1.3). Haggard’s map provides a
useful example of the unrivaled power of European cartography. In the case of King
Solomon’s Mines, Haggard’s map is in the hands of “three white Englishmen” and
Figure 1.3 Map from Henry rider Haggard’s novel King Solomon’s Mines, rev. ed., 1907
(London: Cassell and Company), p. 21.
promises to offer them a path to material wealth (McClintock 1995, 1). Though the
map empowers them, at the same time it disempowers colonized women. For, in
addition to directing the men toward a life of wealth and leisure, the map provides a
blueprint for the domination of colonized women.
This is conveyed by the requirement that the three white men must access “the
wealth of Solomon’s treasure chamber” by “the obligatory charge of first killing
the black ‘witch mother’ Gagool” (McClintock 1995, 1). In examining the map itself,
McClintock observes that “if the map is inverted, it reveals at once the diagram of a
female body. The body is spread-eagled and truncated—the only parts drawn are
those that denote female sexuality.” In order to get to the treasure, the map instructs
the men to penetrate Gagool figuratively through the point on the map that repre-
sents her vagina and exit from “the anal pit.” McClintock describes this as “a male
birthing ritual that leaves the black mother, Gagool, lying dead within” the cave
(McClintock 1995, 3). McClintock reads Haggard’s map, then, as a didactic prescrip-
tion of how European colonizers ought to treat the colonized (and in this case black)
female body. The treatment outlined by the map includes complete exposure of her
body (especially her sexual organs) and violent penetration of her body, ultimately
bringing about her death. In this way, Haggard’s map becomes a powerful metaphor
for how the black female body is mapped and conceptualized by the white, male colo-
nial imagination.
This didactic process takes place through photography as well. Although European
countries profited greatly from colonization, most Europeans did not have direct con-
tact with black and brown bodies. Willis and Williams note that with the advent of
photography, images of black and brown people “became a source of entertainment
and edification for Europeans and Americans” (Willis and Williams 2002, 10). Instead
of having to rely on the imagination, photography made images of black bodies readily
available for consumption. The size of the photos also mattered, since “viewers could
contemplate the nude image in complete secrecy, thereby transforming their rela-
tionship with the subject depicted.” We see this, for example, in Ernest Benecke’s
mid-nineteenth-century image of Zofia, Femme du Caire (Figure 1.4). Willis and
Williams describe this photo in the following way:
Everything about the image connotes sex simultaneously proffered and denied . . . the photo-
graph provides the experience of possession while keeping the actual woman mysterious and
at a safe remove from her would-be “master.” It is promise without the possibility of fulfillment,
delectation without the messiness of consummation. (Willis and Williams 2002, 16)
Benecke and other mainly white European male photographers are an integral part of
what McClintock calls the porno-tropics, or the “long tradition of male travel as an
erotics of ravishment. For centuries, the uncertain continents—Africa, the Americas,
Asia—were figured in European lore as libidinously eroticized,” primarily because
white male photographers provided the European imagination with actual images of
black and brown bodies (McClintock 1995, 22). William Smith could only describe to
Figure 1.4 The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.

Ernest Benecke (German, born England, 1817–1894, active Egypt, Libya, and Syria 1851–1858), Louis
Désiré Blanquart-Evrard (French, 1802–1872). Zofia, Femme du Caire, 1853, salted paper print 21.3 × 16
cm (8 ⅜ × 6 ⁵⁄₁₆ in.).
Digital image courtesy of the Getty’s Open Content Program.
his European readers the sexual dangers of being a white man in Africa, where “if they
[African women] meet with a Man they immediately strip his lower Parts and throw
themselves upon him” (McClintock 1995, 23). But, with the advent of photography,
Europeans could actually view images of black women and girls on their own and
in private.
These images, produced by mainly white male photographers, clearly function as

examples of didactic pornography.7 For, they do not simply seek to arouse the viewer;
in addition, they literally teach or instruct white Europeans on how to treat black
women’s bodies. Black women are presented as the sexualized other and as available for
sexual possession. Is it any wonder, then, that when those very same Europeans were
able to lay their hands on black women’s bodies, they used them as sexual slaves, dis-
played them, dissected them, and placed their genitalia in jars? They simply came to
occupy a relationship that had already been established by the cartographic and photo-
graphic representations of the time.
It is in response to this historical context that many black women artists have sought
to disrupt the prevailing representations of the black female body. American artist
Kara Walker is one of them. What makes Walker’s work interesting and provocative, in
my opinion, is that she develops her own form of didactic pornography. In what fol-
lows, I will show that Walker appropriates the stereotypical images of the black female
body but then uses them to confront white brutality and to instruct white viewers on
how not to treat black bodies.
Kara Walker’s Didactic Pornography

No mere words can Adequately reflect the Remorse this Negress feels at having
been Cast into such a lowly state by her former Masters and so it is with a Humble
heart that she brings about their physical Ruin and earthly Demise.
Title of Kara Walker installation, 1999
Kara Walker has never shied away from controversy. Her large art installations, for
which she is primarily known, typically overpower exhibition spaces with their vio-
lence, sexual suggestiveness, and pornographic imagery. Using black silhouettes on
white walls, Walker portrays narratives of enslavement, rape, and resistance that chal-
lenge the viewer’s sense of history and morality. Yet, her images can also be viewed as
reifying stereotypical notions about the antebellum south. Viewing Walker’s installa-
tion Slavery! Slavery! (1997), for example, is comparable to reading southern apologia
literature or watching Gone with the Wind. It is rife with romance, lies, caricature, and
false beauty. In using images that call to mind fabricated notions of the antebellum
south, it could be argued that Walker’s work
play[s] into the hands of “The White Man” who everywhere seeks to establish the conditions
where actual and symbolic repression returns to thwart the aspirations of African-Americans.
(Corris and Hobbs 2003, 426)
7
Interestingly, Joseph Campbell employs the term “didactic pornography” in his analysis of James Joyce
and the distinction that Joyce makes between “proper” and “improper” art. For Campbell “improper art”
is pornographic because it “excites desire.” Pornographic art becomes didactic when it “excites loathing.”
My use of the term “didactic pornography” differs significantly from Campbell’s because it has very little to
do with the creation of feelings of loathing in the viewer.
Is there a danger in using caricature or stereotypical images to make a point, especially

when that points centers on the hot-button issue of racism?
Howardena Pindell has claimed that Walker and other young, black artists of her
generation have “sold their souls to the white art mainstream.” Speaking directly of
Walker, Pindell states:
What is troubling and complicates the matter is that Walker’s words in published interviews
mock African-Americans and Africans. . . . She has said things such as, “All black people in
America want to be slaves a little bit.” (Corris and Hobbs 2003, 430)
Pindell goes on to say, “Walker consciously or unconsciously seems to be catering

to the bestial fantasies about blacks created by white supremacy and racism” (Corris
and Hobbs 2003, 430).8 For Pindell, Walker’s pronouncement begs the question
of whether Walker has in fact unconsciously internalized romantic notions of
enslavement and, if so, whether this informs her art. Perhaps even more disturb-
ing are those images in Walker’s art that seem to implicate blacks in their own
oppression.
One example is Camptown Ladies (1998), which shows, among other images, a
white male jockey riding a black woman as if she were a racehorse (Figure 1.5). The
jockey holds a carrot on a stick in his right hand in front of the black woman’s protrud-
ing lips and outstretched hand. In the meantime, his left hand positions a riding whip
near her buttocks and right thigh. If it is not troubling enough to see this black woman’s
body depicted in such a degrading manner, this image also seems to convey a certain
amount of complicity, a willingness on her part to play the game. Without any visible
resistance on the black woman’s part, the viewer is left to contemplate whether the
message here is that black women are responsible, in some instances, for their oppres-
sion at the hands of white men. As a result, some may argue that Walker treads very
close to victim blaming and victim shaming.
This image in Camptown Ladies does not seem to take into account actual instances
in which white slave owners used the carrot–stick approach, for example, to coerce
black women to reproduce. Dorothy Roberts explains that some enslavers “rewarded
pregnancy with relief from work in the fields and additions of clothing and food, and
punished slave women who did not bear children” (Roberts 1997, 25). Later, Roberts
tells a harrowing story about enslaved women taken into a barn in North Carolina by
an enslaver who “declar[ed] he intended to flog them all to death,” telling them, “Damn
you I will let you know what you have done; you don’t breed, I have not had a young
one from one of you for several months” (Roberts 1997, 26). Whereas Walker’s
Camptown Ladies seems to minimize black women’s historical and brutal asymmetrical
relationship with white men, Roberts’ narrative puts the carrot–stick approach within
a proper historical framework by showing the imbalance of power existing between
enslaved and enslaver.
8
Though cited by Corris and Hobbs (2003), Pindell’s remarks were made at the Johannesburg Biennial
in October 1997.
Figure 1.5 Kara Walker. Detail of Camptown Ladies, 1998.

Cut paper on wall. Installation dimensions variable; approximately 97.5 × 666 inches (247.7 × 1,691.6 cm).
Striking at the heart of Walker’s use of clichéd images of black Americans is the
argument that “stereotypical representations of African-Americans cannot be rehabil-
itated; they are absolutely inappropriate as resources for expression” (Corris and
Hobbs 2003, 430).9 But this argument is not new; it has been leveled against countless
artists. Even Zora Neale Hurston encountered this condemnation from a segment of
the black intelligentsia that claimed Hurston’s use of black dialect was made for the
consumption of white racist audiences. One such critique came from Richard Wright,
who denounced Hurston’s novel Their Eyes Were Watching God as follows:
Miss Hurston voluntarily continues in her novel the tradition which was forced upon the Negro
in the theatre, that is, the minstrel technique that makes the “white folks” laugh. Her characters
eat and laugh and cry and work and kill; they swing like a pendulum eternally in that safe and
narrow orbit in which America likes to see the Negro live: between laughter and tears.
(Wright 1937, 25)
9
Corris and Hobbs (2003). Although they make this statement in their essay, they do not endorse this
position.
Wright believed that Hurston’s work amounted to minstrelsy and did very little to
progress understanding of black art, particularly among white audiences. But, in
Hurston’s case, Wright failed to see her use of the vernacular tradition as a form of
resistance. Hurston found nothing pathological about the way that southern black
people spoke or how they expressed themselves in song and dance. Whereas Wright
and others expressed shame, disgust, or anger about Hurston’s black characters and
their use of the dialectic, Hurston found a sense of pride in this aspect of black culture.
Speaking to Hurston’s use of black dialect in her novel Jonah’s Gourd Vine, John
McWhorter writes:
At one point, for instance, a character approaches another with “Hello, John. Ah see you
fixin’ tuh make soap.” John asks, “Whut make you say dat, Lucy?” Her answer: “Ah see yuh got
yo’ bones piled up.” Hurston continues, “She pointed to his crossed legs and they both
laughed immoderately.” Bone ash, you see, was used to make soap. The lesson is that this
culture—in which people spend most of their lives barefoot, literacy is rare, speech comes in
a full-blown rural black dialect, and dinner consists of the likes of sow bosom—has the intel-
ligence and wit of wordplay, just as the white world does. And Jonah’s Gourd Vine is replete
with lessons like this, a lecture in the class that Hurston would teach for the rest of her life.
(McWhorter 2009)
The belief that black people were already “splendid,” and the “insistence that the humblest
folkways of black America were a precious heritage crying for documentation,” are what
make Hurston’s writing a form of resistance (McWhorter 2009, emphasis added).
Similarly, Walker’s silhouettes can be viewed as a form of resistance (Bernier 2009,
124). She reclaims and repurposes images that traditionally have been used to deni-
grate the souls of black folk. Walker’s images speak a truth about the brutality and
absurdity of plantation life. Indeed, they demonstrate that the plantation is the ulti-
mate theater of the absurd. If the theater of the absurd is marked by the lack of meaning
of human existence and the triumph of irrationality, then the southern plantation may
be a prime example of it. Consider:
• White men sexually exploit black women. From this exploitation children are
born. White men sell their own children into slavery.
• White women are forced to live on plantations where their husband’s forced mis-
tresses also reside.
• Physical, sexual, psychological violence and death are a constant presence.
• Women are promised freedom if they bear enough enslaved children for the
plantation system.
• Enslaved people are converted to Christianity.
As one very concrete example of this absurd condition, consider the Narrative of James
Curry reprinted in John Blassingame’s seminal text Slave Testimony. Curry’s narrative
relates what happened to a slave girl of about nine or ten on the plantation where they
were both enslaved. The mistress of the house discovered that a comb “worth about
twenty-five or thirty-five and a half cents” was broken. The mistress blamed the little
girl for breaking the comb and, by Curry’s account:
She took her in the morning, before sunrise, into a room, and calling me to wait upon her, had
all the doors shut. She tied her hands, and then took her frock up over her head, and gathered
it up in her left hand, and with her right commenced beating her naked body with bunches of
willow twigs. She would beat her until her arm was tired, then thrash her on the floor, and
stamp on her with her foot, and kick her and choke her to stop her screams . . . she continued
this torture until ten o’clock, the family waiting breakfast meanwhile . . . the poor child never
recovered. A white swelling came from the bruises on one of her legs, of which she died in two
or three years. (Blassingame 1977, 131)
To perpetrate such violence—on a small child no less, and over something as meaning-
less and valueless as this particular comb—is almost beyond words. Walker’s work is
powerful because she makes visible not only the wanton violence of enslavement but
also the absurdity born from the nostalgia for the antebellum south.
Returning to Camptown Ladies, we can see that Walker should not be interpreted to
insinuate that black women (people) are in part responsible for their own oppression.
Instead, what we are viewing is a projection of the white imagination. It is in the white
imagination that the black woman is seen as complicit and that her oppression is
thereby justified. It is precisely this type of projection that facilitated and normalized
violence against black women. Likewise, the white woman who beat the little girl over
the broken comb would likely have justified her abuse of this child in a similar way—
perhaps she believed the child was being dishonest; perhaps she imagined that she
was delivering a moral teaching; perhaps she was sending a message to other enslaved
persons that theft would not be tolerated, etc. The point is that it is her imagination
that conjures up such justifications for abuse. And Walker’s work employs the magic
lantern (sometimes metaphorically and sometimes literally) to reveal the absurdity of
this perspective. For example, the image of the white jockey riding the black woman
like a racehorse does not present a “realistic” or “historical” viewpoint on enslavement,
nor does it present the black woman as complicit in her own degradation, nor does it
present Walker’s own viewpoint on it. What it does present is a white perspective that
has tangible and negative consequences for black bodies.
The scale of Walker’s art further reinforces this interpretation of her work as confron-
tational and a form of resistance. Although she has worked in other media, Walker is
most widely known for her large-scale installations, many of which contain violence that
is so in your face that you are hard pressed to look away. The scale of her work is inten-
tional and significant, because it confronts society’s unwillingness to grapple with and
acknowledge the brutality of African enslavement. This unwillingness shows itself in
the nostalgia of post-bellum movies like Gone with the Wind or history textbooks that
rewrite history and harken back to a time when things were “better” in this country.10
10
In her study The Plantation in the Postslavery Imagination, Elizabeth Russ (2009, 9) analyzes the way
that “white-columned mansions of the antebellum South continue to be objects of nostalgia.”
In her study The Plantation in the Postslavery Imagination, Elizabeth Russ analyzes the
way that “white-columned mansions of the antebellum South continue to be objects of
nostalgia” (Russ 2009, 9). To call Walker’s work stereotypical or mere caricature is to
miss the role of confrontation within it. Her images (for all their violence, or because
of all their violence) are not unconsciously borrowed stereotypes; they are deliberately
and purposefully chosen.
Like the sexually explicit photographs displayed in the “colonial conquest” section
of The Black Female Body, Walker’s silhouettes—which are reminiscent of photography—
exist to instruct the reader. Yet, whereas colonial pornography instructs whites about
how to mistreat black women, Walker’s didactic images are designed to provide a
counterweight or remedy to this narrative. They are didactic in that they instruct white
viewers on how not to treat black bodies—particularly vulnerable bodies like those of
women and children. The black body is not simply placed as an object in her work; her
silhouettes provide a larger context in which the white (typically male) body is placed
alongside the black female. The point of the image is no longer to portray the availabil-
ity, hyper-sexuality, and wantonness of the black female body like we see in many of
the images in the “Colonial Conquest” section of Willis and Williams’ book. Walker’s
images include the brutal, vicious actions that were happening behind the scenes on
manicured, ideal southern plantations: the culture of rape, violence, and abuse of
enslaved women. Celeste-Marie Bernier (2009) writes expertly about Walker’s use of
disturbing imagery and how her images challenge our perception, for example, of slav-
ery while at the same time teaching us about what was going on behind those col-
umned mansions in the south.
One such challenge comes in the form of Walker’s exhibition Gone, An Historical
Romance of a Civil War as it Occurred between the Dusky Thighs of One Young Negress
and Her Heart, 1994 (Figure 1.6). One image shows a black child (I would suspect no
older than ten) kneeling on the ground, resting back on her bent legs with arms stretched
behind her. Before the little girl stands a white boy of about the same age. The little boy’s
hands are extended up and he is wearing a shirt with a tie on it. Both children’s mouths
are open, the little boy’s mouth seems to open in salutation and joy, while the little girl’s
mouth is also open, but in it is the little boy’s erect (larger than life) penis. This image is
agonizing to view because it mixes tropes of innocence (e.g. hair ribbons, youth, light)
with sexual violence. Nevertheless, Walker uses this pornographic image to instruct the
reader. Walker calls into question and displaces the matter-of-fact presentation of both
characters—white boys stand while black girls suck—that we see in colonizing images
of black women. The girl is not sexually available but sexually exploited; and white boys
stand because others (in this case black girls) kneel. Making this claim places Walker’s
art alongside that of other anti-colonial activists such as Fanon, Césaire, and Memmi
who likewise have used their work to display colonial exploitation. Since the little boy
in the photo will one day grow up to be the colonial man, we should all be very afraid.
This image challenges whites, particularly white males, to confront the history of
white sexual exploitation of black women’s bodies.
Figure 1.6 Kara Walker. Detail of Gone, An Historical Romance of a Civil War as it Occurred
between the Dusky Thighs of One Young Negress and Her Heart, 1994.
Cut paper on wall. Installation dimensions variable; approximately 156 × 600 inches (396.2 × 1524 cm).
In her most recent exhibition, A Subtlety, or the Marvelous Sugar Baby, an Homage to
the unpaid and overworked Artisans who have refined our Sweet tastes from the cane
fields to the Kitchens of the New World on the Occasion of the demolition of the Domino
Sugar Refining Plant (2014), Walker constructs a massive sphinxlike figure out of sugar
in the closed Domino Sugar factory in Brooklyn (Figure 1.7). The figure spans 75 feet
from its front paws to its buttocks and is made out of 40 tons of sugar. The body of the
sphinx appropriates from/incorporates aspects of two didactic images: the mammy
and the jezebel. The head of the sphinx is shaped like that of the stereotypical mammy,
complete with overly large breasts, strong, even exaggerated, features (lips, eyes, cheeks),
and a headscarf—the one accessory every self-respecting mammy simply cannot do
without. The backside of the sculpture displays the sphinx’s exposed buttocks and
vulva—here we have the image of the jezebel, highly unprotected and available.
A Subtlety is indeed subtle, since Walker has taken two very contradictory images and
brilliantly fused them into the being of the sphinx—and in doing so portrays black
women’s status in the US, the faithful asexual mammy and the wanton woman.
With its exposed genitals and sexual positioning, the sphinx image is pornographic,
to be sure. But what makes it didactic? Again, as the title suggests, the way that the
piece instructs is also subtle. Walker has taken a product used by so many and politi-
cized it. The European demand for sugar helped to fuel enslavement in the Americas.
In the British and French West Indies, for example:
Figure 1.7 Kara Walker. A Subtlety, or the Marvelous Sugar Baby, an Homage to the unpaid
and overworked Artisans who have refined our Sweet tastes from the cane fields to the
Kitchens of the New World on the Occasion of the demolition of the Domino Sugar Refining
Plant, 2014.
Polystyrene foam, sugar. Approximately 426 × 312 × 906 inches (1,082 × 792.5 × 2,301.2 cm). Installation
view: Domino Sugar Refinery, Brooklyn, NY, 2014. A project of Creative Time.
Photo: Jason Wyche. Artwork © Kara Walker; Courtesy of Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York.
By the mid-18th century, the sugar plantation system occupied roughly 1.4 million slaves, or
40 percent of the 3.5 million African and African-descended slaves at the time; sugar produc-
tion was by far the single largest slave occupation. (Lindsay 2008, 36)
Sugar plantations were often brutal and inhospitable places, and harvest time saw
enslaved persons working “70–80 hours per week, continuing at night to the mill after
toiling all day in the fields” (Lindsay 2008, 37). As explained by Lisa Lindsay, slave
birthrates on sugar plantations in the West Indies were low due to extreme working
conditions, and mortality rates were high due to “malnutrition, disease, exhaustion,
accidents, and physical abuse.” Some might argue that this model does not make much
economic sense. Why wouldn’t enslavers at least do the bare minimum to ensure the
reproduction of their workforce? Lindsey explains:
But with plantation profits high, planters calculated that it was more economical to work a slave
to death and buy a replacement than to ensure the kinds of conditions that would allow the
slave population to reproduce itself. (Lindsay 2008, 38)
All this hardship and death existed to feed “Europe’s addiction to sugar.” Lindsay goes
on to write: “It is no wonder that in 19th-century Cuba, for example, it was said that
sugar is made with blood” (Lindsay 2008, 38).
In Walker’s A Subtlety there is foreground and background teaching at work. In the
foreground, the viewer is called, in part, to address the enormity of the sculpture in a
mature way. The viewer is being confronted with this black female body—imprisoned
in white sugar—and is led to ask questions about its nature, about the substance that
covers it, about its exposed and sexualized body. In the background, and taking a cue
from the curatorial statement, the viewer is invited to address the history of the manu-
facture of sugar (Thompson 2014). Like the plantation house with its white columns
and picturesque gardens and quaint slave quarters, the sugar industry has an unseemly
history filled with psychological, physical, and sexual violence.
Conclusion
In analyzing colonial images of the black female body, this chapter has argued that
white photographers engaged in a form of didactic pornography where the intent of
the images was not simply to arouse the viewer but to instruct the viewer about the
proper treatment of black female bodies. Didactic pornography thus played an
important normative role in justifying white European conquest and domination.
This chapter has also situated Kara Walker’s larger-than-life black silhouettes on
white walls within this tradition. Yet, whereas white photographers were intent on the
sexualization and exploitation of black women’s bodies, Walker’s didactic pornogra-
phy offers a mode of resistance that runs counter to this tradition. Walker’s images
display the violence inherent in the objectification of the black female body as well as
white violence against it. In so doing, Walker’s version of didactic pornography offers
a different message. It attempts to instruct whites on how to see and treat black female
bodies differently—by showing them what they should not do when they encounter
black bodies.
But there is an inherent danger to this attempt, as evidenced by the reception of her
latest work, A Subtlety. In spite of her efforts, it seems that a number of viewers have
missed the subtlety of her work. All they were able to see is the stereotypical, sexualized
image, and this is perhaps what led them to take pictures of themselves in lewd, even
pornographic, poses with the sphinx. Some examples include photos of a young black
male extending his tongue in a suggestion of cunnilingus, a young white woman hold-
ing the sphinx’s nipples in her hands, and several people snapping pictures of the
sphinx’s vulva. This prompted the critic Demetria Lucas to write:
I look at it, then at all the (mostly white) people with their smartphones enthusiastically
photographing “it,” specifically the butt. I don’t want to think of the Hottentot Venus because
I don’t think every black body that’s displayed should be compared or reduced to the 19th-century
kidnapped South African woman who was forced to be on display as some sort of amusement.
That comparison seems too convenient, but it’s what I think of anyway. Here’s a(nother) big,
black booty on display, and here are (mostly white) folks gawking at it, some even posing
with it. (Lucas 2014)
In the audience’s reception of the work, we see only a perpetuation of violence against
black women’s bodies, instead of change and transformation. But even then, as Lucas
goes on to suggest, Walker may be delivering an inside joke, and the butt of the joke
may be the white spectator. Lucas writes:
Maybe the cluelessness of the white audience’s participation in a spectacle without knowing
they’re part of it is an inside joke for black folks to laugh and shake their heads at history unin-
tentionally repeating itself. (This happens when a black woman and I catch each other’s eyes as
a man bends over in front of the sphinx to mimic its pose.) (Lucas 2014)
I am left to wonder, “what are these white folks thinking when they experience Walker’s
works?” Perhaps the answer is that they are stuck in a narrow and stereotypical pattern
of behavior that produces laughter at the immobilized and sexualized body of the
sphinx. My wish, of course, is for introspection and self-reflection that would allow
them to see and acknowledge their own culpability in her objectification—a realiza-
tion which might replace laughter with tears.
References
Achebe, Chinua. 1975. “The African Writer and the English Language.” In Morning Yet on
Creation Day, 55–62. London: Heinemann.
Bernier, Celeste-Marie. 2009. African American Visual Arts: From Slavery to the Present. Chapel
Hill: The University of North Carolina Press.
Blassingame, John W., ed. 1977. Slave Testimony: Two Centuries of Letters, Speeches, Interviews,
and Autobiographies. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.
Collins, Patricia Hill. 2000. Black Feminist Thought, 2nd ed. New York: Routledge.
Corris, Michael, and Robert Hobbs. 2003. “Reading Black Through White in the Work of Kara
Walker.” Art History 26 (3): 422–41.
Gilman, Sander L. 1985. “Black Bodies, White Bodies: Toward an Iconography of Female
Sexuality in Late Nineteenth-Century Art, Medicine, and Literature.” In “Race,” Writing, and
Difference, ed. Henry Louis Gates, 223–61. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Harley, J. B. 1989. “Deconstructing the Map.” Cartographica 26 (2): 1–20.
Lindsay, Lisa A. 2008. Captives as Commodities: The Transatlantic Slave Trade. Upper Saddle
River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall Press.
Loomba, Ania. 1998. Colonialism-Postcolonialism. London: Routledge.
Lorde, Audre. 1984. “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power.” In Sister Outsider, 53–9. Freedom,
CA: The Crossing Press.
Lucas, Demetria L. 2014. “A Bittersweet Tribute to Black Womanhood.” The Root, May 21. <http://
www.theroot.com/articles/culture/2014/05/artist_kara_walker_s_marvelous_sugar_baby_
bittersweet_tribute_to_black_womanhood.html> (accessed November 2015).
Mazrui, Ali. 2005. “The Re-invention of Africa: Edward Said, V.Y. Mudimbe, and Beyond.”
Research in African Literatures 36 (3): 68–82.
McClintock, Anne P. 1995. Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial
Contest. New York: Routledge.
McWhorter, John H. 2009. “Thus Spake Zora.” City Journal 19 (3). <http://www.city-journal.
org/2009/19_3_urb-zora-neale-hurston.html> (accessed November 2015).
Roberts, Dorothy. 1997. Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty.
New York: Vintage Books.
Russ, Elizabeth C. 2009. The Plantation in the Postslavery Imagination. New York: Oxford
University Press.
Shteynberg, Catherine. 2009. “Understanding the Magic Lantern.” The Bigger Picture: Exploring
Archives and Smithsonian History, Smithsonian Institute, Oct. 2. <http://siarchives.si.edu/
blog/understanding-magic-lantern> (accessed November 2015).
Strother, Z. S. 1999. “Display of the Body Hottentot.” In Africans on Stage: Studies in Ethnological
Show Business, ed. Bernth Lindfors, 1–61. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Thompson, Nato. 2014. Curatorial Statement for Kara Walker’s A Subtlety. <http://creative-
time.org/projects/karawalker/curatorial-statement/> (accessed November 2015).
Willis, Deborah, and Carla Williams. 2002. The Black Female Body: A Photographic History,
Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Wright, Richard. 1937. “Between Laughter and Tears.” New Masses, October 5, 22, 25.
2
Taste in Bodies and Fat Oppression
A. W. Eaton
The popular (at least with young people in the US) clothing company Abercrombie &
Fitch does not offer women’s pants in a size larger than an American 10.1 Since the
average size of women in the US is reported to fall between 12 and 16, one is led to
wonder why the company deliberately excludes a potentially significant market. When
asked about the role of sexual attraction in his advertising campaign, Abercrombie &
Fitch CEO Mike Jeffries provided some insight into his company’s exclusivity:
[Sexual attraction is] almost everything. That’s why we hire good-looking people in our stores.
Because good-looking people attract other good-looking people, and we want to market to
cool, good-looking people. We don’t market to anyone other than that. . . . In every school there
are the cool and popular kids, and then there are the not-so-cool kids. Candidly, we go after the
cool kids. We go after the attractive all-American kid with a great attitude and a lot of friends.
A lot of people don’t belong [in our clothes], and they can’t belong. Are we exclusionary?
Absolutely. (Denizet-Lewis 2006)
Although Jeffries’ comments were not explicitly aimed at justifying his company’s
small sizing for women, people very quickly put two and two together: Abercrombie
markets to only “cool,” “attractive” people, and women who wear larger than a size 10
are neither “cool” nor “attractive.”
“Cool” and “attractive” are decidedly aesthetic concepts (as explained in what follows),
and in employing them here Jeffries implicitly expresses an all-too-familiar distaste for
fat bodies. While some ethnic, racial, and sexual minorities, as well as some individu-
als, may not share this aesthetic preference, distaste for fat bodies lies at the center of
what I shall call our collective taste in bodies; that is, the set of aesthetic preferences for
particular body-types that dominate the prevailing forms of cultural expression in
1
I presented a much earlier version of this paper at the Central APA in March, 2011, where I received
extensive helpful comments and challenges from Susan Feagin, as well as Noël Carroll and Jesse Prinz.
I also presented a short version to the Disability Studies program at University of Illinois-Chicago in the
fall of 2013 where I received many helpful comments and challenges, in particular from Carrie Sandahl.
Paul Taylor made an interesting point about the connection of fat negativity to classism and racism that
I did not have time to address. Finally, I am grateful to Sherri Irvin and three anonymous reviewers of this
volume for their helpful suggestions.
38 A. W. Eaton
our society today.2 (Just to be clear, taste in bodies refers not to taste as a bodily sense
but, rather, to the kind of taste that takes the body as its object; that is, by taste in bodies
I mean taste directed at the body.) Fat bodies are rarely represented in mainstream
forms of entertainment and advertising; but when fat bodies are represented, it is usu-
ally as unattractive, ridiculous, contemptible, and even gross and disgusting.
Even among those who agree that this is a problem, it is common to conceive of
the prevailing and ubiquitous aesthetic distaste for fat bodies as a mere symptom of a
deeper underlying fat negativity that is driven by stereotypes, misinformation, and
other false beliefs. This way of thinking is part of a broader tendency to relegate aesthetic
preference to the epiphenomenal: it is common, when thinking about oppression, to
conceive of taste as caused by—but not itself having an effect upon—more fundamental
cognitive attitudes, typically construed as beliefs. It is our beliefs, on this picture, that
are the true motor of our tastes as well as of social life more generally. This picture sets
up the expectation that if we can just educate people by providing correct information
about fatness, then our conduct toward fat people, along with our aesthetic preferences
with regard to the size and shape of bodies, will follow suit. I’ll refer to this as “the
standard picture.”
While I do not mean to underrate the importance of stereotypes and false beliefs
in perpetuating fat negativity, I contend that the standard picture is misguided in its
underestimation of the role of aesthetics in instituting and maintaining oppression.
I argue in this essay that distaste for fat bodies, which is rooted primarily in one’s senti-
ments rather than in beliefs, is an important constitutive element of the oppression of fat
people. That is, the prevailing distaste for fat bodies is not a mere secondary phenome-
non resulting from fat negativity and discrimination but, rather, is part of what, in the
first instance, establishes and maintains the implicit biases, reactions, habits, norms,
stereotypes, and discriminatory practices that make up what is sometimes called
fatism (or, if you prefer, “size oppression,” “fat oppression,” or “fat negativity”). If this is
right, then combatting fatism requires changing not only what we believe about fat
people but also how we feel about fat bodies.
I make the case for the central importance of anti-fat taste in the following way.
Section 2.1 develops a model of oppression that attaches as much importance to agents’
sentiments (which I construe broadly as occurrent, intentional, affect-laden mental
states) and tastes (which I also construe broadly as dispositions and habits of valuing
that are based on sentiments) as it does to agents’ beliefs and principles. My model pays
special attention to cases where sentiments and beliefs conflict. Since sentiments and
tastes rarely yield to evidence and reason, the model proposed in Section 2.1 forces us
2
Our fat-negative collective taste in bodies is decidedly white, heterosexual, and, among other things,
ableist. There has been considerable work, for instance, demonstrating that African-Americans and
Latinas/os tend to embrace body ideals that are noticeably heavier than the ideals embraced by whites. For
an overview, see Rubin, Fitts, and Becker (2003). It is worth noting that most studies focus on ideals for
women’s bodies and not men’s bodies, which is further evidence for my claim that fatism affects women
more than it does men.
Taste in Bodies and Fat Oppression 39
to embrace some new strategies for combatting fatism (as well as other modes of
oppression of which taste in bodies is a central mechanism, i.e. ableism, ageism,
homo-negativity, racism, sexism, and trans-negativity). If my model is right, then
traditional modes of instruction that focus on correcting stereotypes and misinfor-
mation will not by themselves suffice to undermine systemic oppressions of the sort
just mentioned. As a supplement to traditional modes of instruction, Section 2.2 rec-
ommends the Aristotelian strategy of habituation by means of vivid and engaging
representations—from high art to popular forms of entertainment and advertising—
that aestheticize fat bodies. Section 2.3 concludes by critically examining recent
deployments of this strategy in the service of combatting fatism.
Before we begin, I want to be clear that “fat” is used throughout this paper as a
value-neutral descriptive term. This is in keeping with standard practice in Fat Studies
and also in the Fat Pride Community. The basic idea is to avoid seemingly well-
intentioned euphemisms like “saftig” or “heavy” that depend on the tacit understanding
that “fat” is an impolite term of derision, and also to avoid euphemisms like “over-
weight” and “obese” that medicalize fat as a disease. Unabashed use of the term “fat” as
value-neutral is a small part of a much larger project of combatting the all-too-common
notions that fat is unacceptable, inferior, unappealing, and must be eliminated.
2.1 Taste and Oppression

Body size is often omitted from the familiar list of features on which modern forms
of oppression center—the list often looks like “race, class, gender, disability, etc.”—
and fatism is rarely specifically mentioned by theories that purport to explain the
general structure of modern forms of oppression.3 Yet fatism is one of the most
ubiquitous, conspicuous, and overt forms of oppression in our culture today. We
live in a fat-hating world, one that regularly refuses to accommodate fat bodies;
that openly and unabashedly teases, bullies, shames, and stigmatizes fat people
from early childhood onward; and that discriminates against fat people in a variety
of ways.
Here are just a few examples of fatism’s multifarious manifestations in the material
conditions of lived experience:
• Lack of appropriately sized seats in planes, theaters, restaurants, classrooms, and
other public spaces. At the time that this essay was being written, several major
airlines in the US—for instance, American and United—required passengers who
3
For instance, fat oppression does not appear on Iris Marion Young’s (1990) purportedly comprehen-
sive list of oppressions, nor is it mentioned in Ann Cudd’s systematic analysis of oppression (2006). I expect
that both philosophers would of course acknowledge fatism’s existence and argue that their analyses apply
to this phenomenon as well. I mean simply to highlight a stark contrast between the ubiquitous overt hos-
tility to fat that plagues our society, on the one hand, and the fact that in our best theories fatism is ignored,
on the other hand.
40 A. W. Eaton
cannot buckle their seatbelt to purchase an additional seat for themselves (Cheap
Air 2013; Hetrick and Attig 2009; Huff 2009).4
• There is well-documented bias and discrimination against fat people in, for
instance, the workplace, especially with respect to hiring, wages, and promotion
and termination (Puhl and Heuer 2009). It has recently been shown, for instance,
that fat white females earn 11.2 percent less than their non-fat counterparts
(Cawley 2004).
• Fat children are more likely to be teased and bullied (Rimm 2004; Weinstock and
Krehbiel 2009).
• Fat teens are much less likely to date (Cawley 2001; Cawley, Joyner, and
Sobal 2006).
• Fat people are less likely than thin people to receive proper medical treatment
due to a lack of appropriately sized medical equipment (gowns, cuffs, stretchers,
imaging equipment, etc.), negative attitudes on the part of healthcare providers,
and the assumption that fatness automatically precludes health (Puhl and
Heuer 2009).
• Arguably more than any other group, fat people are openly mocked and ridiculed
in all aspects of popular culture and are offered few, if any, positive representa-
tions of themselves.
These and the many other manifestations of fat hatred in our culture are the focus and
target of the rich, exciting, and relatively new (in comparison to other academic fields
dealing with race, gender, or disability) field of Fat Studies. Fat Studies aims to uncover,
analyze, and combat the causes of widespread discrimination against fat people. In this
literature, these causes are typically construed as prejudicial beliefs of various sorts:
e.g. implicit or explicit, occurrent or dispositional, and held with varying degrees of
confidence. An example of such prejudicial beliefs are commonly embraced stereo-
types of fat people as lazy, weak-willed, unhygienic, greedy, or gluttonous.
While I do not mean to deny that stereotypes and false beliefs play a significant role
in maintaining the oppression of fat people, in this essay I urge that we also attend to
what one might call the sentimental dimension of fat oppression. Fatism, I shall argue,
is instituted and maintained not only by misguided beliefs about fat people, but also by
misguided sentiments; that is, as noted earlier, occurrent, affect-laden, object-directed
4
United Airlines’ stated policy is that it will not board a customer who requires additional seating but
declines to purchase an extra ticket. (See their official policy at <http://www.united.com/web/en-US/
content/travel/specialneeds/customersize/default.aspx> accessed November 2015.) American Airlines also
requires that passengers purchase another seat, but they at least acknowledge that they will reseat a passen-
ger who needs, but has not purchased, an additional seat next to empty seats if available and time allows.
(See their official policy at <http://www.aa.com/i18n/travelInformation/specialAssistance/extraSpace>
accessed November 2015.) But nothing prevents an airline from accommodating different body sizes.
Southwest Airlines, for instance, offers two options: one can purchase two seats in advance and then
Southwest will refund the price of one ticket, or one can arrange for the required number of seats at the gate.
(See their policy at <https://www.southwest.com/html/customer-service/extra-seat/?clk=GFOOTER-
CUSTOMER-COS> accessed November 2015.)
mental states such as emotions and also some feelings and pleasures. To be more
specific, fatism is partially constituted and maintained by our malformed hopes
and fears, loves and hates, and, most important for the purposes of this essay, our
malformed taste.
Before we move in Section 2.2 to a discussion of what I mean by “taste,” I want to
reiterate that when I say “our taste” I mean to refer to the collective taste that is man-
ifest in the aesthetic that dominates mainstream media and guides policies like that
of Abercrombie & Fitch. This notion of collective taste is meant to acknowledge the
important fact that some ethnic, racial, and sexual minorities, as well as some indi-
viduals, do not adhere to the dominant aesthetic, and that this is sometimes on
purpose as the result of having cultivated strategies of resistance. The other point to
keep in mind is that this collective taste targets both fat and thin people, albeit in
different ways.
2.1.1 Taste defined

Since the role of taste in bodies in fatism, as well as in other kinds of oppression, has
received less attention, we should take some time to clarify the concept. By taste I mean
an individual’s or collective’s standing disposition for evaluative sentiments regarding
some x—whether a particular thing or a kind of thing—where these sentiments are
partially or fully constituted by or based on pleasurable or displeasurable responses to
some of x’s properties. As noted earlier, I construe sentiment broadly here to include
various occurrent, affect-laden, object-directed mental states such as emotions and
also some feelings and pleasures. By evaluative I do not mean that these sentiments
need involve explicit appraisals of the worth of the object toward which they are
directed; rather, the phenomenology of these sentiments is to present their object as
valuable and so worthy of experiencing, having, or preserving (or as disvaluable and so
to be avoided or discarded). To “have a taste for x,” then, is to have the standing dispo-
sition to take pleasure in x based on some of x’s properties, whereas to have a distaste
for x is to have the standing disposition to be displeased by (or to have an aversion
toward) x based on some of its properties. This is the sense of “taste” in play when
in this essay I speak of a person’s or a group’s having a taste for thin bodies or a distaste
for fat ones.
Taste is not here restricted to the sense that has been the focus of much philosophi-
cal aesthetics, namely the rarefied faculty for discerning aesthetic excellence. Taste as
I construe it is not necessarily contemplative or disinterested, nor need it be directed
at high art or nature. Rather, I mean the concept in the expanded sense that concerns
what has come to be called everyday aesthetics.5 Taste can be—and most often is—directed
5
Everyday aesthetics has become its own sub-field within philosophical aesthetics to which many arti-
cles and books have been devoted. My understanding of taste in the everyday sense has been strongly
influenced by Yuriko Saito’s excellent study (2007), which also contains a useful bibliography on the topic.
See also Irvin 2008a and 2008b. For a criticism of Irvin’s argument, and of in general overextending our
concept of the aesthetic, see Soucek 2009.
42 A. W. Eaton
at everyday things like food, fashion, home furnishing, popular culture, automobiles,
and people; in particular, at people’s bodies. I refer to the latter as taste in bodies, by
which, as I have said, I mean not taste as a bodily sense but, rather, taste directed at the
body. At its most general level, a person’s taste in bodies is her sense of what makes a
person (herself or another) physically attractive or unattractive.
Taste in bodies is a complex matter. For one thing, our taste in bodies takes as its
object more than the body strictly speaking, and extends to: things that we do with our
bodies, like kinds of bodily comportment; the way we care for and groom our bodies;
and things that we put on our bodies, like clothing, makeup, and jewelry and other
bodily accouterments. Further, physical attractiveness and unattractiveness have
many modalities—e.g. beauty, handsomeness, cuteness, sexiness, and chicness, on
the one hand, and ugliness, dumpiness, repulsiveness, and dowdiness, on the other
hand—that admit of degrees and that interact in complex ways. Finally, taste in bodies
is not merely other-directed; it also importantly includes one’s evaluative feelings
regarding oneself and what would make oneself pretty, handsome, sexy, statuesque,
lithe, chic, tidy, or otherwise attractive.
2.1.2 The social and moral significance of taste in bodies

In emphasizing taste’s everyday dimensions, I do not mean to suggest that taste is triv-
ial or practically insignificant. On the contrary, everyday taste has far-reaching moral,
psychological, social, and economic ramifications that are nowhere more apparent
than in the case of taste in bodies.
Most of us tend strongly to underestimate the extent to which perceived physical
attractiveness affects our unrelated assessments of others.6 We like to think that physi-
cal attractiveness is irrelevant to our treatment of a person; to our evaluations of her
worthiness as a friend, employee, or mentor; to grading her work; to deciding whether
she merits a raise or promotion; and so on. While, of course, physical attractiveness
ought to be irrelevant to such matters, psychologists have long recognized physical
attractiveness as one of the most powerful forms of halo effect (or halo bias). The basic
idea is that most of us exhibit a strong tendency to rate individuals perceived to be
physically attractive higher than those deemed less attractive with respect to personal-
ity traits and characteristics such as intelligence, various kinds of competence, and
trustworthiness.7
The halo bias attending perceived physical attractiveness significantly affects a
person’s prospects in most arenas of life. As Deborah Rhode—one of a growing num-
ber of scholars working on what has come to be known as lookism—notes, “appearance
6
Patzer (1985, 10–13) discusses studies that demonstrate people’s underestimation of the extent to
which perceived attractiveness distorts their evaluations. This underestimation is a specific case of a wide-
spread excessive confidence in the rationality of judgment described by Kahneman 2011.
7
Although she does not use the term “halo bias,” Rhode 2010 offers many examples. Also see Verhulst,
Lodge, and Lavine 2010 for a recent study finding that perceived attractiveness is one strong predictor of
judging someone capable of leadership.
imposes penalties that far exceed what most of us assume or would consider defensible”
(Rhode 2010, 23). People perceived as unattractive, or even just “plain,” are not only
less likely to be judged smart, interesting, and likeable than those deemed attrac-
tive; those perceived as unattractive are also more likely to receive unfavorable
treatment in legal settings, are less likely to be hired and promoted, earn on average
lower salaries, and so on (Patzer 1985; Rhode 2010). All of this has far-reaching,
and sometimes quite severe, negative consequences for self-esteem and interper-
sonal relations.
Fat people are among the most common targets of appearance discrimination
and bias (Rhode 2010, 102). This is not surprising since weight has become, in our
culture, such an important component of physical attractiveness, where fatness is
routinely portrayed as a paradigm of unattractiveness, especially for women.8 Being
considered unattractive because fat has negative implications in places where one
might not expect it, like in the attitudes of highly trained healthcare professionals.
Evidence suggests that in addition to holding a host of negative stereotypes about
fat people, a majority of healthcare professionals have negative aesthetic attitudes
toward their patients. In a survey of over 600 physicians, more than 50 percent
viewed “morbidly obese” patients—defined as BMI > 40—as awkward, unattractive,
ugly, and noncompliant, while other studies similarly show that a majority of health-
care providers report feelings of disgust when caring for fat patients (Foster et al.
2003; Hebl and Xu 2001; Brown 2006; Puhl and Heuer 2009). There is evidence to
support the hypothesis that these negative aesthetic judgments render patients anti-
pathetic in the eyes of caregivers and that this in turn negatively affects the care that
fat people receive; e.g. physicians spend less time with fat patients, and fat women
are one-third less likely to receive breast exams, Pap smears, or gynecologic exams
(Fontaine et al. 1998).
The role of our collective taste in bodies in maintaining certain kinds of oppression
has recently received attention in both philosophical and psychological work on
disgust. (Although the term “taste” is rarely used in this literature, disgust lies at one
extreme of a spectrum of sentiments that form part of a person’s taste profile.9)
Disgust, it has been shown, plays a significant role in generating certain social and
moral norms such as rules of etiquette, incest taboos, and purity norms.10 More rele-
vant for our purposes, disgust can play a pivotal role in demarcating and maintaining
group boundaries by vilifying and dehumanizing a given outgroup. For instance,
judging certain groups to be disgusting—groups such as women, Jews, Blacks, homo-
sexuals, and untouchables—has historically played, and continues to play today, a key
role in maintaining prejudice and xenophobia, and in enforcing the marginalization
8
For instance, women are more likely to perceive themselves as overweight, to have dieted, and to
express anxiety about their weight. For some overview, see Tiggeman and Rothblum 1988.
9
For a compelling and provocative account of disgust construed as a component of “taste” more nar-
rowly construed as that rarefied capacity to appreciate art, see Korsmeyer 2011.
10
For a summary of this vast literature, see Kelly 2011, 144–5.
44 A. W. Eaton
and subordination of these groups.11 I suggest that something similar is going on with
fat negativity: the deformation of our collective taste in the direction of aversion to fat
bodies, rendering fat repulsive in the eyes of most, is an important part of the debase-
ment, stigmatization, marginalization, and subordination of fat people. In this way, our
collective taste in bodies is misguided and unjust, and must be changed.
2.1.3 An objection concerning health

I have been arguing that our collective distaste for fat plays a constitutive role in fat
oppression and so is unjust. In presenting this thesis in both formal and informal set-
tings, I have regularly encountered the following objection: our collective distaste for
fat is explained by the fact that this distaste is a direct response to fat’s unhealthiness.
We are displeased by fat, so the objection goes, because we are displeased by the state of
unhealth and its causes. Since fatness significantly increases health problems and the
likelihood of death, the objection concludes, we are rightly displeased by bodies that
instantiate fatness. For brevity’s sake I will refer to this as “the health objection.”
Before addressing the objection directly, there are two things to note about it. First,
the objection purports not merely to explain the causal origins of our collective dis-
taste for fat; it is not simply a story about how we have come to find fat unappealing.
More important, this objection attempts to justify fat negativity by linking it with
something that most consider to be objectively undesirable, namely “unhealth”; that is,
morbidity and mortality. Second and related, if the link between fatness and morbid-
ity/mortality is a justification at all—more on this in a moment—it justifies only collec-
tive distaste for fat; that is, it (purportedly) justifies only the fact that we collectively
find fat to be unappealing. The (purported) link to unhealth does not at all justify the
various stigmatizing and discriminatory practices that this distaste motivates, for it is
utterly unacceptable to shame or discriminate because someone is unhealthy or
deemed unattractive. Here we might also note the complex intersection of fat negativ-
ity with ableism.12
Despite hyperbolic media attention to the so-called “obesity epidemic,” the question
of whether and to what extent fatness increases the likelihood of early death or mor-
bidity remains controversial.13 First, a growing body of literature shows that unless one
is of class II obesity or above (BMI = 35+), being overweight (BMI = 25–29.99) or
moderately obese (where BMI = 30–34.99)—which is by far the largest class of “obese”
persons in the US—does not by itself put one at significant risk for early death.14
11
For the connection between disgust and oppression in the philosophical literature, see: Nussbaum 2001,
especially 34–50; Nussbaum 2004; Kelly 2011, especially chapters 4 and 5. Also see Miller 1997. For psy-
chological studies regarding disgust’s central role in the enforcement of outgroups generally, see Harris and
Fiske 2006. For recent work in psychology on disgust’s role in shaping people’s moral perceptions of homo-
sexuals, see Inbar et al. 2009 and Olatunji 2008.
12
I owe this point to Carrie Sandahl.
13
For criticisms of claims about the so-called “obesity epidemic” see Boero 2013 and Campos 2004.
14
The most comprehensive study is Katherine Flegal et al. 2013. See also Lantz et al. 2010 and Mehta
and Chang 2011.
Further, the overweight category has recently been shown to be significantly associ-
ated with lower all-cause mortality, and there is evidence that moderate obesity (class I,
where BMI = 30–34.9) protects against health conditions associated with senescence.15
But what of morbidity? Even if fatness does not cause early death, surely, proponents
of the health objection insist, fatness is the cause of serious health problems.
While fatness is associated with various health problems, it has not been conclu-
sively established that fatness causes all of these problems; in many cases something
else may be the cause. For instance, recent research suggests that fatness and poor
health may be collateral effects of a common cause, namely poverty.16 The basic idea
here is that poverty leads to poor nutrition, a sedentary lifestyle, limited access to
healthcare, and psychological stress, all of which causally contribute both to health
problems and to fatness.17 And there is mounting evidence, from studies that include
an objective measure of fitness as a covariant with obesity, that when one controls for
fitness, much of the health risk associated with obesity becomes almost insignificant.18
(This, by the way, is one of the main points of the “Health at Every Size” movement,
where physical flourishing is determined independent of a particular body’s size.)
None of this is to say that fatness does not directly contribute to any health problems—
some studies mentioned here do show that class II and class III obesity are directly
associated with some negative health effects—but, rather, that the health risks
associated with fatness have been poorly understood and greatly exaggerated by
popular media.
I have just argued that current research undermines the justificatory component of
the health objection; i.e. since fatness is not by itself an objective measure of health, one
cannot legitimately point to morbidity in order to demonstrate the rightness of our col-
lective distaste. However, the health objection could be reformulated to accommodate
this: the pervasive erroneous belief that fatness is a direct cause of morbidity/mortality
explains our collective distaste for fatness. After all, as already noted, the causal link
with morbidity is often adduced in support of fat-negative attitudes and conduct. If
what matters practically for fat negativity is what people tend to actually believe about
fat, then perhaps all we need to do is educate people about the very complex relationship
between fat and health in order to dispel pervasive ignorance about fat.
While I think that we should of course provide better education about the complex-
ities of the relationship between fat and health, I doubt that this will by itself under-
mine our collective distaste for fatness. This is because I strongly suspect that the health
objection is a red herring, adduced post facto to justify and disguise what is at bottom a
15
For the positive association with being overweight, see Flegal et al. 2013. For the protective effects of
moderate obesity see Lantz et al. 2010.
16
For a recent longitudinal study based on a nationally representative sample of over 3,600 adults, see
Lantz et al. 2010. See also Ernsberger 2009.
17
There may be a feedback loop at work here, insofar as fat people are the objects of workplace and other
kinds of economic discrimination, which makes them poorer. See Ernsberger 2009.
18
Thus concludes Lantz et al. 2010. Also see Church et al. 2004; Katzmarzyk et al. 2004.
46 A. W. Eaton
discriminatory attitude. As evidence of my suspicion, consider other bodily states that

(a) are known to significantly increase risk of various health problems yet (b) are not
stigmatized as repulsive or otherwise unattractive but (c) in some cases are even
aestheticized and admired. Think of, for instance, extreme thinness of the sort seen
in supermodels, a few of whom—among others, Ana Carolina Reston and Isabelle
Caro—died of anorexia nervosa. Or consider elective cosmetic surgeries and other
medical procedures such as breast implants, Botox injections, and facelifts: although
such procedures come with known significant health risks, some of them quite severe,
this does nothing to diminish the aesthetic value of the outcome. Or, to take yet another
example, tanned skin, especially (though not exclusively) for whites. Although it has
been known for decades that tanning significantly increases the risk of melanoma,
tanned skin (for lighter skinned people) is still highly aestheticized in our society, and
as a result, indoor tanning is on the rise in the USA to the extent that some classify it as
a genuine public health concern (Gery et al. 2014). Tanning and thinness are just two
examples of a variety of cases where the known unhealthiness of a particular bodily
state does little or nothing to undermine that state’s attractiveness and desirability. This
strongly suggests that our collective revulsion to fat bodies is not ultimately a response
to the (mistaken) belief that fat is unhealthy.
We should consider one remaining variant of the health objection before dispensing
with it altogether, namely that fatness is only rarely congenital and is instead most
often the result of poor lifestyle choices.19
As noted earlier, fatness is strongly correlated with poverty, and so considering it the
result of “lifestyle choices” is highly suspect. But let us assume that the poor-lifestyle-
choice claim is true. For most of us, quotidian life is shot through with activities and
practices that we openly acknowledge increase our risk of illness, harm, and even
death. To take just one example, most of us choose to drive or ride in automobiles,
where the risks of injury and death are remarkably high (to say nothing of what it does
to the environment, which indirectly has negative effects on health).20 We take these
significant health risks because they afford benefits that we value so much as to out-
weigh the risks; for instance, the risks of driving or riding in automobiles are, most
think, worth taking because we greatly value the convenience that automobiles afford.
The same, mutatis mutandis, is true of, say, cosmetic surgery and chemical treatments
to hair (e.g. dying, bleaching, perming, or relaxing), as noted earlier. Modern life,
especially modern urban life, is built around this kind of trade-off which, in most
cases, does not suffer from any de-aestheticization, stigmatization, discrimination, or
other negative social consequences. Were fatness unequivocally unhealthy (which, as
already explained, is true less severely and less often than typically claimed by critics
of fat) and were fatness the result of a “lifestyle choice” (which, as noted earlier, is
Thanks to an anonymous reviewer of this volume for this variant of the health objection.
19
The average individual’s lifetime risk of death by automobile accident is something like 1 in 84
20
(Pope 2007).
doubtful), then fatness ought to number among the very many health risks that we
regularly willingly take in order to obtain ends whose value outweighs the risks.
Instead, fatness is routinely singled out as an “epidemic” and fat people are openly dis-
criminated against and mocked and shamed, often in the name of “health.” I mean to
suggest that this concern for health is, in the overwhelming majority of cases, phony:
whether conscious or not, the pervasive hyperconcern for the physical well-being of
fat people is typically little more than an attempted cover-up of what is at bottom a
discriminatory attitude.
2.1.4 Four notable features of taste in bodies

I have been arguing that our collective distaste for fat should be considered—alongside
pervasive misinformation and stereotypes—a primary mechanism for maintaining
social hierarchy. Since most of us internalize this distaste without our being aware of
it, simply increasing awareness will not suffice to make the distaste go away. Before
turning to the question of what will eradicate this distaste in Section 2.2, we consider
in this section four features of taste in bodies that present considerable challenges to
modifying it.
First, the pursuit of being perceived as attractive and desirable plays an inestimably
large role in most people’s lives, affecting and organizing much of daily activity. As
noted in the earlier discussion of halo biases and lookism, being perceived as attrac-
tive involves much more than finding mates; it also typically means being considered
likeable, trustworthy, competent, and admirable, all of which increase a person’s suc-
cess in various domains. Putting these two things together—(1) that the stakes for
being perceived as attractive are very high and (2) that the dominant standards of
attractiveness in our society are strongly skewed toward aversion to fat bodies—
makes it difficult to resist internalizing the aesthetic ideal of thinness. Rejecting this
ideal risks forfeiting one’s likeability, credibility, and worthiness in the eyes of many.
It’s no wonder that Americans spent an estimated $60 billion in 2012 trying to lose
weight (PRWEB 2013).
Second, fatism hits women harder than men (Rothblum 1992; Bergman 2009). One
reason is that, as John Stuart Mill noted long ago, the importance of appearing attrac-
tive is unevenly distributed between the two sexes, being of exaggerated importance to
women: “being attractive to men [has] become the polar star of feminine education
and formation of character” (Mill 1869/1998, 16). Women—especially, but not exclu-
sively, heterosexual women—tend to care deeply about appearing attractive to both
men and women, whereas men tend to care considerably less. A quick inspection of
women’s magazines or a comparison of the women’s and men’s cosmetics and toiletries
aisles of any drugstore confirms this. Even when women are quite accomplished in
arenas that were once the sole province of men and have nothing to do with physical
attractiveness, women still feel the need to publicly demonstrate physical attractive-
ness: witness, for instance, IndyCar racer Danica Patrick’s bikini modeling, or the
many female Olympic athletes who have posed nude for professional photographers.
48 A. W. Eaton
It is not surprising, then, that women make up around 85 percent of the consumers
of the weight loss industry.
Third, this de-formation of our taste under fat oppression affects both the privileged
and the oppressed. It is not only the privileged who strongly tend to find members of
an oppressed group, say, disgusting and misshapen, but the oppressed themselves
internalize the dominant taste as well and, at least on one hand, tend to find themselves
unattractive, perhaps even disgusting, and in constant need of improvement. Fat
self-hatred is rampant (Gimlin 2002). In this way, the oppressed come “to exercise
harsh dominion over their own self-esteem,” as Sandra Bartky, following W. E. B. Du
Bois, puts it (Bartky 1990, 105; Du Bois 1903/1986, 364–5).
A fourth notable feature of taste in bodies, as with all taste, is that it resists rational
persuasion and is often norm-discordant; that is, it conflicts with one’s explicitly held
normative commitments. A person’s sense of, for instance, the beautiful and the ugly, or
the sexy and the repulsive, or the dumpy and the chic, is relatively immune to argument
and evidence and is rarely undermined by contrary cognitive considerations. A com-
pelling argument for why one ought not to be repelled by a certain physical trait or body
type or physical act will do little on its own to undermine one’s repulsion. Taste’s recalci-
trance is due to what I earlier called its sentimental basis. As has long been noted, taste is
grounded in emotional and hedonic responses, and even if one accepts a generally
cognitivist approach to emotions and pleasure—that these are forms of perception
that represent things, properties, and states of affairs and that have a judgment-like
structure—one must nevertheless concede that it is difficult, if not impossible, to argue
oneself or another person into or out of finding a particular physical trait, kind of body,
or physical act attractive.21 What this means is that one can have both the justified belief
that fat hatred governs social relations and the conviction that this is morally wrong yet
nevertheless find oneself disgusted by fat bodies. This has important implications for
thinking about how to change taste in bodies, as we’ll see in Section 2.2.
2.2 An Aristotelian Approach to Changing Taste

[F]at liberation occurs only when we embody it physically as well as accepting it
politically and theoretically.
Heather McAllister (2009, 305)
I have been arguing that it is not enough, when fighting fat oppression, to focus on
widely accepted misinformation about fat people. We must also work to undermine
our pervasive collective distaste for fat. One big problem, as we saw in Section 2.1, is
21
A good example of this is the norm discordance of disgust. For example, a recent psychological study
shows that subjects who are disgusted by homosexuality are much more likely to have unfavorable associ-
ations with gay people as opposed to heterosexual people, even when these subjects do not explicitly
endorse the view that homosexuality is morally wrong. See Inbar et al. 2009.
that taste rarely conforms to our considered views and deeply held principles. Taste is
in this regard recalcitrant, stubbornly resistant to guidance by reason and knowledge.
So how do we go about changing it? How can we generate alternatives to our collective
fat-negative taste?
2.2.1 Virtue and taste in Aristotle

I find it helpful to consider this question in the context of the problem of moral educa-
tion as Aristotle conceived it. For Aristotle, moral education involved not simply
teaching correct principles to guide action, but also, importantly, shaping a person’s
affective orientation, especially insofar as this involves bringing her to “find enjoyment
or pain in the right things” (Aristotle 1999, 1104b 12–13).
Full virtue, on Aristotle’s view, consists not simply in knowing the right thing to
do and then acting on this knowledge, but also in having the right character. This in
turn centrally involves experiencing the appropriate affects—emotions, feelings, and
pleasures and pains—with the appropriate intensity toward a given object or set of cir-
cumstances. A fully virtuous person (a) is delighted by, desires, and appreciates noble
and just actions, (b) is disgusted by, despises, and eschews ignoble and unjust actions,
and (c) has these affective states with the appropriate intensity (Aristotle 1999,
1104b 8–9). On this point Aristotle is concerned not just with isolated sentimental
episodes; rather, a virtuous person has the standing disposition to take pleasure in noble
actions and displeasure in vicious ones. I suggest that in this way virtue, on Aristotle’s
account, consists partially but importantly in having the right sort of taste as construed
above.22 I mean to extend this account to taste in bodies as well.
Since Aristotle believed virtue of character does not arise naturally in most of us
(Aristotle 1999, 1103a 19–20), he addressed the question of how to educate a person’s
taste—their appetites, desires, and capacity for particular pleasures and pains—so that
they come to “enjoy and hate finely” (Aristotle 1999, 1197b 26). Aristotle thought of
what I here call taste as “unreasoned,” as Miles Burnyeat (1980, 79) puts it in the way
discussed with respect to taste in bodies in Section 2.1: no amount of argument or evi-
dence, no matter how persuasive, will by itself convince a person to take pleasure in
what formerly repulsed her (or to be repulsed by that which formerly pleased her), to
delight what she formerly abhorred (or vice versa), to develop the appetite for that to
which she formerly had an aversion (or vice versa). But if not by appeal to knowledge
and reason—that is, if not by educating the intellect—how do we train taste?
2.2.2 Aristotle on habituation

Aristotle’s answer is that we train taste, and thereby acquire virtue of character, through
habituation: “Virtue of character [i.e. of ethos] results from habit [ethos]; hence its
22
Some commentators use “taste” to describe the standing disposition to take pleasure in noble and just
actions. See, for instance, Burnyeat 1980, especially 79: “the point about those of the young who have been
well brought up is that they have acquired a taste for pleasures—namely the pleasures of noble and just
actions—which others have no inkling of ” (my emphasis).
50 A. W. Eaton
name ‘ethical’, slightly varied from ‘ethos’” (Aristotle 1999, 1103a 17).23 By “habituation”
he seems to mean repeated exposure: “a state [of character] results from [the repetition
of] similar activities” (Aristotle 1999, 1103b 21, p. 19).
At first blush, this notion of how to educate taste raises tough questions, beginning
with what I’ll call the problem of acquired taste. To call an item an acquired taste is to
say that it is unlikely to be enjoyed and appreciated by someone who has not had sub-
stantial exposure to the item. The seemingly Aristotelian suggestion underlying this
notion is that repeated exposure to a thing can lead one to enjoy, appreciate, and
develop the appetite for it. But can repeated exposure by itself accomplish this? After
all, if I’m disposed to be disgusted by x, repeated exposure to x would at most lead me
to tolerate x. (And here we might note that the stronger the initial disgust, the less likely
that exposure will lead to tolerance; sometimes, for instance, strong aversive reactions
are intensified by repeated exposure.24) However, it seems highly unlikely that repeated
exposure to x would by itself lead me to take pleasure in, enjoy, appreciate, and develop
the appetite for and capacity to appreciate x.
There is a second and related worry about habituation understood as repeated expo-
sure. Recall that on Aristotle’s account virtue consists in “loving and hating finely”; one
must learn not just to take pleasure in the right sort of thing, but also to take displeasure
in the proper sort of thing. Yet it is especially difficult to see how repeated exposure to x
would lead one to be displeased by x, particularly if one were initially oriented so as to
like x (as opposed to simply feeling neutral about x). If x were toxic in large quanti-
ties—for instance, alcohol, tobacco, sugar—then an overdose of x would plausibly lead
one to develop a distaste for x. But this kind of case has limited application. For many
things that one finds pleasurable, repeated and frequent exposure to x would at most
lead one to tire of x, but this is far from coming to hate x.
I do not mean to deny that repeated exposure is a component of successful habitua-
tion, but it is doubtful that repeated exposure can by itself yield the sorts of changes in
taste that Aristotle intends.25 How, then, is habituation supposed to work?
At this point we should pause to notice that the problem of acquired taste is compli-
cated by the following variables, many of which Aristotle recognized. First, the aspect
of taste in need of modification might be not a particular kind of feeling or appetite
but, rather, the degree of intensity with which it is felt.26 Second, the susceptibility of
one’s taste to alteration depends on the degree to which one’s taste is woven into one’s
character. This is why Aristotle thinks it best to begin habituating taste at an early age,
23
Aristotle mentions habituation as the means to acquiring virtue of character in Aristotle 1999, 1103a
17ff, 1103b 16–22, 119a 27, 1121a 34, 1151a 18–19, 1152a 29–34, 1179b 5–1180a 3, 1180a 15.
24
Thanks to Sherri Irvin for this point.
25
Indeed, recent psychological work on exposure effects suggests that repeated exposure would be an
important component of habituation. My point here is simply that it is not sufficient for successful habitu-
ation of the sort envisioned by Aristotle.
26
“Some appetites and pleasures are for fine and excellent kinds of things, such as wealth, profit, victory
and honor. About all these and about the things in between people are blamed not for feeling an appetite
and love for them, but for doing so in a particular way, namely to excess” (Aristotle 1999, 1148a 24–8).
before misguided taste has firmly taken hold. This is not to say that changing the taste
of adults is impossible—as we shall see, there is plenty of evidence that mature taste can
be changed—but the more ingrained the taste, the more difficult it will be to alter it.
Third and related, likes and dislikes exist in degrees. The more intensely I like or dislike
x, the greater the extent to which my taste or distaste for x will resist change. Fourth,
the project of changing taste can be undertaken from the inside, where the agent inten-
tionally sets out to change her taste, or from the outside, where someone else aims to
change one’s taste. In the former case, the process of changing one’s taste is facilitated
by two things: first, the agent’s desires for self-improvement and, second, her own
imagination.
With respect to the last of these variables, consider the following example. Craig is
disgusted by vegetables, but because he knows that they are good for him, he wants to
make them a regular feature of his diet. Further, Craig (a) knows incorporating vegeta-
bles into his diet will be easier if he doesn’t merely tolerate vegetables, but if he actually
likes them, and (b) wants to be the sort of person who enjoys eating healthy things.
Repeated exposure to vegetables might get Craig to tolerate them, but he wants some-
thing more; he wants actually to acquire the taste for vegetables. Craig tries to alter his
feelings about vegetables by acting as if they were tasty. He starts with vegetables that
are most similar to things he does like, such as meat, and he incorporates them into
dishes that he already likes. Finally, it is important that he create positive associations
with vegetables by initially restricting his consumption of them to times when he is
enjoying himself, and performing visualization exercises where he vividly imagines
himself eating vegetables with vigor and enthusiasm.27 How successful this is and how
much time it takes depends on the variables already outlined as well as on Craig’s pow-
ers of imagination, but if he has a chance of changing his taste, these sorts of as if actions
are his best bet.28
Self-improvement projects offer the ideal case of altering one’s taste, because the
agent can supply her own vivid imaginings that draw upon and cater to her other
desires and inclinations.29 Cases where the subject does not see any fault with her taste,
and so does not desire to change it, are trickier. When we cannot rely on the subject to
do her own imaginative work, how does one habituate another person whose taste is
misguided to “loving and hating finely”? (To be clear, this is relevant to our question of
how to redirect people’s taste away from fatism and toward size equality.) I suggest that
the self-improvement case offers an important clue, namely that engaging the subject’s
27
This is, for instance, the kind of visualization training used by many high-level athletes. See
McGee 2000.
28
I get the term as if action from Bovens 1995.
29
As Jon Elster 1983 (especially chapter 2) points out, however, some kinds of self-improvement pro-
jects are doomed to failure; i.e. those where the desired state resists being deliberately induced. For instance,
one cannot achieve indifference by directly trying not to care about something. Indifference is what Elster
calls a by-product that can only be achieved as the result of an action undertaken for some other end.
52 A. W. Eaton
imagination in the right way is an important component in altering one’s taste. We

explore this idea in Section 2.2.3.
2.2.3 Changing taste through representations

In a few key places, Aristotle suggests that something more than mere repeated expo-
sure would be helpful (if not required) in habituating one to love and hate finely,
namely imaginative engagement with mimetic art.30 Aristotle’s basic idea is that
“imitations” (mimesis)—by which he means poetry, painting, sculpture, music, and
dance—prompt their audiences to have particular sentimental responses to repre-
sented objects (characters, inanimate objects, events, situations, and the like), and in
so doing inculcate a predisposition to have the same kind of response to similar objects
in the real world. This raises two questions. First, how do representations train our
sentimental responses on kinds of objects? Second, how does this develop in us a dis-
position to respond this way in real life?
Mimetic representations, for Aristotle, embody what one might call an “as if ” structure.
Rather than simply mirror (or attempt to mirror, as Plato would have it) a pre-existing
object (person, action, state of affairs), mimetic representations, on Aristotle’s account,
give us a picture of possible realities, a sense of what it would be like for the world to be
a certain way. This is achieved by prescribing feelings to the audience and directing
them toward the represented object.31 In so doing, an effective representation can get
us to see a thing in terms in which we would not normally see it: it might, for instance,
get us to see something that we thought disgusting as tasty, or—to the matter at hand—
something that we previously found to be disgusting as attractive.32 This means that
despite what is often thought about the concept of “mimesis,” on Aristotle’s account
mimetic representations are much less like windows offering unimpeded access on
to an imagined world than they are like filters that guide and structure our attention to
and feelings about that world.
We can now see why at certain points Aristotle recommends engagement with
mimetic representations as an important part of the habituation required to achieve
true virtue. By vividly engaging our sentiments and training them on a particular kind
of object, representations can get us to imaginatively engage in the kind of “as if ”
actions, mentioned at the end of Section 2.2.2, that can help us to acquire a new taste.
30
The clearest formulation is in Aristotle 1984, Book VIII Section 5 (especially 1340a 11–25) where
Aristotle recommends music (which he counts as a mimetic art) as a means of properly orienting a person’s
appetites and sense of enjoyment. Similar remarks are to be found in Aristotle 1987, 1.1447a 13–28 and
Aristotle 1984, 1.11.1371b 4–10.
31
The word “prescribe” is a bit of contemporary jargon used by philosophers of art to denote a work’s
calling for a particular response from its audience. It is important to note that the term is normative rather
than descriptive: to say that a work prescribes a response is to say that the audience must have this response
in order to understand and appreciate the work properly, not that all audiences do or will in fact have the
response.
32
As Stephen Halliwell (1992, 248) puts it, “representational works do not offer us deceptive pseudo-
realities, as Plato had sometimes contended, but the fictive signification of possible reality in particular
artistic media that can be recognized and judged as such.”
In this way, imaginative engagement with representations can effectively shape a per-
son’s taste in the direction of virtue.
But in order for imaginative engagement with representations to have an effect on
our attitudes and dispositions toward the actual world, it is important, on this account,
that the representation in question capture general features of things of that type. It is
only insofar as a representation directs our sentiments not at one unique individual
but, rather, at an object seen as an instance of a larger class, other members of which we
encounter in real life, that we can reasonably expect our imaginative “seeing as” to leaf
out into the world.33
There are two points to make about this position. First, although the account usually
takes works of high art as examples, nothing internal to the argument requires that the
works in question be art with a capital “A.” What’s important for the account is that
the works vividly engage the imagination and direct affective responses toward repre-
sented objects. This is to say that the account applies to the realm of popular culture
and in particular to popular representations of fat, as we shall see in Section 2.3.
Second, although Aristotle and the philosophers of art following him discuss the
potential of imaginative engagement with representations to educate one’s taste and
other sentiments, the model lends itself equally well to explaining how some rep-
resentations can adversely shape one’s taste. By eliciting the wrong sentimental
responses to represented objects, representations can deform our taste. This, many
suggest, is exactly what has happened with our collective preference for Barbie-style
female bodies and our collective distaste for fat bodies.
2.3 Aestheticizing Fat

Any time a fat person gets on a stage to perform and is not the butt of a joke—that’s
a political statement.
Attributed to activist-performer Heather MacAllister (Ellin 2007)
Aristotle offers a promising strategy for combatting the perversion of our taste in bod-
ies under fatism, namely that we produce and widely promote vivid, imaginatively
engaging, and artistically interesting representations that celebrate fat bodies and
encourage us to see them as likeable and attractive.
There are plenty of canonical works in the European artistic tradition that could be
marshaled for this purpose. Consider, for instance, Rubens’ many paintings of rela-
tively fat women. Whether or not Rubens intended his art to promote fat acceptance,
33
The basic picture is that by prescribing affective responses to a given state of affairs, art offers a vivid
sense of what it’s like to hold a distinct perspective on oneself, others, and the world. This view has recently
been developed by philosophers of art who, in various ways, argue that by training our affective responses
on imaginary objects, art can educate our emotions and, in this way, should be considered a significant
source of moral knowledge. For an overview, see Carroll 2000, 360–9.
54 A. W. Eaton
many of his paintings lend themselves to the kind of Aristotelian project of bending
taste in the direction of fat acceptance. (“Rubenesque,” after all, has long been an
approving euphemism for fat, at least on women.34) Rubens’ paintings entice the audi-
ence to see fat bodies as attractive by couching fat women in a traditionally lauded
and canonical code of beautification. Consider, for instance, Rubens’ Venus at Mirror
(1614/15, Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna), which employs a standard high-art mytho-
logical code and pays direct homage to the master of sensual fleshy nudes, Titian
(compare to Titian’s Venus at Mirror, c.1555, National Gallery, Washington, DC),
although Rubens’ Venus is fatter than any Titian ever painted. The painting encourages
us to find the fat body beautiful by endowing the subject with other beautifying quali-
ties: e.g. she has a standardly (for the time and place) pretty face, flowing shiny golden
hair, and is bejeweled and surrounded by luxuriant fabrics. This beautification is
heightened by the painting’s formal qualities: the rich and contrasting palette of golden
tones and the looseness of brushstroke lend her flesh a softness and opulence and make
her hair and surrounding drapery shimmer with gauzy lightness and an overall color-
istic flair for which Rubens was famous.
A contemporary example of high art aestheticization of fat is a group of photographs
by actor Leonard Nimoy titled “The Full Body Project.”35 These are high-contrast
black-and-white photographs of unclothed fat women who often strike classical poses
informed by art masterpieces such as Marcel Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase
(No. 2) (1912, Philadelphia Museum of Art). The women are pictured as proud and
confident, boldly engaging the camera directly as they strut, dance, and laugh. Nimoy’s
pictures celebrate and glamorize the women’s girth and fleshy abundance.
Rubens and Nimoy are just two examples of how vivid and sensual pictures can
begin to bend fat-hating taste in the direction of fat appreciation. By couching fat bod-
ies in an already-accepted visually aestheticizing rhetoric, these pictures entice an
audience that is not already so inclined to see fat bodies as if they were attractive, in the
manner described in Section 2.2.3. (I do not mean to suggest that this is the only func-
tion of such images; of course they can also serve to reaffirm and reinforce those who
have managed to resist the dominant distaste for fat.)
However, there are several potential shortcomings of the Rubens–Nimoy strategy.
First, one might worry that, in its current form, this strategy adopts and promotes “the
male gaze.”36 The concern here is that by focusing almost exclusively on the female
body (typically in various states of undress), such work perpetuates the sexual objecti-
fication of women and what Sandra Bartky calls an “obsessional . . . preoccupation of
many women with their bodies” (Bartky 1990, 28).37 Photographer Laura Aguilar
34
Even in Dutch: Rubensiaan.
35
Thanks to Searah Deysach for referring me to these. Images available at <http://www.rmichelson.
com/artists/leonard-nimoy/the-full-body-project/> (accessed November 2015).
36
For an argument about how to understand properly the concept of “the male gaze,” see Eaton 2008,
877–8.
37
I discuss this problem with respect to high art in the European tradition in Eaton 2013.
offers an antidote to this problem. While Aguilar’s photographs often take fat nude
female bodies as their subjects, the photographs aestheticize in a way that resists the
sexually objectifying male gaze. For instance, Aguilar often locates her nudes in nature
in a way that not only harmonizes the rhythms of body and landscape—of crevices and
valleys, mounds and outcroppings—but also emphasizes the fat body’s monumental-
ity, grandeur, and dignity. As Daniel Perez puts the point, “Aguilar consciously moves
away from societally normative images of Chicana female bodies and disassociates
them from male centered nostalgias or idealizations” (Perez 2013, 1).
A second worry is that all of these examples are works of high art which, given its
elite nature, couldn’t be expected to dislodge what I’ve been calling our “collective
distaste” for fat. To begin to answer this worry, one might point to the fact that we are
beginning to see more visually aestheticizing representations of fat bodies in main-
stream advertising. Some of these, like the “Dove Campaign for Real Beauty” and the
growing number of ads employing so-called “plus size” models, take a small step in
the right direction by aestheticizing bodies that are larger than typical models.
However, there are at least two problems with most of these advertising campaigns.
First, they focus exclusively (as far as I know) on aestheticizing women’s bodies, and so
reinforce our collective obsessional preoccupation with women’s appearance.38
Second, most mainstream ads are deficient in their failure to promote genuinely fat
bodies; instead, major clothing companies tend to employ “plus size” models who are
smaller than the average sized woman in the US.39 Against this there is a growing
demand that clothing companies promote genuinely fat models like Alex LaRosa and
Tess Munster.40 In addition, some argue that clothes for fat women ought to be inte-
grated into general collections, as they are for men, rather than segregated into special
collections that typically offer considerably less variety and are considered to be less
stylish (a deeply aesthetic concept) than “regular” collections.41
So while the mainstream is slowly moving in the direction of aestheticizing at least
female fatness, there is still much work to be done, both to dislodge our collective dis-
taste for fatness and to do so in a way that does not perpetuate gender inequality.
A mainstream gender-equitable, fat-positive campaign would sometimes eroticize
38
As Ann Friedman puts the point, “These ads still uphold the notion that, when it comes to evaluating
ourselves and other women, beauty is paramount. The goal shouldn’t be to get women to focus on how we
are all gorgeous in our own way. It should be to get women to do for ourselves what we wish the broader
culture would do: judge each other based on intelligence and wit and ethical sensibility, not just our
faces and bodies.” “Beauty Above All Else: The Problem With Dove’s New Viral Ad,” NYMag, April 18,
2013. <http://nymag.com/thecut/2013/04/beauty-above-all-else-doves-viral-ad-problem.html> (accessed
November 2015).
39
A recent example comes from the trendy department store H&M which used unacceptably thin mod-
els to show off its new “plus-size” collection. See Adams 2014.
40
Tess Munster maintains a website: <http://www.tessholliday.com/>. Alex LaRosa is featured in this
online essay by Marcy Cruz for Plus Model Magazine: “Sound Off: Is This Picture Too Curvy For Comfort?”
January 4, 2014. <http://www.plus-model-mag.com/2014/01/plus-model-magazine-sound-off-is-this-picture-
too-curvy-for-comfort/> (accessed November 2015).
41
For a discussion of dropping the “plus size” category altogether, see Adams 2014 and Beck 2014.
56 A. W. Eaton
male-presenting fat bodies as well, and would aesthetically promote fat women in ways
that do not rely on their sexuality; for instance, representations that entice us to find
fat women to be witty, charismatic, confident, charming, stylish, strong, courageous,
athletic, talented, and imbued with other traits that make a person attractive. A quick
Internet search reveals that a handful of such things are cropping up; e.g. fat-positive
yoga studios, fat mainstream comedians, fat pop-stars (think of Missy Elliott and
Meghan Trainor, whose recent hit All About That Bass has sparked something of a
national conversation about fat positivity), fashionable swimsuits designed specifically
for fat bodies, and children’s books that portray fat characters as likeable, interesting,
and fun. I have been arguing that such aesthetic measures do not merely reflect chang-
ing attitudes about fat but, rather, are an integral mechanism of positive social change;
in particular, they are part of a program of Aristotelian counter-habituation that aims
to bend our collective taste in bodies in the direction of social justice.
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3
From “Little Brown Brothers”
to “Queer Asian Wives”
Constructing the Asian Male Body
C. Winter Han
Introduction
In the past few decades, it has become widely acknowledged in both the academic and
popular press that men’s bodies are increasingly being objectified for commercial pur-
poses, and that as a part of this objectification, media representations of men’s bodies
have grown increasingly muscular (Hatoum and Belle 2004; Pope et al. 2001;
Rohlinger 2002). By now, so widespread is the practice of putting minimally clothed
men’s bodies before substance that locating actual clothes in the wildly popular
Abercrombie & Fitch catalogue, which at its peak had a paid circulation of 1.2 million
copies, quickly turns into a frustrating game of finding Waldo. In fact, as The Chicago
Tribune noted, “the racy catalog has proved so popular that Abercrombie & Fitch actu-
ally sells it for $6 a copy,” making it virtually the only retailer to charge potential cus-
tomers to look at their products (Chandler 1999). With this new turn in the
objectification of men’s bodies, cultural critics have noted that “the culture in which
males now exist places far more scrutiny on the aesthetic attributes to determine one’s
masculine identity” than ever before (Drummond 2005, 291). The objectification of
men’s bodies has led to the conflating of muscularity with masculinity where to be
“masculine” is to be “muscular,” and this conflation of muscularity with masculinity is
now the defining characteristic of attractiveness by which men are judged. Whereas
earlier definitions of manhood, masculinity, and masculine attractiveness focused on
what a man could do with his body, the unrelenting commodification and objectifica-
tion of men’s bodies have led to manhood, masculinity, and attractiveness being inti-
mately equated with not what a male body does, but how that body looks (Blond 2008;
Kimmel 2011).
Despite this growth in the discussion about the way men’s bodies are objectified,
and how masculinity and manhood are becoming intimately tied to the way one
Constructing the Asian Male Body 61
looks, little has been said about the ways that the objectification of male bodies has
increasingly become racialized as well. While one could argue that all male bodies
have become more objectified and commodified, they have not all been objectified
and commodified in the same way. While some racialized bodies have been mas-
culinized through the process of objectification, some have not. For example, the
“Smell like a Man, Man” advertising campaign created by the advertising agency
Wieden+Kennedy for Old Spice featuring Isaiah Mustafa received widespread posi-
tive reaction including a piece in the New York Daily News which noted Mustafa’s
“hunky bod” and his “wildly smug, cool-cat smooth dude persona” (Dziemianowicz
2010). The campaign also earned a Grand Prix at the Cannes Lions International
Advertising Festival and a Primetime Emmy Award for outstanding commercial.
With Mustafa reciting such lines as, “Look at your man, now back to me, now back at
your man, now back to me. Sadly, he isn’t me,” the ad became one of the most watched
videos on YouTube. Although the ad’s racial subtext has been noted by many com-
mentators, including Cristen Conger (2011) on Bitch Media, for harking back to the
dangerous Mandingo images of the past, the ad nonetheless highlighted black male
masculine virility and muscularity, thus constructing black men as objects of sexual
desire. Despite the comedic nature of these ads, the racist undertones in this particu-
lar modern rendition of Mandingo are perfectly clear; the black man is still capable of
stealing white women, albeit through the use of smooth cool-cat persona rather than
brute force. Thus, black men are still oversexualized and hyper-masculinized in a
society that has increasingly come to view sexualization and masculinization of men’s
bodies as being one and the same. Hence if Mandingo no longer uses force, it is
because he no longer needs to.
However, some racialized bodies, particularly Asian male bodies, have become
more feminized. It goes without saying that no viral video exists of a similarly muscu-
lar and unclad Asian man, but the most popular YouTube video featuring an Asian
man was that of Korean pop star PSY’s song Gangnam Style. In the video, the arguably
less masculine and slightly pudgy PSY is shown dancing and singing while fully clad in
colorful and flamboyant outfits. Not only was this video the most popular video featur-
ing an Asian man on YouTube, but it eventually became the most watched video on
YouTube of all time. While the song’s catchy and upbeat tune certainly helped it along,
a part of the appeal may be due to something more than just that upbeat and catchy
tune. As CeeFu Anderson (2012) noted, “He’s this chubby, happy guy. We can embrace
that in a way we can’t embrace other Asian male bodies that challenge the construc-
tions of Asian masculinities that have occurred in the United States.” Thus, at least part
of PSY’s appeal to American audiences may have been his flamboyance and his demas-
culinized presentation through the use of flamboyant clothing and fumbling move-
ments which confirmed for the American audience what they already believed to be
true of Asian men. In some ways, PSY is a modern, imported version of William Hung,
the one-time American Idol contestant who garnered his fifteen minutes of fame in
part due to his failure to threaten or challenge white male masculinity.
62 C. Winter Han
The oversexualization of black racialized bodies and desexualization of Asian

racialized bodies is evident in a skit titled “Flashlight” that aired on the late night com-
edy show MAD TV in 2006. In the skit, two white men are stranded in a park when
their car breaks down. The skit’s central comic theme involves the two men shaking a
motion-powered flashlight in order to get it to turn on. Lines such as “That looks hard,”
and “I’ll keep yanking it” allude not-so-subtly to male masturbation. The central
punch lines of the skit come toward the end when two police officers, one black and
one Asian, arrive to investigate the scene. Immediately, the black police officer whips
out an oversized black MAG flashlight. When the giant flashlight fails to work, the
Asian police officer states, “Just use mine,” and takes out a minuscule pen light, garner-
ing the biggest laugh of the skit. The skit succeeds in eliciting laughter from the audi-
ence because the audience understands the context of the joke. Not only do they
understand that the flashlights represent penises but that the big black flashlight and
the little yellow flashlight represent the doxa of racialized penises. When it comes to
penis size, the epitome of male embodiment, blacks are big and Asians are small. When
it comes to masculine embodiment, Asian men come up short. Yet despite what appear
to be different ways that black male bodies and Asian male bodies are portrayed in the
skit, both of them are used to normalize the white male body.
Rather than all of this just being in “good fun,” or being simply about entertainment,
the racialized objectification of male bodies works to make them inferior to “normal”
white male bodies. As Burdsey (2007, 26) has noted, this tendency to racially objectify
the male body has been “a common and constant source by which minority ethnic
groups in general have been marginalized.” Specifically, the racial objectification of
bodies has worked to link desirability to race, where some bodies are deemed worthy
of sexual desire while other bodies are not. Rather than a question of aesthetics, the
racialized ranking of bodies is intimately tied to the racialized ranking of masculine
“worth.” As Peter Jackson notes:
When desirability is linked with race, and when certain races are ascribed greater erotic inter-
est than others, then to be a member of an “unsexy” ethnic group is to be equated with an
inferior form of existence. (2000, 184)
Thus, racialized objectification of male bodies ties in intimately to the way that men of
different races are deemed worthy of sexual attention and, more importantly, which
bodies have worth and which bodies do not in a world where one’s value is increasingly
defined through aesthetics of the body. Not surprisingly, Asian men are routinely per-
ceived to be less masculine and less desirable than other men (Wong, Horn, and
Chen 2013). While on the surface, the way that black male bodies and Asian male bod-
ies are portrayed in popular media may represent polar opposites, they both help to
mark white male bodies as the “norm” by which others are compared. Thus, both types
of representations help to promote white male normalcy at the expense of men of color.
In this essay, I explore the presentation of Asian male bodies and Asian male roles in
various types of media outlets, including magazines, newspapers, websites, television
shows, and movies, taking special care to examine both straight and gay media out-
lets. Rather than taking a systematic approach to data, I examine a variety of media
outlets where male bodies are prominently displayed or men play a significant role.
The goal is not to systematically describe the representation of Asian men in all forms
of media, but to explore a wide range of media outlets people routinely encounter in
their everyday lives and how those different types of media outlets come to construct
Asian male bodies. While the term “Asian” encompasses a large group of people who
trace their ethnic ancestry to nations that are characterized by different cultural, his-
torical, and social histories, and the term “oriental” was originally meant to describe
everything “east” of Europe, I limit my discussion to men from East, Southeast, and
South Asia. While these areas have had different relationships to the “West” that
would warrant separate discussions, it is also true that they have come to occupy a
similar “racial” space, particularly in the USA, that is different from the space occupied
by those of Middle Eastern or Central Asian origins. Because of this larger racializa-
tion, stereotypes of what it means to be East, Southeast, or South Asian are often con-
flated in the larger imagination, leading to a homogenized mass in the larger, Western
imagination.
The questions I ask are, what are the images confronting Asian men in a variety of
media outlets? How is race implicated in the way that bodies are constructed in the
media and who are these bodies constructed for? I argue that Asian male bodies are
largely presented as the feminine “other” bodies in contrast to the masculine white
“male” bodies. Presenting Asian male bodies, and Asian men, in this way leads to a
hierarchy where white men are viewed as being superior to, and more desirable than,
Asian men.
A Queer Case of Gay Representations

Perhaps nowhere is the obsession with muscular male bodies more prevalent than in
media outlets targeting gay men. Over the past few decades, images of men in gay male
magazines have dramatically shifted to chiseled, fat-free bodies that have led to the
development of a narrow range of desirability among gay men (Han 2007). In fact,
recent scholarship on gay men has found a high level of anti-effeminate attitudes
among gay men and the rise of a masculinity based on lean, hard, and glamorously
rugged bodies as the new gay norm. Thus, marking the new gay norm has been an
emphasis not only on muscular masculinity but on an active rejection of femininity
(Clarkson 2006; Levine 1998; Taywaditep 2002). The strong emphasis on masculinity
and vitriolic rejection of femininity led famed gay writer Edmund White to note:
This masculinization of gay life is now nearly universal. Flamboyance has been traded in for a
sober, restrained manner. Voices are lowered, jewelry is shed, cologne is banished and, in the
decor of houses, velvet and chandeliers have been exchanged for functional carpets and indus-
trial lights. The campy queen who screams in falsetto, dishes (playfully insults) her friends,
swishes by in drag is an anachronism; in her place is an updated Paul Bunyan. Personal
64 C. Winter Han
advertisements for lovers or sex partners in gay publications call for men who are “macho,”
“butch,” “masculine” or who have a “straight appearance.” The advertisements insist that “no
femmes need apply.” So extreme is this masculinization that it has been termed “macho
Fascism” by its critics. (White 1980, 241; emphasis in original)
Although Edmund White made this observation over thirty-five years ago, recent aca-
demic inquiries have demonstrated that this anti-feminine attitude among gay men is
both widespread and deeply entrenched (Edwards 2006; Levine 1998; Nardi 2000;
Taywaditep 2002). Also, evidence suggests that physical appearance, particularly as it
relates to the body, may be more important in gay men’s ability to move up the gay sta-
tus ladder than it is for straight men (Kleinberg 1980).
Unlike media outlets aimed at heterosexual male audiences, gay media plays a dual
role in that the male bodies on display promote an image not only of what one should
be but also of what one should desire. Male bodies in gay media outlets are meant to be
not only emulated but consumed. Not surprisingly, gay men report significantly higher
rates of body dissatisfaction than straight men when exposed to these images
(Gettelman and Thompson 1993; Kaminski et al. 2005; Silberstein et al. 1989), report
more adverse effects on personal relationships because of these images (Sánchez,
Greenberg, Liu, and Vilain 2009), and are more likely to self-objectify by adopting the
observer’s perspectives on their bodies (Kozak, Frankenhauser, and Roberts 2009;
Martins, Tiggemann, and Kirkbride 2007). In addition, Beren and colleagues (1996)
found that gay men, particularly those affiliated with the larger gay community, were
significantly more likely to experience body dissatisfaction as well as psychological
distress associated with their bodies.
As it is, in the larger discussion regarding the objectification of male bodies, little dis-
cussion exists of how the racialization of bodies within a sexualized community influ-
ences the lives of those who are simultaneously racialized and sexualized. Rather, the
literature on gay men’s body dissatisfaction treats all gay men as being similarly located
within the social structure of gay America. For example, despite having a multiracial
sample, Strong and his colleagues (2000) make little attempt to explore the distinction
between gay white men and gay men of color. Instead, it is often implied that all gay men
are influenced by these images in similar ways. However, Drummond (2005), in one of
the very few articles that deal with gay Asian men’s perception of their bodies, points out
that gay Asian men in Western countries may experience concerns of the body that are
distinct from those faced by gay white men. Specifically, their marginalization and stig-
matization within the gay community forces gay Asian men to have to come to terms not
only with their sexuality but also with racism. More importantly, within the larger gay
community, racism toward gay Asian men is specifically based on perceived inadequa-
cies of the Asian male body compared to the white male body. For example, on the web-
site Bathhouse Blues, a gay white man had this to say about gay Asian men:
While white men have masculine underwear parties where guys take off their shirts and expose
rippling stomach muscles, Asian gay men have “Miss Asia” beauty pageants with Asian men
dressing in drag, badly miming the words of Whitney Houston (their lips don’t even match the
words because they can’t even speak English properly) . . . With Asians, almost all of them do
drag or walk like a faggot, are skinny, limp wrist and will basically suck off any old fat white
man that they come across because that is all they are able to get looking the foul way they
do . . . Even most Asians are repulsed by their own kind and chase white men because even they
find themselves disgusting . . . If Asian gay men want to be accepted, try acting like a man . . . It
has nothing to do with race, it’s to do with Asian gay men being sissy, limp wrist with a hairstyle
that looks like the head of a circumcised penis and little round circular steel rimmed glasses.
(Bathhouse Blues 2005; emphasis added)
In this quote, the writer’s focus in criticism of gay Asian men is almost entirely on the
failure of the Asian male body to meet the rippling gay norm of desirability. Surprisingly,
the writer also states that “it has nothing to do with race,” despite his blatantly racist
comments. According to the writer, it isn’t racism that leads to gay Asians being mar-
ginalized, but rather the failure of Asian men to achieve the masculine norm. Gay
white men are not to be blamed for discriminating against gay Asian men, who would
be well accepted if they would only “try acting like a man.” And, at least for this poster,
acting like a man includes having rippling stomach muscles. More important, the
quote cited above is not an isolated incidence of one individual’s online rant. Rather, it
is indicative of the widespread acts of racism directed against gay men of color both
online and off that has been well documented in the academic literature (Bérubé 2001;
Han 2007; Green 2005; Poon and Ho 2008; Teunis 2005).
Feminine Asian Male Bodies

Asian male bodies have had a long history of being feminized in Western discourse
and images. As Joseph Boone (1995) discusses, early European writings about the
“Orient” were filled with the sexual politics of colonization that marked “Oriental”
men as feminine while at the same time constructing European men as masculine.
According to Boone, this gendering of “Oriental” men was used to disguise Western
homoerotic desires within the confines of occidental heterosexuality. As the logic goes,
if the desired male “Oriental” body was not really a male body, then the homoerotic
desires of Western travelers were not really homosexual. But this feminization of Asian
male bodies wasn’t limited to their alleged feminine behavior and traits. Feminization
of Asian men was also achieved by portraying their bodies as small, thin, frail, and
lithe. So feminization of Asian male bodies was accomplished through depicting them
as androgynous or exotifying them with feminized features, dress, or manners. While
these two tactics were often conflated, they did not necessarily need to be.
Given the latent homoerotic desires discussed by Boone, images of Asian men por-
trayed them as both sexually threatening and sexually inferior (Espiritu 1997). A good
contemporary example is found in the cult favorite film Flash Gordon. First released in
1980, the film is an adaptation of the 1930s comic strip of the same name and continues
to have a sizeable following, evidenced by its perpetual presence on the Internet Movie
66 C. Winter Han
Database “top 5,000” popularity ranking among nearly three million titles. More than
three decades after its release, the movie continues to influence the larger racial imagi-
nation of American audiences. In the film, Max von Sydow plays the role of Ming the
Merciless, the emperor of a planet called Mongo. The film opens with Ming plotting to
destroy the Earth using alien-made “natural disasters.” Simultaneously back on Earth,
we are introduced to Flash Gordon and Dale Arden who are passengers on a plane that
is struck down by one of Ming’s alien-made disasters. Miraculously, Flash manages to
crash the plane into the makeshift greenhouse/lab operated by Dr. Hans Zarkov who
lures them into a spaceship in order to help him investigate these unexplainable “natu-
ral disasters.” As can be predicted by the thin storyline, the spaceship crash lands on
Mongo where the three protagonists are taken prisoner and brought to Ming’s palace.
Immediately, Ming is entranced by Dale and orders her to be prepared to be wed to
him. Here, it is clear that Ming is all at once sexually threatening to Dale, sexually
repulsive to her, and sexually inferior to Flash. Whereas Flash is a muscular and youth-
ful football hero, Ming is a weak and frail old man lusting after a woman who does not
desire him. Yet Dale’s repulsion for Ming is not simply based on his treacherous actions
but is intimately tied to his frail, thin, and failing body. Contrasting Ming’s body with
that of Flash, one becomes aware of the type of body that is desirable and the type of
body that is not.
Similarly, early American media products also helped to shape a gendered Asian
male body as being frail and feminine. In examining early American trade cards, Yuko
Matsukawa (2002) notes the feminization of Asian men through various tactics such
as equating Asian labor with domestic work and infantilizing Asian men during a time
when immaturity was equated with femininity. Trade cards for products as varied as
laundry detergent and tea contained images of Asian men with elongated fingernails,
ruby red lips, porcelain white skin, and long black pony tails wearing colorful and
flowing silk pajamas. The fragility and femininity is even more apparent when com-
pared to portrayals of white men during this time that largely focused on rugged and
independent settlers heading west to make their fortune in such masculine activities
as mining, ranching, and frontier building.
While more recent images of Asian men are not as blatantly objectified along femi-
nine lines, they are nonetheless robbed of male sexual agency. In a Hollywood envi-
ronment where plot lines virtually always turn on the romantic tensions of male and
female protagonists, Asian men never take on romantic roles. As Nguyen Tan Hoang
points out:
Despite the recent critical attention and popularity of Asian male actors in Asian cinema and
its successful crossover into Hollywood (represented by such actors as Jackie Chan, Jet Li, and
Chow Yun Fat, and directors such as Ang Lee and John Woo), the representation of Asian men
as sexually appealing scarcely figures in mainstream American popular culture. (2004, 225)
Examples of the asexual Asian “action hero” are abundant. Taking the three examples
provided by Hoang, Jackie Chan’s character on the movie The Tuxedo fails to develop a
romantic relationship with the female lead, even though, as David Henry Hwang
(1985) has pointed out, such relationships are now almost obligatory in the action
genre. Similarly, Jet Li’s character in the movie Romeo Must Die also fails to develop a
romantic relationship with the female lead. Chow Yun Fat, a wildly popular sex symbol
in Asia, is often shown entangled in romantic relationships in Asian movies but never
in American movies. Clearly, based on the global popularity of Bollywood movies and
Korean soap operas, it should be obvious that Asian men can, and do, play romantic
leads on both the silver and small screens. Yet, that understanding seems to disappear
when movies and television shows are produced outside of Asian countries. Even
Bruce Lee, the most iconic of the Asian male martial arts stars, is never shown develop-
ing a romantic relationship in any of his movies. In fact, when Asian men are described
as sexually desirable, they are described using feminine characteristics that make them
different from the “usual” men that are considered sexually desirable within the
Western context (Han 2015). So while some Asian men have managed to stop being
domestics or laundry workers in the Western imagination, they nonetheless remain
sexless and devoid of normal masculine sexual inclinations.
The Large White Body and the Small Asian Body

Contemporary media products also achieve the feminization of Asian male bodies by
often juxtaposing a large white male body with a small Asian male body, thus using the
smaller Asian man to highlight the masculinity of white men. For example, in an epi-
sode of the popular television drama Grey’s Anatomy titled “Where the Boys Are,” an
inter-racial gay couple composed of Joe the bartender and his boyfriend Walter join
the straight male doctors on a camping/fishing trip. While Joe is played by Steven
Bailey, a 6’4”, moderately overweight 35-year-old, Walter is played by a much slimmer,
much younger, and shorter Jack Yang. During the trip, Joe and Dr. Richard Webber,
played by James Pickens Jr., begin to have a discussion about having kids. When
Richard tells Joe that his wife Adele doesn’t want to raise kids alone, an allusion to his
work hours, Joe responds: “Walter says the same thing. I’m always working at the bar.
But for Walter, if I have to make a change, I’ll do it. I can’t imagine my life without him.”
Here, it is Joe who overworks in order to support his “family” and Walter who com-
plains about his husband’s absence due to his work. It should be noted that during this
conversation, all the men including Joe are fishing on the river’s edge while Walter is
shown in the distance sitting on a chair, reading a book. Here again, Joe is presented as
the masculine norm, representing the husband through his appearance, his actions,
and his interaction with the other men, while Walter is presented as the feminine other
that helps to normalize the gay relationship between two men in the eyes of the straight
Dr. Webber who comes to see Joe and Walter as being “just like” him and his wife,
Adele. Depicting the gay white man as a “normal, average” guy who happens to be gay,
while the gay Asian man is portrayed as the very stereotypical feminine homosexual,
68 C. Winter Han
normalizes gay white homosexuality but only at the expense of the Asian male. It is
only because Joe is “just like” the “normal, average” guy that he finds acceptance. Yet
Joe’s normality and averageness is dependent on his very heteronormative relationship
with Walter where Walter is the wife and Joe is the husband (Han 2015).
Another way that white male masculinity is highlighted is by juxtaposing it with an
apparent lack of masculinity in an Asian man. This can be observed in the drama The
Walking Dead. On the series, Steven Yeun plays Glen Rhee, a member of a small group
of survivors of a zombie apocalypse. As with all end-of-the-world catastrophe dramas,
the men who have survived are a rugged bunch. Other than the token older man and
the male child, all the white men in the series are presented as rugged and highly mas-
culine in the way that we would expect men who have survived a zombie apocalypse to
be. Their physical presentations are no different, with all the white men presented with
muscular bodies and a good amount of facial hair. Glen is the stark exception that
works to contrast the rugged white male masculinity with the failed masculinity of an
Asian man. His presence as a smaller, thinner, much less rugged Asian man without
any facial hair, works to highlight the white men’s masculinity by his absence of mascu-
line characteristics (Han 2015).
As Richard Fung (1991) eloquently argued, gay porn is another site where the large
white male body is contrasted with the small Asian body. In examining gay porn, Fung
finds that Asian men play the imagined feminine role of the bottom while white men
play the imagined masculine role of the top. In this way, white male sexuality is nor-
malized by ignoring the narrative of anal sexual pleasure for white men while high-
lighting the more masculine sexual goal of insertive pleasure. This heteronormalization
of white gay male sexual desire comes at the expense of Asian men, whose sexuality is
still seen as the deviant form of gay sexuality. Because the white man is always the
insertive sexual partner in gay porn, his homosexuality is heteronormalized at the
expense of the feminized Asian man who is virtually always the receptive partner.
Infantilizing Asian Male Bodies

As already discussed, the smaller size of Asian men in popular media products leads to
perceiving the Asian male body as either feminine or child-like. Some shows go fur-
ther by deliberately infantilizing Asian men. In the popular television series 2 Broke
Girls, Matthew Moy plays the part of Han Lee, a Korean immigrant who operates a
run-down diner where the two protagonists, Max Black, a poor working-class young
woman with a rough past, and Caroline Wesbox Channing, a former rich, high-society
snob, work as waitresses. In an episode titled “And the Big Hole” that first aired on
March 25, 2013, the show opens with Caroline being late for her shift at the diner. The
interaction that follows in this particular episode between Han, Max, and Caroline is
representative of the type of interactions that occur between Han and the two protago-
nists as well as between Han and the other recurring characters. Entering the scene,
Han rushes to Max and demands to know where Caroline is. The dialogue continues as
Han replies in a childish rant, “She’s twenty minutes late. As the boss, I will not have
this!” Not missing a beat, Max retorts, “Wow, someone woke up on the wrong side of
the crib,” equating Han, who is several inches shorter than both the women, with an
infant—a tactic often used on the show. This act of infantilizing Han robs him of any
authority and power that he might hold over the two women who are, actually, his
employees. When he is constructed as a child, his antics become comical rather than
threatening to the two white women’s privileged racialized position in this hierarchy of
interaction. By infantilizing Han in this way, the show is also able to neutralize any
potential sexual undertones that might exist between Han and the two young women,
easing the long-standing threat of the “yellow peril” that has historically played an
important part in feminizing Asian men in order to mitigate fears of a yellow horde of
men who might engage in miscegenistic sexual activity with white women.
The infantilization of Asian men is not new. Like the feminization of Asian men,
Western media efforts to infantilize Asian men are rooted in a colonial mentality of the
superior West as opposed to the inferior East. For example, following the Treaty of
Paris, Filipinos were characterized by William Howard Taft as “little brown brothers,”
who needed close supervision lest they descend into savagery. While not originally
meant to be a racial slur, the label nonetheless reflected what Stuart Creighton Miller
(1982) has called “paternalistic racism,” whereby the West views the East as populated
by children who need supervision. Whether deliberately meant as a racial slur or not,
the characterization of a racial group as “little brown brothers” infantilizes them and
robs them of the ability to engage with white men as equals. Rather, infantilizing Asian
men and Asian male bodies leads to seeing white men as the natural superior to Asian
men, responsible for not only taking care of them but also keeping them in line.
A similar theme runs across a number of media products such as Indiana Jones and the
Temple of Doom, and more recently Gran Torino, where older and much more mascu-
line white men are responsible for the care, protection, and well-being of young Asian
boys. Somehow, the notion that older Asian men can also serve as mentors to Asian
boys is not only ignored but actively negated. For example, in Gran Torino the only
adult male family member to the Asian boy is portrayed as a gangster out to ruin his
life rather than ensure his well-being.
Asian Male Bodies as the Comic Punchline

With the increasing amount of nudity in popular media products, the term “gratuitous
nudity,” or nudity that isn’t needed to move the plotline forward, has come to take
center stage in public discourse. The concept of gratuitous nudity is generally applied
in cases of nudity used to sexualize a scene that does not need to be sexualized. Yet the
use of Asian male bodies hardly fits this definition. Instead, when Asian male bodies
are gratuitously nude, it is never to arouse sexual desire but rather to act as the comical
70 C. Winter Han
punchline. So whereas naked white male bodies may be used to elicit sexual desires,
naked Asian male bodies are used only to get a laugh. The prime example is in the 1999
film The Hangover, about three friends who wake up in Las Vegas following their
friend’s bachelor party. Having no recollection of the night before or the whereabouts
of the bachelor, the three friends engage in a mad re-enactment of the night before in
order to find the bachelor before his wedding. In one particularly ridiculous scene, Mr.
Chow, a flamboyant gang-leader played by Ken Jeong, jumps naked out of the trunk of
a car to attack the three male protagonists. During the scene, the laughs come from his
comically non-muscular body, and what the Global Grind (2013) called his “small
winkie,” as he swings a crowbar. In the short article describing the scene in Us Weekly,
Jeong’s wife is reported to have stated, “I guarantee this will be the feel-good movie of
the summer because every guy will go home feeling good about themselves”
(Winston 2013), given his non-muscular body and his small penis. Whereas gratui-
tous nudity of white male stars may potentially lead to decreasing body satisfaction
among men who view those images (Agliata and Tantleff-Dunn 2004), Jeong’s wife’s
own statements seem to imply that gratuitous nudity of Asian men is likely to lead
white male audiences to feel better about themselves in comparison to the decidedly
unmasculine presentation of the Asian male body. Ironically, or perhaps not, a link to a
different Us Weekly article, titled “Sexy shirtless stars!,” is provided midway through
the article on Jeong. When readers click to the “Sexy shirtless stars!” article, they are
treated to a photo gallery of sixty-three shirtless male stars, sixty of whom are white.
Predictably, none of the sexy, shirtless hunks are Asian. Again, the Asian male’s lack of
muscularity and masculinity as presented by a gratuitously nude scene of an Asian
man is contrasted with the viral, muscular masculinity of white men (Us Weekly 2013).
Similarly, in the film Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, actor Bobby Lee plays
the role of Kenneth Park, an overzealous college student. Kenneth is first introduced as
a geeky, straight-laced college student majoring in finance. A comedic moment occurs
at the Asian students’ dance party when Kenneth is shown shirtless and gyrating on a
table. Much like in the movie The Hangover, the punchline of the joke from the gratui-
tous shirtless scene of an Asian man comes from the lack of muscular definition and
sex appeal. Rather than sexual arousal, the audience is expected to laugh at the ridicu-
lous scene of a shirtless, out-of-shape Asian man gyrating on a table. Again, naked
Asian men are not used to elicit a sexual response but a comedic one.
The Asian Man as the Queer Wife

Enduring relationships between a white man and an Asian man, whether they be
romantic or otherwise, are often marked by sexual undertones and innuendos that
place the Asian man as the imagined feminine sexual partner to the white male partner.
Perhaps the best example of this trope can be found in the popular CBS sitcom The
Big Bang Theory. The show features four male protagonists, roommates Leonard
Hofstadter and Sheldon Cooper and their co-workers Howard Wolowitz and Raj
Koothrappali. The four male protagonists all play scientists who work at Caltech. In
the episode “The Maternal Capacitance,” which first aired on February 9, 2009, the
relationship between Howard and Raj is characterized as being an “ersatz homosexual
marriage.” In the ongoing joke of Howard and Raj’s ersatz homosexual marriage, Raj
often plays the stereotypical role of the wife while Howard usually takes on the stereo-
typical role of the husband. On the show, their relationship is a source of running gags
in which Raj is presented as Howard’s “wife.”
Raj’s femininity is constantly highlighted throughout many of the episodes in the
series. In the episode “The Transporter Malfunction,” which first aired on March 29,
2012, Raj asks his parents to set him up on a date after failing to find one on his own to
accompany him to Howard’s wedding. At first, Raj believes that he is getting along well
with his blind date until she announces that she is a lesbian and believed Raj to be gay
and was hoping that they could enter into a lavender wedding so that both of their
parents would stop pressuring them to get married. When Raj asks why she would
think that he was gay, she responds, “Fill in the blanks,” and lists off the numerous
feminine characteristics that Raj possesses that have led nearly everyone back in India
to believe he is gay. Likewise, in the episode “The Proton Displacement,” which first
aired on November 7, 2013, Raj is the only one of the four male characters to announce
that he is going to “girls’ night,” with the three female protagonists. When Howard asks,
“You’re going to girls’ night? Do you know they’re making jewelry?” Raj responds,
“You think they came up with that?” When Sheldon enters the scene, he asks Howard
and Raj, “What’s up?” To which Howard replies, “Not his testosterone.” As can be gath-
ered from these brief examples, Raj’s femininity is repeatedly the punchline of jokes.
Thus, despite the premise of the show that all of the men are “socially awkward tech
geeks,” which would foreclose the show’s creators from presenting the three white male
characters as the hegemonic masculine norm, Raj’s constantly highlighted femininity
works to nonetheless construct the other men as being masculine by comparison. An
interesting observation to make about The Big Bang Theory is that, unlike The Walking
Dead, none of the white male characters are portrayed in a hegemonic masculine way.
In fact, it could be argued that the character of Sheldon Cooper, with his particular
campy behaviors, may also be considered “feminine.” Yet as Thomas J. Linneman
(2008) has noted in his analysis of the show Will & Grace, feminizing moments do not
often occur due to the characters acting in effeminate ways but rather occur through
dialogue between characters, particularly with punchlines acting to place male char-
acters in feminine positions. Thus Sheldon is rarely placed as the punchline of a femi-
nizing joke, while Raj is often such a target (Han 2015).
Rather than neutralize the feminine image of gay Asian men found in mainstream
media outlets, gay media outlets tend to hyper-feminize gay Asian men as a contrast to
the masculine white man. For example, the recent ad campaign launched by the
Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN), an organization that promotes itself
as a “watchdog and policy organization dedicated to bringing about full LGBT equality
72 C. Winter Han
to America’s military and ending all forms of discrimination and harassment of mili-
tary personnel on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity,” featured a gay
Asian man comforting a gay white man who was not allowed to serve in the military. In
the ad, a part of their “Let Them Serve” ad campaign, which included the caption, “Let
him serve,” rather than the usual caption “Let them serve” which was often used with
ads featuring more than one individual, it is clear who is the brave soldier and who is
the supportive partner (Han 2008). By placing the Asian man as the “supportive” part-
ner to the brave white man who is not allowed to serve, the ad accomplishes not only
the feminization of the Asian male body, but also the masculinization of the white
body by feeding into the heteronormative narrative that within gay couples, one must
“play” the woman and the other must “play” the man.
White Male Supremacy

In building male hierarchies, white men and white male bodies are often constructed
as being superior to Asian men and Asian male bodies. Given the feminization and
infantilization of Asian male bodies coupled with the trope of the failed Asian man, no
other conclusion is possible. On the website Gay Thailand, developed by Alyson
Adventures, one of the most successful gay travel companies in the USA, which mar-
kets itself as “a travel site for gay visitors to Thailand,” the assumed superiority of white
men to Asian men is blatantly evident. According to Alyson Adventures, the website is
intended to provide “background for travelers on Honah Lee, our active Thailand tour
for gay men, lesbians, and friends.” The advice given by the website is indicative of the
assumed hierarchy of gay white men over gay Asian men. On the “gay dating and social
life” section of the website, potential gay travelers to Thailand are told:
Western men who visit gay bars or other gay venues in Thailand will readily meet Thais who
speak enough English to socialize. Moreover, these Thai men are eager to meet you. Sooner
than expected, you may find yourself socializing with new friends, or even dating on a level
that involves more than a trip back to the hotel room.
The above quote implies that “Western” men are more desirable than Thai men who
will be “eager” to meet them. So eager are Thai men to meet “Western” men that a
“Western” man who travels to Thailand might suddenly find himself in sexual situa-
tions “sooner than expected.” When dealing with the Thai men that he might meet, the
potential gay traveler to Thailand is told:
You’re the social superior. The notion of dating someone on a non-equal basis is tough for most
Americans to swallow, but in Thailand, the concept of social superiority is too ingrained to be
ignored . . . This doesn’t mean you treat your partner shabbily. And in bed, everything can
change. But on a date, it’s assumed that you’ll pay.
Dress well. Dress reflects status. Long pants, and clean, pressed clothes, are expected of some-
one in your position.
Be generous. This, like dressing neatly, is expected of someone of your status.
On a different section educating gay travelers how to behave in Thailand when they are
the social superior or the social inferior, potential gay travelers to Thailand are told:
When you’re the superior

You incur certain responsibilities as the higher-ranking individual.
You pick up the tab at dinner, whether it’s a date or a group of business colleagues; don’t expect
to split the bill.
Dress your role. That tank-top you wore to the beach is not appropriate anywhere else.
Don’t shirk your position. At a public event, for example, you may be ushered to a front row. Stay
there. If you move back, everyone behind you will also feel obliged to move back.
Be courteous to those of lower status. Your higher ranking is never an excuse to criticize or show
anger toward someone of a lower status; doing so will reflect more badly on you than on them.
But don’t overdo it. A smile is more appropriate than a spoken thank-you to a clerk, cab-driver,
or doorman, after they perform an expected service.
When you’re the inferior
Don’t get too smug just yet. You rank above many Thai people, but you always rank below
monks and royalty. Follow the lead of others in the presence of either group, bow your head,
and by no means point at them with your feet or touch them on the head!
According to the website, income, occupation, education, age (with older being “bet-
ter”), social connections, and family names denote social class. The assumption made, of
course, is that every Thai man that the white man meets will have a lower income, have a
lower prestige occupation, have less education, and be younger than the white man.
Whether the claims made by the website are true or not, these quotes illustrate sev-
eral things about perceived racial hierarchies within gay communities. First, it is
assumed that the gay traveler to Thailand is white. While the website refers to “Western”
and “European” tourists as their target audience, statements such as, “Those of us from
the west come from cultures with a deep history of Christian values,” make it clear
that “Western” and “European” are synonymous with “white.” More importantly, it
assumes that the white traveler’s social status will be higher than the Thai men that he
meets, with the exception of monks and royalty. Because the website notes that social
status is determined by, among other things, income, occupation, education, and age,
it is also assumed that the white traveler will have higher income, a more prestigious
occupation, higher levels of education, and be older than the Thai men that he may
encounter. The advice that the white tourist should humble himself in front of royalty
is even more outlandish as it assumes that an average Joe tourist from the West would
somehow have the opportunity for a royal engagement or be in a position to meet
royalty.
The trope of the superior white man is found throughout various media outlets,
particularly television where Asian men are often used to play the role of an “assistant”
to a white man. On the critically acclaimed television sitcom 30 Rock, Maulik Pancholy
plays the role of Jonathan, an administrative assistant to Jack Donaghy, a corporate
74 C. Winter Han
ladder-climbing network executive. Jack’s independence is contrasted with Jonathan’s

overly sensitive attachment to Jack, who is often portrayed as having to shun Jonathan’s
numerous attempts to develop a more personal relationship with him. Jonathan’s hero
worship of Jack, at times, becomes ridiculous. The characterization of an Asian man
who tirelessly works for the approval of a white male superior was not new. In the sit-
com Rules of Engagement, which aired between 2007 and 2013, Adhir Kalyan played
the role of Timir “Timmy” Patel, an administrative assistant to Russell Dunbar, played
by David Spade. Despite what can only be described as an abusive boss/employee rela-
tionship, Timmy constantly seeks the support of Russell, putting his pride aside to be
no more than a glorified houseboy. The interesting thing about these portrayals is that
the Asian man is usually portrayed as holding an occupation that is normally perceived
as a feminine one. That is, in the cases of Jonathan and Timmy, Asian men play the role
of an administrative assistant to a white male boss. More importantly, the Asian male
characters take on many of the stereotypical feminine characteristics associated with
“secretaries.”
Conclusion
The growing discussion about the way that male bodies are objectified and commer-
cialized has failed to account for the different ways that male bodies have also been
racialized. While some male bodies have been objectified as muscular and masculine
and thus deserving of sexual gazes, this has not been the case for Asian male bodies.
Instead, Asian male bodies have been feminized and infantilized and used to contrast
the more muscular, masculine, and desirable white male bodies. The racialization
of the Asian male body has led to further marginalization of Asian men and has
marked them as sexually undesirable, sexually deviant, and inferior to white men. As
such, the racialized objectification of male Asian bodies has done little but reinforce
the marginalization of Asian men through further, albeit updated, stereotypes about
Asian male bodies.
More than just “entertainment,” the marginalization of Asian men through racial
objectification works to reinforce white male supremacy at the expense of Asian
men, both gay and straight. For straight men, the feminization and infantilization
of Asian men maintains white male privilege by constructing white men as more
masculine than, more capable than, and more sexually desirable than Asian men.
For gay white men, the feminized Asian male body helps to heteronormalize gay
sexuality by presenting gay white men as the masculine norm while gay Asian men
are relegated to be the feminine other that helps them make their masculine claims
of normalcy.
Recently, Asian American artists and writers have begun to challenge these portrayals
through various works that confront the stereotypes discussed here. The problem has
been that many of these works have featured images of muscular and hegemonically
masculine Asian male bodies that “fit” into the dominant definition of appropriate
masculinity. Rather than challenge the definitions of masculinity that marginalize

Asian men, these cultural artifacts of our time have simply reinforced the prevalent
norms by feeding into them. What is needed is not to feature Asian men who fit the
dominant definition of masculinity and put them on parade but to challenge the very
definition of what it means to be a “man.”
Here, I return to PSY and William Hung. As discussed earlier, many Asian
American commentators were quick to condemn PSY for being a caricature of an
Asian man. But what was true of PSY is doubly so for William Hung. On the website
AArising, Nathaniel Jue (2010) wrote that “William’s notoriety is fodder for the exac-
erbation of the Asian man stereotype, the one that we’ve been trying to shed for the
last 150 years. The fobby appearance, thick accent and silly dance moves are obvious
subjects of mockery.” Over at AsianWeek, columnist Emil Guillermo (2004) called
Hung “our one-man APA minstrel show. Our real-life Buckwheat.” Sentiments such
as, “I find Hung to be embarrassing and perpetuating Asian American stereotypes,”
written by Janet Pak (2004), the lifestyles editor for Spartan Daily, San Jose State
University’s student newspaper, were a common response from Asian American
activists who saw William Hung as all things wrong with the way that Asian
Americans were portrayed in the media. From my discussion, it should be obvious
that I agree that these are stereotypical representations. However, as Chimamanda
Adichie (2009) noted, “the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but
that they are incomplete.” The problem with PSY and William Hung is not that they
are untrue, but that their stories are incomplete. The problem with PSY and William
Hung is not that these images and personalities exist, but that they are the only ones
that exist. They are the only ones that resonate with white audiences precisely because
they already meet the existing definition of what an “Asian man” is, or should be. That,
of course, is problematic.
But equally problematic is the Asian American community’s response to immedi-
ately condemn these images rather than addressing the real issue, which is the ten-
dency of the media to only promote these images. Arguing that PSY and William Hung
are so preposterous that we must immediately distance ourselves from them reinforces
the mistaken belief that masculinity that is based on being “chubby and happy” or an
Asianness that is based on having an accent or being good at science is somehow unac-
ceptable, and that the racial order that marks Asian masculinity and being Asian as
somehow less than white masculinity and being white is correct. Returning to Raj
from the Big Bang Theory, the problem isn’t that he is feminine when compared to the
white men, but that because we have come to see femininity as less than masculinity,
the show’s tendency to place Raj in a subordinate position to the white men based on
his femininity is never questioned. Thus, rather than question the image itself, perhaps
we should begin to question the racist and gendered assumptions that allow these
images to be used in the way that they are used.
Only with a social context that favors one type of masculinity over another, mascu-
linity over femininity, and whiteness over otherness, do the collective ways that Asian
76 C. Winter Han
men are represented become a problem. Insisting that Asian men be portrayed in the
same way as white men simply reinforces the racist, gendered, and heterosexualized
system that marginalizes those that are portrayed as non-white, feminine, and homo-
sexual in the first place. The goal then shouldn’t be to change the way that Asian men
are represented so that they are presented in similar ways as white men, but to chal-
lenge the larger beliefs about what is and is not appropriately masculine.
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PA RT I I
Look
4
Appearance as a Feminist Issue
Deborah L. Rhode
In 1929, in A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf (1984, 84) maintained that every
woman needed to consider “what is your relation to the ever-changing and turning
world of gloves and shoes.” That world has grown still more complicated since Woolf
wrote. In today’s universe of escalating opportunities for cosmetic enhancement, the
issues surrounding beauty have posed increasingly complex challenges. For some
women, our cultural preoccupation with appearance is a source of wasted effort and
expense, a threat to physical and psychological well-being, and a trigger for workplace
discrimination. For other women, the pursuit of beauty is a source of pleasure and
agency, and a showcase for cultural identity. The question for the women’s movement
is whether it is possible to find some common ground, and to develop a concept of
beauty that is a source of pleasure rather than shame, and that enhances, rather than
dictates, self-worth.
Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Debates

Contemporary challenges to appearance-related practices have long-standing roots.
During America’s first two centuries, “respectable” women did not “rouge,” a practice
associated with prostitutes. Women might ingest chalk, vinegar, or even arsenic to
achieve a fair complexion, or kiss rosy crepe paper to redden their lips, but any detect-
able use of paints or powders put their reputations at risk. Beauty and virtue were
intertwined, and reliance on cosmetics was thought corrosive to a “chaste soul” and a
sign of moral depravity (Peiss 1999, 57). Some black women’s leaders similarly con-
demned anyone who wanted to whiten her skin (Peiss 1999, 207): “Why does she wish
to improve her appearance? Why not improve her real self ” through education and
cultural activities? On hair, many leaders echoed the advice of Marcus Garvey: “Don’t
remove the kinks from your hair! Remove them from your brain” (Byrd and
Tharps 2001, 38).
Market forces, however, kept putting temptation within ever-easier reach, and by
the early twentieth century much of the stigma surrounding cosmetics had eroded.
82 Deborah L. Rhode
They became seen as a form of self-expression and an emblem of emancipation, as well

as a means of moving up in the marriage market. According to Zelda Fitzgerald (1992,
416), “paint and powder” were a way for women to “choose their destinies—to be suc-
cessful competitors in the great game of life.” By the early twentieth century, suffragists
advocated lip rouge as a symbol of women’s rights and incorporated its use in public
rallies (Schaffer 2007, 176).
Although some activists in this “first wave” of feminism also attempted to link dress
reform with other feminist causes, their initial campaigns had little success. In 1851,
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Amelia Bloomer launched their crusade against corsets
and crinolines by wearing shortened skirts over Turkish-styled pantaloons, a style
quickly labeled “bloomers.” A few other suffragists joined the effort, but soon dropped
out after journalists viciously caricatured the costume and spectators jeered and stoned
women who wore it (Brownmiller 1984, 88). However, many doctors, educators,
editors of women’s magazines, and authors of advice manuals supported at least some
reform, and “sensible dress” apart from bloomers gradually emerged (Banner 1983,
98–9, 147–50). The increasing popularity of the bicycle and other forms of physical
exercise, as well as women’s entry into the paid labor market, ultimately reinforced the
demand for functional fashions.
In the 1960s, the emergence of a “second wave” of feminism brought a more funda-
mental and sustained challenge to the beauty industry. In 1968, protestors at the Miss
America pageant announced a boycott of all products related to the competition, and
unceremoniously deposited bras, girdles, curlers, false eyelashes, and women’s maga-
zines into a “Freedom Trash Can.” Although no undergarments were burned, the label
“bra burner” stuck as an all-purpose pejorative to characterize “radical” feminists.
Among that group were authors of a statement accompanying the protest, which
explained, “Women in our society are forced daily to compete for male approval,
enslaved by ludicrous beauty standards that we ourselves are conditioned to take seri-
ously” (Brownmiller 1984, 23). Building on the premise that the “personal is political,”
activists shed a range of conventions along with their undergarments. Unshaved legs
and unadorned faces became a symbol of “liberation.”
The public reception was not unlike the response to early dress reformers. Feminists
were seen as “dowdy,” “frumpy” “moralizers,” who hated men because they could not
attract them. (Brownmiller 1984, 160, 162). Because radicals gained disproportionate
media attention, the early feminist movement in general, and its critique of beauty in
particular, was often dismissed even by those who accepted most of its other egalitar-
ian principles. In The Sceptical Feminist (1994, 339), Janet Radcliffe Richards voiced a
common concern: “The image of the movement comes from the individuals in it. If
large numbers of them are unattractive the movement as a whole is bound to be so too.”
Over the last quarter century, as the feminist movement has grown increasingly
fragmented, different subcultures have differed sharply on matters of appearance.
Since the late 1960s, fat activists have sought to challenge discrimination on the basis
of weight and to make tolerance for all body sizes a social priority. Beginning in the
appearance as a feminist issue 83
1990s, a group of young activists, self-labeled as “third-wave feminists,” focused on

interlocking categories of oppression and ways of encouraging sexual agency
(Heywood and Drake 1997; Baumgardner and Richards 2000). For some of these
women, that has involved reclaiming conventional emblems of femininity—sexual-
ized clothing and stiletto heels. For others, such as those in punk rock subcultures, it
has meant rejecting traditional images of femininity and asserting deviant styles—
green hair or shaved heads (Leblanc 1999, 13, 219). And for aging second-wave femi-
nists, the challenge has been finding ways to reconcile their personal attachment to
femininity with their political commitments.
Critiques of Prevailing Beauty Practices

Despite their other differences, many contemporary feminists have raised shared con-
cerns about current norms of appearance. The most obvious is cost. In her widely pub-
licized account, The Beauty Myth, Naomi Wolf (2002, 53) noted that women’s
absorption with appearance “leeches money and leisure and confidence.” Because
women are held to unattainable ideals, their task is boundless. Almost all areas of the
female body are in need of something. The result is to focus women’s attention on
self-improvement rather than social action.
The costs of our cultural preoccupation with appearance are considerable. The
global investment in grooming totals over US$100 billion and Americans alone spend
over US$40 billion a year on diets (Kuczynski 2006, 7–8; Kolata 2004, A4). Much of
that investment falls short of its intended effects or is induced by misleading claims.
The weight loss industry is a case in point. Ninety-five percent of dieters regain their
weight within one to five years (Grodstein et al. 1996). Yet in the fact-free fantasy land
of diet marketers, miracle products abound. Claims that the Federal Trade Commission
has targeted include topical gels, patches, and dietary supplements that “eliminate
fat deposits” and cause “rapid weight loss” without “diets or exercise” (Rhode 2010,
33–4). Consumers squander millions of dollars on such products because most
Americans assume that manufacturers could not make these claims without a factual
basis (Harris Interactive Health Care News 2002, 1). Yet resource limitations have pre-
vented state and federal regulatory agencies from keeping up with the barrage of mis-
leading advertisements regarding diet and cosmetic products (Sopher 2005, 933;
Specter 2004, 64).
Our preoccupation with appearance also carries health risks, including eating
disorders, yo-yo dieting, and cosmetic surgery (Eating Disorders Coalition 2007;
Campos 2004; Gaesser 2002, 34, 155–6; Ghavimi 2005, 249–55). From a health
perspective, the current obsession with thinness is misdirected; it compromises
reproductive and work capacity, and predicts higher rates of sickness (Owen and
Laurel-Seller 2000, 979–80). Except at extreme levels, weight is less important than
fitness in preventing disease and prolonging life (Campos 2004; Fraser 1997, 176;
Parker-Pope 2008, F5). Concerns about appearance are also linked to depression,
84 Deborah L. Rhode
a nxiety, and low self-esteem (Pruzinsky 1990; Puh and Brownell 2006). Even fashion
footwear carries a cost; high heels are a major contributor to serious back and foot
problems (Linder 1997; Dufour et al. 2009). Hillary Clinton learned that fact the hard
way. One Christmas season during the Clinton presidency, after standing for hours in
receiving lines at holiday parties, she became bedridden with back pain. A specialist
concluded that she “shouldn’t wear high heels again.” “Never?” Clinton asked. “Well,
yes, never,” he responded, and added, “With all due respect, ma’am, why would you
want to?” (Clinton 2004, 491).
Another cost of our cultural preoccupation with appearance is discrimination.
Appearance skews judgments about competence. Résumés and essays get less favora-
ble evaluations when they are thought to belong to less attractive individuals (Quereshi
and Kay 1986; Landy and Sigall 1974). Overweight individuals are seen as having less
effective work habits and ability to get along with others (Solovay 2000, 101–5; Fikkan
and Rothblum 2005). Less attractive teachers get less favorable course evaluations
from students (Hamermesh 2011, 80–1), and less attractive students receive lower
ratings in intelligence from teachers (Hamermesh and Parker 2005; Ritts et al. 1992).
A meta-analysis that aggregated findings of over a hundred attractiveness studies found
that although less attractive individuals are perceived as less competent, the actual cor-
relation between physical appearance and intellectual competence is “virtually zero”
(Jackson et al. 1995, 115). Although the relative importance of appearance varies by
occupation, less attractive individuals are generally less likely to be hired and pro-
moted and they earn lower salaries (Hamermesh 2011, 4; Hosoda et al. 2003; Mobius
and Rosenblat 2006). Penalties are apparent even in professions like lawyer and college
professor, where appearance bears no demonstrable relationship to job performance
(Biddle and Hamermesh 1998, 172; Hamermesh 2011, 79–80). About 60 percent of
overweight women report experiences of employment discrimination (Solovay 2000).
Such discrimination on the basis of appearance carries both individual and social
costs. It undermines self-esteem, diminishes job aspirations, and compromises effi-
ciency and equity.
The overemphasis of attractiveness diminishes women’s credibility and diverts
attention from their capabilities and accomplishments. In the long run, these are more
stable sources of self-esteem and social power than appearance. The devaluation and
sexualization of women based on appearance is particularly apparent for women in
leadership positions. On Condoleezza Rice’s first day as national security adviser, the
New York Times ran a profile discussing her dress size (6), taste in shoes (“comfortable
pumps”), and hemline preferences (“modest”) (Morgan 2000). After she became US
Secretary of State, her appearance in high boots when visiting troops in Germany
inspired portrayals as a dominatrix in political cartoons and comedy routines. Kamala
Harris, California’s Attorney General, received front page coverage when President
Barack Obama described her as “by far the best-looking attorney general in the coun-
try” (Garofoli 2012). As first lady and then as a political candidate, Hillary Clinton
faced a barrage of criticism as frumpy, fat, and “bottom heavy” (Rhode 1997, 73;
FAIR 1999). As secretary of state, when a man at a town hall meeting in Kyrgyzstan

asked her which designers she wore, an exasperated Clinton responded, “Would you
ever ask a man that question?” (Alter 2011, 201). Shortly after Marissa Mayer was
appointed CEO of Yahoo, a Forbes article described her as “attractive, well coifed, and
poised under pressure,” and described her reputation as the “hottest CEO ever,” and
one of the “sexiest geek girls” of Silicon Valley (Casserly 2012). Although Supreme
Court Justices are not known for being eye candy, no male nominee to the Court has
attracted comments like those directed at Elena Kagan; to talk show host Michael
Savage (2010), she looked “as if she belongs in a kosher deli.” I got a personal glimpse
into the phenomenon I was describing after publicizing my book The Beauty Bias. It
was surprising how many men took time to send me comments like “You ugly cunt,” or
“Let’s take up a collection to buy the professor a burka and improve the aesthetics
at Stanford.”
One other cost of discrimination on the basis of appearance is the exacerbation of
economic and racial inequality. Appearance both reflects and reinforces class privi-
lege. Prevailing beauty standards disadvantage individuals who lack the time and
money to invest in attractiveness. Fashion, makeup, health clubs, weight loss products,
and cosmetic procedures all come at a cost. Discrimination based on weight is particu-
larly problematic from a class standpoint. Low-income and minority individuals have
disproportionate rates of obesity, and as one expert puts it, there is some evidence that
“poverty is fattening,” and an “even stronger case [that] . . . fatness is impoverishing”
(Ernsberger, 2009 26, 32). Many poor people live in nutritional deserts—areas with no
readily accessible grocery stores that sell fresh fruits and vegetables (Baker et al. 2006, 1).
These areas also tend to lack public recreational facilities and schools with adequate
physical education programs (Kluger 2008, 66, 69). The bias that overweight individu-
als confront then compromises their educational, employment, and earning opportu-
nities. So too, although images of beauty are growing somewhat more diverse, they still
reflect the legacy of racial privilege. Light skin, straightened hair, and Anglo-American
features carry an economic and social advantage (Fallon 1990; Perry 2006, 590). Those
who look less “white” have lower incomes and occupational status after controlling for
other factors.
Discrimination on the basis of appearance also compounds gender inequality by
reinforcing a double standard and a double bind for women. They face greater pres-
sures than men to be attractive and greater penalties for falling short; as a consequence,
their self-worth is more dependent on looks (Fallon 1990). Overweight women are
judged more harshly than overweight men and are more susceptible to eating disor-
ders and related psychological and physical dysfunctions (Solovay 2000, 105; Fikkan
and Rothblum 2005, 16–18; Sablosky 2006, 33–5). About 90 percent of cosmetic sur-
gery patients are female, with all the financial costs and physical risks that such proce-
dures pose (American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery 2012). Yet even as the
culture expects women to conform, they often face ridicule for their efforts. A case in
point was the comment from a Boston Herald columnist about the appearance of a
86 Deborah L. Rhode
prominent politician: “There seemed to be something humiliating, sad, desperate and

embarrassing about Katherine Harris, a woman of a certain age trying too hard to hang
on” (Rivers 2000). The “certain age” was forty-three. Neither should women “let them-
selves go,” nor look as if they were trying too hard not to (Pollitt 2007, 192–200;
Chapkis 1999, 2). Beauty must seem natural—even, or especially, when it can only be
accomplished through considerable unnatural effort.
Feminists are in a particularly problematic situation. Those who defy conventional
standards are ridiculed as homely harpies; those who comply are dismissed as hypo-
crites. Jane Fonda’s decision to have breast implants and other surgical procedures
seemed to “contradict everything she advocates” concerning health and fitness
(Dinnerstein and Weitz 1994, 13). When confronted by the contradiction, Fonda
responded, “I never asked to be a role model. . . . I don’t pretend to be different from any
other woman. I’m subject to the same foibles and pressures” (Dinnerstein and
Weitz 1994, 13). Most disturbing of all is the toll that these criticisms take on individu-
als’ own self-esteem. Many women who recognize beauty norms as oppressive feel
humiliated by the inability to escape them. They are ashamed for feeling ashamed.
Writing about her resort to electrolysis to eliminate unsightly facial hair, Wendy
Chapkis (1999, 2) confesses: “I am a feminist. How humiliated I then feel. I am a
woman. How ugly I have been made to feel. I have failed on both counts.” Eve Ensler, in
The Good Body (2005, 5–6), recounts her own struggles with self-deprecating irony.
“What I can’t believe is that someone like me, a radical feminist for nearly thirty years,
could spend this much time thinking about my stomach. It has become my tormentor,
my distractor; it’s my most committed relationship.”
The Defense of Beauty

Responses to these critiques have proceeded on multiple levels. Some women stress
agency. Cosmetic surgery patients often describe their decision as “the independent
choice of a liberated woman” and deny that they are pressured by others
(Aitkenhead 2005, 10). In one widely circulated Playboy article, Jan Breslauer (1997,
64, 66, 67), a former Yale feminist theory professor, further insisted that having a “boob
job” expressed feminist principles—“a woman’s right to do what she wants with her
body.” It “made me focus on how far I’ve come. . . . I have arrived at the point where
I can go out and buy myself a new pair of headlights if I want. . . . And if somebody asks
if they’re [mine, I can] tell them, ‘Yes, I bought them myself ’. ”
At the same time, many patients have acknowledged ridicule, humiliation, and
shame as driving their decisions. One female patient described a common experience:
“I wish I could have said, ‘To hell with it. I am going to love my body the way it is,’ but
I had tried to do that for fifteen years and it didn’t work” (Gimlin 2002, 146). Hillary
Clinton, who has had a number of minor makeovers, captured similarly common
views when she told Elle magazine (Lehman 1997, 80), “Cosmetic surgery may be just
as important for someone’s state of mind and well-being as any other kind of surgery.”
So too, studies of women’s use of makeup, salons, and spas find considerable satis-
faction with such purchases. Cosmetics make many individuals feel more “credible”
and “professional” (Dellinger and Williams 1997, 160, 165). Time spent shopping or in
spas and salons provides pleasure and opportunities for female bonding. It can also
seem like an occupational necessity. One study of women in Congress between ages
forty-six and seventy-four found that over 90 percent had no visible gray hair
(Kreamer 2007, 72). The reasons for tinting are not unlike those that motivate users of
Botox. As Susan Brownmiller (1984, 167) observed three decades ago, the facelift is “a
logical extension of every night cream, moisturizer, pore cleanser and facial masque
that has gone before it.”
Yet as Carolyn Heilbrun (1991, 56, 58) argued in a celebrated essay, “Coming of
Age,” makeup or hair tints are a form of temporary “camouflage” that can be shed at
will. Surgery reflects a riskier attempt to alter the body, and the efforts are often only
“briefly if at all effective. Worse, they increase the fear of age. . . . [O]ne should encour-
age youth, not try to be it.” Freedom in midlife can only come in understanding that
“who I am is what I do” not how I look. Eve Ensler (2005, xv) makes the same point
about diets and other appearance-related regimes: “LOVE YOUR BODY: STOP
FIXING IT.”
While women remain divided over cosmetic practices, they also often share discom-
fort about the culture that produces them. Appearance is an opportunity for self-
expression and self-determination, but many women recognize that their options are
far too “limited by circumstances not of their own making” (Davis 1995, 170). In one
study of makeup in the workplace, virtually all the participants believed that they had a
choice about whether to use cosmetics. But they also believed that women who decline
to wear makeup “do not appear healthy, heterosexual or credible” (Dellinger and
Williams 1997, 156). So, too, even women who are satisfied with their decision to have
cosmetic surgery are often highly critical of the culture that had led them to take that
step. Such surgery is “symptomatic of an unjust social order in which women [have] to
go to extremes” just to look acceptable (Davis 1995, 162). To Katha Pollitt (2007, 202):
What is most of this starving and carving about but accepting that woman is basically just a
body . . . with a rather short shelf life? You can postpone the expiration if you “work” at it . . . or
you “have work done,” as if the body were some sort of perpetual construction site. But basi-
cally you are suffering a lot to please people . . . and disguising that fact from yourself with a lot
of twaddle about self-improvement and self-esteem.
Not all women are, of course, under such illusions. Many also recognize that in the
long run, their efforts to conform to conventional ideals carry “heavy costs for them
and for all women” (Gimlin 2002, 107). But this seems like the price for success in the
short run, which requires “making do with a culture that they believe judges and
rewards them for their looks” (Gimlin 2002, 107). As one feminist noted, “I am a
midlifer in today’s world and I don’t think I have time to reeducate society for the
greater good.” “Plastic surgery,” she acknowledged, “is a bit of a sellout, but I don’t think
88 Deborah L. Rhode
it means I have to skewer myself on the feminist spike. . . . The personal may be politi-
cal, but the personal is also personal. . . . I know that aging naturally is the more honor-
able way to go but I’m not there to be honorable to my gender. I’ve done quite a lot of
that in my life” (Viner 1997, T4). Jan Breslauer (1997, 66) defends her implants along
similar lines. Sexism “isn’t going to change any time soon. Here’s the choice: you can
rail at an imperfect world or go get yourself a great pair of bazongas.” As long as
“women are judged by their jugs . . . it’s sometimes better to acknowledge that the injus-
tice exists and get on with your life.”
Such comments point up the discomfiting dilemma that many feminists face
between personal interests and political commitments. Even leaders of the women’s
movement who try to set the right example frequently fail to achieve the inner peace
that their politics demand. As a matter of principle, Susan Brownmiller (1984, 81, 156)
stopped shaving her legs, but years later she “had yet to accept the unaesthetic results.”
Patricia Williams (2008) makes a similar confession about her attachment to “power
point” footwear—shoes with spindle heels and narrow toes that are unsuitable for
actual walking. Such ambivalence is scarcely surprising, given the deep-seated cultural
forces and market pressures that underpin appearance ideals.
So where does that leave us? “Has feminism failed women?” Karen Lehman (1997, 9)
wonders. “Have women failed feminism? Or has society failed them both?” Perhaps
more to the point, are those helpful ways of framing the question? Is a better way for-
ward to avoid looking back and to get beyond blame? Can we criticize appearance-
related practices without criticizing the women who find them necessary?
Underlying this question are deeper, more vexed issues of false consciousness,
female agency, and the “authentic” self. Much of the early work on appearance by con-
temporary feminists underscored the need to link the personal with the political. From
this perspective, a “choice” to engage in practices that objectified women or imposed
undue costs seemed irreconcilable with feminist principles. When women experi-
enced themselves as autonomous agents, making pleasurable decisions, that was sim-
ply evidence of the power of repressive ideologies. The only answer was to raise
women’s consciousness and to demand that they value their authentic unreconstructed
selves. They should accept their bodies as they “really” are, and please themselves, not
others, with the way that they look.
By contrast, most contemporary feminist theorists, influenced by postmodern per-
spectives, see no universal, uncontested standpoint from which consciousness can be
declared “false” or identities considered “authentic.” Yet they also emphasize the link
between the personal and political. Choices are never wholly “free” or solely “per-
sonal.” Cultural practices inevitably shape individuals’ preferences, and their individ-
ual responses in turn help sustain or alter those practices. According to critics such as
Susan Bordo (1993), that entails viewing the body as a site not simply for self-expression
but also for political struggle.
Yet to many activists, such theoretical formulations offer too little guidance on per-
sonal choices that have political implications. As Katha Pollitt (2007, 192) notes, the
failure to take a stance on practices that subordinate women as a group leads all too
easily to a “You go, girl” approach, in which “[a]nything is feminist as long as you
‘choose’ it.” It has now become “unsisterly, patronizing, infantilizing and sexist to ques-
tion another woman’s decision. . . . There’s no social context and no place to stand and
resist; there’s just a menu of individual options and preferences.” An Onion (2003) par-
ody makes a similar point. Under the title “Women Now Empowered by Everything a
Woman Does,” a fictional woman’s studies professor explains that “fortunately for the
less impressive among us, a new strain of feminism has emerged,” in which almost all
activities—shopping for shoes, or gaining weight—are “championed as proud, bold
assertions of independence.” Another fictional feminist in the parody says, “Only by
lauding every single thing a woman does . . . can you truly go, girls.” It was “so much
simpler,” Pollitt (2007, 204) observes, when feminism could just “tell women to use
their famous agency to pull up their socks and say, Screw you.”
Beyond the Impasse

“What do women want?” Freud famously asked, as if the preferences of half the world’s
population could be captured in some universal standard. When it comes to appear-
ance, what women want is not always the same or always compatible. Many women
who opt for cosmetic enhancement feel well-served by the result. But the cost is to
reinforce standards that make it harder for other women to resist.
Yet whatever their other disagreements on these issues, most individuals appear to
share certain core values. Appearance should be a source of pleasure, not of shame.
Individuals should be able to make decisions about whether to enhance their attrac-
tiveness without being judged politically incorrect or professionally unacceptable.
Our ideals of appearance should reflect diversity across race, ethnicity, age, and body
size. In this ideal world, the importance of appearance would not be overstated. Nor
would it spill over to employment and educational contexts in which judgments should
be based on competence, not cosmetics. Women would not be held to higher stand-
ards than men. Neither would their self-esteem be tied to attractiveness, rather than
accomplishment. In order for appearance to be a source of enjoyment rather than anx-
iety, it cannot dictate women’s self-worth.
So how do we get from here to there? There are no easy answers, but refocusing the
feminist critique is an obvious place to start. It has not helped feminists’ political
agenda or public image to denounce widely accepted beauty practices and women who
won’t get with the program. Greater tolerance is in order, along with recognition that
women are not all similarly situated in their capacity for resistance. Those who write
about women’s issues need to recognize that not everyone has the luxury of being able
to say “screw you” to the cosmetics industry. In my job as a law professor, no one cares
whether I use mascara. For television’s legal commentators, such as Greta Van Susteren,
the circumstances are far different, and the condemnation she received for her surgical
makeover seemed misdirected (De Moraes 2002, C1; Ode 2002, E12). Why center
90 Deborah L. Rhode
c riticism on her choice rather than on the preferences of viewers and network execu-
tives that made the choice seem necessary? Focusing attention on personal decisions
rather than collective practices asks too much of individuals and too little of society
(Chancer 1998, 96).
To that end, we need a broad range of initiatives. Individuals should educate them-
selves and others about the risks of cosmetic practices and offer more support for
women who resist them. Schools and workplaces should do more to discourage dis-
crimination based on appearance. The media needs to offer more diverse and natural
images of beauty, and to avoid promoting fraudulent appearance-related advertise-
ments. The law should prohibit appearance discrimination and more effectively regu-
late the marketing of beauty products (Rhode 2010, 154).
Feminists claim to speak from the experience of women. But that experience coun-
sels tolerance for the different ways that appearance is perceived by different women
under different constraints. Fat is a Feminist Issue, declared the title of Susie Orbach’s
(1997) widely circulated critique. So are implants, Botox, stilettos, and a host of
other appearance-related concerns. Women need better ways of talking to rather than
past each other on these issues, which continue to shape their opportunities and
identities.
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5
A Tale of Two Olympians
Beauty, “Race,” Nation
Shirley Anne Tate
Introduction
I had been driving past the Powerade advertisement during my commute for several
months. The slogan, “SWEAT OUT. ZERO IN. Zero sugar, fitness hydration,” with the
Team GB (Great Britain Olympic team) and Olympics logo as its endorsement, was
somewhat overshadowed by the body which caught my eye. I was first arrested not by the
strategically placed, blue Powerade Zero bottle or the words themselves, but by the power
of the woman’s body glistening with sweat, the beauty of its muscular definition and its
“what is she?” “race” question. The image was racially ambiguous because at a glance she
could as easily have been a white athlete with a tan as a Black one. Perhaps other gazers
were fascinated by such physical power and racial ambiguity, or perhaps unlike me they
knew this was Jessica Ennis the champion heptathlete, and that she was Black/white
“mixed race” and a World Champion. Ennis would later go on to be a global icon for the
Olympic Games in London and an Olympic champion, have her 200-foot image pro-
jected onto Tower Bridge in London as part of the British Olympics Association and UK
Athletics campaign to bring the 2017 World Athletics Championship to London, and be
part of daily British life in 2012 through the use of her image surrounded by the Union
Jack in places such as the entrance to Liverpool market.
This chapter focuses on the Black woman’s athletic body and its place in the nation
through looking at two British athletes—lighter skinned, Black/white “mixed race”
Jessica Ennis, MBE and darker skinned Jeanette Kwakye. These women were both cho-
sen as brand ambassadors by US multinational Procter and Gamble (P&G) in 2012.
P&G operates in eighty countries with brands available in 180 countries. Jessica Ennis
was brand ambassador for Olay and Jeanette Kwakye for Ariel.1 In the November 30,
2011, press release when the brand ambassadors were made public, Irwin Lee, P&G
1
The other brand ambassadors were Mark Cavendish, Sir Chris Hoy, Keri-Anne Payne, Victoria
Pendleton, Jenna Randall, Paula Radcliffe, Ben Rushgrove, Liam Tancock, and Sophia Warner.
A Tale of Two Olympians 95
UK Vice President and Managing Director, stated, “We are thrilled to be working with
each of these athletes, who are leading the way in their individual fields and embody
the values of leadership, integrity and passion for winning that we set for ourselves and
our brands at P&G.”2 Linking the athletes with the brand enabled their bodies and
characters to be branded as “the best of British” by this multinational founded in
Cincinnati, Ohio, in the United States on October 31, 1837, by William Procter, an
immigrant from England, and James Gamble, an immigrant from Ireland. Jessica
Ennis, a World and Olympic champion heptathlete, has been the face and body for
Powerade Zero, Adidas, Aviva, British Airways, Jaguar, and the cosmetics brand Olay
Essentials, has appeared in television ads for Banco Santander, and was the face for
Olay Glow Perfectors in 2013, as well as appearing as a cover girl for numerous maga-
zines. Jeanette Kwakye was a finalist in the 100 meters at the Beijing Olympics, was not
chosen for the Great Britain Olympic team (Team GB) because of injury, but worked
with the detergent Ariel on the P&G Capital Clean Up Campaign to make London
spotless for the Olympic Games. These two athletes differed in athletic prowess and
also had different commercial outcomes perhaps because of that fact.
However, this chapter thinks through their very skin about first, how it is that “race”
matters for who can represent the national GB brand and become its global icon for the
Olympic Games. Second, it also explores how, through branding, racially ambiguous
beauty can come to represent the nation irrespective of its “post-race” racism.
Analyzing this “post-race” skin trade, the discussion focuses on the coloniality of
“race” and gender within the continuing salience of skin color in defining national
identities. Why is it that skin shade still impacts on whose body can be extended to the
white nation as proof of social change? Is “racial ambiguity” a tool of selling the nation
to itself as tolerant and multi-cultural? What does this “browning” of the nation do in
terms of whiteness as the beauty ideal? Let us first move to look at the nation as a brand
and “post-race” racial branding.
Team GB as Brand and the Racial Branding of Bodies

GB and Team GB as brands were heavily marketed throughout the Olympic year and
the year preceding it. As brands, GB and Team GB are
something “to which some feeling or action is directed”; it is an objective in that it is the
object of “a purpose or intention,” or even a whole series of purposes . . . [T]he brand is not a
closed object, but is, rather, open, extending into—or better, implicating—social relations. It is
something that is identifiable in its doing. (Lury 2004, 1)
Celia Lury further describes brands as “market cultural form[s]” (2004, 3) that reflect
the marketer “imagining the consumer” (2004, 7). Brands produce and transform
2
<https://www.pg.com/en_UK/news-views/Inside_PG-Quarterly_Newsletter/issue4/innovation.html>
96 Shirley Anne Tate
identifications. In enabling this identification work brands engage “race” performativ-

ity (Butler 1993; Tate 2005) and enlist racialized feelings about brands themselves,
drawing on societal racial affective economies (Ahmed 2004; Tate 2013). When the
brand is consumed or becomes a household name it brings the consumer into being as
racialized (Lury 2004).
GB as brand has existed since its global dominance during colonialism and impe-
rialism. Its symbol the Union Jack is now viral globally and is found on everything
from clothing, shoes, food, and military equipment to the iPhone 4/4S mobile phone
case featuring Jessica Ennis in Team GB kit for sale on eBay and Amazon. The GB
brand is no longer that of global domination through colonial expansion, control of
markets, law, knowledge production, and white superiority as the empire is long
gone. GB is now a nation which prides itself on being democratic, tolerant, inclusive,
and diverse, with colonialism and slavery in its best-forgotten past. GB remains silent
about the contribution of slavery and colonialism to the economy and the emer-
gence of capitalism (Williams 1944). As “post-race” the continuing relations of white
racial dominance, typologies of “race” based on phenotype, and necessity for inte-
gration of “others” are not acknowledged to be embedded within the nation
(Bonilla-Silva 2014).
GB continued to market itself as a multicultural, tolerant nation during the 2012
Olympics. Its brand awareness is tied to the Union Jack then integrated into the Team
GB kit by Stella McCartney as the entire front of the women’s athletic top. The Union
Jack is significant “in the brand’s relation to consumers, since personalisation is what
underpins the affective relations between brands and consumers, which typically
include some degree of trust, respect and loyalty but may also include playfulness,
scepticism and dislike” (Lury 2004, 10). The Union Jack as a sign of trust, respect, and
loyalty forms a positive affective bond between the body which wears it and the GB
brand, thereby reproducing its wearer as patriot and citizen. In terms of the negative
affects of skepticism and dislike, the GB brand (dis)locates some bodies through iden-
tification/disidentification within national discourses on citizenship, immigration,
integration, belonging, and whiteness. The flag as sign for Brand GB has positive or
negative affective value (Gutiérrez Rodríguez 2010) which is transferred to the bodies
of the athletes as they are racially branded as British, “others,” and “other-others”
(Ahmed 2000). For Sara Ahmed (2000) “others” are the people the nation can incorpo-
rate into its economy and culture in order to become multicultural, whereas “other-
others” are those who are beyond this possibility. The bodies of “others” and
“other-others” are central in defining the national body in relation to which the latter
are placed as infrahuman and a threat to the nation (Wingard 2013; Gilroy 2004) while
“others” are located as marginal. The discussion will take up this binary within racial
branding by locating Ennis as “other” because of white kinship and Kwakye as
“other-other” because of anti-African racism.
Racial branding has precedents in colonialism and slavery discourses on and rep-
resentations of “others”/“other-others” which still circulate. Characteristics of racially
branded bodies are already assembled and turn “others” and “other-others” into prod-
ucts for affective (dis)identification much like consumable products in advertising
(Wingard 2013). Affective (dis)identification circulates through racial branding and
uses both image and language to create visceral or somatic responses based on racial
ideology rather than rationality (Wingard 2013). Racial branding intensifies identifi-
cation and affect in constructing national and individual identities. Depending on our
positioning in relation to the nation as a white brand, we will have varying responses to
seeing Jeanette Kwakye with the Union Jack or wearing the Team GB uniform. We will
also have different responses to Jessica Ennis as the face of Olay or as a Team GB mem-
ber. As racially branded bodies both Kwakye and Ennis became part of corporate and
state ideological machinery focused on evading and repressing white power within
neoliberal “post-race” rhetoric. Through racial branding within the GB/Team GB
brands, their bodies became objects of capital producing economic, cultural, political,
and affective surplus value nationally and globally (Gutiérrez Rodríguez 2010;
Wingard 2013). Draped in the Union Jack or wearing Team GB’s colors, “race” set them
apart from the nation or constructed the nation as “post-race” because of their
inclusion.
At the same time as being racially branded their bodies became brands, especially
that of Jessica Ennis. As occurred during colonialism and slavery, her lighter skinned
Black/white “mixed racedness” made her body more palatable than Jeanette Kwakye’s
darker-skinned body, to a nation still embedded in a colonial pigmentocracy regime
(Tate 2007). The skin color hierarchy still means “white is right, if you are brown stick
around, but if you are Black get back.” Ennis’s skin had “cross-over value” and made it
possible for her to be emblematic of a nation which imagines itself as tolerant and mul-
ticultural while at the same time constructing her as “other.” This is the doubleness of
the “race” performativity (Tate 2005) in which her body is caught. Mixedness marks
her as “other” but prevents her from being utterly marginal like Kwakye.
Mixedness is captured through racially branding her ambiguous skin as “Black/
white mixed race,” and this constructs GB as both essentially white and tolerant. The
nation remains essentially white because white athletes would not be racially branded
as whiteness is the invisible norm (Dyer 1997). Ennis’s racially branded body is affec-
tive as it enables both racial identification and disgust/contempt because of “racial
mixing” (Ali 2003; Gilroy 2004; Parker and Song 2001; Winddance Twine and
Smyth 2011). However, never before has a woman’s musculature been so emblazoned
in a country’s memory. GB knows the contours of her body as much as it knows her
skin color, her bleached blonde hair and her facial features. Ennis is a brand within the
GB brand and she is the most globally recognizable Team GB woman athlete to date.
The skin trade within GB’s “post-race” politics is supported by the affective, economic,
political, and cultural surplus value Ennis and Kwakye produce as brands. Within this
skin trade their bodies are appropriated as both negative and positive signifiers of a
national identity which seeks to deny continuing racialization, whiteness as a racial
category, and the power-privilege of white skin.
Skin Trade: Shade, White Nation, and Social Change

According to Hilary Beckles (1999, 10), during slavery in the Caribbean
The black woman was ideologically constructed as essentially “non-feminine” in so far as pri-
macy was placed upon her alleged muscular capabilities, physical strength, aggressive carriage,
and sturdiness. Pro-slavery writers presented her as devoid of the feminine tenderness and
graciousness in which the white woman was tightly wrapped.
All black women were the binary of the “English Rose” who was held up as the epitome
of feminine beauty and morality (Tate 2015b). Although no longer iconic, this frail
white woman’s body has a place within feminine beauty, whereas the muscular Black
woman’s body continues to be masculinized (Tate 2012). The skin trade is composed of
skin color and the muscle, bone, and fat that lies beneath. These construct differential
corporeal value depending on the context of their emergence. If the arena is athletics,
then muscles that bulge are part of the terrain of femininity, while if it is beauty then
lighter or white skin color is necessary. Bulging muscles and skin shade interact as
lighter skin and other beauty signifiers constructed as “white” can negate the mascu-
linizing effects of bulging muscles. Differential corporeal value also calls forth a range
of affects which enable identification/disidentification. Affect and differential corpo-
real value help us to account for Ennis’s national cross-over appeal as brand and as part
of the Team GB brand.
This claim can be made because GB has had champion heptathletes like Denise
Lewis, OBE, for example. Although Lewis is a successful national television sports pre-
senter she did not become a national or global GB icon like Ennis. Thus, it is difficult to
make the claim that it is solely the rigors of her sport and Ennis’s prowess that account
for her iconicity. We can say that Kwakye could not become the national sporting icon
for London 2012 because she lacks athletic success compared to Ennis. However, if we
ponder why she was the brand ambassador for Ariel cleaning products and not Olay,
we have to go back to racialized skin politics, brands, and racial branding through
which darker skinned, muscular women’s bodies have been problematized. Racialized
skin politics mean that Kwakye’s will continue to be a body out of place (Puwar 2004;
Tate 2012) so that even while she represents the nation on the athletics track she c annot
be taken up as a national child (Gordon 1997).
Kwakye was the representative for the campaign to clean up London for the
Olympics sponsored by Ariel. She featured in the Ariel Big Sprint on June 12, 2012, to
encourage the cleanup. Again as in colonial times, we are confronted with the darker-
skinned Black body’s use to advertise soap (McClintock 1995; Pieterse 1995). “Washing
blacks white” was a popular idea in the colonial advertising of soap (Pieterse 1995).
Racial branding juxtaposed a body which could not be cleansed because of its conno-
tations with physical and moral impurity, with the white need for cleanliness, as well as
Black people’s assumed desire for whiteness (Pieterse 1995). Soap was not just about
cleanliness, as these ideas on Black and white bodies were foundational for racial
thinking (Pieterse 1995). In colonial times “it was logical to find segregation inscribed
in the code under which blacks were represented and . . . these images were not naïve
but reflected the political and economic conditions under which they were devised”
(Pieterse 1995,188).
In our postcolonial, “post-race” era P&G’s choice of Kwakye for its detergent rather
than Olay makes us wonder at this twenty-first-century repetition of colonial racialized
body politics. Thinking of brands and consumption, her rejection as the face of Olay
sent out a message. That is, darker-skinned Black women do not have “cross-over value”
as they cannot occupy the space of all women that whiteness, or indeed Ennis’s light-
ness, enables. This was never questioned, as in our time of “post-race” sensibilities it was
seen as merely sponsorship of one brand (Kwakye and/or Team GB) by another (P&G)
which provided individual and team profits as well as visibility through the advertising
campaigns. Through this link to Ariel the code under which darker-skinned Black
women are made “other” within GB’s racial political economy and anchor the bottom of
its racialized beauty hierarchy (Sharpley-Whiting 2007) was reinscribed.
The connection between Kwakye and soap is relevant for thinking about gender,
“race,” and class and the positioning of darker-skinned women in the national imagi-
nation. Their positioning is still embedded in colonial thinking. Intersections of
gender, “race,” and class give pause for thought as the household labor of cleaning
remains attached to those bodies which are constructed as feminized though capable
of hard labor (Gutiérrez Rodríguez 2010). Further, the coloniality of labor meant that
household work was done by enslaved African or indigenous domestic workers during
colonialism (Gutiérrez Rodríguez 2010). Aligning Kwakye with soap produces affec-
tive, political, economic, and cultural outcomes through her body’s return to domestic
labor and the disgust of dirt. As domestic she enables white reproduction, but this is
still seen to lack societal or productive value by the nation at large (Gutiérrez
Rodríguez 2010). However, her economic value as marketable commodity is not
erased but secured through her return to a social location in which whiteness expects
to find black women. As domestic, her darker-skinned, Black, muscular woman body’s
threat to the (white) body of the nation is nullified.
Domesticating the threat of darker skin is necessary even though Brand GB has
asserted that it is a tolerant, multicultural nation. Tolerance always implicates disgust
as its negative axis (Ngai 2005). The disgust generated by Kwakye’s skin is triple because
of racial branding. It is that disgust for the laboring Black female body and the darker-
skinned, muscular body, as much as it is the white tolerant nation’s disgust at its own
racializing, objectifying gaze that locates Kwakye outside of the possibility for national
iconicity because of her darker skin (Tate 2012). The national white psyche is riven by
ambivalence toward its own politics of tolerance which it claims into existence but
which it knows does not exist unconditionally. We can make this claim if we bear
in mind, for example, that Black people still continue to experience more under/
unemployment and are over-represented in the prison population and in the mental
health system as well as being overpoliced.
The Ariel advertisements “Proud Keeper of Our Country’s Colours” featuring

Kwakye make us reapproach this assertion of disgust. In one television ad she is inter-
mingled with other athletes from around the world dressed in their country’s colors as
they participate in their sports. She wins the 100-meter sprint and she runs holding the
Union Jack aloft as the ad fades into the caption “Ariel. Proud Keeper of Our Country’s
Colours.” In being intermingled with others she is not central to the ad, even as the
woman who momentarily holds the flag aloft. In another ad the words imposed on
Kwakye with the Union Jack, “Red, white and blue is my gold . . . when colours mean
this much you can only trust them to ARIEL Proud Keeper of Great Britain’s Colours,”
place her firmly within the nation as she is located as patriotic. Representing her coun-
try is sufficient, that is her gold, but we are left to wonder if she is as proud a keeper of
GB’s colors as is Ariel with which she shares the space of the ad. This is the case because
as Black, as the child of immigrants from Ghana who settled in London’s East End in
the 1960s, she is already positioned as one step removed from the nation of which she
is a part.
While the ads are a part of a tolerant multicultural GB landscape that embraces
diversity, the choice of Kwakye can be seen as a strategy for effacing the imbalances of
power that govern difference. The effacing of imbalances of power from the national
racial landscape means that the viscerality of disgust for its intolerable “other” contin-
ues to be sublimated. Thus, we have Kwakye being very carefully boundaried as only a
part of the ad rather than its main focus, which is Ariel. This sets her apart even as she
places herself squarely within the nation with the claim that red, white, and blue are
her gold. Such setting apart, with its concomitant ambivalence, returns Kwakye as
object to a zone of contempt. This is significant, as contempt is more palatable than
disgust for a nation whose narrative about itself is that it is a space of equality of oppor-
tunity, racial diversity, and tolerance, within which the only difference that impacts
individual life chances is class. Within the zone of contempt for darker skin, she plays a
minimal role in the Ariel ads. She only appears in as much as to make the nation aware
that she does not warrant serious, sustained attention or tolerance (Ngai 2005).
What is to be done when national intolerance bubbles just below the surface and
threatens to derail the national diversity project around which there is an uneasy dis-
cursive consensus? Choosing Ennis as national icon for the Olympic Games based not
only on her skill but clearly on her obvious Black/white “mixed racedness”/racial
ambiguity stabilizes the diversity project. Racial ambiguity made her more palatable to
a nation which problematically still talks of “half castes” when it slips out of the more
politically correct “mixed race” and “dual heritage.” Although used in censuses, gov-
ernment documents, and academic texts “mixed race” as classification still continues
the history of thinly veiled racial disgust of those who dare to mix or to be mixed
(Gilroy 2004). We can see this in the Fletcher Report’s (1930) account of “half caste”
children and “mixed race” families as dysfunctional (Christian 2008); the national
anxiety in World War II about the little “picanninies” which would emerge from white
women fraternizing with Black soldiers from the colonies and the United States
(Carby 2007); the color bar in the 1950s in public spaces aimed at reducing transracial
intimacy; and twenty-first-century problematization of “mixed race” families and
individuals as issues for social policy. The intensity of such racial disgust generates an
atmosphere (Brennan 2004; Gutiérrez Rodríguez 2007; 2010) which seeks to draw
others into its exclusion of its object, enabling a strange kind of racialized sociability
(Ngai 2005).
We can see this in the extra-legal colonial anti-miscegenation regime (Thompson
2009; Carby 2007) that still exists in the UK. This regime means that although not ille-
gal, heterosexual transracial intimacy is not accepted by everyone. The strange kind of
racialized sociability in which Jessica Ennis has emerged as icon is one of provisional
inclusion and “exceptional other” relationality with the national white social skin
because of her white English mother. As “exceptional other” she is also kept apart because
of the mark of Blackness on her skin from her Black Jamaican father. Even as she is
treated as the national icon, racialized skin disgust is not far from the nation’s psyche
and her body is asked to do triple representational work: represent the nation as a
patriot; represent the “mixed race” body’s value within the nation as the embodiment
of its tolerance; and represent the superhuman, muscular femininity of a brand Team
GB Olympian. Any failure will lead to her return to blackness which is always part of
the Black/white “mixed-race” condition (Zack 1993).
Representational tripleness allied with her iconicity has enabled the emergence of a
new “Black Venus” within the nation. The Black Venus master narrative is continu-
ously reasserted in contemporary Europe and elsewhere and orchestrates the skin
trade in Black women’s bodies (Hobson 2005; Ifekwunigwe 2006; Sharpley-
Whiting 2007; Willis and Williams 2002). In Ennis’s case, it is the Black/white “mixed
race” beauty that in the Euro-American imagination, since the time of slavery, has
blended light-skinned beauty with Black sexual expertise and passion (Sharpley-
Whiting 2007; Mohammed 2000; Tate 2012). There is sexualization, racialization, and
regendering (as not quite white woman) at work here. While Ennis’s body refuses sex-
ualization because it embodies power through muscle, it reproduces her as masculin-
ized/masculinizing woman because of her “body work” (Gimlin 2002). Muscle
removes her from the Black/white “mixed race” sex object and produces an other body,
a third form which asserts its femininity against the grain of the demuscled norm. To
show work on the body through muscle demystifies femininity as it also masculinizes
through control of the body, a bulky body that overflows “the natural boundaries” of a
woman’s body (Tate 1999).
Brand GB has a very particular Black Venus in Ennis. She is a Venus of our times as
she is in control of her body—even if not of how it is represented—and produces a new
brand of Black/white “mixed race” femininity. Further, as Black Venus her skin, mus-
cle, bone, and fat remain distinctly racialized in the national consciousness. Even
though we can see Ennis as a positive force for change in terms of Black/white “mixed
race” representation, her body is always returned to its “proper” place in the estab-
lished racial hierarchy of the nation as “not quite white.” We can see this, for example,
in the British Airways (BA) ad which was in place from June 14, 2012, in the run-up to
the Games. BA painted a giant image of Ennis in Thornbury Playing Fields in
Hounslow, strategically placed in the flight path to Heathrow Airport in London. It
took painters two days to complete the art work on the grass using 600 liters of red,
white, and blue weatherproof paint. Millions of passengers, including fellow competi-
tors, saw Ennis with the caption “WELCOME TO OUR TURF.” What is interesting is
the use of white paint for Ennis’s body shaded by gray and black to show her body’s
contours. Skin color accuracy would not have detracted from the image itself. The
claim could be made here that inaccurate representation reveals an active “whitening”
of Ennis as an “exceptional other” so that she can occupy her place within the GB/
Team GB brands as the face of such an aggressive national challenge to arriving com-
petitors and rival supporters. “Whitening” enables an assumption that though she is
an icon her body is also a location of racial disgust/contempt even while her Black/
white “mixed race” embodiment has affective, political, cultural, and economic value
for the multicultural nation. The afterlife of the image keeps alive Brand GB as a multi-
cultural, tolerant nation.
Multicultural Tolerance and Racial

Certainty/Ambiguity
Ennis’s body reminds us that difference can only be recognized as part of the nation if it
is a part of it through “blood,” not solely achievement, merit, talent, or “superstar sta-
tus.” Her body insists that the nation’s “post-race” sentiment is some distance from
being enacted. However, “blood” makes her racially palatable, politically mute, and
available for consumption by the dominant national culture as the en vogue
“Generation Ethnically Ambiguous” (Elam 2011; Hunter 2005; Sharpley-Whiting
2007). We can see this in brand Ennis as Olympic icon, the face and body of Powerade
Zero, Adidas, and Olay Essentials, and post-Olympics as face/body of Santander, Olay
Glow Perfectors, and star of her own wedding in Hello magazine in 2013. She has also
been a cover girl for various magazines and their fashion shoots, some examples of
which will suffice here.
A very femininely stylized Ennis in short dress, stiletto sandals, and curled hair
complete with flawless makeup appeared on the cover of Cosmopolitan (August 2012)
with the caption “Olympic Star Jessica Ennis On Fighting for Her Dreams.” On the
cover of Marie Claire (August 3, 2012) she is dressed in a swimsuit with cut-out sides
and a Union Jack towel over her shoulder with the caption, “Jessica Ennis: ‘I’ve tasted
second and I don’t like it,’ ” and Marie Claire says, “She has gone from humble heptath-
lete to poster girl for the Olympics [to] our cover girl here.” Here we see the reason for
the success of brand Ennis. That is, her ability to morph from athlete, to poster girl to
cover girl through glamour (Dyhouse 2010). Her two covers for Fabulous magazine—
free in the Sun newspaper on Sundays and Britain’s highest circulation glossy—support
this assertion. On April 8, 2012, she appears dressed in an Adidas Purple sports top
and pink Adidas sports shorts with the caption “I wouldn’t say I am proud of my body.”
The glossy declares, “THE BODY: Forget Elle, 2012 is all about Jessica Ennis and her
incredible figure. We’re in awe, so why isn’t she?” Jessica Ennis has “an incredible fig-
ure” not the worked-on bulging muscles of an athlete. “Incredible figure” places her as
feminine, non-threatening to masculinity, and available for consumption. Makeup
also returns her to glamorous femininity such as in the post-Olympics Fabulous cover
(July 7, 2013). Time magazine (July 30, 2012) shows her fully made up with lipstick, eye
shadow/liner, and mascara. So even within an action shot such as in Time, her styliza-
tion ensures that we know that this is still a fashion shoot and she is representing femi-
nine athletics glamour (Dyhouse 2010). In Athletics (July 2012) Ennis again wears
makeup. Makeup is part of her everyday and competition styling as she says in her
Marie Claire interview “I don’t even walk the dog without makeup. I’ve always been
like that.”
This spread of her image from high-end Cosmopolitan to the pullout magazines in
the Sun and London Evening Standard, which are high-circulation tabloid newspapers,
demonstrates the penetration of brand Ennis as Team GB athlete as well as desirable,
glamorous, feminine woman and fashionista. “Woman” is racially unmarked on all the
covers, which complements Brand GB’s “post-race” ambitions. Of course, the work of
racially branding her as Black/white “mixed race” has already been done in the public
sphere, so there is no need for its repetition. In her 2012 book Unbelievable: From My
Childhood Dreams to Winning Olympic Gold, Ennis locates herself as a child of a Black
Jamaican father, Vinnie, who came to Britain in 1963 to join his parents who had
migrated in search of work, and a white English mother, Alison, from rural Derbyshire.
She is “just an ordinary girl from a run-of-the-mill street in Sheffield” (Ennis 2012, 4),
whose parents never married, who experienced poverty, was bullied at primary school,
and turned to sport to deal with bullying. Her story of “race” and racism stops largely
within the body and experience of her father in order to maintain her racially ambigu-
ous girl-next-door image. Even when she says that she had something racist said about
her we never know what that was, only that her father dealt with the child and family
involved.
Ennis’s body emblazoned on magazine covers gives the impression that racial equal-
ity is part of the British political, social, economic, affective, and cultural landscape,
because of the ubiquity of the image. If she can represent the nation we are no longer
trapped in “race” thinking. However, the political economy of “race” illustrates that
“race,” gender, class, and heterosexuality are part of the global market in Black/white
“mixed race” bodies and “post-race” sensibilities within continuing racism. The very
necessity for Ennis as national icon to be in-between/uncertain/ambiguous, projects a
national anxiety with seeing “race” and forgetting it so as to maintain “post-race” nega-
tion of political correctness and antiracist critique.
Seeing/not seeing produce a “race” melancholia (Cheng 2001; Gilroy 2004;
Khanna 2003; Tate 2010) where, as the nation projects its identity as tolerant, non-racist,
and multicultural, it engages in acts of selective forgetting, of swallowing whole that

which goes counter to its identity. For example, in order for Ennis to be a national icon
within Brand GB, it selectively forgets the “mulattaroon” (DeVere Brody 1998), the
“one drop rule” of slavery and colonialism and the metropolitan, postcolonial “half
caste.” However, as is the case for all melancholic objects, “mulattaroon,” the “one drop
rule,” and “half caste” refuse abjection and continue to haunt the nation’s racial imagin-
ings of itself (Cheng 2001; Gilroy 2004; Khanna 2003; Tate 2009). This intimates that
there is no resolution of racial difference, no absolution for the white psyche of the
need to acknowledge its historical and contemporary domination and terror, as long as
the racialized body remains marked by blackness. We can see this in the everyday
“race” making which is carried out on and through Ennis’s body, as no matter how
much the “post-race” white eye is trained to see her as ambiguous and to see “race” as a
commodity, she cannot pass into whiteness. Her body reminds the nation of its racial-
ized past/present and its possible future where white beauty will no longer be iconic
but relegated to just one in a long list of beauty possibilities (Tate 2010). What does this
unacknowledged, hyper-visible browning of the nation mean for its beautiful/ugly
understandings and “post-race” aesthetic future?
The “Browning” of the Nation, Beauty,

and Post-Race Aesthetics
Superstar status and racial ambiguity allied with the “post-race” political economy
of racism have meant that Ennis has been passed into the norm—white, unmarked
woman—on the proviso that she produces economic, affective, cultural, and politi-
cal surplus value which is useful to Brand GB. She does not pass as she has always
been clear about her Black/white “mixed race” background. Being passed into
whiteness implicates a location as exceptional national “other” for her lighter
skinned Black/white “mixed race” body. This makes us revisit George Yancy’s
(2008) assertions about the objectification of the Black body by the white gaze. In
his view:
the current and historical epistemic and habituated embodied orders […] configure and sus-
tain the white gaze and function to objectify the black body as an entity to be feared, disci-
plined, and relegated to those marginalized, imprisoned and segregated spaces that restrict
black bodies from “disturbing” the tranquility of white life, white comfort, white embodiment
and white being. (Yancy 2008, xvi)
Historically, the Black body is linked to normative whiteness, for instance as fear,
desire, terror, and fantasy which lead to the “distortional seeing” of whiteness as
through affect and discourse it objectifies the Black body as “other” (Yancy 2008, xviii).
What prevents Ennis from causing such disturbance? Alongside her racial ambiguity
which aids her being passed into whiteness, she has been positively located as patriot
through her prominent role in Team GB’s World and Olympic successes, as seen in her
being honored as a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE).
Her muscles are not a threat as she has also been returned to feminine glamour from
the location of the masculinized athlete through, for example, her magazine covers,
continuing work as the face of Olay, and being made up on Santander’s 2015 television
ad. Her muscles have become the mark of a woman who has taken the ethics of care to
heart rather than masculinizing her (Edgley 2006; Tate 2012).
For example, in her NOW magazine (NOW, 2013) interview, she gives beauty tips to
readers as one “everyday woman” to another. She admits to dying her hair to its current
“brown-blonde shade” at Nuva salon in Sheffield where she has been a client for more
than ten years. When asked how she cares for her skin when she competes outdoors,
she says that she has a “natural tan but you can’t be too careful. I wear an SPF 30 on my
face.” The use of “tan” elides her Black/white “mixed racedness” even while “natural”
enables the connection to her birth skin which she has to protect from the premature
aging caused by sun damage, like all women. Product placement is an interesting
aspect of the Ennis spread in the magazine, as on the facing page is an ad for “Revlon
Photoready Skinlights: get a healthy glow in any light” featuring Emma Stone. On the
next page a head and shoulder shot of Ennis with her on-trend red lipstick reveals her
“podium ready products” in her makeup bag. Among the products, which in total cost
£124.38, are Olay Essentials Smoothing Face Scrub and Olay Essentials Glow
Perfectors. On the facing page is the same Revlon ad featuring Halle Berry, and on the
following page is a slightly Photoshop darkened Ennis for Olay Glow Perfectors. Brand
Ennis’s placement equates her “affordable glamour” to that of global celebrities. As
artifice, performance, and sophisticated feminine allure, glamour offers a route to a
more assertive and powerful female identity (Dyhouse 2010) even in its more afforda-
ble variety.
Ennis owns a £1 million house but has consistently been marketed as the girl next
door, especially in her biography. As consumable, her deracination means that the
white gaze elides her Black/white “mixed racedness.” In this invisibility we again see
the possibility for contempt seething beneath the surface of her being passed into
whiteness. Ennis occupies the “not quite white” location prescribed by her “race” and
mixedness and will be relegated to that space of otherness when she is no longer useful
to the nation.
Beauty is not trivial, but can lead to social mobility for those blocked from social
routes of ascent because of, for example, class, “race,” sexuality, age, and gender identi-
fication (Edmonds 2010). As an essential form of value, beauty grants power to those
excluded from privilege. We can see this in Ennis’s current wealth and social standing.
The possibility for power and privilege based on beauty helps to explain why the lines
of beautiful/ugly have been so prescribed in terms of “race,” where black ancestry typi-
cally relegates one to ugliness in beauty regimes centered on whiteness (Nuttall 2006).
What can be said about Ennis’s beauty when whiteness has been iconic? Does her
branding as “the golden beauty girl” negate her racialized “brownness”? Does
her “browning” of the nation indicate a “post-race” aesthetic future?
Immanuel Kant (1914, 88) saw beauty as a judgment of taste which is not logical but
aesthetical, national, racialized, and partial:
If now in a similar way for this average man we seek the average head, for this head the aver-
age nose, etc., such figure is at the basis of the normal Idea in the country where the compar-
ison is instituted. Thus necessarily under these empirical conditions a negro must have a
different normal Idea of the beauty of the [human figure] from a white man, a Chinaman
a different normal Idea from a European, etc.
Beauty is racialized. As Black/white “mixed race” “other,” Ennis’s body being placed as
national icon through advertising and her place in brand Team GB produces a ques-
tion: “What is she?” This is closely followed by the questions, “Who can or does she
represent, and who will identify with her?”
In the Olay ads she is young, fit, successful, beautiful, desirable, and in control of her
life. Can non-Black/white “mixed race” women identify with her enough to buy the
product? This is important given that skin color as marker of racialized difference is so
alive in the national consciousness, but her attributes make identification possible.
However, “race” inhibits the transracial relationality necessary for identification. This
is so because in transracial identification her body has to be extendable to whiteness,
so that young white women as consumers of the product can pass through Ennis’s
body as possessors of her attributes. Such extension toward and passing through the
body of the “other” would instantiate a new “race” performativity (Tate 2005) in which
racialized beauty identifications do not begin with whiteness as the norm. This would
enable a “browning” of the nation, its passage beyond “race” as well as the removal of
white beauty as the aesthetic ideal. However, at best, what we have alongside the aes-
thetic ideal of whiteness is lighter-skinned, racially ambiguous beauty as exotic, much
as we had in colonial times (Ali 2005).
Ennis as nationally and globally marketed commodity does not negate the fact that
Black/white “mixed race” bodies continue to have an uneasy relationship with the
nation of which they are a part and from which they are set apart (Elam 2011). Black/
white “mixed race” people are both citizens and non-citizens, and political, cultural,
and aesthetic ideal/non-ideal. This is the case even when, like Ennis, they continue to
produce surplus economic and affective value. “Mixed race” bodies like Ennis’s con-
tinue to be called upon to construct the racial norm as white. Paradoxically, this
occurs because in her inability to pass as white she racializes whiteness as the norm.
As non-white national icon she constructs the UK as progressive even while the old
racial logics stay in place. Her body wrapped in the Union Jack to mark her Olympics
victory makes us think about issues of equality and citizenship, as well as national
aesthetics which continue to favor whiteness. It cannot be denied though that trans-
racial identification does occur when white women and girls pass through Ennis’s
body to secure fitness, beauty, and success. Such transracial identifications create fis-
sures in white beauty ideals with the rebranding of “golden skin” as exotic and white-
ness as the norm.
Conclusion
In the “post-race” political economy of racism which exists in GB, Black and Black/
white “mixed race” bodies continue to have political, economic, affective, and cultural
value for the nation through their otherness. The skin trade in the racially branded
bodies of Kwakye and Ennis within the GB and Team GB brands enables us to see the
continuing coloniality of power within the intersections of “race,” gender, and class in
contemporary times, as skin color still dictates who can be national sons and daugh-
ters. Kinship must be certain, and Ennis’s racial ambiguity, although useful in selling
the nation as tolerant, multicultural commodity, must be as carefully bounded off from
the nation as Jeanette Kwakye’s darker-skinned body. Often presented as “golden,”
“glowing,” or “natural tan,” Ennis’s skin is widely celebrated on magazine covers and
ads. Therefore, the disgust and contempt which play a role in Ennis’s racial branding
appear by indirectly referencing her racialized otherness through “positive” signifiers.
The need is to emphasize that she is mixed/not-Black/not-Kwakye, thus, Kwakye is
bounded off from whiteness, and Ennis is bounded off from Kwakye. However, the
threat remains that she could slip back into blackness. This threat is what reinscribes
the boundary between Ennis and the nation and keeps the disgust and contempt for
black bodies in play as she is irretrievably racially branded as “other.” The racial brand-
ing of bodies continues to ensure that the nation’s browning remains a momentary
process which does not impact on its imaginings of itself as white. National browning
plays the “race” card, in that it returns Ennis’s body to blackness as “not quite white”
while at the same time recouping its surplus value as global brand to GB.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the editor and anonymous reviewers for their comments. Some of this
analysis appears in Tate (2015a).
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6
The Merrickites
Glenn Parsons
Our culture praises—indeed revels in—the beauty of the human form. And yet, in the
midst of this exuberant celebration of corporeal beauty, not even the most unreflective
can be unaware of the problems that have been laid at its feet. The philosopher Kathleen
Higgins notes a “pervasive impression that is widespread in our culture: that beauty, or
some near kin of it, is unsavory, a temptation that might get the soul off-track” (2000, 89).
In response to this suspicion, some have argued that beauty is in desperate need of
reform or redefinition in our time. In this essay, I attempt to analyze and evaluate this
counsel. How should these claims be understood? Would we be wise to follow them?
6.1 Beauty on Trial

A useful, if melodramatic, way to look at our project is as putting the very concept of
beauty “on trial.” In his Republic, Plato notoriously subjected music, epic poetry, and
painting to a sort of philosophical trial, demanding that, in order to avoid banishment
from his ideal society, they demonstrate benefits outweighing their harms. Our task
with bodily beauty is not so different. Unlike Plato, however, I make no grand claims
about what an ideal form of human life would look like. Rather, I will simply try to ask
whether human life would be better if bodily beauty, as we know it, were not a part of it.
Before the trial can proceed, however, we must identify the defendant correctly.
Sometimes the word “beauty” is used merely as a synonym for aesthetic merit. On this
use, King Lear or atonal music could be described as beautiful, insofar as they have
aesthetic merit of some kind (being moving, striking, dramatic, shocking, and so on).
Although it has been criticized (see, e.g., Goodman 1968, 505–6; Stolnitz 1960, 21–2;
and Danto 2003, 92), this broad usage is still common among philosophers.1 In a sec-
ond and narrower sense, however, “beauty” refers to one specific sort of aesthetic merit
among many, distinguished from other sorts by hallmarks like clarity, order, propor-
1
The scruple goes back at least as far as Thomas Reid, who expressed “embarrassment” at the fact that
“Sometimes [‘beauty’] is extended, so as to include every thing that pleases a good taste . . . as well as what
in a more restricted sense is called beauty” (1785/2002, essay VIII, chapter IV).
the merrickites 111
tion, and harmony. In this narrow sense, both atonal music and the music of Mozart
may have aesthetic merit, but only the latter is beautiful.
In this paper I am concerned only with beauty in the narrow sense. That is, I am not
concerned with the aesthetics of the human form in general, but only with that par-
ticular sort of aesthetic merit that we single out as beauty. The reason for this restric-
tion is not that I think the aesthetics of the human form in general is uninteresting or
unimportant, but that the problems that have motivated thoughts of redefining or
reforming beauty apply primarily, if not exclusively, to beauty in the narrower sense.2
Furthermore, in this essay I will understand beauty, in the narrow sense, in a quite
particular way: as pleasing perfection. Thus, when we admire the beauty of the body,
what we admire is its meeting or approaching some ideal which we hold for the human
form. Some would argue that “beauty” should be defined differently, and perhaps more
still would claim that it cannot be defined at all.3 Although I think that beauty can be
adequately analyzed in terms of perfection, I cannot defend this view here.4 However,
one aspect of this account is worth mentioning: it does not identify beauty with any
one specific feature, such as harmonious proportion. As a result, it can account for the
variation of judgments of bodily beauty made in different cultures through the exist-
ence of differing ideas of perfection; e.g. the pursuit of fatness in Azawagh culture, as
documented by anthropologists (Popenoe 2004), can be understood in terms of a set
of beliefs that portray it as their ideal for the human form.
But even those who would reject my definition should agree that, whatever beauty
exactly amounts to, many of our judgments of beauty are judgments of perfection, and
that this is especially true in the case of bodily beauty. The pursuit of physical perfec-
tion and the approximation to an ideal is indisputably a central dimension of our con-
cern with beauty in the human form, and it is precisely this concern with perfection
that generates much of the unease that surrounds the concept. Thus, the outcome of
the present trial should be of interest to all those concerned with human beauty, even if
they believe that there remains more to be said on the subject.
6.2 The Apple of Eris

What is it then about human beauty that has inspired calls for us to bring it under con-
trol, to reform or redefine it? Suspicion about the parlous nature of physical beauty
goes back to the earliest stories of the West, such as the Greek myth of the judgment of
2
Indeed, one suggestion for addressing these problems is to give greater emphasis to other forms of
aesthetic merit; see note 19.
3
Skepticism about defining “beauty” goes back at least to the late eighteenth century (Stolnitz 1961,
185–204). Contemporary skeptics include Kemp (2007), McGinn (1997), and Gaut (2010), who calls
beauty a “conceptual enigma” (204). Even writers who have devoted entire books to the concept of beauty
demur from defining it; see, e.g., Scruton (2009) and Nehamas (2007).
4
The general idea goes back to seventeenth-century rationalism and was developed in the eighteenth
century by Reid (1785/2002). More precisely, my account holds that X is beautiful to S if, and only if, the
experience of X is pleasurable in virtue of the fact that S believes that X couldn’t possibly be better than it is.
112 Glenn Parsons
Paris.5 Feeling snubbed at not receiving an invitation to the wedding of Peleus and
Thetis, Eris, goddess of discord, throws a golden apple into the feast, inscribed simply
“To the fairest.” When the goddesses quarrel over the apple and the title, Zeus appoints
Paris, son of Troy’s King Priam, to arbitrate. Athena bribes him with power and wis-
dom, and Hera with riches. But it is the goddess of love and beauty, Aphrodite, who
wins Paris over with the promise of the most beautiful of mortal women: Helen of
Sparta. Paris’ choice earns him the enmity of Hera and Athena, Helen’s husband
Menelaus, and the entire Greek race. The result is the Trojan war, and its redounding
calamities. Into this colorful tale is compressed so much of the uncomfortable nature
of physical beauty: its explosive incitement of jealousy and desire, its tendency to elicit
venality and raw self-interest (everyone in the affair engages in some form of bribery
or corruption), its capacity to rip apart the carefully woven fabric of human social
relations.
Our own time has tales about the perils of beauty (Wilde’s Picture of Dorian Gray for
instance), but what we have to add to the folk wisdom of the Greeks comes chiefly from
other sources. One is the social sciences: research in psychology, sociology, and eco-
nomics, while it largely vindicates the Greeks’ view of beauty’s dark potency, has pro-
vided new insights into its effects.6 Also, modern values and ideals have produced new
worries about beauty that are conceptually distinct from those that troubled the
Greeks. These can be boiled down, ultimately, to two characteristically modern
concerns.
The first of these is injustice, and specifically the unjustly preferential treatment
received by the beautiful. Much empirical research has demonstrated the existence of
the so-called “halo effect,” or the “beautiful is good” stereotype: beautiful people are
generally perceived as better people in aspects apart from physical appearance. Thus,
people who are physically attractive are thought to be more intelligent, more trustwor-
thy, better leaders, and so on, and are treated accordingly (Jackson et al. 1995).
Interestingly, these effects persist even when the perceiver is familiar with, and has
prior information about, the person in question (Langlois et al. 2000, 400). For
instance, even if you have experience of a person’s intellectual abilities, you will still be
inclined to rate him as more intelligent if he’s better looking. Strikingly, this is true even
of teachers’ judgments of their pupils (Clifford and Walter 1973).7
And importantly, we don’t only believe that the beautiful are better than other peo-
ple; in a range of ways their lives are better. Good looking kids are given more attention
by their mothers, are more popular in school, and get higher grades (Clifford 1975).
5
The tale, along with its classical sources, is presented by Graves (2011, 630–9).
6
There is an enormous amount of empirical research on human beauty. My cursory survey here focuses
on some of the better-established effects documented in comprehensive meta-analyses in the psychological
literature (e.g. Langlois et al. 2000; Eagly et al. 1991; and Feingold 1992). Good reviews for the general
reader are Rhode (2010, chapter 2); Zebrowitz (1997, chapters 6 and 7); Hatfield and Sprecher (1986); and
Etcoff (1999).
7
Note that the halo effect does not impact all traits equally; also in a few cases (vanity, for instance) we
rate the beautiful as worse in other respects (see Eagly et al. 1991, 121).
the merrickites 113
On a personal level, the beautiful date more, have more sex, and are happier romanti-
cally (Sangrador and Yela 2000). They are more likely to marry and they marry part-
ners with higher income and education levels. Beauty also has a significant impact,
not only upon personal relations, but on hiring and professional advancement.
Professionally, being physically attractive is often a requirement for certain kinds of
success in certain professions (acting for example), and is an asset in others (think
of television broadcasting, or politics). The beautiful are more likely to be hired,
they receive higher starting salaries, and they are more likely to get promoted
(Hamermesh 2011).8 We are more likely to help them, tell them our secrets (Cash and
Soloway 1975), and let them win arguments (Chaiken 1974). When they run into trou-
ble with the law, the beautiful are more likely to be pronounced innocent, and, if con-
victed, they receive lighter sentences (Mazella and Feingold 1994).
In general, growing awareness of the significance and pervasiveness of the halo
effect has given rise to the view that it represents a hitherto unappreciated form of dis-
crimination. The term “lookism” has been coined to suggest an analogy to other odi-
ous forms of discrimination, such as sexism and racism. That certain people earn
more, get promoted, and even receive lighter sentences from the justice system just
because they are more physically attractive, seems as arbitrary and objectionable as
certain people having these privileges because they are white or male. As the analogy
would suggest, there have been calls for preventative anti-lookism laws, on the grounds
that freedom from discrimination due to physical appearance is a human rights issue
(Rhode 2010).
But the harms caused by the halo effect are not restricted to such differential treat-
ment of the less attractive by others, for people often harm themselves in pursuing
beauty. Here lie many scourges of modern life, such as the charlatanry of the diet and
cosmetics industries, the dangers of cosmetic surgery, and tremendous expenses of
time and effort spent on improving physical appearance. These and other harms of
pursuing beauty have been much discussed by feminist writers, of course, and these
harms do have a special significance for women, given the greater social pressures on
women to conform to beauty ideals (Rhode 2010, 30–2). Some have seen in the self-
destructive behavior of pursuing bodily beauty a kind of systematic mechanism for the
oppression of women. Naomi Wolf (1990), for instance, argued that patriarchal society
keeps women from advancing to positions of power by distracting and dividing them
with the “beauty myth”: the idea that it is their duty, as women, to labor to be
beautiful.
The story so far suggests that beauty is a scourge for those who lack this golden gift,
but that is only one side of the story. For there seems, to many, to be something
inherently problematic about having beauty as well lacking it. This is the second great
contemporary worry about beauty, distilled so wonderfully by W. B. Yeats in his poem
8
As mentioned in note 7, there are also contexts where physical attractiveness can be a disadvantage
(see, e.g., Johnson et al. 2010, 301).
114 Glenn Parsons
For Anne Gregory. “Never shall a young man,” Yeats writes to Anne, “love you for your-
self alone, and not for your yellow hair” (Yeats 1933). Anne’s problem is that her lovers
never love her—her hair always gets in the way. And this is no mere failing of character
in Anne’s lovers; rather, it is a deep, metaphysical problem: as Yeats says, only God
could love Anne alone, and not her hair. The idea here is that the beauty of an individ-
ual is a matter of her physical appearance, which is distinct from how she is as a person.
Hence, problems arise when our treatment of persons rests on their beauty: for then we
do not treat them based on how they are as persons. Seen in this way, beauty can be
thought of not so much as a magical light that shines out of a person, but a light that
goes before her, eclipsing her, and distorting her personal relations with others, even
the most intimate ones, such as romantic love.
Thinking of physical beauty as the occasion for discrimination and injustice, as well
as a barrier to meaningful relationships, has produced that unsavory impression of
which Higgins spoke. Another image from Higgins’ writings puts an even more strik-
ing form to this impression. “We also consider beauty an assertion of power,” she
writes. “Beauty is the irresistible weapon, the spiritual equivalent of the nuclear bomb.”
Rather than something noble, bodily beauty is something we desire out of self-interest
and our “naïve lust for power”: it is a weapon (Higgins 2000, 88).9 This dark image of
beauty as inherently linked to aggression is one that the Greeks would have recognized
(recall Eris’ grenade-like apple attack), even if our understanding of the weapon’s
workings now differs greatly from their own.
6.3 Dimming the Spotlight

Given the unflattering portrait of bodily beauty just sketched, it is not surprising to
hear contemporary thinkers suggesting that it needs serious reform. What, after all, is
any good about beauty in human beings? To what can we point as countervailing the
harms already described? No doubt much pleasure is taken in gazing on beautiful per-
sons, whether they are our romantic partners, potential romantic partners, or just
strangers. But this is a rather flimsy counterweight to offer against systematic injustice
and abnegations of personal identity. It seems hard to resist the conclusion that, over-
all, bodily beauty is a kind of evil in human life, rather than a good. Like the Apple of
Eris, it seems to be not the exciting gift it first appears, but a curse that we would be wise
to escape, if we can.
To this end, many have suggested that beauty needs reform. I want to turn now to
one such proposal. Something like it has been suggested by numerous writers, but
I will discuss a version inspired by some remarks of Naomi Wolf in her well-known
9
Wolf also makes use of the image of beauty as “a political weapon” (1990, 36): beauty, she says, is
sometimes used by men against women “the way some men use their fists” (288), and also by women
against one another (284).
the merrickites 115
book The Beauty Myth.10 Suggesting that beauty needs “reinterpretation,” Wolf urges
us to adopt a new “prowoman definition of beauty,” one that “admits radiance: light
coming out of the face and the body, rather than a spotlight on the body, dimming the
self ” (1990, 291). What will this new form of beauty be like? Wolf writes:
This new perspective changes not how we look but how we see. We begin to see other women’s
faces and bodies for themselves . . . We catch our breath when we see a woman laughing. We
cheer inside when we see a woman walk proud. We smile in the mirror, watch the line form at
the corners of our eyes, and, pleased with what we are making, smile again. (1990, 288)
Wolf does not develop these ideas in detail, but they can point us toward a certain pro-
posal as to how beauty might be redeemed. One idea that is obviously central in her
remarks is a turn toward a person’s inner beauty—the beauty of her character, or as
I will more poetically say, her soul.11 But the idea is not that we simply ignore our bod-
ies: this would not be a reform of physical beauty but simply a rejection of it. A more
sympathetic interpretation is that we should somehow perceive the beauty of the soul
in the body. This, I take it, is the point of Wolf ’s image of “light coming out of the face
and body.” But how does the soul “come out of ” the face and the body?
Here we may draw a distinction between two kinds of bodily features: expressive
and non-expressive. Some bodily features, such as facial configuration, convey to
us, powerfully and immediately, the mental state of a person. They are expressive of
character or soul. In contrast, non-expressive features, such as the shape of a man’s
shoulders (as opposed to the way he holds them) or the sheen of a woman’s hair, do not
communicate mental states in this same way. Facial configurations are by no means
the only expressive bodily features, for many bodily mannerisms are expressive in the
same fashion: a particular way of smiling, a certain manner of walking, a slouching
posture, a gentle and easy manner of movement. When we perceive these bodily fea-
tures, we are, in a sense, seeing an aspect of the soul, the inner life of the person, mani-
fest in the body.
I suggest we construe Wolf ’s call to reform beauty as a call to stop attending to the
non-expressive aspects of our bodies, those that do not reveal the “self ” inside. The
move to a focus on the beauty of soul is clear in Wolf ’s striking image of a self that is
distinct from the body and “eclipsed” by it, and in her description of the need for us to
change, not our way of looking, but our way of seeing. Wolf is anxious to insist that she
is not endorsing a rejection of beauty altogether, but only of one form of it. We can
make sense of this, I think, by understanding her proposal as urging us to reject
non-expressive bodily beauty, and attend only to expressive bodily features.12
10
Higgins suggests a similar view: “one sees the [truly] beautiful person as radiant, and this radiance
depends on a wholeness that we take to include the person’s inner life” (2000, 105).
11
In using this term, I follow a long philosophical tradition (see Norton 1995). I use it only to refer to
one’s character, not in any religious or theological sense.
12
Although I think this proposal fits much of what Wolf says, I do not claim that she actually endorses,
or would endorse, it. Rather, I consider it here on its own merits.
116 Glenn Parsons
Furthermore, this shift would indeed address the various problems caused by our
current attention to the beauty of the non-expressive features of the body. The injus-
tices generated by beauty are, in part, a function of its being inequitably distributed:
bodily perfections are given to some but not all. But beauty of soul is attainable, in
principle, if not by all, then far more widely than beauty of the body. More importantly,
since this beauty pertains to character, treatment of another on the basis of this beauty
would not be treatment on the basis of a trait that is irrelevant to her capacities, as race
or gender is. Restricting attention to the expressive beauty of the body would address
Anne Gregory’s problem as well, since to love Anne for, say, her kindly looks and her
gentle manner is to love Anne the person, rather than something else (e.g. her hair).
Of course, this call to turn away from the non-expressive beauty of the body—the
beauty of eyes, hair, legs, and noses—might seem hopelessly utopian in a culture satu-
rated with glorification of physical attractiveness. And in a world where sexism and
racism are still serious issues, it could be dismissed as frivolous, as political correctness
gone mad. Nonetheless, it deserves a serious philosophical hearing. The injustices of
the halo effect, as familiar as they are, have been well documented by social scientists.
And how hopeless and eccentric must Plato’s calls to ban Homer’s poetry have seemed
to Athenian ears? Yet his bold challenge to poetry’s value prompted deeper reflection
on something central to their culture. Similarly, thinking through this proposal to
restrict beauty to expressive bodily features may tell us something about its meaning.
6.4 The Soul in the Body: Two Problems

The idea, then, is to attend to those features that express our character, such as facial
expressions and bodily mannerisms. We are to stop fretting about features such as eye
color, hair, skin, and body shape, which have traditionally been the focus of admira-
tion, for these bodily features are expressively inert. One might object immediately,
however, that these features are not expressively inert: for instance, one can “express
oneself ” through a choice of hair style or color that reflects one’s personality, or
through longer term “shaping” of the body, such as losing weight or bodybuilding. So
in fact, our proposal for reform seems to not rule out much of our current attention to
the body at all: perhaps only features that are beyond influence by our behavior, such as
height, would be beyond the pale.
This broad way of interpreting the idea of beauty as the expression of soul in the
body, however, is problematic in two ways. First, it goes against the spirit of our reform
proposal, which was motivated, in part, by the enormous amount of work that women
are required to do in cultivating beauty; the idea of expressing oneself through the
deliberate manipulation of the body (through hair styling, for instance, or through
longer term “bodily projects” such as achieving a certain weight or body shape) does
not undermine but encourages this notion. It might be objected that such body-
fashioning labor would be optional and voluntary, and therefore not problematic in
the way physical beauty traditionally has been. However, once labor-involving bodily
the merrickites 117
expression of this kind is recognized as revelatory of soul, those who do not cultivate
the body in this way will be generally “read” as exhibiting negative character traits. This
is already the case with obesity, and (particularly for women) a lack of concern with
appearance: these are read as indicative of negative character traits (laziness, eccentric-
ity, lack of interest in social norms, and so on).
We might avoid this first difficulty by formulating our proposal in a narrower way,
employing the distinction between expressive actions, such as giving someone a present,
and what we might call natural expressions, such as slouching.13 Expressive actions, like
all actions, are motivated by desire and guided by belief. Giving someone a present is
something you do because of something you want (to show gratitude) and in light of
how you take the world to be (presents are conventional tokens of gratitude). But natu-
ral expressions are not. A man slouches, or smiles shyly, or laughs nervously not because
of something he wants, and not in light of how he takes the world to be. These are not
things he does as a means to any further end; they are not actions, they are simply things
he does. Although they are not explicable in terms of an agent’s beliefs and desires, as
expressive actions are, natural expressions of course can be understood: it is because the
man is insecure that he laughs nervously, because he is introverted that he smiles shyly,
and so on. That is, natural expressions are revelatory of soul or character.
We can construe bodily beauty in a narrower way as the natural expression of soul in
the body. This would eliminate our worry about work in fashioning the body. It also
has a second advantage over the broader reading of the notion insofar as natural
expression can be said to be more truly revelatory of soul than action. Expressive
actions can, of course, reveal our character: the donation of money to charity reveals a
person’s generosity, for example; his defusing of a conflict reveals his tact and skill at
negotiation, and so on. But natural expression reveals character in a fundamentally
different, and more intimate, way. Perhaps the best way to put the difference is to say
that in expressive action, we see what a person can do, whereas in natural expression,
we see what she is like.
Consider again the case of the charitable donation. Knowing the action, we make a
ready inference to the character of the person: he is a generous fellow, worthy of our
admiration. There is nothing wrong with this inference, but does it give us the grounds
for judging the man to have a beautiful (i.e. a perfect) soul or character? We know of
what his character is capable, but do we know what it is like? It might be that he is rag-
ged in spirit, a jumble of inner conflicts and unresolved “issues,” subject to shifting and
unclear motives. Such a soul, it seems, would not be a beautiful one: there are many
ways in which we could imagine it being better. The principle at work here is that, for a
soul to be beautiful, it is not sufficient that it have done excellent things; it is necessary
that the excellences be themselves in the soul, in some sense.
13
The distinction between the two kinds of expression is explored by Goldie (2000, 25–38). Note that
the term “natural” here does not mean “uninfluenced by culture” but merely “spontaneous” or “unpremed-
itated”: a person’s “natural expressions” could be, to some extent, a product of his or her culture.
118 Glenn Parsons
How then do we know when there are excellences in the soul? How do we know the
soul itself, rather than that of which it is capable? I suggest that it is primarily through
natural expression that we come to know the soul in this more intimate way. We know
the beauty of a soul, not by contemplation of its great deeds, but by experience of its
habitual, natural expression. To know that the person in the previous example has a
beautiful soul, for instance, we need to know more than that he was capable of a delib-
erate sacrifice for another’s welfare. We need to know that a selfless concern for others
is a deeply woven part of his character, and this is something that can be fully revealed
only in unconscious, spontaneous expressions. Further, the natural expressions that
reveal character in this intimate way typically occur in those parts of the body, in par-
ticular the face, which we have been calling “expressive features.”
It is true, of course, that we can express our character via any part of the body—by
manipulating our hair, or our skin, or our physique—but this is expressive action, not
natural expression. Thus, while choosing a hair color might allow one to express one-
self, in the sense of conveying one’s preferences or values (e.g. blondes have more fun),
doing so is an action, and hence is not expressive in the sense that an involuntary facial
expression is. So henceforth let us employ the narrower version of our proposal, which
urges us to attend to those bodily features that allow for natural expression.14 I will
continue to call these simply “the expressive features.” This will, I think, allow our
account to maintain the intended focus on only a subset of bodily features (smiles,
gestures, mannerisms, etc.) and eschew the laborious refashioning of the body that we
wanted to reject.
A second problem can be raised, however, against the proposal to attend only to
expressive bodily features.15 This is that these two classes of bodily features—expres-
sive and non-expressive—are not discretely located in the human body, but instead
overlap. One might even say that expressive features and non-expressive ones are thor-
oughly blended together in the body. For instance, a gentle look (an expressive feature)
and a vivid color (a non-expressive feature) are both located in the eyes: to see the gen-
tle look is to see the vivid color. But how then are we to look at, and take pleasure in, the
gentle look but not the vivid color? In this light, the current proposal sounds like the
command: look at, and take pleasure in, the movement of these objects, but not their
shapes. We may wonder whether this is psychologically possible, for surely our atten-
tion to and enjoyment of one set of qualities will naturally spill over into attention to,
and enjoyment of, the overlapping set.
But as difficult as it may be to imagine achieving this separation between the two
classes of qualities, it does not seem psychologically impossible. Surely we can imagine
that, while we notice non-expressive bodily features alongside expressive ones, due to
14
On this account, expressive features need not always be naturally expressive: a man might slouch to
avoid standing out in the crowd, or smile shyly to show that he is ready to be helpful, but doesn’t want to
overstep his place; and so on. The point is not that these features always allow for natural expression, but
that only they do so.
15
Note that this problem would arise equally for the broader version of our proposal discussed earlier.
the merrickites 119
their overlap in the body, there is some strongly negative attitude that prevents us from
enjoying the former.
As an analogy, consider our responses to immoral actions. Most of us, if witnessing
a beating, would be unable to take pleasure in watching the movements involved in the
beating. If told, “Watch carefully, I’m going to thrash this fellow, and I want you to
enjoy how deftly I strike him,” you would be unable to comply with the request
(I hope). This phenomenon ultimately rests on some moral basis—it would be deeply
wrong to derive pleasure from such acts—but it isn’t something done consciously. If
someone beats a man in front of you, you need not “decide” to forgo aesthetically
appreciating it. Rather, you would be psychologically blocked from finding beauty in
those immoral actions: the mind recoils spontaneously from seeking pleasure there.
Let us then imagine a possible world where people are just like us, but in the same
situation with respect to the non-expressive features of the human form. For these
people, the idea of finding pleasure in the perfection of these aspects of human form is
repugnant, as repugnant as the idea of taking pleasure in a beating is to us. Why would
this be? We may imagine that people in this world are acculturated in a society that is
acutely sensitive to the social ills generated by bodily beauty, so that they are simply
unable to find pleasure there. They seem to have truly achieved what Wolf describes as
“a life in the body that is not value-laden” (1990, 290).
It is important to note that the people in this world are not blind to non-expressive
physical features: they can tell, and sometimes notice, that certain bodies are, by given
criteria, perfect, or more perfect than others. For instance, people can tell that, by the
criterion of smoothness, one person’s skin is more perfect than another’s (thus it isn’t
the case that they are all indiscernible to one another; they look different, as we do, and
they can tell one another apart by these differences, as we do). However, they accord no
greater value to those bodies on that account. Another way to put it is that people can
understand and perceive bodily perfection, as we do, but they do not believe that bod-
ily perfection is a good thing. It simply fails to move them. They reject the ideals for the
human body that we accept.
Let us call this possible world—a world like ours, where people have bodies like
ours, but where no one takes pleasure in the perfection of the non-expressive aspects of
those bodies—Merrick’s world, in honor of Joseph Merrick, the so-called “Elephant
Man.” Merrick, whose severe physical deformities fated him to a very difficult life, had
the habit of ending his letters with a quotation from a poem:
If I could reach from pole to pole
Or grasp the ocean with a span,
I would be measured by the soul;
The mind’s the standard of the man.16
16
The poem is False Greatness by Isaac Watts; on Merrick’s use of it, and on his life in general, see Howell
and Ford (2010).
120 Glenn Parsons
In our imaginary world, Merrick’s dream is reality, for no one is judged or admired
based on the comeliness of their bodily form, but only on the worth of their actions,
and by the beauty of character manifest in the expressive aspects of their bodily form.17
6.5 The Merrickites

Merrick’s world gives us a nice way to evaluate our proposal for beauty’s reform. Is this
world, as beauty’s reformers might urge, a better world than our own? Is it the world
that we want? Here we should remember that, putting no stock in physical perfection,
the Merrickites do not experience the many harms we documented earlier: they do not
experience the “halo effect,” for instance. We also cannot say that in treating each other
in virtue of bodily beauty they fail to treat one another as persons. Neither do
Merrickites suffer the anguished pursuit of perfect appearances; the images of physical
perfection that so beguile us do not move them. Do we not, then, want to say that their
world is a better one? Or, on the contrary, might there be there some flaw hidden in the
fabric of the Merrickites’ lives?
One worry that we are apt to have about the Merrickites is that their freedom has
been somehow compromised. We might see them as having been indoctrinated with
an ideology that has shaped their behavior in an unnatural way. Indoctrination is cer-
tainly problematic, but we need not imagine anything comparable in Merrick’s world.
We can imagine that the Merrickites have come to find non-expressive bodily beauty
worthless, not from indoctrination, but through a typical process of moral evolution,
as happened with social attitudes to slavery or sexual harassment. As I mentioned ear-
lier, there is plenty of evidence as to the pernicious effects of beauty, and we can imagine
this evidence, over time, profoundly altering the Merrickites’ values.18
Even if the Merrickites’ attitudes have developed free of coercion, though, we might
still hesitate about them on the grounds that they are overly prudish. But the
Merrickites’ rejection of bodily beauty need not make them prudes: we can imagine
that they are capable of sexual arousal and enjoy all of the sexual activities we do. They
are aroused, as we are, by certain forms of physical contact, by certain gestures, actions,
or words, and by the sight of genitalia or sexually suggestive actions. The key difference
from us, in terms of sexuality, is that they are not aroused by beautiful (i.e. perfect)
human forms, for such features leave them cold. But since sexuality is so clearly a mat-
ter of more than bodily beauty, this by no means entails that the Merrickites must fail
to have satisfying or “liberated” sexual lives.
17
Interestingly, there are still ways for the body to “get in the way,” even in Merrick’s world. Certain
physical disorders, such as Moebius syndrome, rob sufferers of the ability to express emotion through facial
expressions. People with Moebius syndrome are unable to smile or move their eyes in natural ways; on this
disorder and the physiology of facial expression generally, see LaFrance (2011).
18
Also, one might argue that our current pursuit of bodily beauty itself involves a sort of indoctrination,
via constant media bombardment of “perfect body” imagery.
the merrickites 121
We should also note that the ability of the Merrickites to enjoy their bodies extends
beyond the sexual; we can imagine that they are capable of aesthetically appreciating
bodies as well. For instance, they might take pleasure in certain bodies as humorous, in
some as interesting, and in others as powerfully or shockingly expressive (highly tat-
tooed or pierced bodies, for instance).19 What they fail to take pleasure in, so far as
bodies go, is merely their perfection. This form of aesthetic merit they do not recognize
in the body.
But though the Merrickites can take such pleasures in their bodies, it remains true
that in an important sense they are unconcerned about them: achieving physical per-
fection (i.e. beauty) in their non-expressive bodily features simply does not matter to
them. And this lack of concern might worry us: indeed, we might see it as entailing a
kind of pathological self-disregard. But the Merrickites need not be wholly uncon-
cerned about their bodies, or neglectful of them: we can imagine that they care about,
and want, decent bodies, just not perfect ones. For instance, they might recognize that
certain physical attributes associated with bodily health—strength and mobility, for
example—are useful things and so desire them. But they would see no value in any-
thing beyond a certain threshold level of these goods. This is not an unfamiliar attitude:
we take it to many things. For instance, I value a decent car, but accord little if any
additional value to a more perfect one. The reason for this is that a decent car, able to
perform at a certain level, is capable of fulfilling all of my needs, so that any additional
quality in the car—greater comfort, greater speed—is of no significance to me. Perhaps
the Merrickites regard their bodies with precisely this attitude. They have certain needs
and desires: they want to walk, work, have sex, eat, communicate, and so on. A body
must be good enough to do these things, but beyond this the Merrickites are
unconcerned.20
Thus far, we have found no great defect in the Merrickites’ way of life. But the point
just made—that, for the Merrickites, the body is essentially an instrument—points us
in another direction. Perhaps there is something odd in this conception of their bodies
in relation to themselves. One way to look at Merrick’s world is to think of its denizens
as having a distinctive sense of the sort of creatures that they are. That is, they seem to
have a different understanding of what kind of being a person is, in an ontological
sense, than we do.
19
The idea of aesthetically appreciating the body as interesting or fascinating seems to be what Anita
Silvers has in mind in discussing unusual bodies that “advance our comprehension of humanity as (some)
novel objects expand our conceptualization of art” (2000, 218). Silvers says that such bodies (ones with
conditions generating atypical appearances, such as osteogenesis imperfecta) are beautiful if we employ
“an imaginative aesthetic understanding of beauty.” But I think that Silvers is using “beauty” in the broad
sense discussed in Section 6.1, as nothing more than a synonym for “aesthetic merit.” The artworks that
she discusses (cubist portraits, for instance) are aesthetically good, but not beautiful in the narrower sense
of the word.
20
In economic terminology, we could say that the Merrickites are “satisficers” with respect to their
bodies.
122 Glenn Parsons
It might appear, for instance, that the Merrickites view themselves as essentially
mental beings, and regard their bodies, not really as parts of themselves, but as tools or
instruments that they, as mental beings, are able to employ. This line of thought is sug-
gested by the analogy used earlier between the body as an instrument for mobility and
survival and the car as an instrument for transportation. Indeed, the notion that the
body is somehow alien to a person—not a part of him, but something distinct that he
possesses—frequently surfaces in the criticism of beauty that motivated our consider-
ation of Merrick’s world. It comes out nicely in Yeats’ For Anne Gregory, for example,
where Anne’s body is apparently not a part of her, but something distinct from her that
she “possesses,” as she might possess wealth or a particular social rank. This, it might
be thought, is precisely the attitude of the Merrickites. But this attitude, which is
expressed in its purest form in philosophical dualism about the mind and body,
is notoriously fraught with metaphysical difficulties. Most philosophers believe that
it is simply an error to see ourselves as distinct from our bodies in this way.
However, it might be replied that, if this dualist view of persons and bodies is a mis-
take, it is not one that the Merrickites need be making. The Merrickites might view
their bodies as parts of themselves, in an ontological sense: they might agree that they
could not exist without their bodies. They might even be materialists, and agree that
their minds are identical to some physical aspect of their bodies. Their view would
rather be that their bodies are insignificant aspects of themselves, unworthy of praise or
cultivation: aspects that should not matter. This would be a normative rather than an
ontological claim. An apt comparison for beauty, then, would not be something pos-
sessed, such as wealth or social status, but a character trait such as aggressiveness. One
might claim, as many would, that aggression, or the capacity for violence, should not
matter in human life, and is unworthy of cultivation or praise. That claim clearly need
not rest on the notion that aggression is not a part of the self, but something distinct
from it (whatever that would mean).21
So the Merrickites may be acquitted of a metaphysical blunder in their thinking
about their bodies. But we can still ask about the cogency of their disregard for the
perfection of the body. And indeed there is a lacuna in the Merrickites’ thinking here.
There are two aspects to this; to see the first, we may go back to those physical quali-
ties associated with health, such as physical strength, mobility, and robustness. The
Merrickites, we said, do not desire any more than the basic threshold of these quali-
ties that is required to meet their needs. But what are the needs in question here?
There seem to be two: survival and autonomy. Without a certain level of these
qualities, the Merrickites assume, these needs will not be fulfilled. This is true, but the
relationship of qualities such as strength and mobility to these needs does not admit
of a threshold of the kind the Merrickites envision. More of these qualities will lead to
21
Thus, the Merrickites might say that talk of the person and her body as distinct entities, as we find in
Yeats and Wolf, should be taken as mere poetic fancy, albeit one that expresses, indirectly, an important
truth about the significance of our bodies.
the merrickites 123
a greater satisfaction of the needs in question: longer survival, and greater autonomy
and independence.
Second, and perhaps more importantly, the Merrickites’ normative view that
perfecting these physical qualities should not matter is not cogent. In the case of the
analogies to bodily beauty mentioned earlier—aggression, wealth, and social class—
we can, in a fashion, imagine these not mattering. Of course, as things stand now, these
things matter a great deal, but we imagine them not mattering by imagining certain
forms of pervasive social change that render them irrelevant to our needs and wants. For
example, we can imagine, as communists do, a world where there is no private property,
and therefore no advantage to personal wealth. Or we can imagine a world where hered-
itary lineage is given no social recognition and so confers no advantage; or, we may
imagine a world where physical violence ceases to occur, such that aggressiveness loses
the utility it had under more archaic modes of life. It is this form of imaginative projec-
tion that lends cogency to the normative conviction that these various factors should not
matter in human life; they would cease to be legitimate ideals. However, this kind of
imaginative projection becomes problematic in the case of bodily perfection.
For what would such a world look like—a world where improving the physical quali-
ties associated with health did not matter, and ceased to affect one’s survival and auton-
omy? Social change can reform our relations, and reshape our institutions, but it cannot
eliminate our physical nature. No matter how ardently the Merrickites insist that, beyond
a certain threshold, the quality of the body is irrelevant to their needs, it will remain
directly relevant to the basic needs of health, survival, and autonomy, given that they are
physical creatures, living in a physical world. The same point can be made in terms of
desires. In a communist utopia, people would no longer desire money, for money, in such
a state, would have lost its capacity to satisfy our wants and needs. But in Merrick’s world,
insist as they will that physical perfection never matters, the Merrickites will still desire it,
or at least, we can say that they will still have strong grounds for desiring it.
I want to claim, then, that the Merrickites’ way of life is flawed, and would be unac-
ceptable to us, because it aims at an ideal—a world where perfecting the physical body
does not matter—that is impossible for us to conceive coherently. It is important to be
clear about what exactly this argument entails, however. If cogent, what it establishes is
the ineliminability of bodily beauty consisting in certain physical qualities—those
thought to be associated with health, survival, and autonomy. It doesn’t establish that
all ideas of bodily beauty are ineliminable: this is plainly false, as the history of human
beauty demonstrates. Further, it doesn’t establish that any specific physical qualities
must be prized as forms of bodily beauty, for which qualities a given group takes to be
associated with health, survival, and autonomy will be mediated by their beliefs about
many matters.22 All my argument establishes is that a pursuit of bodily beauty—a
22
Among the Azawagh Arabs, for example, fatness is considered healthy in women, and thinness
unhealthy, due to their metaphysical beliefs about the influence of spirits and their medical beliefs about
the operation of the female body (Popenoe 2004).
124 Glenn Parsons
c oncern with some kind of perfection in the body—is, in the long run, an unavoidable
part of human experience.
But one may object that even this claim is too strong. For though we certainly are
physical creatures, it is also indisputable that, through technology and through cul-
tural change, humans have greatly diminished the degree to which our physical attrib-
utes matter. With regard to physical strength, for instance, virtually anyone can now
perform, using a machine, tasks that in ages past only a Samson could have managed.
And in other cases, physical tasks that were impossible for certain people have simply
been eliminated through social change, such as the introduction of access ramps as an
alternative to stairs. Surely we can imagine these processes accelerating to the point
where, someday, technological and cultural mediation will render physical attributes
irrelevant to survival and autonomy altogether, except to the extent that some kind of
basic functioning of the body and its organs is required to sustain life. No matter how
frail or susceptible to disease, disorder, or malfunction our bodies become, some med-
ical treatment or technological intervention will compensate, prolonging our lives and
restoring our autonomy and agency. Much effort now goes, quite rightly, into pursuing
this goal. While we are still very far from realizing it, perhaps this utopian vision is
what ultimately gives cogency to the Merrickites’ claim that our physical perfection
should not matter.
On reflection, however, we can see that this is not the case. The basic problem with
the Merrickites’ position is that increased physical perfection promises greater satis-
faction of our fundamental needs for survival and autonomy. While it is true that tech-
nological and social change can, in principle at least, deliver these goods, this does not
eliminate that problem, for a person with physical perfection will still have a greater
chance of realizing them. This is simply because, while technological and social change
produce autonomy and health, they also make those goods dependent upon the very
structures of change that make them possible. This is not to disparage the autonomy
and health that such changes would make possible: achieving them is an entirely laud-
able social goal. Rather, it is simply to recognize the unavoidable, if often uncomforta-
ble, fact that while we are social and technological animals, we also remain physical
creatures living in a physical world. The desire for bodily perfection, with all of its
attendant perils, is an important and deeply rooted aspect of human experience.23
References
Cash, Thomas F., and Deborah Soloway. 1975. “Self-Disclosure Correlates of Physical
Attractiveness: An Exploratory Study.” Psychological Reports 36 (2): 579–86.
23
Earlier versions of this essay were presented at Ryerson University in 2009, the 2009 meeting of the
Canadian Society for Aesthetics in Ottawa, and at Wilfrid Laurier University in 2011. My thanks to those
present on those occasions, especially Klaas Kraay, Glen Hoffmann, and Jeanette Bicknell for comments
and suggestions. I also thank Sherri Irvin and three anonymous reviewers for Oxford University Press for
helpful feedback on the present version.
the merrickites 125
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Personality and Social Psychology 37 (8): 601–6.
Clifford, Margaret. 1975. “Physical Attractiveness and Academic Performance.” Child Study
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Clifford, Margaret, and Elaine Walter. 1973. “Research Note: The Effect of Physical Attractiveness
on Teacher Expectations.” Sociology of Education 46 (2): 248–58.
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Court.
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Publishing.
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7
And Everything Nice
Stephen Davies
In this chapter I discuss heterosexual sexual attraction. This can involve the desire for
sexual intimacy with a person of the other sex. But in a milder form, it may take the
form of contemplative appreciation of the person’s appearance. Sexual attraction often
is an aspect of mate choice, relationship maintenance, and romantic love. Evolutionary
psychologists tend to treat the subject under these headings. But I separate the topic
from these considerations.
This separation is perhaps more relevant to women. They balance commitment and
resources against passion in seeking a long-term partner, whereas men favor youth
and fertility, which are closely correlated for them with sexual attractiveness
(Sternberg 1997; Thornhill and Gangestad 2003; Shackelford et al. 2005). But when
women seek extra-pair copulations or more casual sex, they are more likely to use sex-
ual attractiveness as the main criterion of choice (Buss 1994; Thornhill and
Gangestad 2003; Fisher 2004). Even in this case, though, they are liable to be more dis-
criminating than men. If men are more open to casual sex and less discriminating in
their choice of partners, it’s women who more often choose where mutual sexual
attraction leads.
Sexual attraction is present in lust—in which almost any semi-appropriate partner
can seem sexually attractive and become the object of an immediate desire for sex—
and in limerence. Limerence (Tennov 1979), or “intense romantic love” (Fisher 2004),
is that state in which a person is obsessively focused on another to the exclusion of
other possible partners, irrationally positive in the assessment of the other’s character-
istics, and longs for reciprocation from the other. Lust is a short-term instinct and lim-
erence usually lasts only for months, with three years as an upper limit. But sexual
attraction can also be much colder than these spicy states. It need not be displayed or
acted upon. Or if it is, it may be manifest in interest and mild flirting, with no intention
of going further. It can be indulged, treated with comparative indifference, or dispar-
aged, depending on its target. (Almost everyone is likely sometimes to have felt sexual
attraction in contexts that were inappropriate or toward people that they otherwise
judge negatively or regard as unsuitable.) And sexual attraction toward a particular
person might be either long- or short-term.
128 Stephen Davies
In the early parts of the chapter I review the empirical literature on sexual attraction
produced by evolutionary psychologists and others. In particular, I consider explana-
tions in terms of the search for “good genes” or for complementary genes, as well as
bases for individual differences in preference. Later, and by way of criticism, I suggest
that this perspective is narrow and incomplete. I go on to defend a broader, more social
view of sexual attraction than is usually considered. The notion of sexual attractiveness
should not be confined to the desire to have sex or to mate, I suggest. I close by consid-
ering the implications of the position I defend for feminist concerns.
Good Genes
A common view is that we are attracted by universal markers of genetic quality.
When the faces of same-sex, similarly aged individuals are morphed together, the
result is judged attractive. The more faces included, the more attractive the face
becomes. What is the outcome of this process? The face becomes more normal or aver-
age. And there are other effects. For instance, averaging smooths the texture of the
skin. More particularly, it results in greater facial symmetry. In the case of actual indi-
viduals (rather than pictorial composites), symmetry correlates first with the quality of
the genetic determinants of body and face shape. Second, it marks a successful history
of resistance to diseases and pathogens that would impinge on the body’s integrity.
That is, it signifies the quality of the immune system and health. In other words, sym-
metry is a marker of good genes.1 The attractiveness of facial and bodily symmetry
appears to be robustly cross-cultural. And it applies in the judgments of both sexes.
While we perceive symmetrical (typically, attractive) people as healthy, doubt has
been expressed about the reliability of this judgment.2 In response, others argue in
favor of the correlation of symmetry with long-term health and biological fitness. (For
instance, see Milne et al. 2003; Simpson and Oriña 2003; Dunbar 2012.) Overall, the
evidence weighs in favor of a connection between health and symmetry. (For a review,
see Perrett 2010, chapter 7.) Though illness and injury might not always show (or per-
sist in showing) in a person’s appearance and body shape, there are many cases in
which they do impact on the body in ways that mark it.
An alternative hypothesis also ties the judgment of facial attractiveness to good
genes, but suggests that the trigger is the positive effect of a well functioning immune
system on the appearance of facial skin (Perrett 2010, 143).
Composite pictures smooth the skin tone, which adds attractiveness, but lose track
of some other signs of health that we find attractive in individuals, such as glossy hair,
clear eye whites, and white, straight teeth (Buss 1994; Symons 1995; Etcoff 1999;
Cunningham and Shamblen 2003). Though there may be some cultural relativity in
1
Here is a very selective set of references: Langlois et al. 1994; Symons 1995; Miller 2000; Manning et al.
2003; Rhodes and Simmons 2007; Swami and Furnham 2007; Dixson 2009; Perrett 2010; Dunbar 2012.
2
Kalick et al. 1998; Rhodes et al. 2001; Tovée et al. 2007; Swami et al. 2008; Laland and Brown 2011.
and everything nice 129
such preferences (Swami et al. 2008), they are widespread. Again, they track health and
good genes.
Of course, the judgment of facial attractiveness takes in more than symmetry. For
instance, female preferences often change through the menstrual cycle (Penton-Voak
et al. 1999). Basically, women are drawn to strong signs of masculinity and genetic
quality in the fertile period, but prefer more feminine aspects in men in the remainder
of the cycle. It has been suggested that, when they cannot conceive, they become less
interested in men’s genetic quality and more concerned with material and social bene-
fits men might provide (Thornhill and Gangestad 2003) or with security and support
at this time (Dunbar 2012, 109, 126).
Men show a much-documented preference for women with a waist-to-hip ratio
(WHR) of about 0.7.3 (The lower the number, the more wasp-like is the build.) Even
blind men prefer a low WHR in women (Karremans et al. 2010). While the universal-
ity of such preferences has been questioned,4 cross-cultural studies (for example, Singh
and Luis 1995; Singh et al. 2010) show that WHR is commonly implicated in men’s
judgments of women’s attractiveness, though, as always, other factors can be involved.
The most common explanation for this ingrained preference suggests that what is
assessed as attractive is fertility. The location of women’s fat deposits is controlled by
the hormone estrogen. A low WHR indicates that a woman is pre-menopausal, that
she has the fat reserves to sustain pregnancy and lactation, and that she is probably not
pregnant.
The correlation with fertility is far from perfect, of course. A woman with a low
WHR might not be fertile because of where she is in her monthly cycle, because she is
in the first trimester of pregnancy, or because ovulation is suppressed by lactation. And
it is clear that other factors, such as a high body mass index (BMI), can be involved in
the judgment of attractiveness of the female body (Gray et al. 2003; Donohoe
et al. 2009). In other words, it may be that men’s taste in female bodies is more for fat
deposits than for body shape. Indeed, it has been suggested that attractiveness is
judged by BMI in nutritionally challenged societies and by WHR only where food
is plentiful (Pawlowski and Dunbar 2006).
BMI depends not only on the availability of food but also on resistance to disease
and to intestinal parasites. So we are back to health. And from the outset (Singh 1993),
a low WHR was seen as signaling not only fertility but also health. In pre-menopausal
and non-pregnant women, a low WHR is an indirect sign of endocrinological fitness.
When it comes to the male body, women find sexually attractive secondary charac-
teristics of maleness (effects of testosterone) such as a strong jaw, beard growth,
3
Here is a very selective set of references: Singh 1993, 1994; Symons 1995; Miller 2000; Singh 2002;
Cunningham and Shamblen 2003; Dixson 2009; Perrett 2010. On the interaction of shoulder, waist, and
hip measures, see Donohoe, Hippel, and Brooks 2009.
4
Tassinary and Hansen 1998; Yu and Shephard 1998; Wetsman and Marlowe 1999; Tovée et al. 2007;
Swami et al. 2008.
130 Stephen Davies
pper-body strength, muscling, and the like.5 They also desire tallness (Pawlowski
u
et al. 2000; Miller 2000; Nettle 2002a; Dunbar 2012), while men prefer women of aver-
age height (Nettle 2002b).
There is some evidence of human pheromones that are found to be sexually attrac-
tive. Androstenol, for instance, is appealing to females (Gustavson et al. 1987) and is a
potent pheromone in the sexual biology of other animal species (Stoddart 1990;
Wedekind 2007). During the fertile time of the cycle, women prefer the odor of more
symmetrical men (Penton-Voak et al. 1999; Thornhill and Gangestad 2003) and as we
have already noted, symmetry is widely thought to track health and good genes.
I have already mentioned fertility and its connection with health. Men are consist-
ently fertile into middle age, so a man’s age might not be important to a woman on
account of his fertility. Women can find older men to be sexually attractive. But a wom-
an’s fertility is significantly affected by her age. Let us suppose a woman might raise five
children to maturity over a breeding life of twenty years, say, between eighteen and
thirty-eight years of age. (Birth-spacing is every four years, as in many hunter-forager
societies, or perhaps she has more than five children but the number is reduced
through child mortality.) If a man takes up with her when she is twenty-six, from his
point of view her potential fertility is only 60 percent of what it was. (And if she already
has children, he may face the burden of supporting them as well as his own.) Not sur-
prisingly then, men are likely to be drawn to younger women and to find them more
attractive. Indeed, some men seem to think that “attractive young woman” is a
tautology!
Complementary Genes
Females choose (are sexually attracted to) males who are genetically dissimilar to
themselves. Breeding with such males increases the viability and disease resistance of
their offspring. This is known as the heterozygosity hypothesis.
Of course, in one sense complementary genes are good genes. But the “good genes”
label is often reserved for general markers of genetic quality that are of more or less
universal value. Complementary genes are good in a more specific way. If your genes
complement mine, when they mesh our children benefit. But your genes might not
complement those of some other person. So complementarity is about what works for
individual couples, not for everyone. Many people’s genes might complement yours,
all in different ways, but the genes of some people will coincide with yours so that nei-
ther brings something new or different to the mix.
A simple example of our interest in complementary genes is the attractiveness of
strangers to the group (Buss 1994; Miller 2000; Fisher 2004). Group members’ genes
are likely to be more similar to each other’s than to the stranger’s. So a group member
5
Buss 1994; Penton-Voak et al. 1999; Simpson and Oriña 2003; Thornhill and Gangestad 2003;
Fisher 2004; Perrett 2010.
who is drawn to the stranger is likely to secure more genetic diversity for his or her
children, who are thereby better able to resist pathogens. (As well, the group member
mitigates the risk of inbreeding.)
The sense of smell plays a more important role for women than men (Stoddart 1990,
93; Havlíček et al. 2008). For instance, mothers and babies can recognize each other by
smell within a few hours of birth (Porter 1998). And women are sometimes attracted
to men by their odor. In this case, the odor is a marker of the man’s major histocompat-
ibility complex (MHC); that is, his immune system. When ovulating, women are sexu-
ally attracted to men whose immune systems differ from and complement their own.6
Resulting progeny would have stronger immune systems than otherwise.
In the non-fertile period of the cycle (or when pregnant, on the pill, or infertile),
women may prefer men whose MHC matches their own (Milinski 2003;
Wedekind 2007).7 But this effect may be more about surrounding oneself with sup-
portive male kin than about sexual attraction (Dunbar 2012, 126). Women who marry
men with matching MHC are more inclined to reject their mate’s sexual advances, to
have fewer orgasms, to be attracted more often to other men, and to have more extra-
pair copulations (Garver-Apgar et al. 2006).
Though the sense of smell is less important for men, they do show similar results in
favoring female MHC odors that are unlike their own (Wedekind and Füri 1997). And
they prefer the scent of women who are ovulating over that of those who are not (Singh
and Bronstad 2001; Dunbar 2012, 51–2).
Individual Difference
With scent, individual preferences vary considerably. There are other respects in which
the triggers of sexual attraction can differ between individuals (or across cultures).
Depending on how our childhoods went, we tend to be attracted to people who
resemble our opposite sex parent (Little et al. 2003; Perrett 2010, 208–11). In addition,
we rate as attractive opposite-sex versions of our own faces (Perrett 2010, 200–1).
Naturally, such effects are manifested as different preferences in different individuals.
Moreover, it is important to note the scope for idiosyncrasy with respect to individ-
ual difference in what is found sexually attractive. Earlier I emphasized certain more or
less universal preferences, but keep in mind the sheer number of features and proper-
ties about a person that can be viewed from a sexual perspective: hair color, straight-
ness or curliness, and length; eye color, size, eyebrows, and separation; height and
carriage; voice and accent; smile; laugh; age; nose size and shape; lip size and shape;
chin size and shape; ear size and shape; skin texture and coloration; hand size; degree
6
Wedekind and Füri 1997; Milinski 2003; Simpson and Oriña 2003; Wedekind 2007; Roberts and
Little 2008; Dunbar 2012, 56.
7
These effects are clearly observed in some other animals (Milinski 2003; Garver-Apgar et al. 2006;
Roberts and Little 2008), and in primates generally (Paul 2002).
132 Stephen Davies
and distribution of body hair; degree of muscling; size of breasts; size of buttocks; BMI.
And so on, down to toe shape.
Each of us might be stimulated by some of these more than others. One woman
might be attracted to men with deep resonant voices, another to men’s eyes, another to
men with athletic builds. One man might like women with a husky laugh, where
another is enamored with redheads, and a third prizes long, slender necks.
As well as liking what is average, as was noted earlier, we also like what is exagger-
ated or unusual, so long as it is not thereby aberrant. This is known as the peak shift
effect (Alley and Cunningham 1991; Ramachandran and Hirstein 1999). Obviously
there are many respects in which faces, bodies, secondary sexual features, and any-
thing else we might find sexually attractive can be out of the ordinary. And individuals
will differ as to which features most excite them.
Preliminary Conclusion
What overall conclusion about the nature of sexual attractiveness emerges from this
review of the literature produced by evolutionary psychologists? As a more or less uni-
versal pattern, sexual attractiveness implicates a complicated nexus between: (a) aver-
ageness or normalcy; (b) health, a strong immune system, and other markers of good
or complementary genes; and (c) signs of fertility. Such is the number of factors that
might be (unconsciously) weighed, and so complicated are the relations between
them, that there is scope for considerable individual difference in preference. But at the
same time, some predilections are deeply rooted and generalizable.
Critical Review
In this section I challenge the account of sexual attraction provided by evolutionary
psychologists. The objection is not that what they say is false but that it is incomplete.
Their view is one-dimensional and thin.
(1) Inevitably, evolutionary psychologists focus on what is universal. And where
idiosyncrasy is described, it is nevertheless governed by a rule or pattern at some
higher level. The rule might be: prefer someone who looks like your opposite-sex par-
ent. Or it might be: choose a partner whose immune system differs from but comple-
ments your own. When different individuals (unconsciously) apply the rule, they
produce individually different results. But not in a way that shows sexual preference to
be subjectively personal.
I conceded that there is scope within the analysis to admit idiosyncrasy. Lots of fac-
tors are in play and individuals might always scale them differently. But even accepting
this, we might think there remains a degree of arbitrariness in such preferences that is
not yet fully acknowledged. Any woman wearing the first generation Star Trek uni-
form will turn my head, for instance. People can be sexually attracted by the strangest
things, without thereby qualifying as perverse, deviant, or fetishistic. Perhaps a woman

is besotted only by musicians. The triggers of such personal preferences probably lie
deep within each individual’s psyche.
Of course, any scientific discipline is bound to seek laws and regularities.
Evolutionary psychology cannot be faulted on that score. But we do well to bear in
mind how personal and malleable sexual tastes can be.
(2) Evolutionary psychologists tend to treat sexual attractiveness merely as an
interpersonal signal rather than as a mode of social interaction. For instance, there is
no discussion of flirting. But this is one common way that sexual attraction, when it is
acted upon, gets played out.
Often we do not want or expect sexual attractiveness to elicit flirting or sexual
behavior. So there must be more than one kind of signal involved. There is the attrac-
tiveness itself, but also there must be signs that indicate how or whether the other is to
respond to the attractiveness. These latter kinds of signals are not acknowledged or
discussed by evolutionary psychologists. They are more often covered in popular
books on body language (such as Pease and Pease 2012).
(3) Given (2), we should note the complex role played by sexual attraction in social
interaction and presentation more generally. There is a close connection between
assessments of beauty or attractiveness and wider evaluations of non-sexual personal
qualities and social performance. We are inclined to rate attractive people as nicer,
cleverer, more competent, and more personable than they are. This is known as the
halo effect.8
There are some interesting correlatives to the halo effect. Treating people as attrac-
tive gets a better social performance from them (Etcoff 1999). And our judgments of
physical attractiveness can be affected by people’s behavior: helpful people are judged
to look more attractive (Perrett 2010).
We should abandon what is implied by the psychologists’ theory, namely that sex-
ual attraction is based only on physical aspects of appearance and scent. Impressions
of attractiveness in appearance are deeply intertwined with our judgments of social
competence and behavior. Take men’s interest in female youthfulness (though note
also that it is simply false to suggest that men do not find women of all ages to be sexu-
ally attractive, especially if they are older themselves). Even if men are drawn to youth,
it is important to note how quickly a pang of sexual attraction can fade if the young
woman opens her mouth to betray a crippled vocabulary—whatever!—and a head
full of dross.
If sexual attraction is to be more than fleeting, the other person must pass myriad
social tests. A person’s artistic taste, religion, politics, and moral standards might turn
us off. That they are a smoker, a vegetarian, or a believer in astrology might make them
less attractive to some and more attractive to others. Simply, a lack of shared experi-
ence or reference can block sexual attraction, as when a woman realizes that the young
8
Feingold 1992; Langlois et al. 2000; Swami and Furnham 2007; Perrett 2010.
134 Stephen Davies
man who interests her has not heard of Steve McQueen or Joni Mitchell, or when he
cannot follow the political jokes on the Daily Show. If another person does not share
our sense of humor we are less likely to be attracted to them. And think how women
can be sexually drawn to originality of wit in men (Miller 2000).
Moreover, shared experience and similar views and values can sometimes kindle a
sexual attraction that was not present at the outset. And decades of mutually fulfilling
intimacy can keep sexual interest and attraction alive.
(4) Given (3), we should consider also not only what sexual attractiveness signals to
the other but also its significance to the signaler. It is a mode of self-presentation. And
it is often more about presenting oneself favorably rather than sexually, about being
valued as the person one is rather than about stimulating a sexual response
(Davies 2012, chapter 7).
To sum up: the account of sexual attraction offered by evolutionary psychologists
paints it as only skin deep. But how we assess people, and whether we are sexually
drawn to them, depends importantly on aspects of character and performance that go
beyond physical appearance. Indeed, these assessments can even affect our rating of a
person’s physical appearance. So, sexual attraction and attractiveness are bound up
generally with social performance. In addition, making oneself sexually attractive can
be part of making the best of one’s social self-presentation. In this case, it invites the
other’s appreciation but not an overtly sexual response.
Some Implications of the Argument for Feminism

The news is perhaps both bad and good.
We are embodied biological organisms. The empirical evidence suggests that our psy-
chology is not solely the arbitrary creation of culture and happenstance. At least some of
our psychological and attendant behavioral dispositions are deeply rooted in our biolog-
ical nature. And evolution encourages us to promote our genes’ interests, which is to
propagate those genes via reproduction, by making the activities that indirectly assist
those interests enjoyable. We take pleasure in eating, exercising, sex, sleep, nurturing
babies, and the like. The notion of gender cannot simply make that of sex redundant.
On the other hand, however, we are not the victims of our biology and our interests
certainly can differ from, and be at odds with, those of our genes. Our sexual identities
and behaviors are malleable and can be affected by personal choice and by cultural
influence. Moreover, being cognitively sophisticated creatures, we are not driven
mindlessly by instinct. When we become aware of the way biology generates the pref-
erences that pull and push us, we can interrogate those preferences. If we choose not to
own them, we can frequently override them, having higher preferences more generally
about the kind of person we want to be.
The account evolutionary psychologists offer of sexual attraction confines it to a
narrow role, as a signal of copulatory value or intent. This may reflect a sexist bias in
their approach. But in any case, I think it reveals poor psychologizing on their own
terms. The measure of biological success is raising children who will be successful par-
ents. Think of the myriad traits and talents one’s partner will need to bring off that
trick. The evolutionary story of sexual attraction can be expected to connect not merely
to a nice smile and narrow waist or to a muscled torso and good business prospects but
also to the broad range of personality traits and skills that make for good parenting. To
bring up a child who will value not only his or her self but others as well, a parent will
need many of those same values and attitudes. And these can contribute to the broader
package of their sexual attractiveness. That is one reason for thinking that the account
of sexual attraction should be more about social presentation and interaction than
about mating, even where the focus is on biological-level, as against personal-level,
interests and agendas.
And once that is conceded, it becomes possible to decouple the notion of sexual
attractiveness from the desire to have sex or mate, so that it can be a common assess-
ment of oneself and others without being tied to a disposition to display overtly sexual
behavior. Moreover, it then also becomes possible to see why things other than indirect
markers of health, good genes, and fertility can contribute to a person’s sexual attrac-
tiveness. More particularly, we can then understand how social traits, such as honesty,
faithfulness, caring, forbearance, patience, and dignity, can contribute positively to the
sexual attractiveness of the person who has them.
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PA RT I I I
Performance
8
In/Visible
Disability on the Stage
Tobin Siebers
1. The word “theater” descends from the Ancient Greek theatron, meaning a “place
for seeing.”1 What does the audience see at the theater? Most obviously, the audience
sees bodies, but what of bodies does it see? Which kinds of bodies are visible on the
stage?2 Which kinds are invisible? These questions reveal a fundamental paradox
about in/visibility when posed in the context of disability on the stage. Because the
theater is a theater of nondisabled bodies, they are supposedly most visible on the
stage, but because they are the norm, they are in effect invisible. It means almost noth-
ing when a nondisabled body appears on the stage. The audience does not see nondis-
abled bodies as nondisabled. It never questions why nondisabled bodies are being
used on the stage. But the disabled body is another matter. When it appears on the
stage, it is visible, perhaps hypervisible.3 The audience usually notices disabled bod-
ies, and it wants to understand why they are on the stage. The disabled body has
meaning—and necessarily so—because, when something as visible as a disabled body
appears on the stage, without attendant meanings or explanations, the audience finds
fault with the drama. The drama that fails to explain the appearance of a disabled
body on the stage is a failed drama. The disabled body threatens to disable the theater
as a place for seeing.
1
Although I understand the distinctions between theater and performance art, I am here collapsing
them into the concept of the “stage” in order to explore theoretically what happens when disabled bodies
make themselves visible for aesthetic purposes.
2
Richard W. Mitchell remarks on the lack of diversity of bodies on the stage, offering a challenge to
community theater to include mentally disabled people: “As we begin the twenty-first century various
‘minority’ groups are more or less absent from the theatre, and the percentage of people who regularly
attend theatrical performances is infinitesimally small” (2001, 93).
3
Petra Kuppers, among many commentators, has captured best the paradox of the in/visibility of dis
abled performers: “The disabled performer is marginalized and invisible—relegated to borderlands, far
outside the central area of cultural activity, into the discourses of medicine, therapy and victimhood. At the
same time, people with physical impairments are also hypervisible, instantly defined in their physicality.
The physically impaired performer has therefore to negotiate two areas of cultural meaning: invisibility as
an active member of the public sphere, and hypervisibility and instant categorization” (2001a, 25).
142 Tobin Siebers
2. The meaning of in/visibility in disability studies revolves traditionally around the
significance held by physical traits in disability oppression. Visible disabilities make
people susceptible to discrimination, while people with invisible disabilities suppos-
edly possess the capacity to pass more easily as nondisabled. The attention to invisible
disabilities in disability studies is designed to wake up people to the prejudices directed
against all disabled people by increasing awareness about the problems faced by those
who do not fit the usual stereotypes.
Of course, the situation is more complicated than it looks (pun intended). On the
first hand, visible disabilities are not necessarily as visible as one might first think
because the general lack of experience with disability in society renders disabled peo-
ple invisible, regardless of their appearance (Siebers 2008, 117–18). There is no disabil-
ity so obvious that it cannot go unnoticed. Georgina Kleege (1999) writes about how
easy it is for a blind person to pass as sighted, and Anne Finger (1990) recounts an epi-
sode in which the people around her did not notice that she was in a wheelchair
because its design was unexpected. On the second hand, people with invisible disabili-
ties may be able to pass, but their passing often requires overcompensation harmful to
their everyday existence. Having an invisible disability can also put one at odds with
the police. Joseph Grigely (2000) admits wishing that he had a red hearing aid to ren-
der his deafness more visible, because his inability sometimes to follow orders in pub-
lic gets him into trouble. On the third hand, experience with disability leads to the
conclusion that there are really no such things as visible or invisible disabilities in and
of themselves. There are only traits that are rendered visible or invisible by certain cir-
cumstances. This is the case because disability is a social construction, of course—since
a disability may be a disability in one context but not in another—but also because vis-
ibility is a social construction.
Visibility and invisibility are matters of “appearance,” then, by which I mean both
the taking of physical form and the specific features of any given physical form.
Disabilities are visible when they appear. When they do not appear, they are invisible.
This formulation may seem naive, but it is the only accurate way to describe the rela-
tionship between disability and in/visibility, since everything in the visible world is a
matter of appearance.
3. Bodies are always appearances. Bodies include human beings, animals, artifacts,
artworks, and natural objects, and when they appear, they stir emotions. For example,
nondisabled bodies encountering disabled bodies experience emotions of pleasure,
pain, revulsion, or terror, to name the most obvious responses. Disabled bodies experi-
ence similar emotions when facing nondisabled bodies. These bodily feelings are the
substrata on which so-called higher aesthetic effects are based. Aesthetics, to provide a
bare-bones definition, is the human science that studies how some bodies make other
bodies feel (Siebers 2010, 1). Its range extends from the emotions felt in everyday
encounters between bodies to the emotions experienced when one body responds to
another body called a work of art.
In/Visible: Disability on the Stage 143
It is extremely difficult to study bodily feelings in the heat of everyday encounters

between people. These encounters show our emotional responses at their most mun-
dane and raw—raw precisely because they occur in the most mundane circumstances,
when feelings of attraction and repulsion, of acceptance and rejection, surge forth with
embarrassing immediacy, fierceness, and clarity. These are the feelings that we negoti-
ate every day when we turn a corner and find ourselves face to face with another body,
and yet it is almost impossible to discuss these feelings, precisely because they are so
familiar to the experience of being human.
But things are different in the world of art. Here not only may we discuss the value of
the feelings that other bodies inspire in us, but we are encouraged to do it as part of the
experience of art. The human appreciation of art has given birth to a culture of feeling,
a long tradition of aesthetic response, a complicated history of theories, and
vocabularies about art—all of which are determined to understand how, what, and
why art objects make people feel. And yet rarely, if ever, have the aesthetic theories
developed about the art world been applied to the emotional interactions taking place
in the social world. There seems to exist little interest in understanding either what our
responses to art objects might tell us about our responses to other people, or the
tendency in both life and art to judge some bodies as inferior based on how they make
us feel.
4. The Black Power movement of the 1970s insisted on the beauty of African
Americans and sought a place for them on the stage. Similarly, disability pride claims
disability and seeks its representation on the stage. I support diversity as a political
goal, but here I am interested in the aesthetic resources of disability. The goal is not to
base an aesthetics of disability either on a strong and normalizing identification with
disabled bodies and minds or on the emotions of aversion supposedly felt before disa-
bilities. The goal is to make disability a resource for expanding the emotions repre-
sented on the stage, using the specific feelings created by disabled bodies and minds to
found a new and modern disability theater.4
5. Although bodies on the stage pass as other bodies—this is the essence of acting—
all theater remains in the end a theater of visible bodies. The actor plays the part of the
character, but the actor’s body remains visible to the audience, no matter how well the
actor inhabits the character. Otherwise, it would be impossible for the actor to spark an
emotional response in the audience. Bodies on the stage excite emotions because they
are visible bodies, including feelings that justify notions of human inferiority. Of these
notions, the inferiority of disabled bodies provides the ideological foundation of
4
The growth of disability theater and performance has experienced a surge in recent years, a phenom-
enon excellently charted by Carrie Sandahl (2008). Sandahl explores changes in casting practices and the
growing attention gained by disability on the stage under the heading of the “new disability theatre.” For
Sandahl, “New disability theatre aims to explore the lived experience of disability, rather than the usual
dramaturgical use of disability as a metaphor for non-disabled people’s sense of outsiderness” (2008, 226).
For additional explorations of the new disability theater, see Fahy and King (2002), Kuppers
(2001b, 2003, 2007), Sandahl and Auslander (2005), Conroy (2009), and Henderson and Ostrander (2008).
144 Tobin Siebers
t heatrical representation, by which I mean that the disqualification of disability is so

central to the stage that it requires us to think about this inferiority in ideological
terms. What I call the ideology of ability is at its simplest the preference for able-bod-
iedness. At its most radical, it defines the baseline by which humanness is determined,
setting the measure of body and mind that gives or denies human status to individual
persons (Siebers 2008, 7–11). There is in the theater a mistrust of the body, and a con-
stant attempt to improve and to perfect it. The stage cannot tolerate disability, and
when disability does appear there, it is marked as inferior almost without fail.
Disabled bodies on the stage are thought to be inferior for two reasons, both having
to do with their supposed visibility. First, disabled bodies do not pass, that is, disabled
bodies supposedly cannot inhabit the character with the same facility as nondisabled
bodies. For example, the actor is supposed to disappear into the character, to live the
part, but the visibility of the disabled actor apparently disrupts this aesthetic effect,
offering instead a spectacle that does not fit into the drama taking place before the
audience’s eyes. Moreover, the long history of interpreting the disabled body as a meta-
phor of evil, social chaos, or moral uplift sets into motion a secondary plot that risks
taking over the narrative of any drama in which a disabled actor appears. The audience
pays more attention to the metaphorical significance of the disabled body than to the
story being told by the drama, and if the metaphor clashes with the drama, the meta-
phor wins. This explains why disability on the stage is generally made to serve simple
and obvious metaphors. Metaphor is the main tool by which theatrical performance
recoups the aesthetic effects of disability for its own purposes.
Second, the disabled body summons emotional responses that disrupt the aesthet-
ics of the performance. This is another way of saying that the disabled body does not
pass, but I want to focus directly on the aesthetic effects of disability rather than on its
supposed impediments to successful acting. The disabled body, theorists of disability
studies argue, represents for nondisabled society a spectacle in itself, with the conse-
quence that the disabled person is, in effect, always on stage (Sandahl 1999, 12). When
a disabled body enters the room, all eyes turn upon it, as if it has moved to center stage.
A rush of emotions animates the room. The disabled person may recoil from the stares,
ignore them, or take a deep bow. In any event the appearance of the disabled person in
the room is pure theater.
The usual spectacle on the stage represents the performer’s incorporation of the role,
the disappearance of the performer into the character. The disabled body, when it
appears on the stage, stands out as a spectacle in and of itself, one that threatens to draw
attention to itself and away from the other performances on the stage. At this moment
the visibility of the disabled body disrupts the space of theatrical representation,
exceeding the formal requirements of that space with an experience of extraordinary,
powerful, and undeniable emotions. How is the audience to deal with the rush of feel-
ings? How are these feelings to be converted into meaning? What happens if these
feelings cannot be converted into meaning?
There appear to be two possible responses. In the first response, as we have already
seen, the explosion of emotions and the need to contain them produce a mental adjust-
ment on the part of the audience. The audience converts the disabled body into a meta-
phor that inserts this body again into the representational space of the drama. The
disabled body comes to represent evil, misfortune, accident, social disorder, etc. The dis-
abled body signifies not itself but beyond itself, by which I mean that it holds a symbolic
position in the plot of the drama. The drama recovers the emotional effects of the dis
abled body and makes them serve its own aesthetic purposes.
But a second response is also possible, one that makers of theater most fear, where
the rush of emotions fails to be recouped in the service of the drama. Here the audience
becomes riveted by the emotions produced by the disabled body. The spectators turn
their attention to the disabled body to the exclusion of everything else, growing rapt
before it, making it alone the source of their curiosity, wonder, and focus. Their feelings
run the gamut from pleasure to pain, from attraction to aversion, from pity to fear.
In other words, the disabled body is both a spectacle and the occasion for many
powerful emotions, and yet the disabled body, despite its obvious theatrical effects, is
not viewed as an aesthetic resource for the theater. Rather, it is labeled as an obstacle,
an aesthetic disruption, whose presence on the stage grinds to a halt the conceit of
theatrical representation.
At this point, the appearance of disability on the stage should raise a few critical
questions. What would happen if disability were not conceived as an obstacle on the
stage but as a resource for different aesthetic effects? What would these effects be, and
how would they transform the experience presented on the stage? In short, how do we
begin to theorize a disability aesthetics for the stage?
6. The ideological rejection of disability, found in almost all forms of actor training,
makes it nearly impossible to cast disabled actors as nondisabled characters. Actors are
trained to perfect their theatrical presence and physical control, to assume a neutral
aesthetic appearance that maximizes the ability to live the part of any character, no
matter the physical and mental attributes of that character (Sandahl 2005). In this sce-
nario, heavily instilled with the ideology of ability, disability on the stage becomes a
distraction at the very least, an obstacle at most, because it has no reason to be there,
just as disability supposedly has no reason to exist in the real world, except as a demon-
stration of personal misfortune. The audience is supposedly unable to believe that dis-
abled actors can play nondisabled characters. The disabled actor, too visible, simply
fails to disappear into the part. But similar doubts do not make it impossible for non-
disabled actors to play disabled characters. Nor do they make it impossible for nondis-
abled actors to play characters with superabilities. In short, disabled actors cannot play
more able-bodied characters, but able-bodied actors can play more able-bodied char-
acters. What are the aesthetic and theoretical underpinnings of this contradiction?
What assumptions are being made by actors and audiences? How does the ideology of
ability control what is being seen on the stage?
146 Tobin Siebers
One key to answering these questions is to probe the aesthetic effects attributed to
disabled bodies on the stage. Disability on the stage, we are told, produces emotional
disruptions, and yet we assume that there is a difference between the aesthetic effects of
disabled bodies on the stage and those of nondisabled actors playing disabled charac-
ters. If the nondisabled actor’s performance of a disabled character were successful,
should not the performance produce the same emotional reactions as a disabled body
on the stage? But this is not the case, and it is not the case because when nondisabled
actors play disabled characters, the performance is always a failure—and is meant to
be. The actors are not meant to pass as disabled. Nondisabled actors preserve a distance
from their disabled character by keeping ever-present in the audience’s mind the fact
that they are not really disabled, only playing disabled. In this distance lies the great-
ness of the actor’s performance. The audience, then, must keep in mind a double image
of the performance, at once taking comfort in the fact that the actor will resume a
nondisabled state when the performance ends, while marveling at the fact that the
actor dares to represent disability. Nondisabled actors do not disappear into their
roles when portraying disabled characters, and we celebrate the performances for
this reason.
The strong tendency to accept the performances of actors who play characters with
superhuman abilities points to similar conclusions. No one seems to doubt that actors
can disappear into the portrayal of characters with superpowers. In film and on the
stage, there is an increasing tendency to represent abilities far beyond those of mortal
creatures. If actors successfully portray superhumans, why must audiences see double
when nondisabled actors try to portray disabled characters? One answer is that the
ideology of ability places no limits on our imagination of human power and achieve-
ment, and we take great pleasure in the vision of human beings become gods. For the
same reason, an audience has difficulty believing a performance when actors play
older, but the same audience is thrilled when old actors grow younger before its eyes
(Gullette 2003, 13). Audiences are most comfortable with artworks that serve the ide-
ology of ability. Disability, however, disrupts the spectacle of ability, for disability rep-
resents its complete opposite. We easily believe what cannot be true: men fly, women
have superhuman strength, and people are immortal. We are terrified by the truth: we
are fragile, we become sick, and we all grow old and die. The first idea gives us pleasure,
the second, displeasure.
7. Aristotle (1961) was the first to describe the theater on the basis of feelings of
pleasure. The Poetics comes to two conclusions about the pleasure of the theater, both
of which lead to a deeper appreciation of disability on the stage. First, Aristotle finds
that we take pleasure in successful imitations. The heart of the theater is the recogni-
tion of imitations on the stage, the process of identifying the moment when the actor
embodies the character—in modern terms, when the actor disappears into the por-
trayal of the character. At this moment, the actor becomes invisible, the character is
made visible, and the audience identifies the character as a type, exclaiming with pleasure,
“That is he!” (IV.5). The audience enters the drama at this instant of identification, but
Aristotle is careful to explain that the pleasures of drama derive not from the formal
aspects of the imitation, from its execution or coloring, but from the fact that specta-
tors recognize the similarity of the imitation to a previous experience of the world.
Spectators take pleasure in the repetition of personalities and situations from their
own lives. The spectator exclaims, “That is he!” when he or she identifies a character on
the stage, but the spectator also realizes at the same moment that “I am this!” “That is
he! I am this!” would be the shorthand formula of dramatic pleasure in Aristotle.
Spectators discover in the drama a relation of identity between first and third persons,
experiencing pleasure because they see at a distance their own human relationships
being replayed for them.
Second, Aristotle notices that our pleasure in imitation has little to do with our
pleasure or pain in the thing imitated. “Objects that in themselves we view with pain,”
he concludes, “we delight to contemplate when reproduced with minute fidelity: such
as the forms of the most despicable animals and of dead bodies” (IV.3). Aristotle appar-
ently has in mind the diagrams used to study human and animal generation, but he
extends his observations to all forms of aesthetic representation, including the stage.
Regardless of the state of the object, whether it is disabled, deformed, or dead, the imi-
tation of the object will give pleasure to those who experience it. Aristotle’s ideas are
suggestive for a theory of disability on the stage because they lead to the conclusion
that the appearance of disabled bodies need not disrupt the aesthetics of the theater.
8. Sigmund Freud offers perhaps the most concise theory of the aesthetic disruption
created by physical and mental disability on the stage. His “Psychopathic Characters
on the Stage” argues—similar to Aristotle—that theater gives “an enjoyable shape” to
suffering, injury, and misfortune (1905/1953, 306). In fact, Freud explains that “this
relation to suffering and misfortune might be taken as characteristic of drama. . . .
Suffering of every kind is thus the subject-matter of drama, and from this suffering it
promises to give the audience pleasure” (1905/1953, 306–7). Remarkably, Freud argues
that the essence of drama relies on the representation of suffering on the stage.
However, some forms of suffering, according to Freud, cannot be converted into
aesthetic pleasure, specifically the appearance on the stage of physical and mental dis
ability. The audience cannot tolerate physical disability on the stage because it disrupts
the ability of spectators to identify with characters. If an audience identifies with some-
one who is physically disabled, Freud claims, it loses the “capacity for enjoyment or
psychical activity”. Consequently, a person who is physically disabled can figure on the
stage only as a “piece of stage-property” (1905/1953, 307). Freud ascribes an even
greater aesthetic disruption to mental disability, specifically to the presence of neurosis
on the stage. He argues that “the precondition of the enjoyment” of mentally disabled
characters in drama is that “the spectator should himself be neurotic” (1905/1953, 308).
“In anyone who is not neurotic,” Freud concludes, the appearance of mental d isability
on the stage “will meet only with aversion” (1905/1953, 309). To Aristotle’s exclama-
tion, “That is he!” Freud responds, “I am not that!” The audience in the Freudian
theater refuses to identify with disabled characters.
148 Tobin Siebers
9. Aristotle and Freud provide basic theories about how bodies on the stage make
other bodies feel, but disabled bodies summon aesthetic responses unanticipated by
both men. For Aristotle, imitation produces an aesthetic distance that permits the
enjoyment of objects that are themselves displeasing. The emotions usually thought to
attend disability on the stage—fear, pity, aversion, and sadness—are purged by putting
them in the service of dramatic representation. Presumably, no object is beyond the
transformative powers of imitation, as long as the object belongs to experience.
Aristotle’s theory compensates for its painful subject matter by transforming pain into
pleasure and by emphasizing the identity between audience and characters rather than
their differences. Imitation produces pleasure when spectators identify with characters
on the stage and observe patterns replayed from their own lives. But if Aristotle were
entirely correct, there would exist no history of expelling disability from the stage. No
one would experience disability as a spectacle in itself disruptive of drama, and disabled
actors and characters would be pointed out and recognized with pleasure by audiences.
For Freud, disability is the exception to the capacity of imitation to make pleasure
out of pain, injury, and misfortune. Spectators fail not only to identify with disabled
characters but also to experience them as dramatic representations. Disability sum-
mons an experience of pain and suffering that disrupts the goals of the theater. Given
Freud’s analysis, it is little wonder that actor training discriminates against disability.
Disabled actors and nondisabled actors who successfully play disabled characters pro-
duce disruptive emotions for which the pleasures of the stage cannot make amends.
Psychoanalysis explains the history of expelling disability from the stage, but if Freud’s
theory were entirely correct, disability would emerge as an object that cannot be imi-
tated, a thing existing beyond the transformative powers of aesthetic representation.
The appearance of blind Teiresias would bring Oedipus the King to a dead halt rather
than propelling the tragedy forward. The neuroses of Hamlet would be unwatchable
for all people but those sharing his mental indecisiveness. Moreover, modern drama
would not exist. Freud claims that the first precondition of the art form is that drama
“should not cause suffering to the audience, that it should know how to compen-
sate . . . for the suffering” that it arouses, but he notices that “modern writers have par-
ticularly often failed to obey this rule” (1905/1953, 307). Modern theater does not
compensate for the pain that it creates, according to Freud, and he is hard put to explain
its attraction to audiences.
There are problems with both Aristotle and Freud, but their ideas can be combined
to realize an alternative theory in which disruptive emotions are not resolved by the
pleasures of dramatic representation but placed in the service of an aesthetics based on
disability. The appearance of disability on the stage represents an aesthetic resource for
modern performances that do not seek to redirect disruptive emotions into a theater of
pleasure—a theater of pleasure in which the pain given by objects of our attention is
soothed by the ability either to identify with them or to expel them from conscious-
ness. Rather, for dramas and performances rooted in disability, the emotions sum-
moned by disability on the stage—fear, pity, sadness, surprise, and attraction—are not
rejected but elaborated as the basis of a disability aesthetics. Disability aesthetics names
a critical concept that seeks to emphasize the presence of disability in the tradition of
aesthetic representation, theorizing the disabled body and mind as unique resources
discovered by modern art and then embraced by it as one of its defining concepts.
Disability aesthetics refuses to recognize the representation of the healthy body—and
its definition of harmony, integrity, and beauty—as the sole determination of the aes-
thetic. Disability aesthetics embraces beauty that seems by traditional standards to be
broken, and yet it is not less beautiful, but more so, as a result. Disability does not
express defect, degeneration, or deviancy in modern art forms. Disability enlarges our
vision of human variation and difference, and puts forward perspectives that test pre-
suppositions dear to the history of aesthetics (Siebers 2010, 2–3). Disability aesthetics
accepts bodies thought inferior by society as resources for art—a historical develop-
ment demonstrating that disability produces a continuum of responses that link the
social world and the world of art.
The stage does not exist either to cleanse emotions thought painful to society or to
provide a rationale for their exclusion. The choice, then, is not between Aristotle and
Freud—neither the Aristotelian moment of recognition in which painful emotions
turn enjoyable and the performer’s body achieves fusion with the character, nor the
Freudian moment of catharsis in which physically and mentally disabled characters,
thought too painful to identify with, are cleansed and purged from the stage. Disability
rendered aesthetically on the stage makes possible a form of identification that neither
accepts nor rejects identity but transforms it. The figure on the stage splits body and
dramatic character to represent multiple and partial aspects of the self, producing an
aesthetically pleasing, though perhaps slightly masochistic, discovery of our inaccu-
rate identifications in the world (Bersani 2010, 415). The stage no longer favors the
image of the nondisabled body. Rather, disability on the stage breaks the mirror image
of health, beauty, and perfection that so fascinates us as spectators.
10. Unearthed in 1820, the Venus de Milo was immediately hailed as the ideal of
both aesthetic and feminine beauty, despite the fact that she is missing both her arms.
Found with the Venus was her left hand, but it was never attached to her body because
it was less finished than other parts of the artwork and considered an affront to her
perfection. The Venus, then, was conceived at the moment of her discovery as most
whole and beautiful in her fragmentary state. Today the silhouette of the Venus
remains an image worthy of veneration and imitation, as painters, sculptors, and pho-
tographers from all over the world pay homage to her beauty again and again. No one
bats an eye at the fact that the Venus, although damaged, holds an honored place in the
Louvre. The Venus’ beauty is imagined to be flawless. The Venus is the perfect work of
art and the perfect woman.
In the 1990s, Mary Duffy, an Irish performance artist, began to inhabit the Venus de
Milo, representing the artwork as a disabled body on the stage (Figure 8.1). Born with-
out arms, Duffy presents herself to her audience fully nude or draped, while reciting
statements challenging the vision of her as defective and claiming her place alongside
15 Tobin Siebers
Figure 8.1 Film still of Mary Duffy in Vital Signs: Crip Culture Talks Back (1996), directed by
Sharon Snyder and David Mitchell. Marquette, MI: Brace Yourself Productions.
the Venus as a disabled beauty. The Venus de Milo, I want to assert, represents, by virtue
of her place in our cultural imagination, one of the great dramatic roles, on a par with
Hamlet, Lady Macbeth, or King Lear. Mary Duffy lays claim to this great role, becoming
a modern day Venus de Milo, not by shunning disability but by incarnating it.
Duffy gives a voice in her soliloquy to the Venus by telling the story of her own
treatment in the medical world and by bearing witness to the stares of disgust directed
toward her. The soliloquy announces the Venus’ status as a social reject: “You have
words to describe me that I find frightening. Every time I hear them they are whis-
pered or screamed silently wordlessly. . . . The words you use to describe me are ‘con-
genital malformation’ ” (Snyder and Mitchell 1996). Duffy brings the Venus into the
contemporary moment, making her answer questions about whether she was a thalid-
omide baby. The effect of the performance is uncanny because the Venus, the great
archetype of feminine beauty, expresses her rage at being made an object of revulsion
and stares down curiosity seekers. Before Duffy begins, the Venus holds the sacred
position of eternal beauty in the audience’s mind, and Duffy taps into this vision to
beautify herself, but as the images of Duffy and the Venus converge, disability and
beauty also overlap, and to the point where they cannot be imagined separately. Duffy’s
performance also produces a baﬄing but crucial bending of time in the historical
appearance of disability, tampering with its visibility and invisibility. The images that
Duffy makes of herself are beautiful because they recall so powerfully the idea of
beauty made visible in the history of art by the Venus de Milo. But these same images
also change retroactively the perception of the Venus, for her beauty now incorporates
necessarily the appearance of disability, where previously it had been invisible.
Duffy’s disability makes her the perfect performer to play the Venus, but Duffy can-
not be thought to embody her. Duffy does not as a performer disappear into the por-
trayal of her character—at least not in the traditional way. Rather, at the moment when
Duffy becomes the Venus, the Venus becomes her, and both are transformed. It is not a
matter, then, of either Aristotelian or Freudian aesthetics. The audience does not
exclaim with pleasure, “That is she!” because there is no recognition of a familiar type.
The Venus’ identity is transformed from flawless to disabled beauty. The she that the
Venus now represents is familiar with a difference—and the difference makes all the
difference because, while her beauty is no longer flawless, she remains beautiful never-
theless. Nor does Freud’s theory capture the emotions stirred by Duffy’s performance.
Aversion before disability appears, but it is itself averted, turned to another aim. The
performance obstructs the refusal of disability identity, even though Duffy tells the
story of her rejection by society, because she has become the standard of beauty.
Similarly, the Venus no longer pleases as the standard of beauty because her beauty
now represents something both more and less than itself. The performance neither
accepts the Venus as a great beauty nor rejects her as disabled. Rather, Duffy makes us
see that the Venus is a great beauty because she is disabled, and with the consequence
that beauty and disability are changed forever. We cannot see Duffy without seeing the
Venus, and we cannot see the Venus without seeing Duffy. Disability emerges as an
aesthetic value in itself.
11. Disability aesthetics does not seek to accept or to reject disability but to pursue
disability as an aesthetic value in itself, one that takes the theater into the modern
era. The result is not a desire to purify humanity, subject to the aims of the ideology of
ability, but to understand disability as a resource for enlarging the range of human
emotions represented on the stage. Disability on the stage produces what Mark Jeffreys
(2002) calls the “visible cripple”—an embodiment of otherness, fixed in our visual
field, that obstructs the dream of our own perfection. In this moment of emotional
self-discovery, we find that fragility trumps strength, sickness outlasts health, loss
overwhelms wholeness, and disability defines the human condition.
References
Aristotle. 1961. Aristotle’s Poetics. Translated by S. H. Butcher. New York: Hill and Wang.
Bersani, Leo. 2010. “Broken Connections.” PMLA 125 (2): 414–17.
Conroy, Colette, ed. 2009. Special Issue on Disability Studies. Research in Drama Education:
Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance 14 (1).
Fahy, Thomas, and Kimball King, eds. 2002. Peering Behind the Curtain: Disability, Illness, and
the Extraordinary Body in Contemporary Theater. New York: Routledge.
Finger, Anne. 1990. Past Due: A Story of Disability, Pregnancy, and Birth. Seattle, WA: Seal
Press.
152 Tobin Siebers
Freud, Sigmund. 1905/1953. “Psychopathic Characters on the Stage.” In Sigmund Freud, The
Standard Edition, ed. James Strachey, vol. 7, 301–10. London: Hogarth Press.
Grigely, Joseph. 2000. “Postcards to Sophie Calle.” In The Body Aesthetic: From Fine Art to Body
Modification, ed. Tobin Siebers, 17–40. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Gullette, Margaret Morganroth. 2003. “Acting Age on Stage: Age-Appropriate Casting, the
Default Body, and Valuing the Property of Having an Age.” Journal of Dramatic Theory and
Criticism 18 (1): 7–28.
Henderson, Bruce, and Noam R. Ostrander, eds. 2008. Special Issue on Disability Studies/
Performance Studies. Text and Performance Quarterly 26 (1–2).
Jeffreys, Mark. 2002. “The Visible Cripple (Scars and Other Disfiguring Displays Included).” In
Disability Studies: Enabling the Humanities, ed. Sharon L. Snyder, Brenda Brueggemann, and
Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, 31–9. New York: MLA.
Kleege, Georgina. 1999. Sight Unseen. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Kuppers, Petra. 2001a. “Deconstructing Images: Performing Disability.” Contemporary Theatre
Review 11 (3–4): 25–40.
Kuppers, Petra, ed. 2001b. Special Issue on Disability and Performance. Contemporary Theatre
Review 11 (3–4).
Kuppers, Petra. 2003. Disability and Contemporary Performance: Bodies on the Edge. New York:
Routledge.
Kuppers, Petra. 2007. The Scar of Visibility: Medical Performances and Contemporary Art.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Mitchell, Richard W. 2001. “Creating Theatre on Society’s Margins.” Contemporary Theatre
Review 11 (3–4): 93–117.
Sandahl, Carrie. 1999. “Ahhhh Freak Out! Metaphors of Disability and Femaleness in
Performance.” Theatre Topics 9 (1): 11–30.
Sandahl, Carrie. 2005. “The Tyranny of Neutral: Disability and Actor Training.” In Bodies in
Commotion: Disability and Performance, ed. Carrie Sandahl and Philip Auslander, 255–67.
Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Sandahl, Carrie. 2008. “Why Disability Identity Matters: From Dramaturgy to Casting in
Belluso’s Pyretown.” Text and Performance Quarterly 28 (1–2): 225–41.
Sandahl, Carrie, and Philip Auslander, eds. 2005. Bodies in Commotion: Disability and
Performance. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Siebers, Tobin. 2008. Disability Theory. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Siebers, Tobin. 2010. Disability Aesthetics. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Snyder, Sharon, and David Mitchell. 1996. Vital Signs: Crip Culture Talks Back. Marquette, MI:
Brace Yourself Productions.
9
Live, Body-Based Performance
An Account from the Field
Jill Sigman
Field Work
I am a phenomenological informant. This is an account from the field, not a theory.
I write here not as a scholar, not as a former philosopher, but as choreographer, dancer,
and movement artist. I make live, body-based performance: the human body moving
in space, surrounded by live viewers. My experience over these last twenty years mak-
ing art and performing live on stages, roads, rooftops, and fields, in abandoned facto-
ries, former arsenals, galleries, and bus stations, in drained-out swimming pools and
over toxic canals, affects what I will say here, what I can tell you.
I want to talk about live, body-based performance and why it matters. I call it this to
distinguish it from other kinds of performance—virtual performance (on video,
simulcast, in Second Life, etc.); live performance where body is not the focus (like peo-
ple playing instruments or speaking lines); and live movement of non-humans
(mechanical dolls, robots, dog shows). I am talking about a subset of performance that
includes dance, some forms of performance art, some forms of social practice art,
some forms of singing. I won’t quibble about what fits into this category or about issues
of taste. The boundaries are blurry. Instead I want to ask: why would anyone in their
right mind make this kind of art at this moment in time? Why does it matter?
My account will take us through some reflections on connection and compassion,
and their importance in creating a sense of care for the earth and each other. I will look
at the mechanics of this—the way live body-based performance creates a shift in
the space as we experience it, and the way this shift is connected to long-standing
forms of ritual.
An Uncomfortable Fit
So, why make this kind of performance? Answers to the question “why not make
this kind of performance?” are plentiful. It’s the early twenty-first century. Digital
154 Jill Sigman
r epresentation is ubiquitous. Audiences seek maximal accessibility. Artists seek fund-

ing and rarely have enough. Making live work that involves the body cuts against the
grain of our digital, economic, and cultural zeitgeist. Live performance is time specific,
sometimes even a one-shot deal. It’s non-replicable (we can document it, but it does
not reduce to its simulacrum). It’s not available 24/7, or simultaneously across the
globe. It usually requires an investment of energy from its audience (you have to go
somewhere on a certain date, pay for a ticket, spend time). It’s the opposite of some-
thing you can see on a tiny screen by pressing “play” at your own convenience. These
are the charges, the ways it is “problematic.”
Furthermore, making live body-based movement performance often requires great
infusions of time, labor, and money from its creators. In the dance world, work is usu-
ally devised through an empirical process of working with the dancers repeatedly over
time. Resources such as dancers, rehearsal space, and sometimes musicians, props, or
other materials, are needed simply to generate the work. Money is needed to pay for
these resources. As a dance moves toward production, further resources are needed:
additional professionals (lighting designers, technicians, theater staff), a theater or
performance space, promotion and press relations work, and money to pay for these
things: in short, all the things that allow the dance to exist and other people to know
about it and see it. Beyond the financial resources involved in securing these things,
large amounts of negotiation might be required. Many arts professionals work free-
lance and are juggling multiple projects and jobs. Scheduling and planning a produc-
tion timeline in themselves require time and work.
Of course, there are many flavors of live performance and some involve less labor-
intensive practices or less rehearsal space or impromptu performances that can hap-
pen anywhere. There are an infinite number of variations. On the other hand, some
involve even more resources: whole companies of people, buildings and their over-
heads, extensive insurance, full-time grant writers, lawyers, physical therapists, printed
materials, photography, fundraising events, shoe budgets, and other idiosyncrasies.
The point is not that it’s the same across the board, but that live body-based perfor-
mance often requires a lot of time and work for an output or “product” that may seem
disproportionately small or insignificant to the lay person. Another way to put this:
live body-based performance embodies the opposite of good capitalist practice.
Significant effort and resources are invested for something with almost no cash value
that is non-replicable—and intended to be that way. Not just a design flaw waiting to be
corrected in the subsequent version, but a choice.
A pragmatist would tell you there are better ways to do things. There are consultants
to set you straight, to help artists understand that they too can be entrepreneurs. There
is pressure from all sides. Current American urban cultural consumers seek maximal
accessibility and flexibility with minimal commitment, embodying the attitude “I’ll
watch it on my own time, while I’m doing three other things, and don’t make me pay
for it.” Prospective audience members will ask, “Why can’t I just download your per-
formance?” “Can you stream it live?” “Can you send me the link?”
live, body-based performance 155
Yes, yes, yes. There are cheaper ways to do things. I can live stream my performance.
You can have it for free. (In any event, you never pay the true cost of performance in the
non-profit arts sector in the USA.) And so it goes, as artists adapt to the times and
continually try to remain “marketable.” But, at some point, a certain level of adaptation
no longer constitutes the intended experience. That thing on your iPhone is not my
performance. And that is not just an unfortunate fact; it is the key to why it’s worth the
bother.
Connections and Confusions

There is something very special about the experience of seeing another body, live,
moving in space. There is a way we are affected by that moving body; we feel a reso-
nance. It’s a kind of visceral experience that seeing a pixelated body (or even an HD
body) on a tiny screen will not afford. This is not just a result of the shortcomings of
technology. There is a difference between the experience of “being there,” feeling con-
nected to a live body moving in front of you, and observing it as image.1
The renowned dance critic John Martin (1933) relied heavily on the idea of metaki-
nesis to explain why we are affected by modern dance. His work engaged the early and
mid-twentieth-century developments in American dance, which may now seem dated
but were hard for some viewers to swallow at the time. He based all his theorizing on
the idea that a non-representational physical movement could convey a psychic or
emotional state, thus forging a connection between dancer and viewer and between
action and interpretation. Martin championed the live act of moving as a way to trans-
mit a psychic state, and used this in his defense of choreographers like Martha Graham
and Doris Humphrey.2
We might want to question aspects of Martin’s use of this idea. It’s unclear whether
what is conveyed by movement is physical or psychical or both. And is “conveyed”
even the right way to think metaphysically about the relationship? That implies a
“something” to be conveyed. Also, the idea of a potential one-to-one correspondence
between movement and emotional experience seems simplistic and fraught with
potential problems. But while we might not want to go so far as Martin, it seems that
live performance often allows some kind of resonance to which the concept of metaki-
nesis points. Insofar as live performance is important, and can be a profound force in
our lives, it seems to be functioning in a different way from its simulacra. It allows a
kind of identification or empathy with the moving subject.3
1
I am content with a phenomenological assessment of this, but there are also studies that suggest that
brains respond differently to live gesture than to imaging. For example, see Järveläinen et al. (2001) and
Shimada and Hiraki (2006).
2
See Burke (2009) for illuminating commentary.
3
For a neuroscientific treatment of the relation between perception and empathy, see Gallese (2001)
and Iacoboni (2009).
156 Jill Sigman
In like manner, the simulacra of performance seem to function differently from it.
Image does not elicit the same response as its antecedent. There are experiences that
images of the moving body don’t provide and, by the same token, responses they allow
that live performance might perhaps not. Let’s look at the artist Wafaa Bilal.
In 2007, Bilal made a piece called Domestic Tension. He was grieving over the war in
Iraq, his brother who was killed in 2004 by a US missile strike in Iraq, and his father
who died shortly thereafter. He heard an interview with a young American military
officer who orchestrated missile strikes on Iraq on screen from a remote location in the
USA. She didn’t have any connection to the people the missiles hit, or really any sense
of them as people at all.4 Bilal was struck by the ways that the video screen experience
could allow this kind of disconnect and could thus be complicit in a kind of violence
the same person might not be willing to commit in person.5
For Domestic Tension Bilal set up a video interface in a gallery in Chicago. The inter-
face controlled a paintball machine; viewers could log on via the Internet and shoot at
him with yellow paintballs. The sound of the machine was as loud as a semiautomatic
weapon and the paint was constantly refilled. Bilal lived in the gallery for one month
without leaving, and invited anyone to shoot at him from the interface. He video
blogged at night from the “war zone” of the gallery, which was gradually demolished
over the course of the exhibition.6
Over a period of one month some 60,000 shots were fired at Bilal by shooters in 128
countries (Rawlings 2011). In fact, shooting Bilal became something of a viral phe-
nomenon, with people all over the world becoming addicted to this new “game.” There
was little sense of awareness or compassion for the fact that he was a person. A new
server had to be installed to handle the volume. People he didn’t know became “regu-
lars.” Other people took on the role of online “human shields,” trying to deflect the
paintballs by remotely capturing and turning the gun. Bilal set up a complex microcos-
mic war zone and watched it play out, getting bombarded with paintballs for a grueling
month in the process (Figure 9.1).
What is this about? What allows people to get addicted to shooting a live person like
a video game? Bilal recounts an incident in which a “regular” wouldn’t stop shooting at
him one night while he was trying to eat dinner. He finally went up to the camera and
4
A study by Gutsell and Inzlicht (2010) suggests that race may be a factor in the extent to which people
empathize with a person seen in a video image. Sherri Irvin also raises an important point about size of
image and its relation to our ability to empathize. We might wonder about the compound effects of race
and image scale on our actions.
5
One can read more about the work on the artist’s own website, <http://wafaabilal.com/domestic-
tension>, and also on his Wikipedia page, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wafaa_Bilal> (accessed November
2015). My own understanding of Domestic Tension comes from an artist talk I heard Bilal give and discus-
sion with him afterwards at the Performing Idea public symposium at Toynbee Studios in London, October
2010.
6
It’s possible to see Bilal’s video posts about Domestic Tension, referred to as “The PaintBall project,” on
YouTube. An example is his post on Day 30, nearing the end: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ptv-
vVbeaSHk&list=UUt11epfyqEV5qBYNakUbARQ> (accessed November 2015).
Figure 9.1 Wafaa Bilal. Detail from Domestic Tension, performance, 2007.
Copyright Wafaa Bilal. Courtesy Driscoll Babcock Galleries.
spoke to the young man directly, telling him that when he shot at him, the paint shrap-
nel was falling in his soup and it was impossible to eat. The boy stopped.7
I will go out on a limb and hypothesize that 60,000 paintball shots would not have
been fired at Bilal in person. We can of course imagine many reasons for this—not only
the difference in response elicited by live human vs. video image but also the wide-
spread appeal of gaming, the possibility for “going viral,” and the obstacles to participa-
tion involved in live performance. However, it seems that the difference between
relating to a video image and relating to a living, breathing, eating, sleeping person is
highly significant. Bilal is expert at using his work to reveal that difference and thereby
highlighting the ways we dehumanize others.8
What can live performance teach us? Remind us? That there is a person there. That
that person is like you. That he is trying to eat his dinner. That the reality of her humanity
7
This was an anecdote Bilal told at his artist talk at Performing Idea.
8
For example, in his piece … And Counting (2010), Bilal had thousands of dots tattooed onto his back
for a period of twenty-four hours. The dots represented people killed to date in the Iraq War. Dots repre-
senting American soldiers were made with red ink; those representing Iraqi civilians were made with
ultraviolet ink (invisible in normal light). Through this highly physical means Bilal highlights the dispro-
portionate numbers and invisibility of the Iraqi citizens killed in the war.
158 Jill Sigman
is not a negligible fact. It is everything. It matters to your reaction (and to her fate)
completely. Performance, at its best, can trigger that shift in viewing—the gestalt shift
between disposability and humanity.
In 2010 I had the honor of reperforming the work of performance art pioneer
Marina Abramović in The Artist is Present, a retrospective of her work at the Museum
of Modern Art in New York City.9 Among the three pieces I reperformed (originally
performed by Marina) was Luminosity, in which the performer, naked, sits on a bicycle
seat affixed to the wall about eight feet from the ground, and very, very slowly raises
and lowers her arms (Figure 9.2).
It was a fascinating experience for me as a performer and also as a kind of under-
cover anthropologist. Viewers’ reactions were varied, emotional, and extreme. There
were people who screamed and people who cried, and people who got uncomfortable
and ran away. One woman tried to get a ladder to get me down from the wall, and some
people talked to me, or stayed with me for long periods, or lifted their arms in solidar-
ity. I made eye contact with many people over the course of those three months on the
wall.10 And it was completely clear that it mattered that I was a person and I was real.
One day a young woman came into the gallery, came up to me, saw me blink and
exclaimed loudly, “Oh, my God! She’s not a video!”
I had seen a fuzzy video of Marina performing the piece in the 1980s and the video,
unlike the original performance, had no emotional punch, no edge, no risk, no vulner-
ability. Video smoothes things out, homogenizes, distances. It makes us look at and for
different features of the work, thereby changing how we interpret it. The piece live,
unlike the piece on video, is not about form; it is about the body pushed to extremes.
Watching Marina and my reperformer colleagues perform in the exhibition, and see-
ing the responses of strangers to my own performance, I came to understand pathos—
the pathos of live performing, of seeing another living body go through something in
front of you. Whether you like that performer or not, whether you know her or not,
you suddenly care. There is a moment of recognition of her humanity and connection
to it. That is, of course, not a virtue for everyone; it makes some people uncomfortable.
I want to offer one last example of the difference between live performance and
image. In 2011, I was working on a new solo piece and doing a lot of surfing on
YouTube. I became interested in the caricatured gestural language from the 1971 film
version of Fiddler on the Roof. I began learning the gesture sequences from a particular
scene and messing with them in three-dimensional space like a physical VJ—speeding
9
The exhibition Marina Abramović: The Artist is Present was a performance retrospective that was
open to the public (after previews) from March 14 to May 31, 2010, at the Museum of Modern Art in New
York City. The exhibition was unprecedented in that it displayed live performance to the public as work in
the exhibition, not as ancillary programming. In the 6th Floor Galleries, five works were reperformed
continually whenever the galleries were open. Marina herself performed for the duration of the exhibition
in the museum Atrium below <http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/965> (accessed November
2015).
10
For a fuller personal account of my experience performing in these works for three months, see
Sigman (2011).
Figure 9.2 Luminosity (originally performed by Marina Abramović, 1997), as reperformed by

Jill Sigman. Installation view of the exhibition, “Marina Abramović: The Artist is Present.”
March 14, 2010, through May 31, 2010. The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Photo: Jonathan Muzikar © The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Digital Image © The Museum of
Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA/Art Resource, NY. © 2015 Marina Abramović. Courtesy of Sean Kelly
Gallery/(ARS), New York.
them up, looping them, combining them, and careening through the space to create
different “camera angles” for an imagined viewer. At the same time, the Egyptian
revolution was under way, and I was listening to live radio broadcasts in the studio.
Sometimes I allowed them to be the sound score for my improvisations with the
gestural material, looping and rewinding and mixing to the urgency of the real time
broadcasts about a government coming undone.
160 Jill Sigman
At one point I videotaped myself to see the movement. This is a practice I rarely
engage in, but I was curious to see what it looked like. So I watched the video of myself
on the little preview screen on my camera and gave myself performance notes based on
this two-inch, two-dimensional image of my moving body. And I said, “Boring. Too
flat. Do more. Loop more. Go faster.” And so I did. And I gave myself a concussion.
Little did I know that adults can give themselves “shaken baby syndrome,” that you
really can shake too hard! Little did I know it would take me nine months to be free of
the strange perceptual experiences caused by my scrambled cerebellum. Most impor-
tantly, little did I know how much my own sense of connection to myself and aware-
ness of the fragility of my body could be impaired by the mediation of a video screen.
I still wonder what I would have thought as a director had I seen the movement live.
If I could step outside and watch myself, would I have given the same notes? Would
I have felt a sense of fragility, humanity, and mania in the movement that I didn’t find
on the screen? I’m not even asking if it would have seemed faster or more satisfying,
but rather, would it have seemed different? Perhaps even to be about something else?
Would I have even been worried about going faster or doing more? I suspect that see-
ing the live version and seeing the tiny virtual version would have led to different
results, even when I played the dual roles of performer and viewer.11
Compassion
A performance experience is an exercise in compassion. Even when it is not as politi-
cized as the work of Wafaa Bilal, or as grueling or extreme as the work of Marina
Abramović, live performance is an exercise in connection and awareness of our
humanity. We see the vulnerability of the performer and it tells us something about our
own humanity and its many faces. Maybe that is why people often like to see perfor-
mance on video instead of live. Perhaps it is not always so comfortable to be reminded
of our vulnerability.
I also reperformed Marina Abramović’s work Nude with Skeleton, in which the per-
former lies silently breathing under a skeleton for two and a half hours with relatively
no motion. Nude with Skeleton exemplifies the kind of compassion ignited by live per-
formance. It reminded people of their humanity and fragility (amplified by the
memento mori imagery). People would stay for long periods of time to watch the on
going performance. They would stare or cry. At one point I went to visit one of my col-
leagues when he was performing the piece and I felt obliged to stay with him. He
seemed tired, thirsty, and uncomfortable and I felt that leaving would be to abandon
him. It was an exercise in what I call “being with”—giving my energy to another per-
son, just by being there and witnessing him. And I could tell that people had that
11
Again, we might wonder how scale of image plays into this. Would a life-size image elicit a different
response? It’s perhaps more likely that the response would be closer to how we might respond to a live
action, but it’s still unlikely to be the same.
response to my performance as well. Some would stay long, or say goodbye when they
left, or mouth the words “thank you.”
In 2013, I premiered a dance work of my own called last days/first field at The
Invisible Dog Art Center in Brooklyn. It was a two-hour performance experience in
which a cast of eight performers danced, then planted an actual field of kale seedlings
in the performance space while serving tea, and finally invited audience members
out of their seats to sit on the edge of the field, eat kale salad, talk, lounge, and “occupy”
the space.
It took about thirty minutes to plant the field in front of the audience. Thirty min-
utes may not sound long, but it is an interminable amount of time for a durational
activity in a theatrical production. It is a shift into “real time”—into letting things take
as long as they take and not trying to cover up the feeling of that time. Why did I do this
and not employ some sort of “theater magic,” some way to speed up the process or cre-
ate an illusion? Why did I allow the monotony of real action? People might get bored.
Because that is what it was all about. It was about doing things in “real time”—about
watching what is happening in front of you, not checking your phone, not just hearing
about it, tweeting about it, but seeing and feeling real bodies actually laboring right
next to you. It was about thinking about where your food comes from, thinking about
who plants it, who picks it, thinking about the field accruing before you as a nexus of
issues from energy to labor to health to climate change. It was about feeling the reality
of actual people planting at your feet. Actual plants. Noticing what you fail to notice in
your daily life. Being bored or enchanted or curious or wanting to come out and touch
the soil with us, but being present. Being connected to the other witnesses who sit
together in this dark space watching a field come into being. Being connected to the
people who make it come into being. Being connected—so that when you are invited to
sit on the field you actually want to because you have been there as it came into exist-
ence. You didn’t take a photo of it, you didn’t get a text message about it, you sat with it
and with everyone else for thirty minutes, and now your own actions can extend out of
that experience onto the field itself (Figures 9.3, 9.4, and 9.5).
This real-time accrual of presence and connection is also illustrated by the way the
piece I was working on during the Egyptian revolution changed in the end. After I gave
myself a concussion, I couldn’t move. I was advised to do nothing but sit still in a dark
room. I couldn’t perform the repetitive loops and shaking of the piece I had been mak-
ing. I chose not to teach them to another performer (for obvious reasons) but rather to
develop the piece in response to the reality of the situation.
The solo work I created was eventually called Brain Song and was performed at the
92nd Street Y Harkness Dance Festival. I entered the space slowly carrying a large bag.
I put up a sign asking audience members to call a phone number on their cell phones.
When they called (what a feat to find a phone system that can accommodate more than
one hundred simultaneous phone calls to the same number!), they got a voicemail with
me softly telling them the story of my work in the studio, the radio broadcasts, the con-
cussion, and my doctor saying I crashed the car without having a car. In the space, you
162 Jill Sigman
Figure 9.3 Dancers Sally Hess, Donna Costello, and Irene Hsi in the movement section of last
days/first field (2013).
Figure 9.4 Dancers planting a field of kale seedlings during a performance of last days/first
field (2013).
Figure 9.5 Audience members eating kale salad and talking on the newly planted field in last
days/first field (2013).
could hear all the voicemails playing slightly out of sync, hovering in the air, making a
trippy, echoing sound score fitting for a piece about a concussion. The voicemail ended
by inviting the audience members to gather around me. People gradually came out on
to the stage. I unpacked the bag and took out five calf brains, which I very carefully,
tenderly, wrapped in bandages one by one. Then I picked them all up, and trying to
cradle the five bandaged brains, I began to dance with them—a tiny micro-dance for
me and the brains. Audience members witnessed me at very close range. The lights
dimmed on all of us (Figures 9.6 and 9.7).
The piece that became Brain Song evolved from my forgetting the point of live per-
formance, making a mistake for which I paid dearly, to being about the very thing that
was nearly left out. There was no more “Do more. Go faster.” There was body, reality,
fragility, movement connected to intention not image, people connected to move-
ment, people connected to each other by witnessing the human condition together.
Pathos. Compassion.
How Does it Work?

This germination of presence and its related connectedness and compassion is what
live body-based performance is about for me. It is what choreographing is about. The
164 Jill Sigman
Figure 9.6 Jill Sigman setting out calf brains during Brain Song (2011).
skill of choreographing is the skill of creating an opportunity for these experiences.

It is not about making steps or movements (although those may be crucial to engi-
neering an experience for a public); rather it is about knowing how to orchestrate
experience. This does not mean the end result will be monolithic, or even predeter-
mined. Viewers will not all experience the same thing. But somewhere between
everyone having a singular experience and a totally random effect is the fruit of
choreographing.
One might wonder about the specific pathway for the development of compassion.
Does a heightened experience of one’s own body through metakinesis lead to a sense of
connectedness with others? Or does connection to others lead to awareness of one’s
own body? Does connection to others lead to connection to a place? I don’t think there
is a singular formula; the order of experience can vary from viewer to viewer. For some,
who are more connected to their bodies, an awareness of one’s own body can perhaps
lead to a connection to others. For others, a feeling of community might lead to a sense
of physical self-awareness. I have seen that it depends on a viewer’s history and skills,
on what is already comfortable territory. Anything can be a gateway, depending on the
person’s ripeness for it.
Figure 9.7 Sigman cradles two wrapped brains as an audience member looks on during Brain
Song (2011).
Take for example the work (Perma)Culture, a dance I premiered in 2014 at Danspace
Project in New York City. After the dancers move extensively on stage, they begin
manipulating ceramic vessels and objects and eventually invite audience members to
come into the performance space and build tiny civilizations with them. Many audi-
ence members were happy to play with the ceramics, but I would suspect their path-
ways of experience varied greatly. For some, the previous dancing perhaps led them to
feel more at home in their own bodies and eventually comfortable in the performance
space, connecting with other people and objects. For others, the activity itself was
familiar (I discovered that in one audience there were both ceramicists and child psy-
chologists, people who are used to handling such objects professionally in totally dif-
ferent contexts). I would venture a guess that for these audience members the
connection to the objects had a kind of primacy and the awareness of their own bodies
may have followed (Figures 9.8, 9.9, and 9.10).
But while there may not be a unique pathway, that doesn’t mean there isn’t a path-
way. Choreographing skillfully is about creating a situation ripe for multiple pathways
of experience involving presence and connection.
166 Jill Sigman
Figure 9.8 Dancers in an improvisational movement score in (Perma)Culture (2014).

Figure 9.9 Dancer Maria Bauman with ceramic vessels in (Perma)Culture (2014).
Figure 9.10 Audience members and dancers building together onstage with ceramic vessels in
(Perma)Culture (2014).
Photo by Alexandra Pfister.
168 Jill Sigman
Why This Matters

In a world of increasing atrocities—some bloody, some cool and systemic—compas-
sion is something we are increasingly forgetting. People as dots on a screen, mortgages,
insurance policies, units of profit. But in a disembodied and insulated existence of ear-
buds, selfies, and texting, how do we remind ourselves that there is a world out there?
A world of other people. And those other people aren’t just pixels or tweets or num-
bers. They are real humans with blood and guts, stomachs to feed, emotions, families,
injuries and illnesses, challenges and triumphs. They are real like you. We can think of
this in terms of reflective functioning in psychology, or the problem of other minds in
philosophy, or any of a number of ways different fields have seen the challenge of pro-
jecting cognitive activity onto another human being. But how do we remind a preoccu
pied public to have compassion? And why does it matter?
There is an ethical dimension to all this. Awareness of a world out there, connected-
ness to our bodies, other people, place, and nature, all influence action. Remember the
young man who stopped shooting into Wafaa Bilal’s soup? Connectedness leads to
care, stewardship. Perhaps if we are aware and connected, we will be concerned about
the fate of something. We will not as blithely and blindly pollute it, sacrifice it, dispose
of it for convenience or profit. If we are connected to the river that flows far away, the
migrant workers who pick the tomatoes we eat, the plastic bags that swirl around in the
Pacific, we will not as easily think “out of sight, out of mind.” Nothing is ever really gone
just because we want it to be. We will realize that schemes and solutions that seem
“rational” and “profitable” involve hidden costs—to humans, animal life, water, air,
food. And those hidden costs need to be factored into the price of our actions.
It’s helpful to turn to Dolores LaChapelle, one of the early proponents of “deep ecol-
ogy.” LaChapelle thought that for us to have a more sustainable relationship with the
natural world, we need not just legislation and technology but a personal sense of con-
nection. She writes about native societies that use ritual as a way to stay connected to
place and to respect the limits of their food supplies. “Our Western European industri-
alized culture provides a striking contrast to all these examples,” she writes. “We have
idolized ideals, rationality, and a limited kind of ‘practicality,’ and have regarded the
conscious rituals of these other cultures as at best frivolous curiosities. The results are
all too evident. We’ve only been here a few hundred years and already we have done
irreparable damage to vast areas of this country now called the U.S.” (LaChapelle 1984).
LaChapelle goes on to suggest:
If we are to re-establish a viable relationship, we will need to rediscover the wisdom of these
other cultures who knew that their relationship to the land and to the natural world required
the whole of their being. What we call “ritual and ceremony” was a sophisticated social and
spiritual technology, refined through many thousands of years of experience, that maintained
their relationship much more successfully than we are.
The human race has forgotten so much in the last 200 years that we hardly know where to
begin. But it helps to begin remembering. In the first place all traditional cultures, even our
own long-ago Western European cultural ancestors, had seasonal festivals and rituals.
(LaChapelle 1984)
How does ritual work? While there are many theories of ritual, LaChapelle believes that
it provides communication between people, between people and places, between
human and non-human aspects of the natural world. It is a kind of connective tissue of a
culture. Tellingly, she writes, “during rituals we have the experience, unique in our cul-
ture, of neither opposing nature or trying to be in communion with nature; but of finding
ourselves within nature, and that is the key to sustainable culture” (LaChapelle 1984).
Can performance function in this way, allowing us to find ourselves in connection
with people and things? Allowing us that experience of not opposing and not trying,
but simply being? Like ritual, performance is set off from daily life. Perception is
heightened. During performance we are looking for meaning and open to experience.
We are able to feel things we don’t feel when short on time and patience and armored
for the “outside world.” The experience LaChapelle describes is similar to what
I described as presence in the previous section.
But change is glacial. Occasionally someone comes to a live performance and has a
transformative experience, a moment of being connected; or someone goes out into
the world and is affected retroactively by a performance. My boss at an early job once
reported seeing a homeless woman differently because she was moving like I did in one
of my dances. Most often performance is not a perfect antidote to disconnection, just a
little reminder. A tap on the shoulder. A tug on the psyche. But we all need rehearsal.
Performance is practice for real life. And, at the same time, it is real life.
The Shell Game

In the performance of ritual it’s not about how bodies look; it’s about what they do.
Whichever cosmology we subscribe to, it is about what change in the cosmos they
provoke. This goes against a traditional way of thinking about performance critically, a
thinking that is rooted in appearance. Typically, in viewing concert dance we look at
the line of the leg; we look at the shape of the body; we look at virtuosity; we look
at effort or effortlessness (whichever we value). The focus is not on action but on the
appearance of body, how the body looks. Is it to our liking? Does it impress us? How is
the leg?
One might argue that this is an outmoded style of criticism, but we need only look at
current reviews by Alastair Macaulay, dance critic at the New York Times, to see that
this way of approaching dance is still alive and well. Macaulay caused quite a sensation
in 2010, criticizing ballerina Jenifer Ringer’s performance in The Nutcracker by sug-
gesting she was overweight (Macaulay 2010b). He went on to defend the public outcry
against his review, saying:
Some correspondents have argued that the body in ballet is “irrelevant.” Sorry, but the opposite
is true. If you want to make your appearance irrelevant to criticism, do not choose ballet as a
170 Jill Sigman
career. The body in ballet becomes a subject of the keenest observation and the most intense
discussion. I am severe—but ballet, as dancers know, is more so. (Macaulay 2010a)
It seems that, at least in certain sectors, appearance is crucial to the effective func-
tioning of performance. We might want to argue about whether it’s really only cru-
cial to the evaluation of the performance (whether it’s a good or bad one), or, as it
seems from Macaulay’s statement, it is wrapped up in the performance’s doing what
it does.
In the 1960s, postmodern dance attempted to disrupt this process of viewing and
evaluating appearance, and to thwart the corresponding artistic process of construct-
ing appearances for the consumption of evaluating viewers. “NO to spectacle” was the
mantra of Yvonne Rainer and the Judson Church choreographers who rejected
received choreographic strategies and virtues.12 They engaged in sabotage of tradi-
tional viewing relationships and stage spaces, and eradication of the lines between
audience and performer. Real, live bodies on stage exerting effort was what they were
after: people doing things in real time—things like carrying a mattress, eating a sand-
wich, vacuuming. Body: the effort, the weight, the viscerality of body became the
focus. The processes of body, the tedium of body, the “pedestrianism” of body, rather
than the appearance of body. Presenting the body for its appearance was newly seen as
distasteful, gauche, and pandering.
So, the postmodern era shifted the focus from the appearance of body back to the
actual body—to its weight, its sweat, its effort, and the time and labor it really takes to
do things. Historically, we’ve come that far. But now I want to pose a question to take us
even further; perhaps a still more radical shift in focus is in order. In body-based per-
formance, is body even where we should really be looking for “the action”? Is body
really what it’s about?
In performance, bodies are tools in the doing of something. They create a change
in the space. Or perhaps it is just a feeling of change. But either way, the change (or
the feeling) matters. Body is a tool in this process—a way of stirring the space, of
making the glue, of connecting us all by imaginary threads. A way of making us feel
that “something has happened here.” I am trained to use my body to help other peo-
ple to be present in the space. But is it a shell game, a bait and switch? The glamour
of body gets us to take notice. But it’s what the body is doing to the space that
matters.13
12
Rainer’s now famous “NO manifesto” has come to signify the zeitgeist of the postmodern movement
in American dance. It involves the denial of spectacle, glamour, and anything that could be seen as playing
to the public. To read the full text, see Rainer (1965, 168).
13
I am speaking from my experience as a performer. I’m not interested in whether we can give a scien-
tific account of this, whether we can stimulate the same centers in the brain more efficiently in some other
way, whether this change can be measured. But it seems that performance, when effective, does
something.
Changing the Space

Artist Ernesto Pujol, who has made many durational performances, has spoken about
something similar in a public dialogue with colleagues Janine Antoni and Paul
Ramirez-Jonas.14 Antoni asked him if, by virtue of his being in a contemplative state,
the audience can enter this state through him:
In the most performative technical terms, that is what I hope. Technically speaking, if a body
starts walking this room, the perimeter of this room, repeatedly, that body is going to eventu-
ally create a space-within-the-space. Because it is drawing a second space, all of a sudden we
will have to make a decision as to whether there is a threshold, and decide whether we stay
outside of it, or enter it. So, performatively, something happens at the purely physical level. At
the level of the performer, the zone in which the performer is, something happens there, too.
If you are a pedestrian and you find me in silence, and you become silent too, now it is times
two. And slowly we have a cloister wall. The pebble fell in the pond and now we have a first
ripple. And then someone else comes after that and there is a second ripple, so it expands.
(Becker 2011, 28)
Pujol is talking about the mechanics of how this change in the space could come about.
Still, it is unclear whether he suggests an actual change in the space or merely a change
in our experience of it. Surely, the space doesn’t change physically in any obvious ways;
the walls don’t move, the dimensions don’t change, the materials are what they are.
Perhaps the temperature or humidity changes, or the smell of the space, or there is
some imperceptible deterioration of the architecture. As a former philosopher, I don’t
really dare talk about undefinables like energy. But are there objective features of the
space that change in ways that affect us, either consciously or subliminally?
It seems that one’s answer to this question will depend on the metaphysics to which
one subscribes. There are robust cosmologies according to which there are spiritual or
energetic things that change in a space through our actions there. And there are views
that are more conservative metaphysically that might suggest that only we change—
our awareness or perception or experience of a space changes. In either case, it may be
some sort of shift, afforded by body as a tool, that is the real content of performance.15
Here is an example of what that could look like.
Building Huts
I am engaged in an ongoing series of installations called The Hut Project. I build
site-specific structures out of found and cast-off materials, as a way of raising questions
about waste, sustainability, housing, and home. These huts act as containers—for live
14
The discussion was moderated by Carol Becker at Proteus Gowanus on March 26, 2011. A transcript
is published in Becker (2011).
15
Kimerer LaMothe (2014) deals with this question very interestingly by appealing to “bodily becom-
ing” and describing how it accounts for the kind of transformation we often witness in ritual dance.
172 Jill Sigman
performances, community discussions, tea serving, permacultural plant systems,

freegan dinners, and other rhizomic activities that fit with these themes and give peo-
ple different ways to interact with the huts and each other (Figures 9.11 and 9.12).
In 2012, I built Hut #7 at Arts@Renaissance, an art space in Brooklyn, New York on
the border between the neighborhoods of Williamsburg and Greenpoint. This part of
Brooklyn processes some 40 percent of New York City’s waste (Short 2012) and is chal-
lenged by issues related to pollution and toxicity, high incidence of pollution-related
illnesses, racial polarization, gentrification, and affordable housing. The gallery in
which I built the hut was in a restored building of Greenpoint Hospital, closed abruptly
by the city in 1982. In what was once the hospital’s outpatient wing, and then later a
men’s homeless shelter highly contested by the neighborhood, in a part of the city that
has experienced extreme governmental disinvestment, I built a hut out of the detritus
I found in the neighborhood. Greasy garbage from trucks and the roads under the
Brooklyn Queens Expressway mixed with waste from the dumpsters of new luxury
condos, commercial garbage from cafes and groceries, and plant clippings from the
Department of Environmental Protection Nature Walk near the polluted Newtown
Creek, a little known Superfund site.
I felt the need to contain the feeling of this waste, and so I wrapped it all into pack-
ages reminiscent of medicine bundles, body bags, or toxic waste—eighty-eight pack-
ages with skins made of tarps and cardboard and IKEA bags and blankets, all cast off as
well. These were the building blocks of the structure (Figures 9.13 and 9.14).
Figure 9.11 Hut #6 (2011) by Jill Sigman at the Oslo Opera House; Oslo, Norway.
Figure 9.12 Hut #9 (2014) by Jill Sigman at Godsbanen; Aarhus, Denmark.

Photo by L2 Lab/Alejandra Ugarte.
Figure 9.13 Hut #7 (2012) by Jill Sigman at Arts@Renaissance; Brooklyn, NY.

174 Jill Sigman
Figure 9.14 Hut #7 detail (2012) by Jill Sigman.

After two months of meeting with neighborhood residents, collecting waste, and
building the hut, I was scheduled to perform in it. I did the only thing I felt I could do
honestly as a performer: I circled the hut relentlessly, letting the feeling of the hut and
the space affect me continually and “tilling” the metaphorical soil of the space—the
memories, the history, the subtle feelings. I felt like a divining rod, using my movement
to bring to light what was not revealed or stated overtly but what was present in the
architecture, biography, and identity of that site. My movement choices were not
deductive; I did not think “this happened here, therefore I should do x, y, and z to
respond to it.” But every time I passed one of the lead plates in the wall (where X-rays
were given), or the doorway to the men’s shelter showers (which were still intact), or
the gated windows, or the metal feet of some long-gone medical table that were still
embedded in the ground, my movement was affected and shifted gradually, in a way
that went beyond my own design or intention.
I circled the hut for about an hour. Then I led the audience out to the abandoned lot
adjacent to the gallery, a large tract of broken cement that is full of weeds and embroiled
in a legal battle. I walked the perimeter in slow motion with a fluorescent light attached
to a long stick. To my surprise, the audience followed me around the lot slowly, so we
made a large procession together. Other people watched from both sides: on one side
the windows and fences of the current-day men’s homeless shelter, on the other side
the balconies of the luxury condo across the street. Together we reclaimed this unwel-
coming space for something new, and made it feel like a place in its own right
(Figures 9.15 and 9.16).
At the end of the performance, I came to the middle of the lot and did some slow
movement. On one hand, it was the changing of the space that mattered, not the par-
ticularities of the movement. On the other, my movement was critical to that change; it
Figure 9.15 Jill Sigman in a performance of TILL at Hut #7 (2012).

176 Jill Sigman
Figure 9.16 Sigman and audience members on the lot in TILL at Hut #7 (2012).
played a big functional role in engineering that shift. And while its details didn’t matter
in this case (the exact angles of my arms when dancing in the center, the number
of steps taken around the lot, the exact speeds of rotation around the hut), it was
not negligible either. A tap dance at the end would not have created the same shift in
the space.
Which characteristics matter is a complex question, best determined on a case by
case basis. It’s not just the symbolism or concept of the movement that matters—if the
number of steps taken around the lot were the number of people in the neighborhood
who are sick with asthma and lupus, or the number of waste transfer trucks that pass
through per week, or the number of homeless men who slept in the gallery, that would
be intellectually interesting. But it would not necessarily be sufficient to create a change
in the space (depending on how the steps were taken). What matters is how one moves,
and where one moves—the exact timing and the very presence of the live body. A com-
plex cocktail of all those things engineering a physical and mental situation, a moment
shared by a group of people being present, aware of their being together then and there.
It is the right cocktail that creates the chain reaction that Pujol described—two people
being silent, fifty people walking on an abandoned lot, one hundred people sitting
together on an indoor field.16
16
LaMothe offers a related account in terms of her concept of “bodily becoming” (2014, 60–2). She
takes her cues from the “mothers” of American modern dance: Ruth St. Denis, Isadora Duncan, and
And this is why live body-based movement performance matters—because of its

potency for making that shift, that change in the space. It allows us to see and experience
ourselves and a place differently. It is what ritual has known and tried to achieve for
centuries. When it succeeds, it changes consciousness. It changes connection. It makes
us feel connected to our bodies, or each other, or a place, or a history. It makes us feel. It
reminds us that we are human. And in doing so it gives us the power to create change, to
grapple with the challenges of the human condition instead of denying them.
What we learn in performance we take into our lives, in sometimes large, sometimes
small ways. If we experience a shift in performance, or a sense of connectedness, per-
haps we leave with a new sense of possibility. Or perhaps we will try to engineer that
kind of shift in our lives, or that feeling with a group we are part of. In performance we
model what can happen in “real life.” And by doing so, we also begin it.
This explains not only why this kind of performance matters but why my own move-
ment has evolved over the years, why I feel much less concerned with technique and
recognizable dance vocabulary. To create these kinds of shifts in the space, one uses
whatever tools are best. It feels limiting to be locked into a vocabulary that comes from a
particular movement technique. While I was trained initially very intensively in classi-
cal ballet, and then in the Humphrey and Limón techniques of modern dance, and then
in more contemporary ways of moving, these seem to me to be things to draw upon. It
makes as little sense to me to “deskill” and throw them away as it does to limit myself to
moving in these technical ways (there are aesthetic camps that advocate both).
The physical acts of planting or walking can be as perfect and effective as a more vig-
orous or recognizably virtuosic movement, depending on the needs of the space and
what it takes to engineer a change in the group’s presence at that moment. The real virtue
is in knowing which to choose and in doing it in a way that is right for that situation.
What is done in that way will be performance, and it makes no sense to worry about
whether “anyone could do it” even if anyone could plant or walk. Anyone couldn’t do it.
So here we see the shell game. The real engine of body-based performance is ironi-
cally not in the appearance of body, not even in the action of body, but in what that
action does, how it changes us and the space. And for that we have all the tools of life—
different bodies, ways of moving, physical objects, the built world, the natural world—
at our disposal. A broader palette of tools of course creates issues of legibility, of how to
interpret when the palette goes beyond the codified movement “languages” we know,
but that’s not a reason to limit the palette.
Performance before Performance

Many of the arts have become desiccated vestiges of their former selves. Postmodern
performance is laced with de rigueur irony, apathy, cynicism, and doubt. But perhaps
Martha Graham. On her account, the specificity of the movements and certain movement patterns does
matter to the experience that can open for the viewer, but it does not uniquely determine that experience.
178 Jill Sigman
the very nature of performance has been characterized by doubt since its beginnings. If
we look at the admittedly dated discussion of the transition from ritual to drama in
ancient Greece found in Jane Harrison’s (1913) Ancient Art and Ritual, we find an
account that describes the beginning of performance as heralding the end of ritual.
Harrison talks about the shift from the dromenon or thing done (the ritual action) to
what we now know as drama. “We know from tradition,” she writes, “that in Athens
ritual became art, a dromenon became the drama, and we have seen that the shift is
symbolized and expressed by the addition of the theatre, or spectator-place, to the
orchestra, or dancing-place” (Harrison 1913, 136). She describes the decay of religious
faith and the importing of new content for the drama through the Homeric stories as
complementary parts of this process.
Harrison suggests that engagement, emotion, and participation waned with the cre-
ation of dramatic form and the architecture we associate with it. For Harrison, art and
performance necessarily involve distance and disengagement:
We have seen that the orchestra, with its dancing chorus, stands for ritual, for the stage in
which all were worshippers, all joined in a rite of practical intent. We further saw that the the-
atre, the place for the spectators, stood for art. In the orchestra all is life and dancing; the mar-
ble seats are the very symbol of rest, aloofness from action, contemplation. The seats for the
spectators grow and grow in importance till at last they absorb, as it were, the whole spirit, and
give their name theatre to the whole structure; action is swallowed up in contemplation.
(Harrison 1913, 141–2)
Harrison goes on to write about how as the ritual dance languished, the role of the
“stage” developed. The stage was originally far from our current conception of a stage,
not even a platform for the viewing of the performance. Rather, “It was simply a tent, or
rude hut, in which the players, or rather dancers, could put on their ritual dresses”
(Harrison 1913, 142). Over time this hut expanded, eventually incorporating scenery,
becoming the platform we now recognize, and encroaching on the sacred area of ritual
dancing. This is the shift from the ritual dance as a “dromenon, a thing to be done, not a
thing to be looked at” to a thing to be observed (Harrison 1913, 142). And so she
describes the shift from participatory ritual to drama as spectator sport.
Ironically, what Harrison describes as pre-performance seems to bear many simi-
larities to the live body-based performance I have described—with features such as
presence, connectivity, community, participation, and change. Many types of perfor-
mance continue to remind us of those lost forms of engagement. Over time, perhaps
everything becomes old and empty. But the value of body-based performance is its
connection to this earlier type of immediacy and engagement, to the performance
before “performance,” and the potency it has as a result.
I began my dance studies in classical ballet; my first introduction to the stage was the
traditional proscenium. Perhaps it is somehow fitting that I have now come to build
huts, shrinking the stage back to what it once was and letting the participation of the
audience swell as a result. In the realm of live body-based performance, the dromenon
seems alive and well. In fact, it’s what makes live performance worthwhile.
References
Becker, Carol. 2011. “Utopian Strategies: Artists Anticipate Their Audiences.” The Brooklyn
Rail, June 3, 26–9.
Burke, Siobhan. 2009. “Rejecting Artifice, Advancing Art: The Dance Criticism of John Martin.”
The Columbia Journal of American Studies 9 (Fall): 289–305.
Gallese, Vittorio. 2001. “The ‘Shared Manifold’ Hypothesis: From Mirror Neurons to Empathy.”
Journal of Consciousness Studies 8 (5–7): 33–50.
Gutsell, Jennifer N., and Michael Inzlicht. 2010. “Empathy Constrained: Prejudice Predicts
Reduced Mental Simulation of Actions During Observation of Outgroups.” Journal of
Experimental Social Psychology 46 (5): 841–5.
Harrison, Jane Ellen. 1913. Ancient Art and Ritual. London: Oxford University Press.
Iacoboni, Marco. 2009. “Imitation, Empathy, and Mirror Neurons.” Annual Review of Psychology
60: 653–70.
Järveläinen, Juha, Martin Schürmann, Sari Avikainen, and Riitta Hari. 2001. “Stronger
Reactivity of the Human Primary Motor Cortex During Observation of Live Rather than
Video Motor Acts.” Neuroreport 12 (16): 3493–5.
LaChapelle, Dolores. 1984. “Ritual Is Essential.” In Context: A Quarterly of Humane Sustainable
Culture 5 (Spring) <http://www.context.org/iclib/ic05/lachapel/> (accessed November 2015).
LaMothe, Kimerer. 2014. “Transformation: An Ecokinetic Approach to the Study of Ritual
Dance.” Dance, Movement & Spiritualities 1 (1): 57–72.
Macaulay, Alastair. 2010a. “Judging the Bodies in Ballet.” New York Times, December 3.
Macaulay, Alastair. 2010b. “Timeless Alchemy, Even When No One is Dancing.” New York
Times, November 28.
Martin, John. 1933. The Modern Dance. New York: AS Barnes and Company.
Rainer, Yvonne. 1965. “Some Retrospective Notes on a Dance for 10 People and 12 Mattresses
Called ‘Parts of Some Sextets,’ Performed at the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford,
Connecticut, and Judson Memorial Church, New York, in March 1965.” The Tulane Drama
Review 10 (2): 168–78.
Rawlings, Ashley. 2011. “Remote Repercussions: Wafaa Bilal.” Art Asia Pacific 72. <http://
artasiapacific.com/Magazine/72/RemoteRepercussionsWafaaBilal> (accessed November 2015).
Shimada, Sotaro, and Kazuo Hiraki. 2006. “Infant’s Brain Responses to Live and Televised
Action.” Neuroimage 32 (2): 930–9.
Short, Aaron. 2012. “Fire Fighters: G’point Environmentalists Protest Incineration Plant Plan.”
The Brooklyn Paper, March 8. <http://www.brooklynpaper.com/stories/35/11/dtg_incinerator_
2012_03_16_bk.html> (accessed November 2015).
Sigman, Jill. 2011. “On the Wall: Reflections on Being Present.” Contact Quarterly 36 (1): 23–8.
10
Aesthetic Effortlessness
Barbara Gail Montero
Although we praise effort, we prize effortlessness.1 Effortless bodily movement, effort-

less speech or writing, even effortless objects affect us in a way that one naturally thinks
of as aesthetic. But just what is effortlessness? What are we appreciating when we
admire a dancer’s effortless technique, precision, or presence? Why is it, for example,
that when the renowned Alicia Markova “finishes her effortless variation, with the turn
of its final phrase rounded off meticulously to the fraction of a beat, it is no wonder that
the house bursts into applause almost as an automatic reaction” (Martin 1941, 15)?
What makes effortlessness aesthetically valuable?
The concept of aesthetic effortlessness is rarely discussed in academic circles today,
particularly in analytic philosophy. Moreover, in the art world, effortlessness, though
still highly valued by some, has generally gone the way of the two related qualities of
beauty and grace, with many contemporary artists more interested in creating works
that are provocative, powerful, beleaguered, or shocking, than in creating works that
are effortless. The choreography of Pina Bausch, for example, is certainly aesthetically
valuable; but it is valuable because it expresses frustration, alienation, brutality, and
pain, not because it expresses effortlessness.
Though perhaps unpopular in academic circles today, it cannot be denied that
effortlessness captures us, and its aesthetic appeal seems to be more immediate, more
bodily and less cerebral than our interest in the conceptually charged work of artists
such as Pina Bausch. Moreover, the idea of effortlessness has drawn the attention of
many great thinkers in the past. To look at just a few examples, the ancient Chinese
Daoist thinkers Laozi and Zhuangzi exalted effortless action, or wu-wei (literally
translated as “no trying”), in both the artisan and the political leader. The Italian
Renaissance theorist Baldassare Castiglione’s (1528/1975, 67) Book of the Courtier
inspired the artists of his day to, as he puts it, “practice in all things a certain
nonchalance which conceals all artistry and makes whatever one says or does seem
1
This chapter has benefited from comments from audience members at International Conference:
Aesthetics and the Embodied Mind, Delmenhorst, Germany, 2013; I especially thank Richard Gray for his
insightful remarks.
aesthetic effortlessness 181
ncontrived and effortless.” And, arguably, one aspect of what Kant (1790/2007, 135)
u
meant when he said that “the fine arts must not seem purposeful, although they are
purposeful,” or, as he explains, that “fine art must be able to be considered as nature,” is,
in part, that fine art must appear to be merely a product of nature, that is, it must appear
to be effortless.2
To mention one more historical period during which the concept of effortlessness
garnered the attention of theorists (a period I shall return to), we find effortlessness
and the closely related concept of grace discussed, analyzed, and greatly admired by
the late nineteenth-/early twentieth-century thinkers Henri Bergson and Herbert
Spencer, with Bergson (1889/2001) describing the impression of grace as “the
perception of a certain ease, a certain facility in the outward movements,” and Spencer
claiming that “truly graceful motions . . . were those performed with comparatively
little effort” (1852/1892, 381) and that “a good dancer . . . makes us feel that . . . an
economy of effort has been achieved” (1852/1892, 382–3).
Today, though the concept is largely passed over by tough-minded academics, the
allure of effortlessness is apparent in the media where one frequently finds various
athletes, artists, and artworks praised for their effortlessness: the ballerina Natalia
Osipova’s grand jetés, for example, are extolled for their effortless elevation, soaring
“through the air with so little effort that the sight of her lithe form hanging high above
the stage is a shock every time”; the opera singer Beverly Sills is described as being
able to “dispatch coloratura roulades and embellishments, capped with radiant high
D’s and E-flats, with seemingly effortless agility”; of Yo-Yo Ma, the novelist Mark
Saltzman says, “his playing was so beautiful, so original, so intelligent, so effortless
that by the end of the first movement I knew my cello career was over.” And in the
world of politics, one finds individuals chastised for their lack of effortlessness and for
displaying “what appear to be laboriously studied moves rather than anything that
comes naturally.”3
Effortlessness, it seems, can be ascribed to bodily movements, to intellectual
insights, to poetry, prose, and paintings. Even the Golden Gate Bridge has been
extolled for its “seeming effortlessness,” being described as “Grace Kelly in Rear
Window.”4 Indeed, perhaps one reason the topic of effortlessness does not have a foot-
hold in analytic aesthetics is this multifariousness. There is something to be said in
favor of this stance: trying to figure out what it means for a portrait to represent a per-
son, one might say, is difficult enough; ought we really to confuse things further by
trying to understand what it is for a bridge to represent effortlessness? I am not immune
2
See Hammermeister (2002), for discussion.
3
The quotes are taken, respectively, from “Elusive Treasure, Object of a Pirate’s Affections; ‘Le Corsaire’:
American Ballet Theater with Natalia Osipova” by Gia Kourlas, published in the New York Times, July 6,
2012; “Beverly Sills, All-American Diva With Brooklyn Roots, Is Dead at 78, by Anthony Tommasini,
New York Times, July 4, 2007; and, quoted Weschler (2012).
4
As stated by urban design critic John King and California Historical Society executive director Anthea
Hartig, respectively, in their interview with Christensen (2012).
182 Barbara Gail Montero
to such methodological scruples, and in my work in philosophy of mind I have fre-

quently advocated that we should not bother trying to understand whether the mind is
physical until we have understood more basic ideas, such as what it means to be physi-
cal (Montero 1999, 2001, 2009). But when it comes to aesthetics, my relationship to the
subject matter is somewhat different; it is not that of detached theoretical interest but
rather it is that of an individual with prior interests that have developed from years of
work in the field.5 Thus, being less driven by the pursuit of truth than by passion, I am
inclined to focus straightaway on what is of interest to me. If this is inconsistency, so be
it. I imagine I am not the first.
What, then, is it for an action to be effortless? What are we appreciating when we
admire Castiglione’s effortless courtier, a dancer’s effortless leaps, a basketball player’s
effortless shot, or even a seagull’s effortless soar? For Castiglione as well as for the
ancient Chinese thinkers, effortlessness was primarily a social value. According to
Castiglione, effortlessness, or at least the façade of effortlessness, enabled individuals
to gain recognition, approval, and promotion to higher political positions in the Royal
Court. And according to the Daoist tradition, effortlessness engendered, de, is a type of
charisma that allows rulers to persuade neither by force nor decree but merely in virtue
of their magnetism. Though no less relevant to politics now than it was in the past, my
concern is more with aesthetic rather than social value, and specifically with the aes-
thetic value of effortlessness in works of art.
10.1 Medium, Representation, Process

In appreciating a work of art such as a dance, a sculpture, a painting, or a musical
performance, the accolade “effortless” may apply to three aspects of a work, what I
shall call the “medium,” the “representation,” and the “process.” The medium encom-
passes the relatively lower-level entities, properties, processes, and relations that
comprise the work. For a dance, this might be bodily movements; for a painting, this
might be the array of paint. The representation is, unsurprisingly, what the work rep-
resents. For example, John Ward’s sculpture of William Shakespeare represents the
great author in a pensive, yet effortless pose. And the process is what goes into creat-
ing the work, as it appears in the work (rather than, say, the hours in the rehearsal
room).
Perhaps a few examples will help clarify these distinctions:
The painting is of an effortless figure (the representation is of an effortless figure).
The painting looks as if the painter created it effortlessly (the process seems effortless).
5
After graduating from high school at age fifteen and before attending college I danced professionally
with Oregon Ballet, North Carolina Dance Theater, Florida Ballet, and Atlanta Ballet. Of course, I have
theoretical interest in this topic as well, since in a forthcoming book I argue for the importance of effort in
expert action. It is thus incumbent on me to make sense of our appreciation of effortlessness in a way that
is consistent with all this effort.
The brushstrokes seem effortless (the medium is effortless).

She played a piece representing a carefree dance (a representation of effortlessness).
It sounds as if the pianist plays effortlessly (the process of playing seems effortless).
The piano sonata sounds effortless (the medium, the sound produced, is effortless).
What are the relationships between these forms of effortlessness? Can we have one
without the others? Or are some sorts of effortlessness invariably connected? It seems
that we can readily differentiate the representation of effortlessness from the other two
forms of effortlessness. That is, we may appreciate represented effortlessness—of the
sculpted torso, painted hand, or a poetic description of a stream, and so forth—with-
out necessarily feeling either that the process of creating the representations is effort-
less or the medium itself is effortless. Consider Michelangelo’s David standing in a
relaxed contrapposto: with his hip protruding slightly, he effortlessly bears his weight
on one straight leg with the other resting, gently bent. The statue represents an effort-
less figure. Yet the statue might very well appear to have been effortfully created and
the shapes of the marble might not be perceived as effortless. Or let us return to
Raphael’s painting of Pope Leo X. The painting represents an effortless figure, yet one
can reasonably see both the process and the medium as effortful. With dance, the con-
nection is tighter, yet perhaps still possible to pull apart. A dancer performing the
female lead in the ballet La Sylphide, for example, may represent an effortless winged
being who is both enormously enticing and unattainable, yet it might not seem that she
is effortlessly coming up with her movements. And perhaps one even need not see the
movements themselves as effortless, though I imagine that the best representations of
effortless creatures in dance also evince effortless movements (effortlessness in the
medium).
One can also at least sometimes identify effortless mediums without identifying
effortless processes or representations. The Golden Gate Bridge may appear effortless,
yet it does not appear to have been created effortlessly nor even less does it represent
something effortless; for example, it certainly doesn’t represent Grace Kelly. (Might it
represent effortlessness or freedom or some other property, a property which is itself
effortless? I leave this footnote to Plato aside.) A rock garden may appear effortless
while also appearing to have been created with great care (perhaps because the curves
suggest an effortless way of movement); and a Glenn Gould performance of Art of the
Fugue may sound effortless, but not represent effortlessness.
Again, at other times the connection among these three elements may be tighter: a
Chagall painting might seem to be simply thrown together, in part because of the
effortless individuals it represents; good writing, as Somerset Maugham put it, may
appear “a happy accident,” but in seeing a piece of poetry or prose as a happy accident
one both attributes an effortless process and feels the writing itself to be effortless.
Moreover, one is more likely to experience such happy accidents in writing that repre-
sents effortless characters than in writing that portrays struggle, in T. S. Eliot’s Old
Possum’s Book of Practical Cats rather than in The Wasteland. (Though is this merely
because the authors have chosen to match their writing style to their subject matter, or
does the subject matter itself affect our attributions of effortless style?) It may also be
that our attribution of effortless style influences our attribution of effortless repre-
sented subjects. And in many, or perhaps most, cases when we ascribe effortlessness to
bodily movements, we understand the movements as being both effortlessly created
and effortless themselves. Fred Astaire, the king of effortlessness in dance, seems to
move effortlessly and to come up with his ideas about how to move, or about which
steps to do, effortlessly (and this last effect may be apparent despite his following set
choreography).
10.2 Bergson on Effortlessness and Grace

On Bergson’s view, effortlessness, which he closely aligns with grace, is the spilling of
one movement right into another.6 With effortless movements, according to Bergson,
you expect what is going to happen next: “perception of ease in motion passes over into
the pleasure of mastering the flow of time and of holding the future in the present.”
Music that accompanies dance, for Bergson, adds to this effect. As he says, “the rhythm
and measures [allow] us to foresee to a still greater extent the movements of the dancer”
(1889/2001, 12).
This is an appealing idea, for many of the bodily movements we think of as effortless
have a smooth, flowing, predictable quality, and we dub many smooth, flowing move-
ments as effortless. For example, when we think of the effortlessness of great athletes or
dancers, we might imagine a smooth, perhaps even slow motion, picture of their
movements, and when we see individuals walking in an even, perfectly coordinated
way, we understand their gait as effortless. Additionally, smooth actions not only
appear to be effortless but also generally take less effort to produce than sharp ones,
which require a burst of energy at each start and stop.
However, although many actions that we understand as effortless do appear smooth
and flowing, it is not clear that all effortless movements are like this. A breakdancer’s
movements, for example, may appear effortless yet include at least some sharp, jerky
movements, and in fencing, a riposte may be quick, sharp, brilliant, and effortless. True
enough, Michael Jackson’s breakdancing was preternaturally fluid, but, arguably, even
he could include a sharp, effortless, pop or lock now and again. If these examples are
accurately described—and there is room to question them—not all effortless actions
are smooth. In addition, the sharp accents or quick ripostes, though effortless, may not
be predictable from looking at the current movement.
6
I am not sure that the connection between gracefulness and effortlessness is as tight as Bergson sees it
since, as I shall explain later, I understand our attributions of effortlessness to depend in part on our knowl-
edge of the difficulty of the movement; it is not clear that our attributions of gracefulness depend on this,
or at least depend on this to the same degree. Clearly, there is much more to say about the relationship
between effortlessness and grace, yet I shall, for the most part, pass over this, as there is already too much
to say about effortlessness and its relation to other perhaps less difficult concepts.
Perhaps more apparent, not all fluid movements look effortless. For example, if one
notices a tense expression on a performer’s face, a smooth and flowing movement
might appear effortful. Or if a movement is smooth, yet extraordinarily slow—not
slow as seen on a slow motion film, but physically slow—it might look effortful. This is
especially evident in the Japanese dance form Butoh, in which performers often move
at a glacial pace. Butoh can be smooth and beautiful, yet look extremely effortful.
Moreover, effortful actions, such as Butoh, might also contain, as Bergson saw it, the
future in the present. You might know, for example, that a Butoh dancer is going to fall,
in an excruciatingly painful and protracted way, to the bottom of a staircase.7 Yet you
may also feel that this fall takes all his effort and then some. Predictability might also
occur without either smoothness or effortlessness. A toddler’s steps do not appear
effortless, yet an observer often knows what is coming next; and a parent might some-
times rush over to get ready to catch before the fall has even started.
Thus, though often found together, it seems that smooth, flowing, predictable
actions are neither necessary nor sufficient for effortless actions. Nonetheless, it may
be that smooth, flowing movements, done at a normal pace, without any facial signs of
effort, at least often seem effortless. But why might we attribute effortlessness to a sharp
movement and why do glacially slow yet smooth movements appear effortful?
10.3 Spencer on Effortless Bodily Movements

For Spencer, grace is exemplified by movements “performed with comparatively little
effort” (1852/1892, 381). And in line with this view, it does seem that in praising the
effortlessness of a dancer’s or athlete’s movements, we are noting, among other things,
an apparent reduction in bodily effort. We may not see his or her movements as requir-
ing little bodily exertion—it would be hard to explain all that sweat if that were the
case. Rather, we perceive the movements as efficient. As Spencer notes: “after calling to
mind sundry confirmatory facts,” he concludes that “grace, as applied to motion,
describes motion that is effected with economy of force” (1852/1892, 381). “A good
dancer,” he tells us, “makes us feel that . . . an economy of effort has been achieved”
(1852/1892, 382–3). Effortless bodily movement seems to use just the muscles neces-
sary for the job.
But it is not entirely straightforward how to explain what this is. The tennis player
Roger Federer has been noted for, among other things, his effortless playing. He may
be putting 100 percent of his energy into a game. But his playing appears to have no
wasted movements. For example, other players when they run for a ball might end up
taking a number of small steps at the end to get right where they need to go; Federer
gets there with the minimum number. Spencer, if he were to have had the opportunity
7
As does the Swiss Butoh dancer, Imre Thormann, in his 2006 performance at Hiyoshi Taisha Shrine in
Japan. See <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ms7MGs2Nh8> (accessed November 2015) for a YouTube
excerpt of this remarkable event.
to watch Federer play, would likely have held that it was because of this efficiency we
marvel at his effortless games.
However, in dance the efficiency equation is a bit more complicated, for in dance
sometimes many little steps, as in a pas de couru (which involves many fast, tiny steps),
are exactly what is called for. Or consider a pas de cheval, a movement in which the foot
moves from a standing position, sensuously wraps around the ankle, and then, after a
slight lilt, is extended from the body and lowered down to the floor. Clearly this is not
the most direct way to get from point A to point B. Efficient bodily movements in
dance, then, cannot be understood as moving with the minimum number of motions
or in the most direct way possible from one point to another. Rather, in this context, it
seems that an efficient movement is one that involves no superfluous muscle tension.
Raised shoulders, for example, will not help one to perform the pas de cheval better, so
raised shoulders while doing this step would typically indicate superfluous muscle ten-
sion. (Of course, sometimes a raised shoulder is an important part of the movement,
such as if one is trying to portray coquettishness. But here the movement would not be
superfluous.)
Perhaps the idea that effortless movements do not involve superfluous muscle ten-
sion helps explain some of the apparent counterexamples to the Bergsonian view of
effortlessness as involving smooth, predictable flowing movements. Perhaps the
breakdancer’s sharp movements might seem to involve no excessive effort, that is, no
superfluous muscle use. On the other hand, glacially slow yet smooth movement may
appear effortful because we sense both the effortful willpower and bodily control.
10.4 Effortlessness and Difficulty

What else must be present if we are to understand a work of art as effortless? When we
attribute effortlessness to bodily movements in dance, it seems that at least in many
cases we also see the work as, in some sense, difficult; we see it as difficult, yet appearing
easy. Osipova’s effortless leaps are certainly difficult.
In classical music, as well, we often attribute effortlessness to pieces that are techni-
cally challenging; that is we attribute effortlessness to the medium—the notes played—
in light of an underlying difficulty. Even the Golden Gate Bridge seems to accomplish
something very difficult—the longest span—with ease.
This seems to be part of what we love: accomplishing something difficult with ease, or
at least apparent ease. But in what sense is it difficult? I said that we can, at times, sepa-
rate our attributions of an effortless process from both an effortless medium and rep-
resentation. For example, we might see a painting as representing an effortless individual
yet not think that the process was effortless. Yet, it may be that if the individual who is
observing a work of art is positively convinced that the process is difficult for an artist,
then the appearance of effortlessness, at least effortlessness of medium and perhaps
even of representation, may be lessened or destroyed; for effortlessness, it seems, is
highly cognitively penetrable: our beliefs about it affect how we experience it. Upon
listening, you might feel that Glenn Gould’s music is effortless (product), yet after
watching him play and seeing that it appears difficult for him (or at least uncomfortable,
given his odd posture), you might not hear it in quite this same way. Even our percep-
tion of effortlessness in an artist’s representation might be affected by our beliefs about
how difficult the work seemed to produce. The Renaissance artists held this view and
kept their toils hidden so as to not destroy the effortlessness of their represented figures.
And although I seem to be able to see the Golden Gate Bridge as effortless (medium) yet
not having been created effortlessly, perhaps an engineer who fully understands the
difficulty of such an accomplishment would not even be able to see the bridge itself as
effortless. So we find difficulty in effortlessness in as much as we see the process as
difficult; however, if we understand extremely well just how difficult the process really
is, this may lessen or destroy our ability to perceive the medium as effortless.
Yet what are we to say of the movements of dancers who are dancing in pieces chore-
ographed using everyday movements? Such movements would not be difficult for us
to perform. Do we, then, not appreciate the effortlessness in such movements? The
Judson Dance Theater, for example, was known for creating dances out of everyday
movements, sometimes even taking untrained individuals to perform the movements.
In cases when the individual is untrained, I would say that the value of the dance has
nothing to do with its effortlessness. Though there may be conceptual interest in a
dance performance that consists, say, of people off the street moving furniture onstage,
we typically do not appreciate the effortlessness of the “dancers’ ” movements in such a
performance. Of course, the movements themselves might not have required effort
(if the movement was walking, for example, rather than moving heavy furniture), but
the movements were not aesthetically effortless.
Or at least, they may not have been effortless. For there are those charmed individu-
als who, without any training, seem to just have a naturally effortless gait. Certain indi-
viduals just seem to embody aesthetic effortlessness in the way they move about in
everyday situations. But even here perhaps we can find that the difficulty resides in
how they are moving. They are moving in a way—so smoothly and evenly—that would
be difficult for us.8 The seagull spreads its wings and effortlessly soars. It’s not hard
for the seagull to do this, but it is an impossibility for us, and so we see it glide
unencumbered.
In other cases, where everyday movements performed by dancers compose a dance,
we might value the effortlessness of such dances. Yet such dances involve difficulty as
well. For example, it would be quite difficult to perform the everyday sorts of move-
ments that show up in some of Merce Cunningham’s work in the way his dancers per-
form them; the movements may be ordinary walking or running, but the dancers
perform them in an extraordinary way.
8
If this is correct, those who walk effortlessly should not see or appreciate effortlessness (as opposed to
merely smooth even movement) in the gait of others, for they do not see it as anything that would be diffi-
cult for them to do. Or at least they would not see it to the same extent as those who are not endowed with
such grace. Whether this is true, however, I do not know.
10.5 Objective, Apparent, and Intentional Ease

Effortlessness involves an element of difficulty, or so I have argued, but what is it that
we admire about this difficulty? In certain cases of natural effortlessness, such as the
seagull’s effortless soar, the action is not difficult to perform for the one who is per-
forming it. Yet we are in awe that it can be done at all—we certainly could not soar—
and done with such ease. However, how are we to understand the effortlessness of
actions that require long hours of deliberate practice to perfect? In particular, when we
admire the effortlessness of a dancer or athlete, do we marvel at the fact that someone
has mastered a movement to such a high degree that it has actually become easy for her
to perform? Or is it that we value the appearance, that is, the artist or athlete’s ability to
make what is difficult for her appear easy? In most sports, athletes do not deliberately
try to make their movements look easy (exceptions might be gymnastics, figure skat-
ing, and other such endeavors). However, even in basketball, one can still ask: do we
cherish the actual ease of the athlete’s movements, or the (unintentional) appearance
of effortlessness in movements that are, for the athlete herself, extremely difficult to
perform? Finally, in cases where there is a deliberate attempt to create effortlessness, do
we, in addition to treasuring the beauty of the apparent effortlessness of the move-
ment, treasure the ability to create the guise of effortlessness?
I suggested earlier that our attributions of effortlessness to the medium (such as the
bodily movements of a dancer) depend on our familiarity with how difficult the action
is to perform. And if you fully understand that a movement is difficult to perform, for
the performer, you may be inclined to not see the movement as effortless. But some-
times, even if you are familiar with the difficulty of a movement, you may be able to
perceive it as (merely) apparently effortless. Or at least, this is what my own experience
suggests. With movements that I am very familiar with, and that I know are difficult,
I am less likely to think that the movements have actually become easy for the per-
former, though I still may relish the apparent ease of those movements. Similarly,
sports journalists, who I assume frequently have practical knowledge of the skilled
movement they write about, often couple their praise of an athlete’s effortlessness with
an acknowledgment that the effortlessness is only apparent. The 2012 US Women’s
Open champion, Na Yeon Choi, was lauded for her “easy swing that makes her game
look effortless”; “yet,” it is pointed out, “it was anything but” (Manoyan 2012). It seems
that what is being noted in such cases is not that the athlete’s movements are easy for
her to perform, but rather that they appear easy. Thus, it might be that the more one
knows about a type of highly skilled movement, the less likely one is to see it as actually
easy rather than as merely appearing easy.
It may be that in thinking about the effort of one’s own movements, we place more
weight on whether the task requires effortful will power (than, say, whether it requires
great muscular strength) and thus whether we judge an action as requiring a great
effort often turns on whether we judge it as requiring great willpower. And whether we
determine that an action requires great willpower often depends, it seems, on whether
the action is pleasurable. Doing the dishes, though in some objective sense an easy
task, is an activity I find unpleasant—especially when I have waited until midnight—
and thus it requires willpower to do, and thus I judge it as effortful. A dancer, in con-
trast, may perform something that is in some objective sense effortful; in watching him
I might think of his movements, not as presenting the guise of effortlessness, but as
truly effortless (with regard to the will) if I assume that the movement is pleasurable
and thus requires little willpower.
Over and above the appreciation of apparent ease, is the appreciation of the guise of
ease, that is, the deliberate creation of ease. Castiglione held that a courtier’s manner
should not only appear effortless but also give no indication of the great pains the cour-
tier must take in order to create this appearance, for it was believed by him that the
courtier’s effortlessness, or sprezzatura, would be destroyed by any suggestion that
the process of creating an effortless manner itself required effort. The great artists of his
time, influenced by his work, believed this as well and kept their labors carefully hid-
den from view in order to preserve the effortlessness, or sprezzatura, of their paint-
ings.9 No doubt, there is something correct about this; as I have been emphasizing, our
background knowledge seems to affect our attributions of effortlessness. However, it
might be that one can see a bodily movement as effortless, even while at the same time
seeing it as produced by mental effort, or willpower; we might call this a “studied
effortlessness.” Yet, distinct from this, at times one might appreciate the guise itself,
that is, not the effortlessness of a movement, but the difficult process of making an
action appear (to those not in the know) effortless.
10.6 The Perception and Pleasure of Effortlessness

How is it that we perceive effortless movement? Most simply, while an effortless piano
cadenza is heard, an effortless bodily movement is seen. But is there something special
about the way we see effortless movement? Bergson (1889/2001) thought that our per-
ception of grace had to do with “physical sympathy”; we feel, in watching a graceful
movement, that our body, though stationary, is in some way attuned to the body of the
graceful individual. As I understand this, it is the process by which upon watching
someone else move, one feels as if one were moving in a similar way oneself. One might
call this “proprioceptive sympathy,” and what I have elsewhere called “proprioceiving
another’s movement” (Montero 2006a; 2006b).10 Is proprioceptive sympathy relevant
to our perception of effortlessness?
The question is not easy to answer. It does seem that part of the experience of watch-
ing effortless dance involves an experience, in the observer, of bodily ease. However,
9
The effortlessness in these works is in the representation. Raphael’s portrait of Pope Leo X, for exam-
ple, reveals a man in tranquil thought with his hands so smooth and delicate that they appear not only to
be utterly relaxed as they rest but to never have engaged in manual labor at all, and his portrait of the great
Castiglione himself reveals an individual who embodies the ideal described in the Book of the Courtier.
10
See also Montero (2011), wherein I discuss a number of the ideas that have come up in this chapter.
while knowing that someone is putting large amounts of effort into a movement
reduces the appearance of effortlessness, the more practically familiar you are with the
movement you are seeing, the greater your proprioceptive sympathy with the move-
ment. In watching a ballet dancer, for example, I am less likely to sympathetically pro-
prioceive her bodily movements as effortless—as I know from practice how difficult
they are—than I am when watching basketball. Nonetheless, in watching dance I may
feel a strong proprioceptive sympathy with her movements. So proprioceptive sympa-
thy would appear to be only part of the story.
For Bergson, however, proprioceptive sympathy accounts, at least in a large part, for
our pleasure in watching what he thought of as higher grace. Such movements, he
seemed to think, were effortless but not just effortless. We take pleasure in them, he
seemed to think, because of their “affinity with moral sympathy”; and, in criticizing
Herbert Spencer for claiming that what we appreciate when we appreciate grace is
merely reduced effort, he tells us that we identify grace in another person when we are
“able to detect . . . some suggestion of a possible movement towards ourselves,” when
we experience “a virtual and even nascent sympathy” (Bergson 1889/2001, 13). How
could Spencer account for why grace affords us such pleasure, he wanted to know, if it
is just the saving of effort?
I think Spencer’s (1852/1892) view, however, might have something to recommend
it. If the movements we dub as effortless are movements that would be for us difficult to
perform yet appear to be performed with reduced effort, then part of the reason why
effortless action is attractive could be that it reveals a superfluity of fitness. Of course,
proprioceptive sympathy could be part of the reason we admire effortless movement as
well. Whether this is in part because proprioceptive sympathy makes us feel as if we
were attuned to our fellow human beings, as Bergson seemed to think, I am not so sure,
but it does seem that upon watching effortless movement, one of the things we enjoy is
the feeling of performing difficult movements in a smooth, coordinated, efficient way
(and this, perhaps, can be experienced even if we know great work was put into creat-
ing this coordinated efficiency).
But perhaps most importantly, effortless movements are pleasurable because they
are beautiful. And it may be that we recognize them as beautiful because we both sym-
pathetically proprioceive them and see them as revealing a superfluity of fitness.11
10.7 A Call to Further Study

As I have pointed out, the concept of effortlessness has been considered important by
many great thinkers throughout history and, despite the relative lack of attention
11
Is every attribution of effortlessness normative? Is effortlessness necessarily an aesthetic attribute? Or
might there be cases in which we attribute it but do not intend to make an evaluative judgment? I leave
these questions for future (effortful) study.
a esthetic effortlessness receives in academia, it seems to have a profound effect on us.

But what exactly is aesthetic effortless movement? How do we perceive it? And why do
we like it? I have tried, in the preceding remarks, to address these questions to some
extent as well as to inspire others to pursue further study into the nature of
effortlessness.
References
Bergson, Henri. 1889/2001. Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of
Consciousness. Translated by Frank L. Pogson. Mineola, NY: Dover.
Castiglione, Baldassare. 1528/1975. The Book of the Courtier. Translated by George Bull.
London: Penguin.
Christensen, Jon. 2012. “The Color, Romance, and Impact of the Golden Gate at 75.” The
Atlantic Monthly, May 27.
Hammermeister, Kai. 2002. The German Aesthetic Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Kant, Immanuel. 1790/2007. Critique of Judgment, rev. ed. Translated by James Creed Meredith.
Manoyan, Dan. 2012. “Doubt Lasts Only a Moment in an Open Win.” New York Times, July 8.
Martin, John. 1941. “Dolin Work Given by Ballet Group.” New York Times, November 29, p. 15.
Montero, Barbara. 1999. “The Body Problem.” Noûs 33 (3): 183–20.
Montero, Barbara. 2001. “Post-Physicalism.” Journal of Consciousness Studies 8 (2): 61–80.
Montero, Barbara. 2006a. “Proprioceiving Someone Else’s Movement.” Philosophical Explorations
9 (2): 149–61.
Montero, Barbara. 2006b. “Proprioception as an Aesthetic Sense.” Aesthetics and Art Criticism
64 (2): 231–42.
Montero, Barbara. 2009. “What Is the Physical?” In Oxford Handbook in the Philosophy of
Mind, ed. B. McLaughlin and A. Beckermann, 173–88. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Montero, Barbara. 2011. “Effortless Bodily Movement.” Philosophical Topics 39 (1): 67–79.
Spencer, Herbert. 1852/1892. “Gracefulness.” In Essays: Scientific, Political, and Speculative,
vol. 2, 381–6. New York: D. Appleton and Company.
Weschler, Lawrence. 2012. Uncanny Valley: Adventures in the Narrative. Berkeley, CA:
Counterpoint.
11
Misleading Aesthetic Norms
of Beauty
Perceptual Sexism in Elite Women’s Sports
Peg Brand Weiser and Edward B. Weiser
What would prompt a young woman on an intercollegiate softball team to deliber-

ately grow a long ponytail and decorate it with ribbons while fiercely competing
alongside her teammates by throwing a fast pitch for a strikeout in a Division I level
championship? Why do young women, who compete in sports competition in
record numbers since the passage of Title IX in 1972, worry so much about how
they look, in addition to how they play?1 Why have women in elite professional
sports, for example past Olympic contenders, submitted themselves to “sex testing”—
removing their clothes to stand in front of “expert” male judges, to be looked at and
deemed female or male—in order to determine their future in athletic competition?
It is indisputable that the challenges of gender identity for women in elite sports
depend upon widely shared aesthetic norms of the ideal female body, namely what
it means to be a “woman” in contemporary society—values learned from popular
culture, traditional gender roles, even art history—and that both individual and
institutional judgments about such bodies often depend upon emotional reactions
to the sight of strong, athletic, muscled women and not how fast they can run or
how high they can jump.
Women’s bodies have been under scrutiny in sports for over one hundred years;
indeed, women were initially forbidden to compete in sports because it was thought
that their bodies would be physically damaged by the strain, ultimately failing them
during their reproductive years. Equally important, it was thought, prior to the suc-
cessive stages of social change that launched women’s liberation in the twentieth cen-
tury, that developing a fit and strong body would repel a prospective husband on
1
According to the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA 2014), in 1981–2 there were 74,239
female student-athletes on 4,776 teams, and 169,800 male student-athletes on 6,843 teams. Today, there are
191,131 female student-athletes on 9,746 teams, and 252,946 male student-athletes on 8,568 teams.
Perceptual Sexism in Elite Women’s Sports 193
whom a woman would ultimately depend for her identity and welfare. Philosophers
Jane English (1978) and Iris Marion Young (1979) pioneered early feminist writing in
the 1970s, after the passage of Title IX, about women’s relationship to sport, highlight-
ing the dominant masculinist culture that relied upon deeply inculcated moral norms
to both exclude women from sport and convince them that sport was an exclusively
male province. A corresponding examination of sport with input from feminist
aestheticians is long overdue, especially in the image-based era in which we live. Now,
how one looks (to others) can influence how one feels (in terms of gender identity) to
the point where young, strong women fear being called lesbians and elite female
athletes must prove to judges that they are not gender misidentified as male (Adams,
Schmitke, and Franklin 2005; Cahn 2010; Davis-Delano, Pollock, and Vose 2009;
Watts 2011). In effect, the early twentieth-century conceptualization of the female
athlete as beauty queen still persists into the twenty-first century; she must maintain a
delicate balance between “muscle moll” and attractive feminine heterosexuality
(Cahn 2010).
This essay is about the history of challenges that women in elite sports have faced
with respect to their gender identity within a society that perpetuates misleading
aesthetic norms of beauty; it is a history fraught with controversy and injustice. The
unique physical beauty these athletes manifest creates what appears to be a paradox
yet is, in fact, scientifically predictable. As might seem intuitively obvious, the
intense training for participation at the highest levels of sports competition leads to
unique bodily strength and beauty that correlate with specific anatomic changes.
Athletes who develop the physical capabilities that permit them to compete at the
pinnacle of their sport and receive appropriate accolades for their success can be
singled out as exceptions from their gender and subsequently prohibited from com-
peting by the same organizations that encouraged their participation in the first
place. Conflict arises when agencies and individuals who are “sports authorities,”
such as officials of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and International
Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), coaches, fans, and fellow athletes use
traditional and racialized aesthetic norms of beauty as the basis for ungrounded
judgments of gender misidentity. Perceiving and then mistaking an elite athlete’s
body as “male” instead of “female” reveals an underlying cognitive bias acquired
through years of experience and education based on misleading aesthetic norms of
beauty: a case of erroneous and damaging categorical perception (a term borrowed
from cognitive science) that we call perceptual sexism. Evidence from cognitive science
shows that correcting one’s bias is not only possible but results in a more informed set
of beliefs, expectations, and values that in turn influence future perception (Goldstone,
de Leeuw, and Landy 2015). We recommend both the acknowledgment within the
realm of elite sport of perceptual sexism based on misleading aesthetic norms of
beauty, and a way of correcting such erroneous categorization that allows athletes the
autonomy and agency to choose to compete as male or female based on a declaration of
their own gender identity.
194 Peg Brand Weiser and Edward B. Weiser
11.1 Sex Testing Female Athletes: A History

of Gender Misidentity
On August 19, 2009, 18-year-old South African middle-distance runner Caster Semenya
was ordered by the governing body of the IAAF to undergo testing to verify her sex,
eventually clearing her to compete that afternoon as a female at the World Track and
Field Championships in Berlin where she outran her opponents in the 800 meter race to
win the gold medal (Figure 11.1). The testing was prompted by accusatory rumors and
complaints; her speed and the way she looked prompted insinuations that she was a
man. A teenager from a rural area, Semenya was thrust into an international limelight of
shame and degradation, and was subsequently forced to withdraw from competition for
nearly a full year, until July 6, 2010. Susan Cahn (2011, 38) aptly frames the procedural
injustice that threatened the continued pursuit of the athlete’s livelihood and passion:
Figure 11.1 Caster Semenya competing at the World Athletics Championships in Berlin.
“In this Monday, Aug. 17, 2009, file photo South Africa’s Caster Semenya, right, competes in a
Women’s 800m semifinal at the World Athletics Championships in Berlin. The IAAF has asked
the South African track federation to conduct a gender verification test on 800 meter runner
Caster Semenya amid concerns she does not meet the requirements to compete as a woman.
The 18-year-old Semenya is a favorite in the 800 meter final later Wednesday, Aug. 19, 2009.”
AP Photo/Anja Niedringhaus, File.
Specialists in genetics, endocrinology, gynecology, and psychology picked over Semenya’s body
and mind to answer the seemingly simple question: Is Semenya a woman or a man?
Given her upbringing and desire to compete alongside women, Semenya self-identified
as female, but she was held scientifically suspect due to her speed, fit body, and flat
chest, causing Italian and Russian rivals to insinuate to journalists, “just look at her”
(Dixon 2009). Beneath the innuendo, she was suspected of being a man or, at mini-
mum, of being intersexed, that is, medically diagnosed by experts as being one in 2,000
persons who is afflicted by a DSD: disorder of sex development (Cahn 2011). Visual
differences clearly set her apart from most other athletes; she was South African and
black and many other competitors were European or American and white. Moreover,
her own feelings of gender identification with the female sex and her autonomy to
choose to compete in women’s competition were deemed irrelevant. She was forced to
“prove” to the “experts” that what they saw as visual differences, i.e. aberrations from
the norm, did not warrant an ascription of “male” which would subsequently disqual-
ify her from female competition, and that her improved race times were not due to
male testosterone (Staurowsky 2011). In effect, once suspicions arose she had to prove
she was indisputably female while the governing sports authorities disqualified her
personal testimony. (It is significant that her own team coach secretly “tested” her on
August 7, 2009, prior to competition in Berlin (Wonkam, Fieggen, and Ramesar
2010).)2 How were these gender verification tests conducted, and why have female
athletes been subject to sex testing at all?
Arthur Caplan (2010) argues that undertaking gender determination in athletic
competitions depends on long-held social conventions of separating sports into
(only) two categories of male and female, based directly on commonly held beliefs
that reflect social values and historical precedent that there are only two sexes in the
world. Alternatively, all sports teams could be mixed-gender teams, somewhat like
figure skating, tennis, and badminton which can be played by pairs or mixed doubles,
though this system still maintains a one man, one woman requirement. Or we could
allow open competition between men and women as in motor sports, golf, and eques-
trian events, but few reformers argue for such a radical change that serves to subvert
and extend current gender boundaries (Griffin 2011). Given the prevailing sentiment
against women’s participation in sports in general—women were excluded from the
first modern Olympics in 1896—their separation in competition is a reflection of
sports’ institutional values and the power of these values to prevail. Sex separation
was originally intended to insure fair competition and prevent injuries to “real”
women in contact sports since their bodies have less muscle-to-fat ratio compared to
men as well as less heart and lung capacity. Thus, it was argued, those persons who
undergo transsexual surgery (male-to-female), or who are even suspected of being
2
The team doctor, the Athletics South Africa (ASA) general manager, and the South African athletics
chief had Semenya “tested” before competing in Berlin, confirmed by the team coach who also knew that
Semenya was not fully aware of the nature of the tests. The exact nature of the “testing” was never revealed.
male, pose a substantive challenge to eligibility determination upon which female

sport is based. Caplan (2010, 550) correctly notes that transsexuals were allowed to
compete in the Olympic Games in Athens in 2004, under the conditions that their
gender be legally recognized and that they had undergone at least two years of
post-operative hormone therapy. Caplan (2010, 550) concludes, “At least at this elite
level of international competition, gender has been recognized as both a social/legal
concept and a biological one.” However, the conditions under which Semenya’s sex
was questioned in 2009 were not associated with a suspicion that she was transsexual;
rather, she was targeted because competitors, journalists, and judges thought she was
unfairly gaining a p
hysical advantage over others, in part because she simply looked—
to their eyes—masculine.
Harsher critics such as Laura A. Wackwitz (2003) are not so sanguine about sex
testing, characterizing it as an oppressive, discriminatory institutional practice that
subjects only female athletes to a mythical binary sex-gender system of categoriza-
tion that in the name of protection (of the so-called “weaker sex”) actually punishes
them for achieving strength, skill, and the courage to compete at the highest levels.
Wackwitz cites “the first recorded instance of sex testing in the Olympic Games”
which began in the eighth century bce: a rule that all trainers, in addition to com-
petitors, should appear naked. This imperative followed an episode in which a
woman was caught merely observing the competitors, a crime previously punisha-
ble by death “from a precipitous mountain with high rocks” (Wackwitz 2003, 553).
The naked male body became the requisite certificate of competitive entry, that is,
proof of masculinity. Even today, the IOC perpetuates the stigma of female partici-
pation in elite sport by not allowing women to compete unless they have proven
themselves to be “real” women, both genetically and in terms of appearance, testing
athletes suspected of being too masculine on a case-by-case basis. Their history
over the past decades has been fraught with testing behavior that violated privacy,
caused indignities, and altered lifelong careers, particularly when we consider that
genetic sex testing was mandatory for all athletes competing in women’s Olympic
events between 1968 and 1988. What led to this proliferation of testing? Consider
the following history.
In 1936, six-foot-tall American gold medalist Helen Stephens, who declared as a
woman but ran with long male-like strides, was accused by Polish journalists of being a
man; she was tested by officials but confirmed female. She had beaten Polish-American
track legend Stanisława Walasiewicz, later Stella Walsh, in the 100 meter race.
Ironically an autopsy of Walsh’s body in 1980 reportedly revealed ambiguous genitalia
and abnormal sex chromosomes (Carlson 2005).
Two Soviet sisters, Tamara and Irina Press, were long suspected of being “male” after
collectively setting twenty-six world records and winning six Olympic gold medals in
track and field, particularly after they—and four other teammates—suddenly retired
from competition after testing began in 1967. Without any real proof, officials felt
vindicated that, indeed, males had infiltrated women’s competition and something
needed to be done to rectify the unfairness to “real” women who would “naturally” be
disadvantaged by competing against presumably stronger, faster males (Carlson 2005).
But it was four specific, similar cases that prompted the IOC to instigate mandatory
“femininity testing” in 1968, all of which involved competitors identified as women who
later “became” men: Czech runner Zdenka Koubkova, who set the 1934 women’s world
record in 800 meters; two French track medalists at the 1946 European Cup; Austrian ski
champion Erika Schinegger, who retired after a 1967 medical examination requested by
World Cup authorities revealed irregularities and subsequently underwent sex reassign-
ment and later competed as Erik Schinegger in men’s skiing and cycling; and Hermann
Ratjen, nicknamed “Dora,” who masqueraded as a female high jumper at the 1936 Berlin
Olympics, where he finished fourth, and later went on to set a world record in 1938 before
being arrested and subjected to testing. In the 1950s he admitted to being a man and cited
coercion by Nazi officials to pose as female (Carlson 2005).
It was not that precautions had not already been taken to control an illegal infiltra-
tion of the female ranks of competition. In 1946, encouraged by Avery Brundage of the
IOC and others, the IAAF required a medical certificate from female competitors in
order to be eligible to compete and then, in 1948, the IOC adopted this same rule
(Heggie 2010). By 1966, however, the presentation of a medical certificate became use-
less as authorities changed the protocol of testing to rely primarily upon visual obser-
vation of external genitalia, known as the infamous “naked parades” first introduced
by the IAAF at the 1966 European Track and Field Championships where female ath-
letes were required to walk naked in front of a panel of judges and occasionally undergo
gynecological examinations; this also occurred at the 1967 Pan American Games in
Winnipeg and the 1967 European Cup Track and Field event in Kiev, USSR. At the
1966 Commonwealth Games in Jamaica, all female athletes were subject to a “manual
examination, likened by one athlete to ‘a grope’ ” (Heggie 2010, 159). Maren Sidler,
an American shot-putter, characterized the degrading procedure in Winnipeg in
1967 as follows:
They lined us up outside a room where there were three doctors sitting in a row behind desks.
You had to go in and pull up your shirt and push down your pants. Then they just looked while
you waited for them to confer and decide if you were OK. While I was in line I remember one
of the sprinters, a tiny, skinny girl, came out shaking her head back and forth saying: “Well,
I failed, I didn’t have enough on top. They say I can’t run and I have to go home because I’m not
‘big’ enough.” (Heggie 2010, 159–60)
In addition, there was the case of 21-year-old Eva Klobukowska, who failed to pass a
chromosomal genetic sex test (the Barr body test) in 1968 and was subsequently
stripped of her two 1964 Olympic medals and forced out of competition even though
she had successfully passed, just one year earlier, a “visual verification test” that
included close-up visual examination of external genitalia. The Barr body or
sex-chromatin test shifted the criteria used to determine sex from genitalia to chro-
mosomes (Carlson 2005), although it is now widely acknowledged that “neither the
chromosomal make-up nor the physical appearance of a person is a 100 percent relia-
ble indicator of biological sex” (Wackwitz 2003):
Cells from the inside of the female’s cheek were scraped and examined under a microscope,
called the buccal smear. This test relied on the fact that most female cells contain two X chro-
mosomes and that most male cells contain one X and one Y chromosome. The Barr body is the
inactivated second X chromosome found in genetic female cells. Genetic males (46, XY) do not
show this Barr body since they typically only have one X chromosome, which remains active.
(Sullivan 2011, 404)
Barr body testing was adopted by the IOC in 1967 and used on an experimental basis at
the 1968 Winter Olympics in Grenoble to disqualify Erika Schinegger who later had
surgery to become Erik. It was formally adopted at the 1968 summer games in Mexico
City. Even though the authorities came to learn that there was no scientifically accurate
way to determine sex, the Barr body test was used at the Olympics through 1988.
Fourteen athletes failed the test but were later reinstated, including Eva Kłobukowska.
She was the first to fail the test with the charge that she had “one chromosome too
many to be declared a woman for the purposes of athletic competition” (Sullivan 2011,
405)—probably XX/XXY mosaicism. Kłobukowska was reported to have gained no
athletic advantage from her chromosomal makeup, i.e. she was not violating “fair play”
competition rules; nonetheless, she had been barred from international competition.
María José Martínez-Patiño was a Spanish hurdler who failed the Barr body test in
Kobe, Japan in 1985 with a chromosome pattern of XY. After refusing to retire, she was
disqualified and successfully fought the ruling to be reinstated three years later. She
was found to have androgen insensitivity syndrome where she is chromosomal 46, XY
but her body does not respond to testosterone; therefore, she is a phenotypic female.
Phenotypic sex identifies the characteristics we associate with women, both genital
(vagina, vulva, and uterus) and non-genital (breasts, hips, voice, hair, absent hirsutism,
etc.). She had neither prior knowledge of the condition nor reason to doubt her sex
identity. “She was ridiculed, lost her athletic scholarship, and her records and titles
were deleted from the books; she went into hiding and likened her ostracization to
being raped while ‘the whole world watched’ ” (Sullivan 2011, 405). Upon her rein-
statement, pressure to drop sex testing began to mount.
In 1990 the IAAF brought together physicians from genetics, pediatrics, endocri-
nology, and psychiatry who recommended against gender verification testing; it was
not, however, stopped. They claimed that tight clothing on athletes, plus observing
athletes providing urine samples for drug testing, would preclude problems: once
again relying primarily upon the visual appearance of an athlete’s external body. The
American Medical Association and the American College of Obstetricians and
Gynecologists weighed in, voicing their discontent. The IOC responded by switching
to a DNA-based, polymerase chain reaction test that focused on the genetic makeup of
the Y chromosome, considered a superior, more accurate method of determination.
The test, costly and cumbersome, was initiated at the 1992 Winter Olympics. As Claire
Sullivan argues, “Up to this point female athletes had to prove they were ‘female’
according to the IOC definition of what constitutes female at that time (XX). Now,
female competitors were asked to prove that they were ‘not male’ (XY)” (Sullivan 2011,
406). At the 1996 summer Olympics in Atlanta, eight of the 3,387 female athletes tested
positive but were subsequently allowed to compete. Only when the IOC’s Athletic
Commission called for the discontinuation of the IOC system of gender verification in
1999 did the IOC’s executive board reduce the practice to a trial basis at the summer
Olympics in Sydney in 2000. Further challenged by transsexual, transitioned, and
transgender athletes, particularly male-to-female (MTF), they approved the
“Stockholm Consensus.” Beginning in 2004 at the Olympic Games in Athens, both the
IAAF and IOC now resort to “suspicion-based” medical examinations for question
able cases, brought by officials or competitors. Hence, this was the basis for the sanc-
tions enacted against Caster Semenya in 2009–10.
Since 2011, the IOC and IAAF have worked together to set up eligibility rules for
female athletes with hyperandrogenism (HA), defined as excessive—“not within the
normal range”—production of androgenic hormones, primarily testosterone, in
females (Sullivan 2011, 414). They have subsequently diverged in their conclusions,
instituting different policies and eligibility requirements that remain controversial and
are opposed by groups such as the Coalition of Athletes for Inclusion in Sport. An ath-
lete’s refusal to cooperate in a “therapeutic proposal” to lower their testosterone level
through drugs or surgery (removing a woman’s gonads and partially removing her
clitoris) can result in a permanent ban from elite women’s sports. Worth noting is the
fact that the surgeries the doctors perform are “drastic, unnecessary and irreversible
medical interventions” which surely raise questions of medical ethics (Karkazis and
Jordan-Young 2014). As many theorists have argued, it is not the case that a male body,
replete with more testosterone, would necessarily gain the edge in competition; no
studies have shown that all males will outperform all females. Testosterone levels have
not shown a clear correlation with athletic performance (Sullivan 2011). A recent
study of 693 elite athletes in Clinical Endocrinology actually revealed a significant over-
lap in testosterone levels among men and women: 16.5 percent of the elite male ath-
letes had testosterone in the so-called female range; nearly 14 percent of the women
were above the “female” range, thereby leading to the conclusion that “The IOC defini-
tion of a woman as one who has a ‘normal’ testosterone level is untenable” (Healy
et al. 2014, 294). These authors suggested that lean body mass, not hormone levels,
may better explain the performance gap.
11.2 Perpetuating Misleading Aesthetic

Norms of Beauty
Even prior to the intense pressure at the elite level of sport to pass a sex test that proves
one is not a man, strong competing female bodies are forced to fit into the confining
box of femininity while growing up and acclimatizing themselves to an acceptable

meaning of “woman.” Girls who like sports are called “tomboys” or “jock girls” and are
proscribed from appearing too masculine or developing highly toned muscles with
weight training (Cahn 2010). If they exhibit too much strength, speed, or skill, they are
warned away from another widely held transgression of proper femininity: the fear of
being called “dykes” (Adams, Schmitke, and Franklin 2005). Self-consciousness about
one’s own performing body can result in a kind of “double consciousness, what schol-
ars have called a conflict between the ‘athletic body’ and the ‘social body’ ” that nega-
tively affects behavior in girls at an age when identity and self-confidence are incredibly
fragile, at puberty and through the teen years (Cahn 2011, 44–5). It can also create sit-
uations of overcompensation: for example, schools and parents dictating dress codes
for girls’ teams that require feminine attire and beribboned ponytails to alleviate girls’
(and parents’) anxieties about their bodies and about participating in sport. As early as
the 1970s, Jan Felshin cast the internalization of this pressure to conform to feminine
ideals as “apologetic,” a rationalization to overcompensate for potentially masculiniz-
ing demands of their sport by which exercise naturally produces stronger, more mus-
cular, faster bodies (Felshin 1974; Staurowsky 2011; Davis-Delano, Pollock, and
Vose 2009).3 And now, there is ample scholarship on the challenges of a woman “living
the paradox” (Krane et al. 2007) of being a “sport feminist” as she tries to negotiate love
of competition with being a “real woman” (Griffin 2011; Staurowsky 2011). Interviews
with female athletes reveal that heterosexuals suppress their physical workouts to
avoid becoming too muscular while lesbians and bisexuals “appear to have discarded
those prohibitions, embracing the beauty of being physically powerful” (Staurowsky
2011, 57; Watts 2011).
The case of Harris vs. Portland in 2006 highlights the additional racial component of
these feminine ideals. Jennifer Harris was an African American basketball player who
charged her Pennsylvania State University head coach, Maureen Portland, with gender
orientation discrimination, sexism, and racism, and was ultimately forced off the
Pennsylvania State University team with the loss of her athletic scholarship. According
to critics Newhall and Buzuvis, the media inappropriately focused on the coach’s pro-
hibition of drinking, smoking, and homosexual behavior and Portland’s explicit accu-
sations that Harris was a lesbian, but more important was the coach’s taboo of cornrows
and her charge that Harris’ dress was not “feminine” enough:
By interrogating the standards of appearance and behavior that Portland required of her
players and revealing them as norms for white, heterosexual femininity, we can better under-
stand the racist overlay in Portland’s harassment, demotion, and termination of Jennifer Harris.
(Newhall and Buzuvis 2008, 349)
3
Davis-Delano, Pollock, and Vose (2009) interviewed athletes on three collegiate teams to reveal that
the most common apologetic behavior involved efforts to look feminine, apologize for aggression, and
mark themselves as heterosexual. Softball players engaged in more apologetic behavior than soccer and
basketball players.
It is crucial to examine traditional racialized norms of beauty because they are so per-
vasive and establish a framework—a well-recognized category of “female beauty”—
that affects individual and institutional judgments especially about women of color
who compete in outdoor track and field, indoor track, and basketball. In fact, within
the NCAA, these are the three sports with the highest black female participation.4
Recall the suspicion regarding Caster Semenya’s performance in the women’s 800
meter race; although her times improved enough to startle some observers, her 2009
time of 1:55.45 in Berlin was still eighteen seconds off the men’s record (Fausto-
Sterling 2012) and—when compared to the all-time bests of her female competitors of
previous years—ranked twenty-sixth. Compare her time of 1:55.45 to that of Jarmila
Kratochvílová of Czechoslovakia, who established the record for the women’s 800
meter race in 1983 with a time of 1:53.28 (a record that still stands in 2015). It is worth
noting that in 1983 suspicions were raised due to Kratochvílová’s appearance: her
“broad-shouldered, flat-chested physique” (Staurowsky 2011; McClelland 2011).
Given that the improvement in Semenya’s time was not really as suspicious as it was
characterized to be, skepticism about her sex focused on her appearance. Would
doubters have been so quick to judge her as male if they had seen, in advance of her
race in August, the makeover image from the September 10, 2009 issue of South
African magazine YOU (Figure 11.2)—where she sported no cornrows and was
dressed in a more feminine way?
It is also important to note that young women in general are fed a visual diet of
images that intentionally exemplify white heterosexual femininity, particularly in the
sports media like ESPN. Jennifer L. Knight and Traci A. Giuliano call it “the image
problem,” whereby broadcasters overcompensate for female athletes stigmatized as
mannish or lesbian and deliberately heterosexualize them by emphasizing their rela-
tionships with men: love interests, partners, marriages, and pregnancies (Knight and
Giuliano 2003). Sports media, along with popular culture in general, fail to present
girls and young women with an adequate array of examples of female athleticism.
Ongoing studies by the University of Southern California Center for Feminist Research
confirm “the image problem,” citing a marked decrease over the twenty-year period
from 1989 to 2009 to an all-time low in the visibility of female athletes on major televi-
sion outlets (Messner and Cooky 2010). Adding to this mix of the contextual backdrop
of the concept of the paradoxical “sport feminist” who longs to be strong, competitive,
yet feminine, are the more deeply ingrained, unconscious gender preconceptions that
most of us have learned. Let us first look for evidence from the worlds of philosophy
and art for the perceptual and cognitive categories by which we see and judge bodies,
particularly those that are unfamiliar and appear to be ambiguous and defy easy classi-
fication into male or female.
4
NCAA data from 2011–12 shows black women in Divisions I, II, and III number 8.6 percent overall,
with 47.9 percent in basketball and 24 percent in outdoor track, compared to, for example, 4.1 percent in
softball (Lapchick 2012).
Figure 11.2 Caster Semenya appearing on the cover of YOU Magazine, September 10, 2009.
Courtesy of YOU Magazine South Africa.
The history of a restrictive definition of “woman” is long and clear. Ancient Greek
philosophers Plato and Aristotle restricted the classification of human beings into
male and female, corresponding with categories of rational versus non-rational, active
versus passive, fit for education, public office, the gymnasium and public competition
versus restricted to the private sphere of home and children. Aristotle was particularly
egregious; he defined women as “deformed males,” ranking them—with children and

slaves—far below free men in ancient Greece (Tuana 1993). Casting females as “ones
who lack” what males have (phallus, penis, intelligence, power) set a foundation for the
privileging of male over female in the history of Western civilization, whether in the
general social sphere or—as we saw with the history of the Olympics that started with
the Greeks in the eighth century bce—with sport. Women fared no better throughout
the history of philosophy, with the most infamous misogynists like Rousseau and
Schopenhauer denouncing the base and bodily nature of woman, her emotional insta-
bility, and her lack of capacity for virtue—unless virtue was defined as physical exter-
nal beauty that brought pleasure to men. Even dubious pronouncements from
Descartes, Burke, and Kant rarely veered far from the historical conceptualization of
woman-as-inferior and, in effect, woman-as-body-to-be-looked-at. The repetitive
belittling of women by philosophers and theologians affected women’s legal status,
economic options, and political identity—recall women were denied the vote in the
United States until 1920—and most of all, women’s sense of self-worth and confidence.
The consensus from the history of philosophy was clear; “woman” was a category that
captured the pervasive sexism of the ages. This sexism extended to the way male writ-
ers characterized women in narratives as well as the way male artists depicted their
bodies. Consider the history of the female body in Western art, from ancient Greek
times through the early twenty-first century, which established the norms of Western,
white, heterosexual female beauty that continue to influence the narrow ways that
women are portrayed today in popular culture, films, video games, advertisements,
and sport. The history of art is replete with examples that habituate viewers repeatedly
to see women through a lens we call perceptual sexism—a cognitive framework based
on an underlying set of beliefs, values, and expectations that devalue women—that
influences one’s succeeding acts of perception to see mistakenly a woman on display in
a specific and limiting way.
Unlike artifacts from the early Paleolithic period, such as the small stone Venus of
Willendorf sculptures that depicted female bodies as fat and fertile, complete with
exaggerated breasts, hips, and stomach, the ancient Greeks limited most of their visual
options to the three mythological roles of Hera, the mother goddess of love and mar-
riage, Athena, the goddess of war, and Aphrodite, the goddess of love and sexuality.5
The occasional Amazon figure depicting a female warrior with one breast riding
adeptly astride a horse and shooting arrows, i.e. a strong female athlete, was a clear
exception to the rule. Not only was the depiction of a muscled, fighting female an aber-
ration from the norm, but what became the prototype for Western type-casting in art
was the occasional figure, particularly on vase paintings, of prostitutes or the more
highly regarded (and rumored to be educated) heterae or courtesans, who functioned
5
The feminist critique of the history of art is well rehearsed by many authors since the 1970s; one
instructive overview that includes images and stereotypes of women by both male and female artists is
Chicago and Lucie-Smith 1998.
Figure 11.3 Phintias Painter. Attic Hydria, The music lesson. Detail. 510–500 bce. Staatliche
Antikensammlung, Munich, Germany.
Foto Marburg/Art Resource, NY.
in a homosexual society where women were treated instrumentally by men for pleas-
ure, potential offspring, or maternal care-taking (Figure 11.3).
For thousands of years, this was the model for women repeated throughout the his-
tory of Western European art—the horizontal nude, providing visual pleasure while
also provoking the fantasy of sexual satisfaction, primarily for the male gazer. These
images portray women as anonymous, passive, and available; or in the case of rape
scenes, deserving of forced sex, given the “natural” order of male over female. Female
virtues consisted in love (loyalty), fertility, and childbirth, whereas male virtues of
strength and stamina distinguished the warrior and statesman; to pose as a type of
warrior or amazon was to transgress the norm, to be mannish. Instead a woman was
encouraged to aspire to her proper gender role by emulating the goddess Aphrodite/
Venus, pictured in the Roman copy of Aphrodite of Knidos by Praxiteles, second cen-
tury ce (Figure 11.4), with canonized ideal proportions, a slight tilt to the hips, and
sensualized features. There is no question that at first (and recurring) glance(s) the
goddess of love is female; she is portrayed to sexually titillate a male viewer; her virtue
lies in her looks and submission to male authority.
Early Christianity replaced mythological roles with the one, irreversible, and incor-
rigible change: the introduction of Eve as a symbol of sinful pride, the rejection of God
for self-knowledge, the epitome of evil passed on to her human successors. Saint Paul,
Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas had nothing good to say about women; women were
a necessary evil for procreation, always functioning as the incarnation of bodily lust,
the epitome of physical uncontrollability (due to their menses), and a trap for men. The
Figure 11.4 Venere Felice with Eros. Marble statue. The body is a Roman copy of the Aphrodite
of Knidos by Praxiteles. The head is the portrait of a Roman lady from the second century ce.
Location: Cortile del Belvedere, Museo Pio Clementino, Vatican Museums, Vatican State.
© Vanni/Art Resource, NY.
recurring image of Eve is either Eve-the-seducer or, pictured after The Fall, Eve-the-
embodiment-of-shame. Masaccio’s Expulsion from Paradise (c.1425) shows Eve justly
deserving the punishment of expulsion, shame, and pain in childbirth (Figure 11.5).
Seeking knowledge, as a man would be praised to do under different circumstances,
eternally dooms her to a status secondary to man’s control.
A return to the motif of woman as nude sexualized body on display came to occupy
center stage as Greek and Roman mythology reinfused the Italian Renaissance with
images of women as the paragon of sexual desire while simultaneously symbolizing
the irresistible carnality denounced by the Christian fathers. Titian’s Venus of Urbino
(Figure 11.6) became an instructive paradigm by which we are taught that a woman’s
agency is reduced to looking beautiful and seducing a man; she performs no worth-
while action in the world nor is she allowed to improve herself by means of education,
to become stronger, to better herself for her own sake. (The women who chose to do so,
such as Abbess Hildegarde of Bingen, joined convents to live apart from men.)
In the rare instance when women were depicted in competition, as in the Northern
Renaissance painting The Judgment of Paris by Lucas Cranach the Elder (Figure 11.7),
they competed against each other for a man. The hierarchy of gender roles entitled
men to freely judge their external features but not any skills or qualities they may have
possessed. In determining the most beautiful among the three, Paris seems over-
dressed in cold and impenetrable armor compared to the women on display: nude but
for their diaphanous drapery, jewels, and hat. It is impossible to imagine the situation
reversed, for example The Judgment of Penelope—a patient wife, besieged by multi-
tudes of suitors while awaiting the return of her missing husband, Odysseus—fully
dressed, casually choosing from three nude men who languidly pose with penises pro-
truding: all to impress her and win the vote!
The hold of the aesthetic norm of female beauty rarely waned; European painters
were obsessed with the motif of the reclining, receptive nude female body. With
Manet’s famous 1863 depiction of “Olympia” (a mythological excuse to present yet
another prostitute), white female beauty was strategically emphasized, reinforced by
reducing the black servant to a foil for the white body—on white sheets—for the viewer
to enjoy (Figure 11.8). The black woman who serves the sex worker who serves the
paying customer is doubly marginalized.
Woman’s essential nature is to seduce and destroy; thus, it is better to control her
in advance, in a harem or brothel under the watchful eye of male supervision, to be
punished—even by death—as in The Death of Sardanapalus by Delacroix (Figure 11.9).
A nude woman begs for mercy, to be spared by Assyrian King Sardanapalus who—
once he learned that he was faced with military defeat—ordered his possessions
destroyed and concubines murdered before immolating himself. These women are
chattel: conveniently disposable.
The tradition continued into the twentieth century with Pablo Picasso exhibiting
the bodies of prostitutes with faces hidden behind African masks (Les Demoiselles
d’Avignon) and Willem de Kooning’s infamous series of women depicted as grimacing
Figure 11.5 Masaccio (Maso di San Giovanni) (1401–28). Expulsion from Paradise. Brancacci
Chapel, S. Maria del Carmine, Florence, Italy.
Scala/Art Resource, NY.
Figure 11.6 Titian (Tiziano Vecellio) (c.1488–1576). Venus of Urbino. 1538. Oil on canvas.
46 7/8 × 65 in. (119 × 165 cm). Photo: Nicola Lorusso. Location: Uffizi, Florence, Italy.
Alinari/Art Resource, NY.
she-monsters with vagina dentata. Many imaginative variations on the theme of

female beauty, sex, and power are traceable through the centuries, with nuanced com-
plications of the meaning of “woman” often expanded to include the monstrous—the
devouring female (the beauty of Medusa, vampires, the fatal woman) and the castrat-
ing female (Judith beheading Holofernes, Salome with the head of John the Baptist,
Samson and Delilah). Art historian Edward Lucie-Smith offers a rationale why male
artists responsible for the long history of perceptual sexism—easily discerned in paint-
ings and sculpture—routinely sought to showcase a woman’s submission to man, to
depict her subjection, to paint her violated innocence; in effect, she was not a full per-
son with rights and agency, but rather a sexual object to be used and discarded.
The prostitute was enslaved, not by chains and through the exercise of physical force, but by the
need to find the money to live. From the sexual point of view—the woman’s total submission to
the man—the consequences were the same. (Lucie-Smith 1991, 28)
Repeated in nineteenth-century scenes of cabarets and brothels were sexualized

images of women of low class and ill repute (Toulouse-Lautrec, Degas) and the depic-
tion of “exotic” women of color as slaves became the “fashionable orientalism” of a
woman in chains such as Hiram Power’s The Greek Slave (1847) and Jean-Léon
Gérôme’s A Roman Slave Market (c.1884). The nude slave, on display to be bought and
Figure 11.7 Cranach, Lucas the Elder (1472–1553). The Judgment of Paris. Possibly c.1528. Oil
on wood, 40 1/8 × 28 in. (101.9 × 71.1 cm). Rogers Fund, 1928 (28.221).
Photo: Schecter Lee. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY, USA.
© The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image source: Art Resource, NY.
Figure 11.8 Edouard Manet (1832–83). Olympia. 1863. Oil on canvas, 130.5 × 190.0 cm. Inv.:
RF 644. Photo: Patrice Schmidt. Musée d’Orsay, Paris, France.
© RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, NY
sold, is eroticized to increase her value on the Roman sales block as well as in the eyes
of the nineteenth-century art buyer of Gérôme’s canvas (Figure 11.10).
Recent popular culture offers its own lessons for young people today. Even those
unfamiliar with the history of art can recognize the motif of the reclining female body
in popular publications like Playboy, the annual Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, com-
mercial advertising, and film. Jean Kilbourne (2010) has archived a veritable inventory
of such images over the past forty years in her filmed lectures, most recently titled
Killing Us Softly 4: Advertising’s Image of Women, where she critiques the $250 billion a
year advertising industry in the United States as selling a pattern of “damaging gender
stereotypes—images and messages that too often reinforce unrealistic, and unhealthy,
perceptions of beauty, perfection, and sexuality”:
The average American is exposed to over 3,000 ads every single day and will spend two years
of his or her life watching television commercials . . . Ads sell more than products. They sell
values, images, and concepts of love, sexuality, success, and normalcy. They tell us who we are
and who we should be. (Kilbourne 2010)
Consider her findings: ads that promote eating disorders and a concept of ideal female
beauty that is flawless, unattainable, and visually manipulated through airbrushing,
cosmetics, and computer retouching (adding to the booming cosmetic industry
involving surgery, Botox, liposuction, and breast implants); ads that eroticize violence,
Figure 11.9 Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863). Death of Sardanapalus (Ashurbanipal 668–627

bce). Detail. 1827. Oil on canvas, 392 × 496 cm. RF2346. Photo: Angèle Dequier. Musée du
Louvre, Paris, France.
© Musée du Louvre, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais/Angèle Dequier/Art Resource, NY.
Figure 11.10 Jean-Léon Gérôme. A Roman Slave Market, c.1884. Oil on canvas. The Walters
Art Museum, Baltimore, MD. H: 25 1/4 × W: 22 ⅜ in. (64.1 × 56.9 cm); Framed H: 37 ⅜ × W:
35 × D: 7 ⅜ in. (94.93 × 88.9 × 18.73 cm).
portraying women in bondage, battered, dismembered, or murdered; ads that show

girls and grown women using body language that is passive and vulnerable, unlike the
more active and assertive poses of boys and men; ads that show increasingly younger
girls as innocent but sexy, virginal but experienced;6 advertising that is relentlessly
6
According to Kilbourne (2010), a 2007 American Psychological Association report concluded that
girls exposed to sexualized images from a young age are more prone to depression, eating disorders, and
low self-esteem. Young women’s sexual activity results in the United States having the highest rate of teen
pregnancy and the highest rates of sexually transmitted diseases in the developed world.
eterosexist with the portrayal of lesbians often coming from the world of pornogra-
h
phy. Numerous ads show only parts of women (no heads), or focus on only one part
(breasts), or turn women’s bodies into “things” that serve to dehumanize and objectify,
amid a climate in which there is widespread violence against women; black women, for
example, are often featured in jungle settings wearing leopard skins as if they were
exotic animals. Moreover, women of color are sold a prescription for the white ideal of
beauty that includes light skin, straight hair, and Caucasian features. Kilbourne con-
cludes that in spite of advances made by the women’s movement in the past forty years,
advertising’s image of “woman” has only gotten worse. A more recent film entitled Miss
Representation reinforces and updates the message that mainstream media offer a lim-
ited portrayal of women and girls in America (Newsom 2013).
Note how this negative evidence from popular culture correlates with “the image prob-
lem” cited in 2003 by Knight and Giuliano (2003) whereby broadcasters overcompensated
for mannish or lesbian female athletes by deliberately heterosexualizing them; it also
meshes with the results of Messner and Cooky’s study (2010) on how popular sports
media fail to present girls and young women with an adequate array of positive examples
of female athleticism and autonomy. By and large we, as a collective society of consumers,
have learned from philosophers, artists, advertisers, film, the Internet, and the sports
industry (both amateur and professional) that gender identity is best configured by men
who control the crafting and parameters of the category of “woman” by prescribing ideal
female appearance, sexual behavior, limited agency, and range of acceptable gender roles.
In effect, our culture has consistently perpetuated aesthetic norms of beauty and feminin-
ity for young women that have misled girls into fearing a deviation from the norm; they
have learned to refrain from being too strong, too fast, too muscular, too competitive, and
if they do compete in sports, to signal their adherence to the norm by wearing pink rib-
bons or appearing nude in Playboy or “The Body Issue” of ESPN The Magazine (2014).7
Perceptual sexism is a learned attitude of beliefs, expectations, and values that fosters sus-
picion of strong female athletes who compete or excel.
11.3 Understanding Perceptual Sexism and Reversing

the Status Quo
Either explicitly or subtly, we learn on many levels—in the history of art, in advertis-
ing, in women’s participation in sport—that new and unique athletic beauty at the elite
7
Athletes pose in new and unique ways in these magazines, as well as in more traditional poses. As early
as 2004, Playboy (September) boasted “12 pages of spectacular nudes” that included Olympians Fanni
Juhasz (pole vault, Hungary), Amy Acuff (two-time Olympian, high jump, United States), Susan Tiedtke-
Green (three-time Olympian, long jump, Germany), Katie Vermeulen (1,500 meters, Canada), Haley Clark
(backstroke, United States), and Mary Sauer (pole vault, United States). Begun in 2009, ESPN The Magazine
annually publishes “The Body Issue” with sports stars that have included international soccer star and
Olympic gold medalist Hope Solo, Olympic gymnast Alicia Sacramone, snowboarder Gretchen Bleiler, and
tennis star Venus Williams <http://espn.go.com/espn/bodyissue> (accessed November 2015).
level can bring a risk of internalized pressure to conform to the misleading norms of
Western, white female beauty. Given the history of sex-testing and accusations of gen-
der misidentity, female athletes who compete in IOC or IAAF events are inescapably
judged to be eligible for competition based, at least in part, on their external appear-
ance: whether or not it sufficiently matches our bias-laden category of “woman.”
Perceptual sexism influences our judgment; we learn to respond viscerally to the sight
of an ultra-fit, flat-chested, short-haired, muscular body as male, or at least, as not fully
female.
Susan Cahn (2011) cites research on the process of gender attribution, such as the
early work of Suzanne Kessler and Wendy McKenna who asked test-takers to label a
number of figures they saw as either male or female based on looking at only bodily
cues. The researchers concluded: “Gender attribution is, for the most part, genital
attribution: and genital attribution is essentially penis attribution” (Kessler and
McKenna 1978, 153). However, given that we rarely see the genitals of someone we
view, we attribute gender nonetheless—rightly or wrongly—based on “cultural geni-
tals,” defined as the genital that “is assumed to exist and which, it is believed, should be
there” (1978, 154). As Cahn summarizes, “We look at secondary sex characteristics
like facial expression, movement, dress, accessories, and paralinguistic behaviors:
posture, spitting, or snorting, etc.,” and we prioritize male cues so that a single male
cue might signal maleness whereas a female cue, by itself, does not signal femaleness
(2011, 43). This suggests that the “only sign of femaleness is an absence of male cues”
resulting in the conclusion that “to be male is to ‘have’ something and to be female is to
‘not have’ it” (Kessler and McKenna 1978, 150, 153). (Was Aristotle on to something?)
Most importantly, the researchers found, once a gender assignment had been made, it
stuck; it affected every perception and interpretation of visual data to follow. In other
words, “once a gender attribution is made, people filter almost any information, no
matter how dissonant, through the male or female lens they first select” (Cahn 2011,
44). This is important data that provides yet another layer to the contextual apparatus
by which we see, judge, and draw conclusions about gender identifications on a routine
basis. It should not be surprising that in looking at an elite athlete’s body, particularly if
it appears ambiguous and confuses our beliefs, expectations, and perceptual catego-
ries, we succumb to the temptation to misidentify gender. Recall that beginning in
2004 at the Olympic Games in Athens, both the IAAF and IOC came to rely upon
“suspicion-based” medical examinations for questionable cases brought forward by
officials or competitors. Suspicion springs from the perceptual sexism that narrowly
defines “real” women as Western, white, and heterosexual; nothing could be further
from this norm than African, black, with the appearance of what is judged by means of
perceptual sexism as mannish or masculine physicality. But gender misidentity con-
tinues to cause problems in 2015, perhaps even more so than in Semenya’s case in 2009,
leading us to ask, what can be done to remedy the indignation caused to elite athletes
who, through no fault of their own, are suspected of being intersexed or look too mas-
culine? Should we allow the governing bodies to proceed as they will? We believe a
better choice is to craft a strategy for how such narrow categories can be recognized
and corrected.
Although useful in its day, the ethnomethodological approach proposed by Kessler
and McKenna has been surpassed by recent scholarship on the psychology of percep-
tion that provides a wealth of empirical data on how perception plays a previously
unrecognized, and special, interactive role with cognition in our mental life. Let us
consider several insights that might help us understand perception in order to elimi-
nate future injustice done to female athletes who come under suspicion for gender
misidentity: (1) the role of bias in categorical perception, (2) the perception and inter-
pretation of ambiguous figures, and (3) the education of perception.
(1) According to Robert L. Goldstone and Andrew T. Hendrickson (2009, 69), cat-
egorical perception (CP) is “the phenomenon by which the categories possessed by an
observer influence the observer’s perception,” and “CP is an important phenomenon
in cognitive science because it involves the interplay between humans’ higher-level
conceptual systems and their lower-level perceptual systems.” Far from being sharply
delineated as scientists once believed, perception and cognition operate together, indi-
cating “permeability and bidirectional influence between these systems.” Humans
receive feedback that serves to alter future perception, making the process adaptive to
one’s needs. Perpetuating misleading aesthetic norms of beauty erroneously creates
biased categories of “female” and “male” by which we judge the physical appearance of
an elite athlete based on similarity to what we know and come to believe about that
category. Suspicion arises when dissimilarity presents us with a dissonance between
what we see and what we “know” about the category of “woman.” We are inclined to
question a problematic image of a strong, black, fast female athlete, and our suspicion,
in turn, affects subsequent sightings, replicating the doubt and thereby increasing the
number of requests for gender testing brought before the IOC and IAAF. It is impor-
tant to note that the ongoing process of perception and cognition serves to reinforce
one’s interests and needs:
Even if humans are not consciously and strategically changing the “wiring” of perceptual mod-
ules . . . these modules nonetheless adapt systematically at the time scales of tens to thousands
of repetitions to allow an organism to better make discriminations and categorizations that are
vital to its interests. (Goldstone, de Leeuw, and Landy 2015, 25)
In some cases, we respond automatically with biases even though the responses are
inappropriate (Lippa and Goldstone 2001). The cycle of repetition can be inter-
rupted, however, and we can recognize and acknowledge our misguided interests
and correct our biases. Changing one’s cognitive framework to affect categorical
perception depends upon one’s “need” to judge more fairly; a judge’s “needs” can be
altered to include more fairness to athletes and fewer discriminatory cases of mis-
taken identity.
(2) Second, psychological data isolates the difficulty of disambiguating faces and
figures that fail to conform to and confirm one’s existing categories and demonstrates
how prior perceptions affect the task. In relation to the image of the familiar but
ambiguous duck–rabbit drawing (Jastrow 1899), studies show that what one expects to
see can often affect what one does see. Also if a person has seen an image of a duck or
discussed a duck prior to seeing the ambiguous figure, she will see a duck (Medin,
Goldstone, and Gentner 1993). According to the perceptual construction hypothesis,
a viewer’s tendency to see an image one way or another depends upon the perceptual
organization, i.e. the context. This context may be within the stimulus pattern itself
and/or it may be provided by the subject’s beliefs, expectations, and values. We are not
passive receptors of external stimuli; rather, “Visual patterns are constructions created
by the perceiver, and the perception of patterns is heavily affected by experience and
expectations” (Brand 1998, 164).
Consider the consequences of this framework for the average person’s viewing of an
elite female athlete for the first time, or even upon repeated viewings. First of all, it
must be noted that we are not always in control of how we see ambiguous figures: as
duck or rabbit. At times we can intentionally switch between the two but often, no
matter how hard we try, we cannot. Remember also that our expectations are rarely
clear or explicit, even to ourselves, so that an observer might be incapable of enumerat-
ing the contents of her “mental set” that influences the interpretation of the visual
stimuli she experiences. Therefore the strong possibility exists that repeated exposure
to images—indeed icons—of white heterosexual femininity from popular culture,
sports coverage, or from the history of art not only has a bearing on our cognitive pro-
cessing but also influences our deeply ingrained preconceptions and expectations of
the perception of a young African runner. Unless sports viewers, including members
of the IOC and IAAF, deliberately work against the ingrained predisposition to see
anyone who fails to fit stereotypes drawn from ideals of Western, white, heterosexual
femininity as not a “real woman,” then the interpretation of what they perceive may be
easily explained as the failure to disambiguate an ambiguous figure in any other way
than what they expect to see; a female athlete can only be a white heterosexual woman.
Anything else is a man or, at the very least, a male contender.
Interestingly, one cannot see an ambiguous figure both ways at once, as contempo-
rary philosophers of perception acknowledge (Brand 1998; Jagnow 2011; Nanay 2010,
2011).8 What is important is that the interpretation of the visual stimuli of one’s per-
ception necessarily depends upon the cognitive makeup of the observer, the context in
which the perception takes place, and one’s immediate (or long-standing) experiences
prior to the perception. This leads us to the suggestion that one can actively eliminate
biases and re-educate one’s perceptual modules and cognitive framework to reject the
stereotype of “woman” for a more open sense of the term.
8
Brand (1998) contends that one can toggle back and forth between the aesthetic positions of “disinter-
ested attention” and “interested attention” in experiencing works of art, just as one can switch back and
forth when processing more simplistic duck–rabbit ambiguous figures.
(3) Given the interaction between perception and cognition, we are clearly capable
of educating our perceptual modules with clearer categories that help to avoid cases
of misidentity by disambiguating what we see (Goldstone, Landy, and Son 2010;
Goldstone, de Leeuw, and Landy 2015), but we must also realize that gender stereo-
types must be acknowledged and overcome, particularly when it comes to athletes.
Studies indicate that when we perceive the athletic accomplishments of men versus
women, we judge by means of a “shifting standards model” that diminishes the women
and elevates the men, indicating a pro-male bias; in sports where both men and women
compete, men are considered better athletes. This is akin to a double standard model,
but more complex, since it suggests that “group members are judged on stereotypic
dimensions with reference to the expectations associated with their particular cate-
gory membership” (Biernat and Vescio 2002, 66), yielding the additional result that
black women athletes are judged more athletic than white. Moreover, “the influence of
stereotypes and other heuristics is strongest when stimuli are ambiguous in nature”
(2002, 74). As researchers point out, “standard shifts occur readily, perhaps without
awareness” (2002, 74; see also Biernat 1995), thus making it more important to raise
awareness of internal biases and stereotypes that affect the process of disambiguating
difficult and unfamiliar faces and figures.
Given the intricate cognitive makeup, social meanings, and cultural patterns that
ground our perceptual experiences, it seems clear that it will take a significant amount
of change in our individual—and collective cognitive—consciousness to be more open
to blurred distinctions and boundaries between the two traditionally accepted gen-
ders. How might we improve the situation for beginning girls and ultimately elite
female athletes who—under these trying circumstances—still choose to compete?
In order to prevent recurring injustices, we propose some practical, realistic guide-
lines. First, we suggest a concept of “athletic identity” in light of some of the wording of
the International Bill of Gender Rights (IBGR), crafted in the mid-1990s:
All human beings have the right to control their bodies, which includes the right to change
their bodies cosmetically, chemically, or surgically, so as to express a self-defined gender iden-
tity. (International Conference on Transgender Law and Employment Policy 1995)
What if the IAAF and IOC were not allowed to set themselves up as judges of gender
identity, nor allowed to enforce sex testing, but rather exercised tolerance in permit-
ting all self-defined gendered athletes to compete, whether they claimed themselves to
be male, female, or intersexed? In other words, what if we imagined one’s gender iden-
tity to be tied only tangentially, not essentially, to one’s mix of body (DNA, hormones,
genitals, and secondary sex characteristics), environment, and lived experiences—on
a straight line continuum between the two extremes of male and female? Better yet, as
Anne Fausto-Sterling suggests, instead of two intersecting continua—one of sex and
one of gender—imagine them “best conceptualized as points in a multidimensional
space,” as is recommended by the new sex nomenclature from the North American
Task Force on Intersexuality (NATFI) which is endorsed by specialists in surgery,

endocrinology, psychology, ethics, psychiatry, genetics, and public health, as well as
intersex patient-advocate groups:
One proposal under consideration replaces the current system with emotionally neutral termi-
nology that emphasizes developmental processes rather than preconceived gender categories.
For example, Type I intersexes develop out of anomalous virilizing influences; Type II result
from some interruption of virilization; and in Type III intersexes the gonads themselves may
not have developed in the expected fashion. (Fausto-Sterling 2000, 22–3)
Fausto-Sterling has not only abandoned her earlier (controversial) suggestion of five
sexes (Fausto-Sterling 1993), but calls for the abandonment of any reference to physi-
cal genitals in favor of the term “cultural genitals” plus the elimination of the category
of “gender” from official documents such as driver’s licenses and passports in favor of
more visible attributes such as height, build, eye color, and less visible fingerprints
and genetic profiles (Fausto-Sterling 2000; Kessler and McKenna 1978). This leads
her to advocate the International Bill of Gender Rights, and in her book, Sex/Gender:
Biology in a Social World, to consider a genderless future (she is doubtful this will
happen any time soon) beyond chromosomal, fetal hormonal, and genital sex to a
focus on brain sex, based on one’s motor activities which help to shape the brain
through lived experiences (Fausto-Sterling 2012, 120–1). Her ultimate guideline
is that “bodies are not bounded”—as advocated in the IBGR—and further study is
needed for us to understand “how sensory, emotional, and motor experience becomes
embodied” (2012, 123).
Other advocates for discarding the restriction of sex to two categories—the binary
model—indicate a “more nuanced view” of sex in terms of a “spectrum” whereby sex is
redefined as ranging from cases of typical male (XY chromosomes) to typical female
(XX) with a host of options in between indicating intersex conditions, differences, or
disorders of sex development (DSDs) (Ainsworth 2015). They recommend that if one
wants to know what a person’s gender identity is, one should just ask. Unfortunately,
legal categories in most countries are still restrictive but the push is on; at least one
American university has recognized a third gender: neutral (Scelfo 2015).
The notion of “athletic identity”—distinct from sex identity or gender identity—
might include an athlete’s statistics from competition gleaned from their actual
records, but also allow for a loose form of multi-gender (mixed) competition, even if
not on the running track or playing field, simply by comparing numbers. The absence
of a scientific or even quantitative system of athletic gender distinction and achieve-
ment appears, at our current level of technology and aesthetic mix, to make a fair sys-
tem seem otherwise impossible. To perpetuate the notion of an athletic binary
allocation of gender clearly is neither scientifically warranted nor socially just, given
the diverse gender characteristics of the elite athlete. More seriously, for the IOC and
the IAAF to perpetuate a system by which any ill-founded suspicions of any person—
especially an athlete’s own competitors—can become the basis for intrusive and
demeaning sex testing, is immoral and violates principles of both fair competition and
medical ethics.
To process the visualization of Semenya’s body as male is to preclude the important
relational qualities of her 18-year-old body in the year 2009 by prejudging and quickly
lapsing into misidentity. Against the backdrop of white oppressive practices of abuse
toward female African bodies, along with the psychological anguish and torment such
behavior caused, it is necessary to view Semenya’s female body as an object of self-
sculpted beauty and atypical physical strength and speed, and to accord it the respect
and dignity it deserves as a unique athletic identity. It should not be ogled, prodded,
and poked by gynecologists, endocrinologists, and psychologists who are empowered
by the IAAF and the IOC. To view her body as an aesthetic—athletic—object requires
wide berth by resisting the temptation to force her into a bounded category of male or
female, masculine or feminine. Since, however, elite sports competition seems mired
in a binary gendered system regardless of justice considerations, if an athlete identifies
as a woman, she should be allowed to compete as a woman. Moreover, let us learn to
appreciate her body as the new beauty of elite athletic competition without implying
she is a man. This will take time on the part of spectators and judges, but it is an
endeavor that allows the beauty of the sport feminist to resist the perpetuation of
aesthetic norms of traditional white beauty while empowering herself through

self-identification and agency.
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PA RT I V
Practice
12
Body Aesthetics and the
Cultivation of Moral Virtues
Yuriko Saito
Moral Significance of Body Aesthetics

How do we act respectfully toward others? At the very minimum, we should not violate
their rights by injuring them and their property, restricting their freedom, or slandering
their reputation.1 Carrying out these negative duties toward others is necessary, but not
sufficient in respecting them. Sometimes we should fulfill positive duties toward them,
such as helping them when they are in dire need. Ignoring their plea for help may not
violate their negative right but it will be a sign of our disrespect, particularly when help-
ing them does not place an unreasonably heavy burden on us.
An ethics of care places emphasis on this latter kind of action. The virtues of care and
consideration for others are manifested in things we do for others, rather than or in
addition to refraining from certain actions. In fact, for many of us our everyday moral
concerns seem to be directed more toward caring for a sick neighbor and bailing out a
friend from a bad situation than refraining from violence like murder, rape, assault,
and theft. A person who never goes beyond not violating others’ rights is certainly
better than a murderer or a rapist, but seems morally deficient. Similarly, a society
where no egregiously immoral acts occur but neither do human interactions expres-
sive of care and respect is certainly preferable to the Hobbesian state of nature, but
I doubt our lives there will be satisfying or fulfilling.2
However, what does not get sufficient attention is the fact that the moral character of
an action motivated by care and respect is largely determined by the manner or the way
in which it is carried out. For example, Nel Noddings (1984, 9) observes that “I cannot
claim to care for my relative if my caretaking is perfunctory or grudging.” Similarly,
1
An earlier and much different version appears as “Bodily Aesthetics and the Cultivation of Moral
Virtues,” in New Essays in Japanese Aesthetics, ed. Minh Nguyen, forthcoming from Lexington Books.
I thank Arnold Berleant and Sherri Irvin for helpful suggestions regarding the writing and organization of
this piece.
2
Sarah Buss (1999, 799, 804) urges us to imagine what it is like to live in such a society.
226 Yuriko Saito
citing Seneca, Nancy Sherman (2005, 285) remarks that “we spoil kindness . . . if our
reluctance is betrayed in inappropriate ‘furrowed brows’ and ‘grudging words’ ” and
concludes that “playing the role of the good person . . . has to do with socially sensitive
behaviour—how we convey to others interest, empathy, respect, and thanks through
the emotional expressions we wear on our faces (or exhibit through our body language
and voices).” Even if I accomplish the goal of kindness and caring, say by taking a rela-
tive to the doctor, the way in which I carry out the action changes the nature of the act:
I can do so kindly and gently or spitefully and grudgingly.
The manner in which one carries out an action is often considered to be a matter of
etiquette, civility, and courtesy. Compared to the issues of justice and rights that have
grave social consequences, manners are considered superficial and trivial, not worthy
of the same kind of attention. When writing Why Manners Matter, the author Lucinda
Holdforth (2009, 3) admits “it’s hard not to wonder if, among the grand and awe-in-
spiring issues of our day, manners must come a long way down the list,” when consid-
ering that “the planet is hotting up, the Middle East is imploding, terrorists plot our
demise and much of Africa is starving.” Furthermore, manners and etiquette often
raise the “questions of social hierarchy and identity politics” and they have historically
been used as a gender- or class-specific means of discrimination and exclusion, as well
as constructing gender stereotypes (Laverty 2009, 229).3
However, these seemingly trivial aspects of our daily lives go a long way toward
determining the quality of life as well as the quality of the society. As Karen Stohr
observes, “rules of polite behavior play a far more important role in helping us live out
our moral commitments than most people realize” (2012, 166) and “morality is incom-
plete unless we attend to its manifestation in ordinary human interaction” (2012, 167).
This is because, as Sherman observes, courteous interactions in our everyday lives are
“the ways in which we acknowledge others as worthy of respect” (2005, 273) and “the
communication of those appearances is a part of the glue of human fellowship” (2005,
282).4 Holdforth (2009, 4–5) also reminds us that “manners are a civil mode of human
interaction” and “they matter because they represent an optimal means to preserve our
own dignity and the dignity of others.”
What is relevant to my discussion here is that the way in which we interact with
others consists of aesthetic factors: handling of objects, tone of voice, facial expres-
sions, and bodily movements. I am here using the term “aesthetic” not in the honorific
sense usually associated with beauty or artistic excellence. Rather, I am referring to
sensory perception in the original Greek sense as well as Alexander Gottlieb
3
Gender stereotyping based upon manners seems well entrenched in the Western philosophical tradi-
tion. David Hume (1957, 88), for example, declares that “an effeminate behaviour in a man, a rough man-
ner in a woman … are ugly because unsuitable to each character, and different from the qualities which we
expect in the sexes … The disproportions hurt the eye, and convey a disagreeable sentiment to the specta-
tors, the source of blame and disapprobation.” Friedrich Schiller (1882, 204) claims that grace is found
more in women and dignity more in men.
4
In addition to what has already been cited, see Calhoun (2000).
the Cultivation of Moral Virtues 227
Baumgarten’s use in Aesthetica. According to Sherman, the list of what constitutes the
“aesthetic of character” (2005, 272) or the “aesthetic of morals” (2005, 281) includes
“how we appear to others as conveyed through formal manners and decorum, as well
as manner in the wider sense of personal bearing and outward attitude” (2005, 272),
specifically “voices, faces, and gestures” (2005, 281). Sarah Buss (1999, 814) also asks
us to “think of the significance we attribute to the subtlest gestures (the curl of the lip,
the raised eyebrows), the slightest differences in vocal tone.” Referring to Confucianism,
Nicholas F. Gier (2001, 288, emphasis added) points out that “bad manners are wrong
not because they are immoral but because they lack aesthetic order: they are inelegant,
coarse, or worse” and “Confucian li [the good] makes no distinction between manners
and morality, so an aesthetic standard rules for all of its actions.” The specifics of what
bodily gestures express courtesy or rudeness of course vary from situation to situation
and, more importantly, from culture to culture, giving rise to all-too-familiar cases of
cultural faux pas. However, the most important point for my purpose here is that the
aesthetic dimension of the way in which we carry out an action can determine its moral
character.
One may claim that performing an outward aesthetic expression of care and respect
is simply putting on an act, not necessarily indicative of the person’s virtuous character
or the moral value of an action. Particularly when there is a set of socially prescribed
rules of proper behavior, one could simply go through the motions to appear as if one is
a caring, thoughtful person. Or worse, such an appearance may disguise a moral defi-
ciency. It is possible that “as a ‘pretense, or semblance’ of respect and good will, civility
makes despicable individuals appear likable, and it conceals uninterested, unflattering,
and even contemptuous appraisals of others” (Laverty 2009, 228). A cruel person can
act with graceful manners.5 Even within the Japanese tradition known for its emphasis
on the outward display of moral virtues, as I shall show in the next section, “it may well
be true in some instances that this caring for others is less heartfelt and more an uneas-
iness about being seen not to care” (Carter 2008, 138).
It is true that outward appearance of respect and care does not guarantee a virtuous
character. However, admitting this does not refute the relevance of such an appearance
as a way of embodying moral virtues. Respect and care for my neighbor cannot be
conveyed by merely accomplishing a certain task like taking her to a doctor, although it
is better than refusing to do so. The kindness of my action is compromised or even
nullified if I act in a grudging and spiteful way, even if I insist that I did show my care by
driving her. As Cheshire Calhoun states, “the function of civility . . . is to communicate
basic moral attitudes of respect, tolerance, and considerateness” (2000, 259) and “civil-
ity always involves a display of respect, tolerance, or considerateness” (2000, 255).
Friedrich Schiller’s discussion of grace is instructive here. He identifies grace with
willful movements expressive of “moral sentiments” (1882, 171) and distinguishes it
from beauty derived from natural endowments or what he calls “beauty of frame”
5
Indeed, there is a Japanese term for this: ingin burei (慇懃無礼).
228 Yuriko Saito
(1882, 187) or “architectonic beauty” (1882, 193).6 He also distinguishes it from a

purposeful action which is executed to accomplish a certain task, such as receiving
an object.
When I extend the arm to seize an object, I execute, in truth, an intention, and the movement
I make is determined in general by the end that I have in view; but in what way does my arm
approach the object? how far do the other parts of my body follow this impulsion? What will
be the degree of slowness or of the rapidity of the movement? What amount of force shall
I employ? This is a calculation of which my will, at the instant, takes no account, and in conse-
quence there is a something left to the discretion of nature. (Schiller 1882, 184)
Grabbing an object from a friend in an indifferent, nonchalant manner is very different

from receiving it gratefully and appreciatively. The specific body movements such as
how far I extend my arm and how speedily I grasp the object determine the character
of the attitude and action, and Schiller’s point is that they are located somewhere in
between intentional action and natural movement.
In the next section, I present various examples of the bodily movements primarily
from the Japanese cultural tradition and practice, some of which share remarkable sim-
ilarity with Schiller’s example. I find that the Japanese cultural sensibility is particularly
suited for illuminating the relationship between body aesthetics and moral significance.
However, my intention is not so much to introduce Japanese body aesthetics. Instead,
I want to explore the aesthetic expression and cultivation of moral virtues in the
Japanese tradition which can be applicable beyond this specific cultural border.
Respect for Humans Expressed Aesthetically

Lucinda Holdforth characterizes those who have not only manners but “beautiful
manners” as “the ones who . . . gently draw out the shy stranger, or quietly close the win-
dow against the cold draft, or tactfully change the dangerous topic, or subtly reorganize
the seating so that the slightly deaf person is able to hear better” (2009, 149, emphasis
added). Although the emphasis is mine, she makes it clear that the manner of carrying
out each action determines the beauty of the action. If these actions are done roughly,
loudly, tactlessly, and blatantly, the beauty of the action diminishes considerably or
disappears altogether.
Let me first take one of Holdforth’s examples: the mundane act of closing a window.
Consider the behavior of a man who leaves a lady’s chamber after a night of love-
making described by Sei Shōnagon (清少納言), a court lady of eleventh-century
Japan. Though separated from our life in time and cultural context, her assessment of
the man’s act and ultimately his character should ring a bell. Here are some examples
of “hateful,” “charmless,” “improper,” “distasteful,” and “distressing” behavior:
6
See Schiller (1882, 193) for Grace expressive of moral sentiments and (1882, 173) for Grace distin-
guished from nature.
He is so flurried, in fact, that upon leaving he bangs into something with his hat. Most hateful!
It is annoying too when he lifts up the Iyo blind that hangs at the entrance of the room, then
lets it fall with a great rattle. If it is a head-blind, things are still worse, for being more solid it
makes a terrible noise when it is dropped. There is no excuse for such carelessness . . . When he
jumps out of bed, scurries about the room, tightly fastens his trouser-sash, rolls up the sleeves
of his Court cloak, over-robe, or hunting costume, stuffs his belongings into the breast of
his robe and then briskly secures the outer sash—one really begins to hate him. (Sei Shōnagon
1982, 49–50)
It is noteworthy that her attention is focused not only on the man’s hurried and careless
movements but also the various noises created by his actions. His behavior at the time
of leave-taking, according to her, is such an important indicator of his worthiness as a
lover that she declares that “one’s attachment to a man depends largely on the elegance
of his leave-taking” (Sei Shōnagon 1982, 49). This commotion-filled leave-taking is
contrasted with an elegant one:
A good lover will behave as elegantly at dawn as at any other time. He drags himself out of bed
with a look of dismay on his face. . . . Once up, he does not instantly pull on his trousers. Instead
he comes close to the lady and whispers whatever was left unsaid during the night. Even when
he is dressed, he still lingers, vaguely pretending to be fastening his sash. Presently he raises the
lattice, and the two lovers stand together by the side door while he tells her how he dreads the
coming day, which will keep them apart; then he slips away. (Sei Shōnagon 1982, 49)
Although her assessment of each man concerns his worthiness as a lover, the ultimate
criterion is a moral one. That is, what is “hateful” about banging and rustling noises is
the fact that such annoying sounds were created by a man who is preoccupied by what
he must/wants to do, regardless of their effects on the woman. In short, he is not being
considerate. His bumbling and commotion-causing actions indicate his neglect, thus
disrespect, for the woman who must put up with the flurry of movements and unto-
ward noise. That is, even if unwittingly, he is forcing a negative aesthetic experience on
her through his body movements and the sounds he makes. If he is considerate, he
would behave more gently, carefully, and mindfully which would result in less or no
noise, as in carefully lifting up a head blind and opening a sliding door.
Even a head-blind does not make any noise if one lifts it up gently on entering and leaving the
room; the same applies to sliding-doors. If one’s movements are rough, even a paper door will
bend and resonate when opened; but, if one lifts the door a little while pushing it, there need be
no sound. (Sei Shōnagon 1982, 46, emphasis added)
One’s bodily movement accompanied by a loud noise and a hurried and fidgety motion
communicates thoughtlessness or indifference, while a gentle and elegant bodily
movement implies a caring and respectful attitude. How many of us are annoyed, and
sometimes angered, by the sound of a door being slammed? Every parent (myself
included!) who has dealt with a disgruntled teenage child, I am sure, is familiar with
the feeling. Even if my request of closing the door was honored and the task was
accomplished, such a way of closing the door can hardly be characterized as being
230 Yuriko Saito
respectful in satisfying my request. The virtues of care and thoughtfulness or lack

thereof are expressed aesthetically through bodily actions and the sensory impressions
they create.7
Another mundane everyday act regards serving and eating food. One can serve
food mindlessly and carelessly by heaping a mound of food on a plate and thrusting it
in front of the person eating, typical of a cafeteria-type of place. Such serving style,
though understandably necessitated by various constraints and requirements like
serving many people as speedily as possible, cannot help but give an impression of an
uncaring and impersonal attitude. Compare it with another way of serving in which
each food item is carefully arranged for the most pleasing impression and put in front
of the eating guest slowly and gently. Even if it is the same food, the latter way of serving
makes it appear more inviting and appetizing, partly because we appreciate the server’s
care taken in honoring our experience of being served.8
At the same time, our manner of eating can embody various moral attitudes.
Particularly if the food is presented with care, unlike the previously mentioned institu-
tionalized food wantonly served, it will be considered both inelegant and disrespectful
if we gobble up the food without taking time and care to savor its taste and texture.
Furthermore, a Japanese author commenting on eating etiquette discourages guests
from digging some items from the bottom of an arrangement out of respect for the
cook who took care in preparing a beautiful presentation.9 It is also expected that the
unappetizing remnants left on the plate, such as fish tail, head, and bones, should be
collected neatly together. The care taken in preparing food requires reciprocal care in
eating. That food preparation and eating is a particularly apt venue for embodying a
human relationship seems to transcend cultural borders. A contemporary French
writer, for example, points out that “the relationship that one maintains with one’s
body and with others is read, translated into visible acts, across the interest and care
given to meals” (Giard 1998, 191).10
Similar other-regarding considerations expressed by certain bodily movements
underlie Zen priests’ training in serving and eating food. Zen Buddhism denies any
hierarchy among various activities for their worthiness as a vehicle for enlightenment.
To underline this egalitarian view on various activities, Zen puts a particular emphasis
on the importance of mundane activities, such as washing one’s face, cleaning the
space, cooking, serving food, and eating. Whatever activity one undertakes, one has to
do it mindfully and respectfully. Part of the mindfulness and respect must be directed
7
Of course the dictum of “ought implies can” applies here. If the design of the door is such that it auto-
matically closes shut with a loud noise with even a little push, our assessment of the act of closing the door
will be different. If I am the one who closed the door with a bang, I would feel horrible for making such a
racket as if to express disrespect.
8
A possible complication here is that sometimes rough serving of food adds to the ambience of the
restaurant, as is typically the case in a Chinese restaurant serving dim sum.
9
These specifics are culled from Shiotsuki (1983).
10
The title of the essay itself, “Doing Cooking,” indicates the emphasis Giard places on the act of cook-
ing rather than the product of cooking.
toward other people, whether they be cooks, servers, or eating companions. Dōgen
(道元, 1200–53), arguably the most influential Zen priest in Japan, left extensive rules
regarding the manner of serving food and eating required of Zen trainees. For exam-
ple, when serving, “the rice must be served carefully and never in a hurry for, if the
serving is hurried, they who receive the food will be flustered; it must not be served
slowly, however, for then the recipients will become tired” (Dōgen 1992a, 158). When
eating, one must assume the correct posture, hold the bowl and use chopsticks prop-
erly, and begin eating at the right time. In addition, “when the food has been received,
it must not be consumed greedily” (Dōgen 1992a, 158).11 One has to take time and
carefully pick up each morsel to savor its taste and texture rather than devouring the
food. These painstakingly detailed rules are all guided by being mindful and showing
respect for the cooks, servers, and one’s eating companions. The other-regarding con-
siderations are explicitly indicated by the following rules with which I believe we can
identify even today: “fruit seeds and other similar waste must be put in a place where it
will give no offence to others—a good place being on the lacquered table top in front of
the bowl, slightly hidden by the bowl’s rim—others must never be allowed to become
disgusted by such a sight” (Dōgen 1992a, 161, emphasis added).
The Japanese tea ceremony established in the sixteenth century crystallizes the
attention to other-regarding aesthetics. Some aesthetic decisions are directed toward
the choice and placement of the various objects used in the ceremony. Other aesthetic
considerations guide bodily movements of both the host and the guest with almost
excruciating specificity. For example, the host opens the sliding door to the tea room
slowly and carefully to allow enough time to indicate his entrance without causing
alarm or commotion. The host also handles implements for making tea in a gentle and
elegant manner, such as by “tak[ing] care not to jar the observer by tapping the tea
scoop too sharply on the bowl’s rim” (Surak 2013, 52). The guest cradles the tea bowl
with both hands to honor the bowl and tea inside. Through beautifully and economi-
cally choreographed actions, both the host and the guest practice conveying a respect-
ful, considerate, gentle, caring, and pleasant impression to each other. This mutual
respect should linger even after the tea ceremony is over as the guest leaves the tea hut
through the garden path. The guest should not converse loudly with other guests but
rather turn around to see the host, who in turn sees them off until they are out of sight
before returning to the tea hut for clean-up.12
All of these rules aim to cultivate a morally sensitive way of carrying out an action.
One nineteenth-century tea practitioner, also a noted statesman, remarks: “the host
11
The same rule appears in the tea ceremony discussed later. Kristin Surak (2013, 51) explains: “Not to
appear greedy when the drink is set out, the guest waits until the moment the host removes her hand from
the tea bowl—but not so long as to appear inattentive—before moving to retrieve the tea. And when the
bowl is returned, the host, careful not to convey a sense of rushing things, waits until the guest is again
seated before she collects the bowl.”
12
Ii Naosuke, Sayu Ikkaishū (Collection of Tea Meetings), finished in 1858, cited by Murai (1979, 169).
Details of required bodily movement can also be found in Sen (1965) and in Surak (2013, chapter 1).
232 Yuriko Saito
should attend to every detail to express his consideration and kindness so that there
will not be any mishaps, and the guest in turn should recognize that the occasion is one
time only and show sincere appreciation for the thorough hospitality given by the
host.”13 A contemporary Japanese sociologist also states: “the host’s care and consider-
ation is expressed through artistry of motion and gesture” and “the guests were expected
to reciprocate through their unspoken appreciation of the host’s hospitality and con-
cern for their comfort” (Ikegami 2005, 226, emphasis added). Ultimately, “the deepest
human communication took place through silent aesthetic communion” (Ikegami
2005, 227, emphasis added).14 Although her interest lies in how the aesthetics of the tea
ceremony contributed to the formation of cultural nationalism in Japan, Kristin Surak
also points out that the formalism involved in prescribed body movements in the tea
ceremony is “one softened by the stylistics of action, marked by a restrained grace in
movement, attention to rhythmic intervals, and vigilant consideration of others” (Surak
2013, 47, emphasis added).
Finally, consider the act of opening a gift, which is part of daily life in a gift-giving
culture like Japan. Particularly if the gift is thoughtfully packaged, consider what dif-
ferent attitude would be expressed if the receiver were to rip apart the package in order
to get to the item fast, compared to opening it carefully to minimize the unsightly rem-
nant of torn pieces of paper and string as well as the sound of tearing papers. Even if
unintended, the former act cannot help but convey a failure to recognize and appreci-
ate the thoughtful and considerate preparation by the giver, particularly because
Japanese packaging is known for embodying a “deep respect for material and process,
and respect too for the intended user” as well as “care for the object inside, and there-
fore care for the recipient of the object” (Hendry 1993, 63, emphasis added). The action
and resultant unpleasant noise and unsightly aftermath of the ripped-up packaging
material inevitably indicate a deficiency in both aesthetic and moral sensibilities.
In all these examples, different moral attitudes are expressed aesthetically (in the
classificatory sense) through certain bodily movements even if the same task is accom-
plished: closing the door, serving food and tea, drinking tea, eating food, and receiving
the gift item. The specifics of what constitutes those bodily actions expressive of respect
or the opposite vary, as they are context- and culture-dependent. For example, all my
examples of communicating care and respect through a particular body movement are
based upon what I take to be an ordinary context in which taking time and acting gen-
tly in opening a door, bidding farewell, eating food, or opening a package do not cause
a problem. However, in certain contexts, extenuating circumstances may, for example,
require accomplishing these tasks as swiftly as possible, and in such cases the most
thoughtful way of acting will have to be adjusted and modified. The important point is
13
Ii’s Sayu Ikkaishū cited by Murai (1979, 169). My translation.
14
It is instructive that meals and snacks prepared and served by the host are sometimes referred to as
furumai (振舞), which also means dance-like movement, or chisō (馳走) or gochisō (御馳走), which liter-
ally means running around (to prepare food with utmost consideration). See Murai (1979, 165).
that, despite variable specifics, bodily movements often reflect whether the agent is
considering his or her action’s effect on other people.
Respect for Non-Humans Expressed Aesthetically

Other-regarding concern expressed through bodily actions can also be directed
toward non-human others, such as the item inside a package, stones to be used in
garden-making, flowers to be arranged, and ingredients of the food served. For example,

consider Robert Carter’s description of how a master potter, Hamada Shōji,15 designated
in 1955 as a Living National Treasure of Japan by the Japanese government, handled a
pottery piece:
He would sit down on the floor . . . carefully unwrap a piece . . . We would talk about each piece,
touch each piece in order to get the feel of it, and then he would slowly and carefully rewrap it,
for this, too, was part of the journey of appreciation that he had taken me on . . . for Hamada, the
rewrapping, the care of each piece, was part of being drenched in the beauty of each object. It
was done as a sign of respect and appreciation. (Carter 2008, 124)
Carter also observes how “landscape gardening brings about a gentleness in the
designer, the builders, and the caretakers” (2008, 70, emphasis added). The gentle atti-
tude is reflected in the treatment of materials through certain bodily movements. He
reports on the making of a garden for the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Ottawa
by a contemporary master gardener, Masuno Shunmyo:
The work began on a cold, rainy day, and as the sand and rocks were being positioned by the
Japanese crew under Masuno’s detailed instructions, the Canadian workers were surprised by
the way in which the Japanese crew entered and left the actual site by walking in the footsteps
of a single pathway, which had already been established in the mud on the site, rather than
tracking mud all over the newly placed sand, or on or around the rocks, keeping tracking and
foreign markings to a minimum. It was a degree of caring and concern for the state and clean-
liness of the site that was itself quite foreign to the Canadians on hand. (Carter 2008, 61,
emphasis added)
A similarly respectful attitude informs the art of flower arrangement. “The tender way
in which the materials for flower arrangements are handled” (Carter 2008, 102,
emphasis added) includes carefully unwrapping the bundle of flowers to be used, gen-
tly bending and twisting when shaping the branches and stems, and neatly arranging
unused remnants of flowers for disposal. Ultimately, the aim of flower arrangement is
“not just to teach techniques and basic skills, but to convey attitudes which would
apply both to flower arranging and to living one’s life generally” (Carter 2008, 108–9).
Finally, consider again Dōgen’s instructions regarding food. Whether cooking or
eating, one must be respectful not only of the other humans involved in the process but
15
A contemporary Japanese person’s name is given in the Japanese order, last name first and first name
second, except when referring to an author whose work appears in English.
234 Yuriko Saito
also of the ingredients. One’s attitude should not change whether one is dealing with an
expensive luxury item or an ordinary, inexpensive material:
When you prepare food, do not see with ordinary eyes and do not think with ordinary
mind . . . do not arouse disdainful mind when you prepare a broth of wild grasses; do not arouse
joyful mind when you prepare a fine cream soup. Where there is no discrimination, how can
there be distaste? Thus, do not be careless even when you work with poor materials, and sustain
your efforts even when you have excellent materials. Never change your attitude according to
the materials. (Dōgen 1992b, 282)
These expressions of respect, care, and gentleness shown toward inanimate objects,
such as rocks, flowers, and cooking ingredients, may strike one versed in the main-
stream Western ethical tradition as falling outside of moral discourse because these
objects don’t have a “good of their own” which gets damaged by soiling or rough han-
dling. According to this view, if they deserve to be treated with care, it is because of the
indirect effects of our actions on other humans, such as the object’s owner or prospec-
tive appreciators. However, I agree with Simon James (2011, 392) who argues that such
an attitude is morally relevant in the sense that “part of what makes someone morally
good or virtuous is the fact that she will tend to exhibit . . . a ‘delicacy’ towards her sur-
roundings, taking care not to damage the things with which she deals, even when those
things are neither sentient nor alive.” There is something odd about a person, if s/he
exists, who may act morally and caringly toward sentient beings while treating
non-sentient objects callously or even violently with no good reason even when such
an action does not indirectly harm other sentient beings.16
In light of the prevalent discussion of aesthetics focusing on memorable experiences
of art and beauty, these mundane examples from daily life may strike many as being
trivial and unworthy of aesthetics’ attention. However, lacking the same intensity felt
with art and beauty does not render these experiences insignificant. Instead, I would
argue that their very invisibility on the conventional aesthetic radar makes it all the
more important to illuminate their presence in our life and the power they have to affect
quality of life and shape society. Body aesthetics thus expands the scope of mainstream
Western aesthetic discourse that has been focused on art and memorable experience.
Practicing Body Aesthetics

There is another way in which body aesthetics expands the scope of aesthetic dis-
course. It is to liberate aesthetics’ almost exclusive attention to spectator-based
16
Stan Godlovitch (1994) discusses the moral wrongness of destroying inanimate natural objects, such
as ice, even when there is no possible and future harm to sentient beings. His reason for its wrongness is
different from James’ reason in that he believes the proper human attitude toward nature, sentient or
non-sentient, has to be acentric. It is unclear whether his view extends to artifacts. The issue here also calls
into question whether “delicacy” or “gentleness” must be expressed toward artifacts which are created
specifically for evil purposes, such as a weapon of mass destruction or a torture device.
accounts. Friedrich Nietzsche challenged this model. He points out that “our aesthet-
ics have hitherto . . . only formulated the experiences of what is beautiful, from the
point of view of the receivers in art. In the whole of philosophy hitherto the artist has
been lacking” (1968d, 429, emphasis added). He specifically mentions Kant in this
regard: “Kant, like all philosophers, instead of envisaging the aesthetic problem from
the point of view of the artist (the creator), considered art and the beautiful purely
from that of the ‘spectator’ ” (1968c, 539, emphasis added). Nietzsche’s own aesthetics
is rather concerned with how one becomes an artist, creator, or poet of one’s own life by
giving it “an aesthetic justification” (1974, 164, emphasis added).17 As such, “in man
creature and creator are united” (1968a, 344) and the person who fancies that “he is a
spectator and listener who has been placed before the great visual and acoustic specta-
cle that is life . . . overlooks that he himself is really the poet who keeps creating this life”
(1974, 241). Thus, for Nietzsche, the significance of aesthetics in our life is profound
because it provides a strategy to fashion a good life.
That the realm of inquiry in aesthetics is not limited to spectator-based experience
and judgment is also clear when considering the Japanese aesthetic tradition. The
Japanese aesthetic tradition is primarily constituted by practicing artists’ instructions
regarding their art medium, as observed by one commentator: “Japanese aestheti-
cians . . . have generally very little to say about the relationship between the work and
the audience, or about the nature of literary and art criticism” (Ueda 1967, 226).
Furthermore, in this tradition, what may at first appear to be a how-to manual for an
artistic practice turns out to be a discourse on how to live one’s life. Mostly Zen priests
or students of Zen Buddhism, Japanese art masters and their disciples all emphasize
selfless devotion, rigorous self-discipline, and constant practice in the chosen artistic
medium not only as a means to achieve artistic excellence but more importantly
as a way of experiencing enlightenment and self-fulfillment. Furthermore, such
self-discipline, whether toward Zen enlightenment, artistic mastery, or the good life,
requires bodily engagement and practice. Zazen (座禅), sitting and meditating, the
specific training method of the Sōtō (曹洞) sect of Zen Buddhism established by
Dōgen, engages both body and mind, where bodily engagement requires sitting still,
keeping an erect posture and breathing mindfully, and locating one’s center of gravity
in the middle of the abdomen.
As mentioned before, the Zen bodily training goes beyond Zazen to encompass all
daily activities, ranging from cooking and eating to cleaning and face-washing. From
his own experience at a Zen monastery, Richard Shusterman relates how his Roshi’s
instructions to the trainees were directed toward “the way we handled our bowls and
17
Similarly, “it is only as an aesthetic phenomenon that existence and the world are eternally justified”
(Nietzsche 1968b, 52, emphasis in original) and “existence and the world seem justified only as an aesthetic
phenomenon” (Nietzsche 1968b, 141, emphasis added). Specifically, “whatever it is, bad weather or good,
the loss of a friend, sickness, slander, the failure of some letter to arrive, the spraining of an ankle, a glance
into a shop, a counter-argument, the opening of a book, a dream, a fraud—either immediately or very soon
after it proves to be something that ‘must not be missing’ ” (Nietzsche 1974, 224, emphasis added).
236 Yuriko Saito
chopsticks, how we chewed and swallowed our food, how we passed food to our eating
companions” (2013, 30) by showing them “the aesthetically proper way to pick up and
put down one’s chopsticks and to hold one’s rice bowl and cup” (2013, 31). The goal is
to achieve “performative grace and thoughtful elegance” facilitated when each move-
ment is “executed and experienced as the focus of careful, mindful, loving attention”
(2013, 30). Zen bodily training contributes to cultivating an open-minded aesthetic
sensibility to recognize aesthetic values in diverse objects and qualities, as well as
mindful living by paying careful attention to things and surroundings.
Though her focus is not specifically on body aesthetics, Sherri Irvin argues for the
aesthetic dimension of ordinary experiences including scratching an itch, drinking
coffee, and petting her cat. The benefit of cultivating aesthetic sensibility toward these
mundane acts of daily life, she claims, is enriching one’s life: “insofar as we are led to
ignore [everyday experience] or regard it as unworthy of attention, we deprive our-
selves of a source of gratification,” and “if we attend to the aesthetic aspects of everyday
experience, our lives can come to seem more satisfying to us, even more profound”
(Irvin 2008, 41).
I agree that cultivating aesthetic sensibility regarding everyday objects and activities
contributes to living more mindfully and appreciatively, as well as encouraging a more
open-minded approach to objects and human affairs. However, there is a potential danger
in accounting for the value of practicing aesthetic mindfulness as self-improvement,
self-enrichment, and acting as an artist of one’s own life, unless its social ramifications
are also taken into account. Particularly with respect to practicing aesthetics through
specific body movements, we need to emphasize the social and interpersonal dimen-
sions, as the examples in the previous section have shown.18 The ultimate reason why it
is important to practice specific body movements is because it contributes to cultivat-
ing other-regarding moral virtues, for which self-improvement may be a necessary
step. As we have seen in Dōgen’s instructions regarding serving and eating food, the
concern with the specific body movements is directed toward how best to express one’s
respect and care for others. Through repeated practice, we are cultivating ourselves to
be a civic-minded member of a society who contributes to creating a humane environ-
ment respectful of other members’ dignity.
It is instructive that in the Japanese language, the written character for social disci-
pline or cultivation of manners, shitsuke (躾), is a Japanese invention which combines
two Chinese characters: body (身) and beauty (美).19 A significant part of learning
18
Irvin (2008) does go further by pointing out the specific moral benefit of deriving satisfaction and
pleasure from things and activities which incur no moral, social, or environmental cost. For example, we
can learn to take aesthetic pleasure in what we already have rather than participating in consumerism and
trying to keep up with the Joneses. Similarly, we can cultivate a new taste toward vegetarian food to pro-
mote health as well as reducing our support for a meat industry which is fraught with various environmen-
tal and moral problems. I will not pursue these claims as they do not pertain at least directly to body
aesthetics.
19
I owe this point regarding the Japanese character to Kazuo Inumaru. Ikegami also discusses this
character and further points out that the same term is also used for “basting” in sewing, which is a prelim-
inary rough sewing to put the fabric’s shaping and folding in place to prepare it for the bona fide sewing.
proper behavior concerns body movements of daily activities such as opening and
closing a door, holding a cup, serving a drink, giving and receiving a name card, open-
ing a gift, and bowing, to name only a few. Shitsuke training requires that we practice
engaging in these acts gently, carefully, respectfully, and mindfully. If we act carelessly,
roughly, and with no regard to how the appearance and sound of our movements affect
others, our actions would appear not only inelegant but also disrespectful, even if it is
unintended and despite the fact that the task gets accomplished.20
The aesthetic appeal of an elegant body movement thus is not for the sake of aes-
thetic effect alone but more importantly offers a sensuous display of one’s other-
regarding considerations. Arnold Berleant’s notion of “social aesthetics” is instructive
here. His long-held aesthetics of engagement is an attempt to overcome modern
Western aesthetics’ deeply entrenched framework of subject–object separation as well
as a disembodied, disinterested spectator as the ideal agent for having an aesthetic
experience. One of the consequences of the aesthetics of engagement is that there is no
limit to what can inspire aesthetic engagement. He challenges the traditional aesthetic
discourse by “arguing that . . . disinterestedness confines appreciation to a state of
mind, that is, to a psychological attitude, and unduly excludes the somatic and social
dimensions of experience, thus directing aesthetic appreciation improperly” (Berleant
2010, 85, emphasis added). The “disinterested” attitude that is regarded as a require-
ment for an aesthetic experience and judgment also isolates aesthetic matters from
other human concerns. Interpersonal interactions and social situations comprise vari-
ous sensuous dimensions, giving rise to an aesthetic character, sometimes positive and
some other times negative, on the basis of characteristics (or lack thereof) such as
acceptance, respect for uniqueness, and reciprocity, among others. These characteris-
tics underlie our aesthetic engagement, but they also characterize moral relationships
between humans. Social aesthetics thus highlights “the essential relatedness of the
aesthetic and the social” (Berleant 2010, 7) and the fact that “ethical values lie at the
heart of social aesthetics” (2010, 95).
Thus conceived, social aesthetics necessarily leads to what may be called a more
“activist”-oriented aesthetics.21 That is, we cannot remain uninvolved, disinterested
spectators of a social situation by making an aesthetic judgment as distant observers.
Most of the time, we are active agents and take part in creating a social situation by
interacting with others. The preceding examples of body aesthetics indicate that we
This process may be compared to “training” a material such as a plant material to create a desired shape,
and the analogy extends to the training of the body so that it expresses moral virtues (Ikegami 2005, 344).
20
During the Edo period, various rules of etiquette involving bodily movements were established,
sometimes formally written as manuals and sometimes as townspeople’s cumulative wisdom referred to as
Edo Shigusa (Edo Way of Acting). For various written documents, see Ikegami’s (2005, 324–59) chapter on
“Hierarchical Civility and Beauty: Etiquette and Manners in Tokugawa Manuals.” For Edo Shigusa, specific
body movements are discussed in Iikura (2008).
21
I borrow the term “activist” aesthetics from Arnold Berleant’s characterization of Henry David
Thoreau’s nature aesthetics in his “Thoreau’s Aesthetics of Nature” presented at the 71st Annual Meeting of
the American Society for Aesthetics, 2013.
238 Yuriko Saito
need to practice body movements in daily life as a way of cultivating moral virtues,
thereby contributing to a civil discourse and humane society. That is, we cannot simply
study virtues or will ourselves to develop virtues. As Robert Carter (2008, 5) points
out, “correct ethical action most often grows out of concrete, physical training, or rep-
etition, and is best described as a cluster of attitudes about who one is in the world and
how to properly and effectively interact with others. Ethics is not a theoretical, intellec-
tual ‘meta’ search, but a way of walking (or being) in the world.” Similarly, Megan
Laverty (2009, 235) states, “civility is a learned behavior—individuals develop civility
by habitually practicing civil interactions.”
Various theories and cultural traditions testify to the fact that practicing these
movements will make civil behavior a kind of second nature so that it flows spontane-
ously as if one is acting purely on one’s inclination without recourse to rational deliber-
ation. Citing an empirical research result, Nancy Sherman concludes that “emotional
change can sometimes work from the outside in,” and “we nurse a change from the
outside in” (2005, 277) because “outward emotional demeanor can sometimes move
inward and effect deeper changes of attitude” (2005, 278).
Testimonies of Japanese art practitioners and those who had a proper shitsuke disci-
pline sufficiently demonstrate that, through repeated bodily engagement and practice,
artistic skills and respectful conduct tend to become internalized so that one becomes a
certain kind of person who, at the masterful stage, will “naturally” exhibit virtuous
qualities. The training of geisha best illustrates this process of internalizing outward
bodily training. A geisha, whose name literally means a person accomplished in the
arts, practices classical music, dance, and the art of entertaining guests. The arduous
physical regimen of all of these activities, according to a first-person account, is “as
much a discipline of the self as the technical mastery of an art form” and “if art is life for
a geisha, then her life must also become art.” Accordingly, “a geisha’s professional ideal
is to become so permeated with her art that everything she does is informed by it,
down to the way she walks, sits, and speaks” (Dalby 1983, 51).22 One may not achieve a
perfectly virtuous self, but that does not nullify the ideal of cultivating moral virtues
through bodily engagement both within and outside of artistic training.23
Such an ideal of a virtuous self underlies Schiller’s views on aesthetic education. In
response to Kantian ethics, Schiller argues for the crucial importance of the sensuous
and the emotive in our moral life, as he believes following the heart is necessary in
effecting an action dictated by reason. His vision of a moral person is not of someone
22
Geisha training of body and mind is analogous to artistic training in medieval performing arts.
Ikegami (2005, 345) points out that “the distinctive characteristic of medieval performing arts was their
emphasis on the relationship between a careful aesthetic training of the corporeal body and personal and
internal cultivation. It was through the repeated training of body movements in the performing arts that
unity of body and mind might be actualized.”
23
The point here is similar to Aldo Leopold’s (1977, 210) discussion of the land ethic. “We shall never
achieve harmony with land, any more than we shall achieve absolute justice or liberty for people. In these
higher aspirations the important thing is not to achieve, but to strive.” Eric Mullis (2007, 106) points out
that Confucius himself “is quite clear that the moral ideals that he espouses are difficult to attain.”
who simply carries out duties dictated by reason, often against his inclination; rather, it
is someone who has a “great soul when the moral sense has finished assuring itself of all
the affections, to the extent of abandoning without fear the direction of the senses to
the will, and never incurring the risk of finding himself in discord with its decisions”
(Schiller 1882, 203). Such a person acts with grace. For Schiller, grace is located
between willful movements instigated by rational deliberation and those activated by
natural endowment. However, his writing is not clear as to whether grace can be
acquired through practice or is something akin to an inborn gift, as indicated by the
following passage: “The true grace . . . ought always to be pure nature, that is to say,
involuntary (or at least appear to be so), to be graceful. The subject even ought not to
appear to know that it possesses grace” (Schiller 1882, 186).
In comparison, Confucianism is clear about the role of performing and practicing
aesthetic movements through arts and rituals. For example, Mencius teaches that:
sages literally “image” the virtues in their bodies and make even more evident the fusion of the
good, the elegant, and the beautiful. Learning li 禮 is essentially a “discipline of the body,” and
the literal meaning of teaching by examples (shenjiao 身教), which is to be preferred over
teaching by words (yanjiao 言教), means “body teaching.” (Gier 2001, 283)
When such training is successful, “the beauty of such a creation [of an elegant, harmo-
nious, and balanced soul] is reflected in the person’s demeanor as well as in her face,
limbs, and back” (Gier 2001, 292).24 While practicing and training imply intentional
activity and sustained effort, it is believed that such continuous devotion will help one
internalize the expression of virtues so that ultimately it becomes almost like one’s sec-
ond nature, where a virtuous action naturally and spontaneously follows. This ideal
state of a virtuous self is what Confucius describes himself as having achieved at the
age of seventy: “I could follow my heart’s desires without overstepping the bounds of
propriety” (Confucius 2003, 9).25
Conclusion
The aesthetic cultivation of virtues through practicing bodily movements is important
not only for self-improvement and enrichment of one’s life, but more importantly for
the social role it plays in the making of a good society. A good society promotes every-
one’s well-being, including civil rights, health, education, economic security, and
political participation. Another important ingredient is what some call “aesthetic
24
Speaking of the art of calligraphy as an example, Eric Mullis also emphasizes the moral and aesthetic
importance of “gestural communication” (2007, 103, 104) and points out that “the human body is at the
intersection of the moral and the aesthetic, as the ability to intelligently form habits enables one to become
both a good person and a good artist” (2007, 101).
25
The entire passage reads: “At fifteen, I set my mind upon learning; at thirty, I took my place in society;
at forty, I became free of doubts; at fifty, I understood Heaven’s Mandate; at sixty, my ear was attuned, and
at seventy, I could follow my heart’s desire without overstepping the bounds of propriety.”
240 Yuriko Saito
elfare” (Sepänmaa 1995, 15), a sensuous manifestation that our lived experience is

w
attended and responded to with care. We need an aesthetic verification that our expe-
rience matters, both in the physical environment and social interactions that take place
within. Care and thoughtfulness expressed through the kind of objects created and
arranged and the kind of actions executed in a certain manner define the nature of the
environment that surrounds us. The character of our environment cannot but affect
the quality of life and society. If our environment is good in all respects including civil,
respectful, and humane social intercourses expressed aesthetically, we are motivated
to pay it forward, so to speak, by encouraging ourselves to engage in caring actions for
others, whether human or non-human. In contrast, if we have no indication that our
experience is honored, we tend to become indifferent to others’ experience. As Sarah
Buss (1999, 803) notes, “when people treat one another rudely, they are less likely to
accommodate their actions to others, or even to believe that they ought to.” Such a
reaction is not conducive to developing civic virtues and moral sensibility.
The aesthetic dimension of our lives is thus not a frivolous triviality or decorative-
ness. It has an often unrecognized role to play in cultivating moral sensibility, which in
turn contributes to defining the quality of life and society. Self-improvement and
self-enrichment are certainly some of the benefits of aesthetically minded bodily activ-
ities. However, I believe that such values must be developed into civic virtues necessary
for a civil society. Ultimately, through bodily training and aesthetic expression of
respect and care for others, we are contributing to the world-making project. I main-
tain that, whether we recognize it or not, we humans are all implicated in the collective
and cumulative project of world-making. Not all of us are professional world-makers
like architects, designers, manufacturers, and politicians. But non-professionals among
us do participate in a world-making project as consumers with our purchasing deci-
sions, as residents with our management of environments, and as citizens with our
support for public policies and projects.26 Equally important are our interactions with
friends, neighbors, co-workers, and passersby, as well as non-human inhabitants of the
earth. Furthermore, the nature of those interactions is determined not only by what
gets done but also by how it gets done, and this latter issue belongs to body aesthetics.
A welcoming, comfortable, nurturing, as well as stimulating and engaging, physical
environment is not sufficient for a good life and good society if the human interactions
within it are cold, impersonal, disrespectful, and alienating.27
The world-making project thus must include nurturing courteous, civil, and
respectful human interactions. I have tried to argue that aesthetics has a crucial role to
play in facilitating such human interactions. What people experience in daily life
becomes a powerful, though subtle, vehicle for moral education, and it is facilitated by
aesthetically minded bodily engagement.
26
I explored these different ways in which all of us are implicated in the project of world-making in
Saito (2012).
27
However, it is also the case that the character of such a physical environment goes a long way toward
encouraging respectful, civil, and humane human interactions.
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13
White Embodied Gazing, the Black
Body as Disgust, and the Aesthetics
of Un-Suturing
George Yancy
Body aesthetics, when theorized through the racist historical sedimentation of the
white gaze, can yield insights into processes of racialized valence that have deep social,
ontological, and existential implications. To come to terms with this claim, I begin with
the white gaze in its active form, implicative of a site of white power, hegemony, and
privilege, one that comes replete with an assemblage of “knowledge” or a racist epis-
teme regarding the Black body.1 White gazing is a violent process. It is not an atomic act
or an inaugural event that captures, in an unmediated fashion, the bareness, as it were,
of “objects.” Indeed, white gazing is an historical achievement. In other words, white
gazing is a specific historical practice, socially collective and intersubjective, a process
that is dutifully maintained. Whether consciously or unconsciously enacted, white
1
The reader should note that when I refer to the “Black body,” I am privileging those Black bodies
that in some sense became “black” qua problematic as they moved across the middle passage. I am,
however, aware of the “terrain of Blackness” in terms of the changing landscape of Blackness, for exam-
ple Black African immigrants and their children. However, I point to the middle passage as the crucible
in terms of which Black identity is marked. It functions as that space of death, docility, amalgamation,
and resistance that is important to understanding Black people in North America. So, it becomes a central
existential and ontological motif through which I theorize what it means to be Black. Yet, it is important
to note that those bodies were scattered and not confined to North America. So, I think that it is impor-
tant to theorize the ways in which that oceanic experience shaped other Black bodies that were dispersed
throughout the world. As such, then, one must examine the different genealogies and phenomenological
configurations that speak not only to those bodies that were not enslaved in North America, though came
through the middle passage, but also speak to those Black bodies that did not arrive at their “destinies”
through the transatlantic slave trade at all. This raises important questions regarding the lived meaning
of “Blackness” and how Blackness is differentially defined diachronically and in terms of points of geo-
graphical origin. Furthermore, this raises questions about how Blackness is permeable and protean. This
also raises the issue of the meaning of 1619 and how Black identity and Black subjectivity can be errone-
ously tied to that moment in time, which then raises the issue of how a specific Black historical narrative
can function monolithically and thus exclude those Black bodies that don’t narrativize 1619 in the same
way or even at all.
244 George Yancy
gazing is an achievement that is synonymous with an accomplishment, that which is

the result of actions, deeds (pragma), practices.
By emphasizing the concept of achievement, the aim is also to belie the implication
that white gazing is somehow an ahistorical phenomenon. Rather, white gazing is a
deeply historical accretion, the result of white historical forces, values, assumptions,
circuits of desire, institutional structures, irrational fears, paranoia, and an assemblage
of “knowledge” that fundamentally configures what appears and the how of that
which appears. On this score, the white gaze involves the correlative constitution of a
racialized field (May 1993, 69) that normalizes the marking of Black bodies through a
relationship of white power. Hence, the discourse of achievement or accomplishment
vis-à-vis the white gaze or white gazing thematizes and thereby undercuts the
obfuscatory structure of whiteness, a structure that normalizes its practices.
Theorizing his racialized “white” skin tone, John Warren (2001, 462) argues, “The fact
of my whiteness is not accidental. Rather, my whiteness is an accomplishment of a
history of discursive, normalized moments that worked together to make me appear
this skin tone.” In stream with Warren’s argument regarding whiteness as a history of
discursive moments, while lecturing at conferences and teaching in classrooms I have
often asked white people to examine their racially white bodies in mirrors and to
think beyond the frame of that single visual moment, to read that visual moment
through the reality of a specifically configured socio-historical temporality, one that
is inextricably expressive of white supremacy, purity, privilege, and power. The
objective is to get them to enlarge their frame of reference, come to terms with the
ways in which their bodies are marked by a history that they did not create, but will
perpetuate in often banal ways. More importantly, socio-historical temporality
enlarges the meaning of that visual moment, revealing the fact that their white bodies
have racial meanings that they could not have were they to bracket out historical
temporality through a fictive and imaginary self that is an absolute law unto itself.
In this way, the past lives in their present bodies “just as in melody the first notes are
transformed by those which follow and are given a value they could not have had by
themselves” (Marcel 1952, 150).
In terms of a relevant Foucauldian conceptual register, the discourse of achievement
or accomplishment is consistent with genealogical inquiry, which attempts to uncover
that which obscures its origins. In short, a genealogical inquiry critiques hegemonic
orders that mask themselves as “natural processes,” thus demonstrating their contin-
gency and thereby their openness to transformation. Indeed, by emphasizing the his-
torical achievement of the white gaze, the notion of agency is preserved as the white
gaze is socio-historically constituted, that is, contingent, not ontologically fixed. In
terms of white gazing, when white bodies look out upon the world, they not only see
what has been put there for them to see, and see it in a specific way, but they cooperate,
consciously or unconsciously, with broader processes of normative and epistemic
accretion, in assisting to bring certain objects into view in particular configured ways.
My point here is that the white gaze is an embodied phenomenon, a mode of social
The Aesthetics of Un-Suturing 245
engagement, a form of practice that presupposes a thick, historical sedimentation or

encrustation of white supremacy. Again, however, as a site of historical practice, an
historical accomplishment, the white gaze is contingent and thereby open to be dis-
rupted, undone.
The process of white gazing might be said to be a species of attunement (stimmung)
that discloses as well as cancels. This process of gazing is not simply limited to the ocu-
lar sphere, but functions as a synecdoche that implicates white embodiment, more
generally. In this case, white embodiment, its expansions and contractions through
space vis-à-vis Black bodies or bodies of color, signals the white body’s complex reper-
toire of racial responsiveness. As Jean-Paul Sartre (1964, 13) notes, “the whiteness of
his skin was another look, condensed light. The white man—white because he was
man, white like daylight, white like truth, white like virtue.”
White embodiment is the site of whiteness as the transcendental norm: a norm that
takes itself to be fungible with “daylight,” “truth,” and “virtue.” Whiteness deems itself
un-raced and universal. Yet, these features of whiteness, along with their tropes, con-
stitute a lie; that lie is part of its structure. There is contained within whiteness another
lie, one that is dialectically linked to the brutalization, dehumanization, and violence
imposed upon Black bodies and bodies of color. That lie is that the Black body is night,
doom, darkness, and danger; it is deceptive and devious; it is a site of vice and moral
depravity. Hence, the meaning of whiteness, as universal, contains within itself an
obfuscated parasitism that reduces the Black body to a wretched particularity. It is this
sense of damned particularity that implies hierarchical difference, a form of difference
that is defined through the normative structure of whiteness that defines itself as
ontologically self-sufficient. It is precisely this sense of ontological self-sufficiency and
axiological universality that installs the Black body as ersatz, aesthetically deformed,
morally disabled (think here of the curse of Ham or Canaan), excessive, monstrous,
disgusting, that is, distasteful.
Lillian Smith, who wrote with courage and deep insight regarding the racist vitriol
within the southern United States, especially within the context of the pre-civil rights
movement, provides an insightful example of just how white embodiment has inher-
ited a history that resides in and through the white body, a white racist history that sat-
urates white modes of being. More accurately, whiteness as the transcendental norm is
the very expression of white embodied existence: orientation; modes of comportment,
style, emotion, aesthetic responses; feelings of threat, neuronal activity; the activation
of sweat glands, breathing patterns, heart rate, auditory and olfactory responses. In
short, whiteness is all the way down. Smith tells the story of a white church woman who
desired to break the racist segregationist taboo of eating with Black people. Smith
(1949, 148) writes, “Though her conscience was serene, and her enjoyment of this
association was real, yet she was seized by an acute nausea which disappeared only
when the meal was finished. She was too honest to attribute it to anything other than
anxiety welling up from the ‘bottom of her personality,’ as she expressed it, creeping
back from her childhood training.”
246 George Yancy
Kristina DuRocher also provides an example where this sort of white embodied
revulsive response was activated vis-à-vis Black bodies. DuRocher (2011, 169) notes
that Alice Harris Kester, the wife of Howard Kester, a prominent white preacher who
was influenced by the Social Gospel movement, “confronted one of the southern ‘sins,’
at a Negro Baptist Publishing House lunch. She tried to eat at the same table as African
Americans, but could not keep her food down, running home in tears.” Both white
women appear to be sincere in their efforts at political activism. Yet, their bodies
responded in ways contrary to their intentions. The former was hit with severe stom-
ach distress that dissipated only after she left the presence of those Black bodies. The
latter, literally, could not keep her food down. Given the white distorted imaginary
vis-à-vis the Black body, it is my sense that she perceived the Black bodies present as
“disgusting Black beasts,” “hyper-sexual animals,” sites of “uncleanliness,” “filth,”
“feces,” which are the antitheses of white normativity qua purity. In the language of
Frantz Fanon (1967, 111), it is as if both white women had already “sketched a his-
torico-racial schema” below their corporeal schemas. In the case of Alice, she gags,
retches, vomits up what the logics of her white embodiment refuse to endure through
what she sees and perhaps smells and hears. Indeed, perhaps her entire bodily senso-
rium reacts negatively to the “disgusting” and “revolting” Black body, eliciting a vis-
ceral white embodied response that is grounded within the historical sedimentation of
racist myths and representations. Yet, to puke because of the presence of the Black
body reveals a greater truth: it is “evidence” of a white corporeal contract, as it were,
that agrees not to concede that white racist mythopoetic constructions are products of
white fabulous (as in fable) embodied self-aggrandizement: smelly Negroes; hyper-
sexed Blacks; ugly baboons; coons; Black savages; and dirty niggers.
Dan Flory (2015, 80) notes that “famous nineteenth-century naturalist Louis
Agassiz had a ‘pronounced visceral revulsion’ to being in close proximity with blacks,
in spite of being opposed to slavery.” It was, after all, Immanuel Kant, the critical phi-
losopher par excellence, who said that “Negroes stink” (1997/1775, 46) and that they
have “no feeling beyond the trifling” (1997/1764, 49). In the former case, the Black
body is philosophically authorized by Kant as a site of putrefaction. In the latter case,
the Black body is philosophically authorized by him as devoid of the “feeling of the
beautiful and the sublime” (1997/1764, 49). Such white aesthetic sensibilities, fueled
by the distorted racist imago of the Black body in the white imaginary, are sites of vio-
lence. Cornel West (1993, 83) writes, “The myths offer distorted, dehumanized crea-
tures whose bodies—color of skin, shape of nose and lips, type of hair, size of hips—are
already distinguished from the white norm of beauty and whose feared sexual activi-
ties are deemed disgusting, dirty or funky and considered less acceptable.”2 Think here
of the tragic reality of the fictional protagonist Pecola Breedlove, in Toni Morrison’s
2
Of course, the reality here is that the same “disgusting” Black body also implicates a white libidinal
economy of desire.
(1970) The Bluest Eye,3 who, through a kind of racialized dysmorphia, came to hate her
Black body, wanting to be white at the expense of her own sanity. As Emmanuel
Levinas (1969, 21) writes, “But violence does not consist so much in injuring and anni-
hilating persons as in interrupting their continuity, making them play roles in which
they no longer recognize themselves, making them betray not only commitments but
their own substance, making them carry out actions that will destroy every possibility
for action.” James Baldwin (1985, 410) speaks directly to the problem of white racist
historical sedimentation, and a certain fabricated sense of white self-mastery, and
white atomic neoliberalism:
White man, hear me! History, as nearly no one seems to know, is not merely something to be
read. And it does not refer merely, or even principally, to the past. On the contrary, the great
force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously controlled by
it in many ways, and history is literally present in all that we do. It could scarcely be otherwise,
since it is to history that we owe our frames of reference, our identities, and our aspirations.
In the case of the two white women (or Louis Agassiz), it is not the case that they failed
to bracket epistemologically false beliefs. It was not as if either one was morally torn
regarding the ethics of racial oppression. In both cases, intentionality and ethical forti-
tude were of little help in terms of staving off the disruptions of the habituated white
body, a white body that is constituted within a white supremacist historical matrix that
is present in the white body’s modes of engagement. In other words, simply having a
serene conscience or having epistemologically correct beliefs made little or no differ-
ence in terms of the white body’s iterative “sociomoral disgust reactions” (Flory 2015,
85). Flory (2015, 80–1) notes:
In general, individuals who react thusly do not even know on a conscious level the character of
or reasons for their responses. Such reactions are primarily what we used to call “non-cognitive”;
that is, not an aware, rational choice, but rather a cognitively opaque response. Thus in the vast
majority of cases they are phenomenologically experienced as “automatic” rather than thought-
ful or reflective. Disgust, as a direct affect, is generally unmediated by ratiocinative thought
processes or explicit propositional content.4
It is precisely the white body as racially habituated vis-à-vis the Black body that
occludes the crucial instigation necessary for rupturing “racialized disgust”
(Flory 2015, 80). Yet, it is this racial and racist habituation that renders the feeling of
disgust “ ‘natural,’ which would serve to reinforce the presumed appropriateness of this
kind of [disgust] response” (Flory 2015, 80).
The Black body vis-à-vis the process of white gazing can assume all sorts of trans-
mogrified dimensions. Think here of the eleven iterative cries from 43-year-old Black
male Eric Garner after he was forced to the ground and before he was killed. White
3
I philosophically engage Morrison’s text in Yancy 2008, especially chapter 6.
4
For an extended philosophical commentary on whiteness as a site of psychic opacity, see Yancy 2015a,
especially chapter 6.
248 George Yancy
police officer Daniel Pantaleo put his left arm around Garner’s neck, while the other
police officers helped to wrestle him to the ground. While on the ground, Garner was
heard, at one point with his right hand showing with his palm out, pleading for help:
“I can’t breathe,” which was followed by ten additional cries. What did the white police
officers hear as Garner called out for help? What didn’t they hear? What couldn’t they
hear? Perhaps they heard nothing at all, perhaps unintelligible groans, perhaps gobble-
dygook. After all, he was allegedly engaged in criminal activity; he was perceived as the
ethically derelict, the big Black smelly beast in need of taming; a walking, talking King
Kong in New York City threatening the nation-building efforts of white police officers.
And like King Kong, he met his dreadful fate at the hands of white bodies. From the
perspective that I’m theorizing, Eric Garner was a site of disgust like a piece of meat
wedged prominently between one’s front teeth, hard on the eyes. We don’t want to
look, but we somehow must.
Garner, with his “I can’t breathe” cry of help, can be compared to 19-year-old Black
female Renisha McBride, who was shot in the face and killed by 55-year-old white
male Theodore Wafer on November 2, 2013, in Dearborn Heights, Michigan, as she
banged on his front door for help after being in a car accident. Innocent and unarmed,
McBride sought safety, a place of protection within what is demographically a pre-
dominantly white suburban space. And while it is unclear whether or not Wafer knew
that McBride was Black or female, we do know that his defense said that he saw a
“shadowy figure.”5 We also know that Wafer complained of “crime” and how his neigh-
borhood had become increasingly “dangerous” and how he had discovered “drug”
paraphernalia there.6 We also know that Wafer initially said that his shotgun had gone
off by accident, but later said that he defended himself because of the pounding at his
door. While he may not have seen that McBride was Black, the suggestive power of
racist and racial signifiers is present. “Crime,” “drugs,” and “danger” are racially coded
terms; their racial operational intelligibility is linked to a racial Manichean divide
where “shadowy figures,” “death,” “doom,” and “danger” reside, where Black bodies are
racially overdetermined. Joe Feagin (2010, 49) notes:
In the English language of the colonists, prior to the development of African American enslave-
ment, the word “white” had uses that were mostly positive, such as “gleaming brightly,” as for a
candle, while the word “black” had mostly negative meanings like “sooted.” The word “black”
had long been used by the residents of England metaphorically, to describe evil and the devil.
It was soon adopted by the early English colonists for the purpose of naming dark-skinned
Africans.
Examining the toxicity of deep cultural, racial semiotics, Frantz Fanon (1967, 189)
notes that “Satan is black, one talks of shadows, when one is dirty one is black—
5
<http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/unjustified-opening-arguments-heard-porch-shooting-
death-n162851> (accessed November 2015).
6
<http://legalinsurrection.com/2014/08/homeowner-takes-the-stand-in-detroit-front-porch-murder-
trial/> (accessed November 2015).
whether one is thinking of physical dirtiness or of moral dirtiness.” So, what did Wafer
“hear” as he was awakened from his sleep? It is important to note that Wafer’s
response—the feeling of threat, the eagerness to stand his ground, his white space,
moving to retrieve his shotgun, the urgency to eliminate the outside threat, perhaps
“contaminant,” opening the front door, and shooting through the actual closed and
locked screen door at the “shadowy figure”—is a deeply corporeal response, one that
white bodies enact through habituation, because of media saturation of Black stereo-
types. In other words, Wafer performs and perpetuates racial spatial logics, racial
affective logics, and racial judgmental logics; these logics constitute white modes of
being-in-the-world that reflect what Fanon (1967, 191) calls “the unreflected imposi-
tion of a culture.” Hortense Spillers (1997, 384) reminds us that as a Black woman she is
a “marked woman.” As McBride sought help, perhaps disorientated because of the car
crash, she was always already marked: a Black female body in the wrong place. Spillers
(1997, 384) further notes, “I describe a locus of confounded identities, a meeting
ground of investments and privations in the national treasury of rhetorical wealth. My
country needs me, and if I were not here, I would have to be invented.” On another day
and time, McBride might have been needed to be a “prostitute,” a “Welfare queen,” or a
“nappy-headed ho,”7 but on November 2, 2013, she was a “shadowy figure,” a spectral
sight, “a phantasmatic production” (Butler 1993, 18). She was shot and killed not
because she posed a real threat; she was shot in exchange for the robbery she never
committed, the physical violence she never caused, but which she is, by virtue of her
Blackness, always already about to commit or cause (Butler 1993, 19). What is impor-
tant to note is that were it up to Cheryl Carpenter, a defense attorney for Wafer, a post-
mortem racist narrative would have been invented to “prove” that McBride “was
aggressive. She was violent. She broke part of Mr. Wafer’s house.”8 Carpenter also
wanted to create a narrative based upon McBride’s text messages that would help to
“demonstrate” that her character was morally questionable by revealing her possession
of provocative photos and her use of apparent “slang” references to marijuana.9 Like
Eric Garner, McBride, through the white imaginary, was guilty and had to be taken
down. Both were part of a white America, a sham democracy, “whose state apparatus,
including judges, attorneys, ‘owners,’ ‘soul drivers,’ ‘overseers,’ and ‘men of God,’ appar-
ently colludes with a protocol of ‘search and destroy’ ” (Spillers 1997, 387).
Or think here of 17-year-old Black male Trayvon Martin who, on February 26, 2012,
after buying a juice and candy from a convenience store, was profiled, and epistemo-
logically totalized, by George Zimmerman, who decided to get out of his car and track
down Martin. Doing discursive violence to Martin’s body before the actual confrontation
7
<http://mediamatters.org/research/2007/04/04/imus-called-womens-basketball-team-nappy-
headed/138497> (accessed November 2015).
8
<http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/21/renisha-mcbride-shooting-trial-detroit> (accessed
November 2015).
9
<http://www.hngn.com/articles/34967/20140630/judge-blocks-renisha-mcbride-cellphone-pictures-
in-trial.htm> (accessed November 2015).
250 George Yancy
with Martin, Zimmerman said that he looked “suspicious,” was “up to no good” and
looked like he was “on drugs.” Notice how it is Zimmerman’s description (or, more
accurately, ascription) of Martin’s body that eats away at its somatic integrity and also
supplants Martin’s first-person understanding of himself. Zimmerman’s words, then,
not only violated Martin’s embodied-being-in-that-space of Sanford, Florida, but vio-
lated Martin’s epistemic integrity. As we know, Martin’s young Black body, because it
was “up to no good,” had to be controlled. As he innocently traversed the streets back
to be with his younger brother, with his juice and candy, he was not met by Thanatos,
whose touch of death is gentle. Rather, as by the Keres, who imposed violent and cruel
death on their victims, Martin’s young life was brutally taken; he was shot in the chest
by George Zimmerman whose touch was deadly and violent. When asked if he regret-
ted that he got out of his car to follow Martin, or regretted that he had a gun that night
or if there is anything that he would do differently retrospectively, Zimmerman’s
response was a resounding, “No.” In fact, like the “divine” teleological assumptions
undergirding the doctrine of manifest destiny, Zimmerman declared, “I feel that it was
all God’s plan.”10 In this case, Martin’s Black body was destined to be killed; he had it
coming. Like white colonizers, Zimmerman had a “divine” mission to fulfill—his job
was to exterminate, to unburden white America of one more problem, one more mis-
fortune, and one more nigger.
Garner, Martin, and McBride were sites of imminent disaster, calamitous, threaten-
ing like an astrological omen.11 After all, Garner was big and he was Black, an object
that offended the “civilizational” sensibilities/tastes of the white police officers. Like
Martin vis-à-vis Zimmerman,12 Garner was always already suspicious. Both Martin
and Garner were “out of place,” a blight that needed to be profiled and removed from
sight. Their bodies disrupted the harmony and symmetry of white space, functioning
as a shocking presence that had to be stopped; indeed, stopped dead. Think here also of
Jordan Davis who was killed by white male Michael David Dunn, who exercised his
whiteness within a public space to control and police what he called “thug music” or
“rap crap.” The Black young male bodies playing the aesthetically “cacophonous music”
did not have a right, from Dunn’s perspective, to express sonic freedom, taste, and their
own aesthetic agency. Then again, I guess that those Black young male bodies had “no
feeling beyond the trifling.” For Dunn, or so I would argue, rap music and those young
Black male bodies were interchangeable: both excessive, a needless surplus of sorts,
and, thereby, disposable. Once they are removed, symmetry returns, things are back as
they ought to be; one now feels good, corporeally unstressed, at ease.
When one thinks about the history of the Black body within white America, the
theme of racialized immobility is a salient one; it is a form of violence exercised
through the corporeal and spatial policing of the Black body. The history of slavery,
10
See <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZxpwb0UYuk> (accessed November 2015).
11
Thanks to Jane A. Gordon for helping me to think about the concept of disaster in this way.
12
And while it is true that Zimmerman is mixed race, I would argue that he internalized the logic of the
white gaze. The point here is that the white gaze is mobile.
Black codes, Jim Crow, white neighborhood covenants, lynching, and stop-and-frisk
are some of the ways in which the Black body’s agency has been militated against.
Davis and his friends exercised embodied agency when they refused to turn down
their music. Garner exercised his embodied agency when he told police officers, who
accused him of selling loose cigarettes, “I’m tired of this. This stops today!”13 However,
given white fear of Black embodied mobility, agency, and self-definition, which consti-
tutes a threat to white power, such agency undergoes a process of “transposition and
fabrication of dangerous intention” (Butler 1993, 21). This reversal of who constitutes
the perpetrator of danger is clear in the tragic case of Sandra Bland, a 28-year-old Black
woman who was stopped by white male trooper Brian Encinia in Prairie View, Texas,
on July 10, 2015. Bland, after being arrested, was mysteriously found dead in her jail
cell from an apparent suicide. While the investigation of the “suicide” is at the time of
this writing ongoing, what is clear to me is that Encinia exercised white panoptic sur-
veillance and state power/violence (see James 1996). As in the cases of Garner and
Davis, Bland was punished (and eventually died) for exercising her agential voice, for
taking a stand against white power and presumed white impunity when it comes to the
brutalization of Black bodies. What is clear from the dashcam video14 is that Bland
knew that she was being followed. Knowing this, she pulled over, apparently failing to
signal. Counterfactually, one is led to believe that Bland would have been alive today
had Encinia not pursued her while driving Black. Once stopped, she says, “You were
speeding up, tailing me.”15 When framed through the recent deaths of unarmed Black
men, women, and children by white police officers and their white proxies, one can
understand that Bland might change lanes. She no doubt felt intimidated and angry,
knowing that she was being followed though she had not done anything wrong. So, she
exercised agency by pulling over. Perhaps Encinia, through a racist episteme, already
knew that Bland was about to do something wrong. Given Encinia’s white epistemic
authority, he could “see” this. Butler (1993, 17) notes, “The visual field is not neutral to
the question of race; it is itself a racial formation, an episteme, hegemonic and force-
ful.” Encinia’s asking Bland “What’s wrong?” and “You okay?” sounds more like an
imputation of guilt than concern. Those questions seem to function as part of an even-
tual discovery of what he already knows. Understandably, Bland is upset because she
feels as if she was put into a situation for which she did not ask, even if it is true that she
failed to signal. Bland tells Encinia as much after he says that she seems really irritated.
She says, “I am. I really am. I feel like it’s crap what I’m getting a ticket for. I was getting
out of your way. You were speeding up, tailing me, so I move over and you stop me.
13
<http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2014/dec/04/i-cant-breathe-eric-garner-chokehold-death-
video> (accessed November 2015).
14
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/the-deeper-meaning-in-the-sandra-bland-video-
that-has-so-many-deflated/2015/07/25/5fb47db8-30e4-11e5-8353-1215475949f4_story.html> (accessed
November 2015).
15
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/sandra-bland-arrest-transcript_55b03a88e4b0a9b94853b1f1>
(assessed November 2015).
252 George Yancy
So yeah, I am a little irritated, but that doesn’t stop you from giving me a ticket.” If it is
true that white people have created a world in which their understanding is expressly
thwarted, then Encinia is living in a state of profound white bad faith. Yet, this is how
white power functions; it lies to itself. Encinia was following closely a Black woman
who was minding her own business, and excited, we are told, about a new job. Encinia
appears to live in a world in which the brutal history of white male treatment of Black
women was nonexistent. Yet, the history of whiteness, its sedimentation, created the
conditions for what would ensue. After checking her driver’s license, Encinia returns
to Bland’s car and says, “Okay, ma’am.” From what we discover later, Encinia was going
to give Bland a warning. So, why didn’t he give the warning and let her go? My conten-
tion is that he was already angered by her agency, her freedom to express how she felt
angered by his actions. She was not the problem; he was. It was her lack of silence that
insulted his white male and white state authority. After all, the history of white suprem-
acy is a history of silencing Black voices—some having their tongues cut from their
months. Thus, the silencing is not only hegemonic, but perverse and sadistic. Framing
this silence vis-à-vis anger, Audre Lorde (2007, 129) writes, “Women of color in amer-
ica [sic] have grown up within a symphony of anger, at being silenced, at being uncho-
sen, at knowing that when we survive, it is in spite of a world that takes for granted our
lack of humanness, and which hates our very existence outside of its service.” With
white state authority and arrogance spilling from his lips, Encinia asks, “You mind put-
ting out your cigarette, please? If you don’t mind?” Bland, laying claim to her spatiality
and embodied freedom within her own car, says, “I’m in my car, why do I have to put
out my cigarette?” Encinia then gives a “lawful order,” “Well, you can step on out now,”
one that is inextricably linked to Bland’s direct exercise of agency. In short, Encinia,
angered by this Black woman’s agency and defiance of white male power and, by
extension, the hegemony of white state power, is able to express and simultaneously
obfuscate his frustrated white male megalomania through the declaration of a lawful
order. This provides the grounds for lawful arrest, but reframes and distorts the narra-
tive sequence that led to the lawful order. Any resistance on the part of Bland, who is
painfully aware of how the events actually unfolded and who is grounded by her own
epistemic authority, will now constitute “aggression” and “violence” against Encinia
and the state, which helps to construct the racist assumption that the Black female
body needs to be placed under control, in need of white discipline because of its natu-
ral proclivity toward ire. Refusing to follow orders that are really the result of Encinia’s
white male authority being challenged, he threatens to light her up with a stun gun, and
drag her from her car. After getting out of the car, Bland accuses him of slamming her
head to the ground, something that is outside the purview of the dashcam. When
Bland complains of having epilepsy, Encinia says, “Good. Good,” implying that he
would not give a damn if Bland had an epileptic seizure as a result of her head being
slammed to the ground. This insensitivity is reminiscent of the shooting death of
44-year-old Black male Eric Harris on April 2, 2015. He was shot in the back, while on
the ground, by 73-year-old Reserve Deputy Robert Bates, who said that he was reaching
for his Taser and unintentionally shot Harris with his regular gun. As Harris realizes
that he has been shot, he cries out, “Oh my God. I’m losing my breath.” One of the
white male police officers shouts, “Fuck your breath!”16 Butler (2006, 33) notes,
“Certain lives will be highly protected, and the abrogation of their claims to sanctity
will be sufficient to mobilize the forces of war. Other lives will not find such fast and
furious support and will not even qualify as ‘grievable’. ”
Bland had a right to be where she was; she had a right to speak her frustration into
existence; she had a right to be angry; she had a right to continue smoking her ciga-
rette. She had a right to and an obligation to pull from the history of Black women who
have refused and continue to refuse silence and injustice. Bland’s voice and her demand
for respect were denied. Encinia failed or refused to understand how white suprema-
cist history, power, and privilege structured his encounter with Bland; he failed to
understand how his white body was the site of a particular legacy, a site of specific
white regulatory values and perceptual habits. He did not “see” or “hear” Bland on her
terms, thus placing her epistemic authority under erasure. Bland’s life did not matter.
There was no recognition of Bland’s alterity as the site of an opportunity for Encinia to
engage his whiteness differently, to recognize the promise of the beauty obtainable by
relating to a fellow human being with respect.
Returning to the tragic moments of Eric Garner’s socio-existential plight, his cry, his
call, is intelligible within the framework of a relational ontology. “I can’t breathe” is a
call for help, a crying out to others, a call that says, “Please hear me.” It implicates the white
other. “I can’t breathe” challenges white perceptual practices, ones that have become
sutured, held intact, seemingly impregnable. Like Encinia, the white police officers at
the scene have seemingly closed off the possibility of entering into battle with their
historically created white selves (Baldwin 1985, 410). Garner’s cries for help were
absorbed into an “established [white] ontology” (Butler 2006, 33). To have heard his
cries should have solicited (etymologically, to disturb) an urgent response from the
police. To hear pounding on one’s door at three in the morning does not ipso facto sig-
nify danger. The meaning of the pounding isn’t predetermined, but open for interpre-
tation, deferred through the workings of a different moral imagination. The pounding
can also function as an invitation, a call to respond to a desperate Black teenager, a
stranger in the early morning, a fragile soul in search of help. Hers was a frantic plea for
help. Exposed to the will of another, she sought out a “neighbor,” someone who might
have the will to dwell near her; someone who might respect her alterity; someone who
might courageously ask, “Are you in danger?” But Wafer had nothing more than death
for McBride—the silencing of another Black life. Similarly, to see Trayvon Martin as a
young Black boy traversing with effort through the street, after realizing that he was
being watched, profiled, and surveilled, would require something more from
16
<http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/apr/12/video-shows-tulsa-police-pursuing-and-shooting-
man-killed-in-alleged-mistake> (accessed November 2015).
254 George Yancy
Zimmerman. But Zimmerman had nothing more than death for Martin—the silen
cing of another Black life. To hear the so-called rap crap differently, and to see those
young Black males as exercising their aesthetic sensibilities, and not as “thugs” with
crude musical tastes, would require more from Dunn. But Dunn had nothing more
than death for Davis—the silencing of another Black life. Bearing upon their white
bodies is effective white history, white systemic interpellative forces, white implicit
alliances, white discursive regimes, white iterative processes of habituation, and white
power and privilege. Baldwin (1985, 410) argues that “it is with great pain and terror”
that one begins to realize that history has shaped, in this case, those white police
officers, and those white self-appointed protectors of all things white and pure. It is
with great pain and terror that they will come to understand that they have inherited
and continue to perpetuate their white frames of reference. Yet, those white bodies
(Daniel Pantaleo, George Zimmerman, Michael David Dunn, Theodore Wafer, and
Brian Encinia) avoided that great pain and terror.17 I would argue that they remained
sutured; sewn up and sealed, unable or unwilling to understand their relationship to
white effective history; to understand the ways in which they have already been dis-
possessed by history, which already presupposes sociality and therefore vulnerability.
More accurately, they fled from (covered over) their vulnerability; they refused to
come to terms with the un-sutured selves that they are: corporeal selves that are always
already exposed and beyond mastery. If only trooper Encinia had entered into battle
against his historically created white self and challenged the racist epistemic and axio-
logical frame of reference through which he encountered Bland, he would have possi-
bly been hailed from a different place, “undone” by having truly heard Bland’s anger, a
form of justified anger rooted in a white racist system that he helps to perpetuate. The
violence done to Bland should not be restricted to what happened after she exited her
car, but also located at the moment when Encinia initially follows her. It is the violence
toward and violation of her integrity that is also at issue here; she was made to suffer the
consequences of a racist imago of the Black body ingrained in four centuries of this
country’s existence. “What’s wrong?” and “You okay?” did not bespeak concern, did
not communicate an un-suturing. Encinia was not prepared to be moved by the epis-
temic testimony of a Black woman being pursued within a country that legally sanc-
tions the thesis that Black lives don’t matter—unless, of course, they serve the interests
and desires of white power.
The terms “sutured” and “un-sutured,” as I deploy them here, are not only practices
that respectively occlude change and engender change, but they are also indicative of
what it means to be a human subject at all, that is, indicative of what it means to be
homo possibilitas (un-sutured) and to be thrown within the context of historical factic-
ity (sutured). In other words, to be a subject is indicative of what it means to be “sub-
jected to” or “constituted by,” and indicative of what it means to resist certain forms
of being “subjected to,” “constituted by” or interpellated. I would argue that this is
This small section was taken, with some minor revisions, from Yancy 2015b.
17
precisely our ontology, one that speaks to who and what we are as human beings—we
are both constituted (sutured) and un-constituted (un-sutured) realities. Yet, histori-
cally, there will be ways in which we are specifically constituted (sutured), and there
will be specific ways in which we might find it necessary to challenge (un-suture with
respect to) that form of specific constitution—none of which is determined a priori. As
Judith Butler (2005, 18) argues, “From the outset, what relation the self will take to
itself, how it will craft itself in response to an injunction [a mode of interpellation, his-
torical structuring], how it will form itself, and what labor it will perform upon itself is
a challenge, if not an open question.” As noted earlier, Baldwin argues that history is
literally present in all that we do. He is specifically addressing white people within the
context of white supremacist history. Given this history, what white people will do is
indeed an open question. Also, what labor the white self will perform upon itself is a
challenge. Baldwin points in the direction of a process of laboring that attempts to dis-
rupt or “undo” white supremacist history. White modes of being-in-the-world, white
bodily forms of comportment, white ways of occupying space, and white gazes, are
precisely the ways in which white supremacist and hegemonic power is literally present
in all that white people do. Baldwin theorizes a space for white people to battle with
their historically contingent, created white selves. He provides us with a specific frame-
work that will shape the relation that the white self will take to itself. The discourse of
battle presupposes processes of rupture, agency, and the capacity to resist (etymologi-
cally, to take a stand against) certain processes of white racist interpellation.
In short, while it is true that whiteness is a site of power, an assemblage of “knowl-
edge,” and an effective history, it does not follow that white people are determined or
devoid of agency qua white, that there is no space for counter-iterative, white anti-racist
practices. In other words, there is a space for the practice of un-suturing, where this is
both a site of a specific form of anti-racist practice and a way of being all too human,
always already a site of the given (facticity) and the taken (possibility)—a self that is not
created ex nihilo, but a self that both understands its historical facticity and can “engage
in an aesthetics of the self that maintains a critical relation to existing [problematic and
heteronomous] norms” (Butler 2005, 17). On this score, then, when it comes to Daniel
Pantaleo, George Zimmerman, Michael David Dunn, Theodore Wafer, and Brian
Encinia, there was no effort on their part to embody (or recognize) a radically different
aesthetics of dwelling, of being-in-the-world, of being near, a different way or style of
somatic comportment, sensing, feeling, emoting, perceiving—an aesthetics that real-
izes the futility of total closure, where the body, in this case, the white body, is already
exposed to the touch of the Black body; indeed, where they are already touching.
While the aesthetics of un-suturing, which here refers to a form of practice, sounds
counter-intuitive, especially as aesthetics has come to denote and connote that which
is beautiful, I argue that it is precisely in being un-sutured, exposed, vulnerable, open
to be wounded that there is a profound element of the beautiful, the ecstatic, to be
experienced and engaged—where the body trembles in its contingency, responsibility,
and restlessness; where it stands in awe, which is an instantiation of an aesthetic
256 George Yancy
response, where the perceptual and sensorial are shaken, unhinged.18 White bodies
need to undergo processes of undoing, processes of disorientation; whites must come
to relate to their own bodies/embodiment in ways that will install experiences of the
uncanny, the strange. They must come to terms with the fact that, at a fundamental
ontological level, their embodiment is already un-sutured, which points to the reality
that as human subjects we are always already beyond ourselves, dispossessed by forces
of interpellation, where the idea of the atomic self and absolute self-mastery is deeply
problematic. Moreover, within this context, the concept of un-suturing points to the
importance of being undone through the cultivation of practices that disrupt our rela-
tionship to various problematic forces and existing norms, practices that cultivate dif-
ferent ways of being-in-the-world, different ways of understanding embodiment as
extended through a shared social integument as opposed to a form of rigid spatial
enclosure. So, it is important that white people, within the context of a white suprema-
cist, neoliberal social and political context, which is indicative of our current historical
moment in the USA, come to realize that they were never the site of mastery in the first
place. To use Judith Butler’s (2005, 77) discourse, which points to what I theorized
earlier in terms of what it means to be human persons, the reality is that all of us are in
the precarious situation of “having been given over from the start.” So, whites must
begin to recognize that they are un-sutured and that being un-sutured points to a real-
ity fundamental to who and what we are as human beings. As Butler (2005, 103) notes,
“One seeks to preserve oneself against the injuriousness of the other, but if one were
successful at walling oneself off from injury, one would become inhuman. In this sense,
we make a mistake when we take ‘self-preservation’ to be the essence of the human,
unless we accordingly claim that the ‘inhuman’ is constitutive of the human.” Butler’s
use of “inhuman” is pertinent here, especially given the inhuman ways in which white
people have learned to suture themselves vis-à-vis Black bodies (Jim Crow, redlining,
anti-miscegenation laws, gated communities). Within this context, whiteness is his-
torically installed as the site of “racial purity” and as the human qua human. Given this
problematic, racialized understanding of the human, we are left with the category of the
human as morally bankrupt, especially as whiteness is a site of racial self-preservation
which is, in this case, a species of the inhuman.
As white people nurture practices of un-suturing vis-à-vis Black bodies, they dwell
within the space of the human. “White man, hear me!” is Baldwin’s plea to redirect the
attention of white people toward understanding that they have failed to understand
themselves within a history of their own making, and failed to understand how this
history installs sites of fleeing, of seeking shelter, of self-preserving, of suturing. In fail-
ing or refusing to understand the vicious history of anti-Blackness of which whites are
the principal architects, the Black body has, by extension, become a site of teratology
which white people deny any responsibility for creating. As a result, white bodies
approach Black bodies with a form of suturing (somatic and psychic closure) which
18
I would to thank Deepika Bahri for the discourse of the sensorial within this context.
they both inherit and perpetuate. Coming to terms with the vicious history of white
supremacy requires a practice of un-suturing, a critical distancing from (or disruption
of) various hegemonic norms, that enables an anti-hegemonic way of crafting a differ-
ent (white) self and thereby recrafting/deproblematizing Black embodiment.
Because white people collectively engage in habituated embodied white racist prac-
tices that are mutually reinforcing within the context of socially quotidian spaces, and
that are further supported by deeply ingrained and sedimented historical, institutional
structures, the assumption that white people can engage in practices of un-suturing
solely through a single act of intention, as one might change his/her clothes at will, is
misleading. The ingrained history of white supremacy, its habits and its insidious
nature, will require constant striving; it will require practice, a reiterative opening and
wounding, habits of uncovering the stench of white mendacity. Yet, it will be a form of
practice accompanied by an awareness of the ways in which white identity formation is
still connected to and complicit with white supremacist structures. In this regard, “the
mechanisms of [white] social systems are much more insidious, fluid, and difficult to
pinpoint” (Warren 2001, 458) even as white people engage in acts of un-suturing qua
resistance. The system of anti-Blackness is a pervasive systemic structure and is etched
into the embodied lives of white people. Un-suturing is not an act of magic, but requires
“the active repetition of acts, verbal and nonverbal, that continue to communicate”
(Warren 2001, 460) the responsibility to engage opportunities for creating fissures in
the system, disruptions in one’s mode of being white. The white self that engages respon-
sibly within this practice is not an atomic self, but a deeply historically embedded self.
As such, then, un-suturing will involve a form of white anti-racist Bildung that takes
seriously the gravitas of collective white history and white collective practices that sus-
tain white collective suturing. This process of Bildung will involve the indispensability
of installing anti-racist forms of configured subjectivation, discursive practices, and
regimes of anti-racist intelligibility, that call for/hail an un-sutured self or a white self
that critically engages in unmasking and fissuring white historical sedimentation.
The process of un-suturing ultimately means, as John Warren (2001, 464) states, “lis-
tening to others and trying to find ways of hearing how I [as a white person] help to con-
stitute whiteness in ways that build from and reinstitute my own privilege.” Being
sutured, then, Zimmerman failed/refused to be undone by Martin’s presence. He did not
hear Martin; he did not see Martin. In the presence of Martin, Zimmerman became the
“master” of the meaning of his corporality; indeed, he also became the master of the
meaning of Martin’s embodiment. Martin was, for Zimmerman, up to no good, suspi-
cious. Martin wore the mark, the stain. Martin was the site of “terror” through
Zimmerman’s gaze. Yet, there is a different experience of terror, one that expresses a form
of exuberance, one that promises more than that projected upon Martin’s Black body; it
is the terror or the sublime to be recognized in Martin’s precarious existence and in
Zimmerman’s own existence or in one’s own existence. Etymologically, the word “precar-
ious” denotes dependency. Therefore, to say that Martin’s existence is precarious is to say
that his embodiment expresses a form of dependency, a form of asking, an entreaty; a
258 George Yancy
form of prayer, of supplication. So, if what we are is ontologically a site of asking, then
what is required is a response. Think of the unfolding of the potential of something pro-
foundly beautiful and yet “terrifying” had Zimmerman become un-sutured vis-à-vis
Martin’s body, a body that is an asking: “Will you help me?” “Will you take care of me as
I walk in this unfamiliar space?” “Will you support me as I walk here with effortless grace?”
“Can you see my Black body as one that matters?” Given the racial asymmetrical power
relations between Black bodies and white bodies, Martin’s body all the more stands out as
a site of enfleshment in the mode of beseeching. And the terror is the realization on the
part of Zimmerman that he alone is being asked to respond, and to respond in such a way
that he becomes vulnerable; to recognize his mutually precarious (and therefore depend-
ent) existence in relationship to Martin’s. In that moment of un-suturing, Zimmerman
would come to understand the meaning of his own being in the mode of deferral: he is
not a monad, but is already out there, as it were, entangled in the life of Martin.
In this un-suturing, this wounding, I want Zimmerman to understand that he is
always already an “answer” to Martin’s presence qua an asking. The point here is that,
given the ontology that I’m suggesting of embodiment as a mode of asking, Zimmerman
is already an answer to Martin’s presence within that mutually shared space. And while
the answer was initially in the mode of epistemic violence (and later actual physical
violence), there is, or so I’m arguing, something deeper ontologically that Zimmerman
misses. The dyadic relationship called for a kind of “unobtrusive vigilance,”19 where
Zimmerman is on the lookout for Martin’s safety, but it called for even more than that.
I theorize and envision a dyadic relationship both where Zimmerman is on the lookout
for Martin’s safety and where Zimmerman, the site of an always already un-sutured cor-
poreal interconnectedness, is ontologically compelled to respond in a mode of care
expressed as a presumption of entreaty on the part of Martin.
There are some forms of terror, as I’m theorizing the concept here, that point to a kind
of awe, where one stands in the presence of an embodied other qua entreaty that
demands a freely given response, one that is thereby anxiety-ridden, filled with risk,
uncertainty, a sense of corporeal unsettling, and deep ontological and existential gravi-
tas. It is not the kind of terror waiting to be unleashed, as in a lynch mob; rather, it is a
form of terror that is experienced in the form of being unhinged vis-à-vis the other. It is
not the intentional mobilization of expressible/expressed terror to do harm, but the
demobilization of expressible/expressed uncertainty and joy. Neither Renisha McBride’s
nor Sandra Bland’s existence unhinged the suturing practices of Theodore Wafer or
Brian Encinia. McBride’s entreaty was met with swift and horrific deadly violence. And
Sandra Bland’s effort to assert her integrity and to articulate her lived experience of frus-
tration and anger at being stopped while driving Black was met by white male police
arrogance in the name of white state power, control, and brutality. Both Wafer and
19
I would like to thank Sherri Irvin for this term and for creatively talking through this section of the
chapter with me. Susan Hadley is also to be thanked for her assistance as I struggled to express what felt
inexpressible.
Encinia missed the profundity of having their whiteness challenged vis-à-vis encoun-
ters with Black bodies that could have prompted a new way of seeing, a new way of
knowing, a new way of being. Similarly, in the case of George Zimmerman, he turned
inward, sutured himself, became centripetal and all the more self-certain, failed or
refused to understand his relationship to a white metanarrative history, and failed
or refused to grasp the ways in which he was always already linked to the social and
ontological integument that subtends (literally, to stretch beneath) his relationship to
Martin. Gearing up, preparing for a battle, not an embodied entreaty, Zimmerman, as
we know, pursued Martin.20 Zimmerman was on the prowl, his physical gait uninviting;
a body in the mode of taking a stand, upright, with no intention of genuflection (etymo-
logically, to bend the knee). As such, Martin became the enemy, monster; the stranger
and infestation unworthy of life itself, an infinitely disposable life. After all, Martin was
supposedly there to take, to pillage. In other words, Zimmerman chased Martin, pur-
sued him, which is etymologically linked to the term “prosecute,” to hold a trial. It was
Zimmerman’s bodily style and comportment, being on the hunt, as it were, that posi-
tions Martin as the one who is about to commit a crime, who is to be feared, and who is
to be tried. As such, Martin’s being, in the form of an asking, was met with a bullet, fired
from a gun by a sutured self that failed to lose itself in that moment, or to come to terms
with its being as always already dispossessed. As Butler (2006, 22) writes, “I think I have
lost ‘you’ only to discover that ‘I’ have gone missing as well.” Yet, it is within the frame-
work of whiteness as the transcendental norm that Zimmerman will be enabled to
“find” himself, to reclaim himself, that is, to live the illusion of a form of mastery and
ontological independence that was never his to claim. Un-suturing disrupts; it troubles
and unsettles; it is not afraid of forms of genuflection and humility that get expressed
through a panoply of open or centrifugal embodied gestures; un-sutured gestures that
are linked to the ways in which the world reveals itself differently. As an aesthetic
gesture/site, un-suturing is a form of exposure, an opening, a corporeal style and a
dispositional sensibility that troubles the insularity of whiteness, that troubles and over-
whelms the senses, revealing our somatic porosity and instigating instability, that sense
of being thrown off balance, off center, and exposing different (and counter-hegemonic)
ways of being attuned to our intercorporeal existence, our mutual touching.
References
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St. Martin’s Press.
Butler, Judith. 1993. “Endangered/Endangering: Schematic Racism and White Paranoia.”
In Reading Rodney King: Reading Urban Uprising, ed. Robert Gooding-Williams, 15–22.
20
For a critical analysis of the racialized policing of Trayvon Martin and the implications for Black
bodies, more generally, see Yancy and Jones 2014.
260 George Yancy
Butler, Judith. 2005. Giving an Account of Oneself. New York: Fordham University Press.
Butler, Judith. 2006. Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. New York: Verso.
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Temple University Press.
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Contemporary Manifestations of Racial Dynamics. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
14
Somaesthetics and the Fine
Art of Eating
Richard Shusterman
14.1 Introduction: Three Dimensions of Gastronomy

“Eating is a need; knowing how to eat is an art” states a famous gastronomical maxim,
widely but falsely attributed to the great seventeenth-century French aphorist La
Rochefoucauld, who sometimes traded his witty maxims for tasty dishes and recipes.1
The saying (along with its false attribution) seems to derive from a nineteenth-century
German writer, but its dubious origins cannot gainsay its compelling insight and influ-
ence. Today we find many texts that speak of “the art of eating,” sometimes with
impressive erudition and brilliance. But they do so without adequately clarifying the
exact referent of that term, which is highly ambiguous. Very often “the art of eating”
serves as a general term to cover the entire field of gastronomy, as for instance in
M. F. K. Fisher’s (1990) delightfully instructive book by that name, which is actually a
compilation by the author of five of her previously published books on food. My mod-
est aim in this essay is to introduce a bit more precision in gastronomical theory by
focusing on the art of eating in a more restricted sense and by distinguishing that
sense from other meanings of the term. For economy of exposition, I will use the term
“eating” in the broad sense that includes drinking, and I will likewise use “food” to
include drink, except when I specify otherwise. It is noteworthy that China, perhaps
the oldest and historically richest of food cultures, already had in ancient times a term
that combined food and drink: yin shi (飲食).2
In considering the aesthetics of gastronomy, one can focus on at least three distinct
(though closely related and sometimes overlapping) elements. First is the diverse and
1
The author is Eduard Maria Oettinger (1807–72), who attributes the saying to La Rochefoucauld in his
historical novel Mademoiselle Mars und ihr Hof (1852), which was later translated into French.
2
The term appears frequently in the Liji (or Book of Rites, also known as Li Chi), one of the Confucian
classics; for example, in the famous passage 19 of Book 7 (“Li Yun”): “The things which men greatly desire
are comprehended in food and drink and sexual pleasure. 飲食男女, 人之大欲存焉. Legge (1967) trans-
lates 食 (“food”) more narrowly as “meat.” The passage can be found at <http://ctext.org/liji/li-yun>
262 Richard Shusterman
often complex processes, methods, aims, criteria, and experiences in preparing food
and drink. This can include also preparations for the presentation of food and drink
(with their accessory implements such as crockery and cutlery) on the table. We could
call this dimension “the art of cuisine” and divide it into food preparation and pres-
entation. Second, aesthetic study and discussion can focus on the food objects them-
selves in terms of their properties relevant for aesthetic experience and judgment.
Comprising not only the formal and sensory qualities that these edible objects present
to taste, smell, and other senses involved in our appreciation of food, such properties
also include the larger symbolic and social meanings of various foods, which can, of
course, involve meanings related to nutritional properties as well as cultural signif-
icance. We could call this dimension of gastronomy, the art of food appreciation
and criticism. Apart from cookbooks, most food writing seems to be of this genre.
Many people enjoy reading food writing and looking at food images (in magazines
or on screen) without actually eating the dishes presented and certainly without
preparing them.
There is, I would argue, a third dimension of gastronomy which focuses on the vari-
ous processes and considerations involved in actually ingesting food or drink into
one’s body. This concern with how we eat and drink in terms of our modes and man-
ners of ingestion can be construed as the art of eating in its narrower or more precise
sense. My essay is focused on this stricter sense, whose meaning I would not extend to
include also digestion, which is standardly defined as a mechanical, chemical process;
whereas art implies intelligent choice, judgment, or reflection. The art of eating in the
strict sense I define it here is still broad enough to provide a rich field for gastronomical
research, and it certainly impacts the other two areas of gastronomy, just as it influ-
ences digestion as well.3 I concentrate on this dimension of eating because it needs
more attention in order to bring its study up to the level of research of the other two
dimensions of gastronomical aesthetics: food preparation and appreciation. Though
gastronomy’s most astute writers have sometimes touched on this third dimension,
they have neglected some of its essential aspects, whose importance I aim to highlight
in what follows.
14.2 Defining the Art of Eating

We should first distinguish the art of eating from the mere act of eating. Eating can be
merely an instinct-driven, habitual behavior of ingesting food and drink in an entirely
thoughtless, automatic, and crudely insensitive way. The most basic behavior of ingest-
ing edibles for pleasurable nutrition when stimulated by hunger and thirst is shared by
other animals, though the human form of eating differs in being profoundly shaped
3
I do not wish to suggest that digestion is not a worthy topic for somaesthetics. A recent book in
German provides an interesting discussion of the somaesthetics of digestion. See Denker 2015, especially
pp. 459–64.
somaesthetics and the fine art of eating 263
by culture. Such shaping involves far more than our human use of cooking, which any-
way refers to the preparation and presentation of food rather than its ingestion. Human
culture, through its use of language, enables us to name or identify what we eat and
thus better select, communicate, acquire, and critically evaluate our food choices. We
can thus organize our ingestion of them in an orderly form or sequence that adds
meaning to the act of eating. The very notion of linguistically defined meals (such
as breakfast, lunch, and dinner) as distinguished from haphazard feeding reflects
this cultural imprint on the way we eat. So do the linguistically defined notions of
sequenced courses (such as appetizer, entrée, and dessert) or the distinction of main
dish versus sides that organize our eating experience. Animals clearly lack such order,
structure, and meaning in their food consumption, which is why some theorists prefer
to say that animals simply feed rather than eat. History has long recognized that one
difference marking the transition from animal or savage status to human culture is in
knowing how to eat. In the ancient epic Gilgamesh, the savage Enkidu (raised from
birth by animals) did not know how to eat bread until he was taught to do so (by a
courtesan who also taught him human love-making).
When the shrewd founder of modern gastronomy, Brillat-Savarin, proclaims:
“Animals feed themselves, men eat, and smart men know how to eat,” he implies a
further distinction (Brillat-Savarin 1949/1825, 2). Acquiring basic human eating prac-
tices through acculturation and muscle memory is contrasted to a much deeper level
of eating know-how that requires intelligence, refined sensibility, and focused reflec-
tion on the qualities and effects (both gustatory and nutritional) of one’s eating options,
preferences, and habits. Gastronomes, of course, belong to this higher class of eaters
who have an articulate, reflective knowledge of eating. I would propose a further dis-
tinction: between gastronomes who simply know how to select and enjoy good food
(and who master the art of eating in this important but basic sense), and those gastro-
nomes, who also know how to eat aesthetically in the fullest sense—beyond making
good food choices and combinations. By this I mean those gastronomes whose knowl-
edge of food and sensitive tasting is translated into an art of eating focused also on the
aesthetic elements and qualities of the experience of ingesting food. Those aesthetic
features go beyond the realm of gustatory taste and even, I will argue, beyond the five
familiar senses. If a special term is sought to distinguish this particularly aesthetically
refined art of eating, we might call it the fine art of eating or the art of dining. But as the
term “fine art” could cause confusion and controversy, I will henceforth use the terms
“art of eating” and “art of dining” synonymously to designate this distinctively refined
gastronomical art of ingestion that goes beyond expertise in food knowledge and
appreciation.
How should we classify this art? First, it is essentially a temporal art. Time and
timing are crucial in many ways to its artistic success and aesthetic pleasures.4 One
4
Among the many gastronomical theorists who recognize the aesthetic importance of temporality in
eating, I should note Carolyn Korsmeyer (2002) and Yuriko Saito (2008).
enjoys this art of eating in terms of temporal sequencing: not merely one course
leading to another, but one mouthful leading to the next, or, more precisely, one
mouthful leading to a complex sequencing of smelling, biting, tasting, chewing,
swallowing, and breathing. Each one of these activities involves its own complex
sensorimotor sequences and yet must be finely coordinated with the other activities
in order to achieve a pleasing harmonizing rhythm to enhance the performative pro-
cess of eating. Moreover, on a larger temporal scale, the different mouthfuls and
phases of ingestion should be arranged in an aesthetically satisfying narrative struc-
ture (of beginning, middle, and end) in the entire meal or a particular course thereof.
Time is thus essential. Good eating, perhaps even more than good cooking, really
requires taking one’s time. Any movement for “slow food” must equally insist on
slowing down the act of eating so as to realize and savor the full potential of the art
of dining’s range of pleasures. Brillat-Savarin repeatedly insists on the importance of
time, chastising his best friend for the “habitual vice” of to “eat too fast,” and then
explicitly listing time as one of “the four following conditions” for fully enjoying our
meals: “food at least passable, good wine, agreeable companions, and enough time”
(Brillat-Savarin 1949, 10, 191).
Like the paradigm temporal arts of music and dance, eating is a performing art
whose aesthetic enjoyment is in the performative process of eating. Some thinkers
might challenge this view by arguing that one’s satisfaction in the art of eating is not
really in the eating but in the objects eaten; that the relevant aesthetic object in the art
of eating, therefore, is simply the food eaten, not the act of eating it. This implicit
assumption lies behind gastronomy’s overwhelming concentration on the food object
and the best ways to prepare and present it. Appreciating food’s crucial contribution
to the art of eating, I nonetheless argue that the art of eating goes well beyond the
aesthetic qualities of the objects eaten. There are aesthetic features and qualities per-
taining to the activities of the eating process itself, if that process is done with artful
attention and care.
An analogy from other arts might make this clearer. Theatre is clearly a temporal
and performing art which standardly relies on a literary work—a dramatic script—as
its object. But theatrical art goes well beyond the aesthetic features of the script as liter-
ature; its distinctive artistry and aesthetic experience lie in what the embodied dramatic
performance does with that script, how it actualizes and enriches the script’s aesthetic
qualities and artistic meanings. Good theatrical art not only deepens the artistic value
already in the script but also contributes its own dramatic values. Likewise, the art of
dining does more than deepen the sensory pleasures found in the things we eat; it also
contributes aesthetic pleasures that go beyond the tastes, smells, and visual forms of
our food objects: for example the satisfactions of somatic movements and perceptions
involved in the activities of eating and in the manner in which we perform them. We
can take pleasure in the way we chew, the way we sip, or slurp, or swallow; we can enjoy
the arc of movement that brings the fork to our lips, the warmth and weight of a bowl of
coffee in our hands, and so forth.
14.3 Values of the Art of Eating

Before I go further into the different aspects of our ways of eating and their aesthetic
potential, I should underline the multiple importance of eating as a performative art.
Part of this importance derives from the performative character of this art; its artistic
elements and stylizing qualities are so closely attached to the person who performs this
art that their aesthetic effects remain with that person and reshape her aesthetically. In
this way, one could argue that the art of eating is superior to that of cooking, because in
cooking the valued end is an external object—the dish of food rather than something
intrinsic to the creating artist and affecting him. A cook is not affected by the bad food
he makes, unless he eats it. With the art of eating, the valued end is the enjoyment of
eating itself which is inseparable from the act of eating and directly affects the eater. If
the proof of making a good pudding is in the eating which can lie outside the pudding’s
maker, then in the art of eating, the proof and pleasure lies in the act of eating and the
agent itself. In Aristotelian terminology, cooking is poiesis, the making of an object
with skill, while eating resembles praxis, the performing of an action. Aristotle’s influ-
ential definition of art as poiesis—the skillful making of objects—could be one reason
why some people find it difficult to see eating as an art; another reason is the practical,
life-serving function of food, whereas art and the aesthetic are envisaged as free from
material concerns and life-serving practical purposes. If pragmatist aesthetics first
challenged this division between the aesthetic and the practical, then so does somaes-
thetics, which emerged from pragmatism’s focus on embodied practice.5
Eating is a daily activity, typically performed at least three times a day. It is a neces-
sary activity for life. It is a universal activity, since everyone not only has a natural need
but also a natural ability to eat which can be developed through culture into genuine
eating know-how. Eating is therefore an extremely important activity, one worth culti-
vating as an art for improved practice. Just as bad eating habits can be damaging and
deadly, so the benefits of improving our eating seem multiple. First, perfecting our
eating practices by more carefully attending to them will significantly increase our
pleasure. This is because, more generally, heightened attention to our pleasures
enhances our enjoyment of them not only by intensifying their perception but also by
adding to them the delights of reflection. Eating pleasures can be sharpened through
practice because we eat so often and so long as we live. Eating is an art we can continue
to practice, enjoy, and perfect well into old age, even when we have long lost our cap
acity for sports and other activities we enjoyed earlier in life; although we must, of
course, adjust our diet as we age. The art of eating involves reflection on our style of
eating, with respect not only to what foods we eat but also to our ways of eating them:
for example, how much or how fast we eat; our sequencing of meals, courses, and
mouthfuls; the ways and rhythms of chewing and swallowing.
5
For more discussion of this Aristotelian distinction and of the pragmatist insistence on art as a practice
that affects its makers and not just the objects it makes, see Shusterman (1992, chapter 2). For somaesthet-
ics, see Shusterman (2008).
Besides augmenting pleasures, better eating leads to better health. By improving our
choices in what we eat, we provide the body with the right balance of nutrients while
avoiding foods that disturb our digestion, drain our energy, or otherwise impair the
proper functioning of the soma or body-mind. In preventing obesity, improved eating
habits developed through better somaesthetic consciousness go beyond mere health to
enhance one’s somatic appearance (Shusterman 2012a). This is not merely with respect
to figure; smart eating promotes the glow of smooth skin, the textured luster of healthy
hair, and the radiance of vibrant energy. Nor is its impact on appearance merely visual;
what or how we eat can strongly affect the odors and even the sounds our bodies make
(think of eating onions, garlic, or beans or eating so fast that we belch, hiccup, or fart)
(Shusterman 2012b).
If, to some extent, we are what we eat (as Brillat-Savarin and Feuerbach insist6), then
a reflective art of eating serves to advance the philosophical aim of self-knowledge by
making us more aware of our eating habits and how they affect both us and those oth-
ers who share our meals or merely our eating spaces. In the gastronomical art of eating,
such self-knowledge is more than an end in itself; it serves as a practical, meliorist
means toward greater perfection through aesthetic discipline. As a daily habit gov-
erned by desire and ultimately grounded in our strongest instincts of survival, eating
provides an excellent medium for shaping the self and its powers of choice, introspec-
tion, taste, discrimination, order, discipline, and will. This provides ethical as well as
cognitive and aesthetic benefits.
Its value for self-knowledge and self-cultivation should not obscure the social bene-
fits of an art of eating. Human eating is intrinsically a social practice, steeped in cul-
tural meanings, even when one dines alone. But most (and surely the most important)
eating is done in the company of others. Here artful eating not only adds pleasure to
one’s own dining but enhances the enjoyment of one’s companions to create distinc-
tively communicative aesthetic pleasures of sharing an informed appreciation of the
dining experience, an enjoyment that goes beyond the taste of food. Brillat-Savarin,
Charles Fourier, and many other gastronomical theorists thereafter have emphasized
these social pleasures of eating, insisting on proper company as one of the necessary
conditions for the fullest delights of gastronomy (Fourier 1971, 265–6).
What these theorists always emphasize about social dining are the pleasures of con-
versation from good company. I would insist, however, also on the non-discursive
visual pleasures of seeing one’s companions eat with both gusto and refinement
through intelligent and graceful movement in handling the food they share together,
whether in ingesting it themselves or passing, placing, or pouring it for others; I would
further insist on the diner’s own proprioceptive pleasures of participating in such
6
Feuerbach (1862/1960, 41). Feuerbach notes here his first expression of this famous sentence in a review
of Molleschott’s “Lehre der Nahrungsmittel fuer das Volk” (1850). In more recent times, the notorious
Italian futurist Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, who sought to transform Italian culture by revolutionizing its
cuisine (most controversially through prohibiting pasta), writes, “men think, act, and dream according to
what they eat and drink” (Marinetti 1932/1991, 36).
coordinated movement through her own dining actions. Through such artful dining,
even a simple meal becomes an artwork of improvised, group choreography whose
silent yet communicative harmonies not only serve as a means for efficiently coordi-
nating food ingestion, but can provide powerful pleasures in their own right. Before
considering examples of such dining, I should note another important aspect of
somaesthetic cultivation that artful eating potently promotes, and then also offer a
brief analytic sketch of key elements that comprise the art of eating.
Perfecting sensory perception through heightened sensory discrimination and
transmodal appreciation is perhaps the most distinctive way that dining’s art contrib-
utes to somaesthetic self-cultivation. Gastronomical theorists frequently highlight
eating as a multisensory experience that provides the skilled gastronomer with an
object to be appreciatively savored both as a source of pleasure and as a site for perfect-
ing her senses by honing her perceptual discrimination and acuity. Brillat-Savarin
repeatedly insists on the essential “perfectibility” of the human senses, while advocat-
ing the role of sensory transmodality in improving sensory perception. Different
senses combine or integrate to aid each other in providing more accurate judgment:
“touch correct[ing] the errors of sight,” while “taste helped itself through sight and
smell,” and so on (Brillat-Savarin 1949, 25–6). Noting that taste is so dependent on
smell that “when the sense of smell is cut off, taste itself is paralyzed,” Brillat-Savarin is
even tempted to suggest “that smell and taste form a single sense, of which the mouth is
laboratory and the nose is the chimney” that appreciates the gases of what the mouth
tastes (Brillat-Savarin 1949, 38). Like most of the gastronomical writers who followed
him, Brillat-Savarin (1949, 187–90) insists that dining’s delights, which he calls “the
pleasures of the table,” go beyond the sensory modalities of smell and taste to embrace
the visual beauties of food-presentation and the auditory harmonies of music that
often accompany our dining to enhance its overall satisfaction.
However, even those gastronomical theorists who recognize the multisensory
enjoyment of good dining, nonetheless fail to appreciate its full range of sensory pleas-
ures and potential. Priscilla Parkhurst Ferguson (2006, 16), for instance, in making her
case for eating as a profoundly “total social phenomenon,” firmly asserts that “food is
also a ‘total sensory phenomenon’ [that] addresses the baser senses—the tongue, the
nose, and the palate—along with the traditionally nobler eye and ear.” But her account
of this total sensory experience is problematic because it omits important modalities
of dining pleasure that go beyond these body parts and their senses. Important dimen-
sions of touch are neglected, whose role in eating pleasure surely transcends the
tongue, nose, and palate to include the lips and teeth. We appreciate on our lips the
warmth of a hot coffee or the cool wetness of a beer; we likewise appreciate the firm
crunchiness of an apple through the feelings of our teeth and jaw. The tactile pleasures
of eating are not confined to the mouth; the same heat of the coffee is often enjoyed in
the hands warmed by the cup. Apart from warmth or coolness, we also enjoy tactilely
the weight and shapes of the eating implements we use. Beyond the tactile pleasures of
handling our eating instruments, various forms of “finger food” provide the hands
with direct tactile enjoyment of what we eat; for example, the textured feel of a waffle
cone; the warm grainy feel of a toasted sesame bagel. Before the use of knives and forks
became common, this direct tactile experience of eating was probably more promi-
nent in the diner’s consciousness.7 But also today (and even if not explicitly noticed),
the tactile sensations of handling food form part of our eating experience, so more
attentive appreciation of them (along with the tactility of our eating instruments) can
increase our sensory enjoyment in dining.
A sensory dimension so far neglected by gastronomical theorists is proprioception
and its movement aspect of kinaesthesia. Even the great Brillat-Savarin ignored this
proprioceptive dimension, though his account of human sensation went beyond the
five traditional Aristotelian senses of sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch.8 I, how-
ever, would insist on its value for the pleasures of the art of eating and can provide
some examples. First, consider the Japanese style of eating soba or udon noodles.
Although the Japanese are usually quiet and dainty eaters, they typically consume
these noodles with noisy sucking sounds and boisterous slurping movements; and
they consider it polite to do so. Two explanations for this practice are commonly given:
either that the loud, energetic slurping shows great appreciation of the food (an act of
politeness) or that the funny sucking noise and gestures add an enjoyable communal
humor in eating together that heightens the shared enjoyment of the meal as a social
act (again a polite gesture). I find both explanations reasonable but would suggest a
supplementary factor. There is a distinctive proprioceptive pleasure of strongly suck-
ing the long noodle into the mouth, a feeling that anyone will notice, once it is pointed
out. There is an enjoyable feeling of micro-muscular power and focused energy
through the vigorous suction movement, a pleasure that may be related but cannot be
reduced to its symbolic association with our initial infant sucking bliss nor to the
amusing sound that noodle-sucking makes. Moreover, since proprioception (as inner
somatic perception) is typically felt as a very private experience, by emphatically shar-
ing this distinctive act and feeling of sucking, fellow noodle eaters heighten their sense
of communal solidarity through the sharing of private pleasures: once again a gesture
of polite sociality.
7
This point is also suggested in the instructive essay by Massimo Montanari (2006, 65). Montanari’s
book does not mention his famous compatriot Marinetti, who sought to revive gastronomical tactility for
avant-garde aesthetics. Marinetti and his futurist culinary collaborators sometimes highlighted the tactile
in their often extreme efforts to create radically new and unconventional multisensory gastronomic crea-
tions of “absolute originality” that use “all the five senses: touch, taste, smell, sight, and hearing.” One dish
uses “a tactile device” along “with sounds and scents.” When eating the designated food on his plate, the
diner uses his index and middle finger to feel the tactile “device, made of a swatch of red damask, a little
square of black velvet, and a tiny piece of sandpaper,” while hearing “part of a Wagnerian opera, and, simul-
taneously, the nimblest and most graceful of the waiters sprays the air with perfume” (Marinetti 1932/1991,
38, 77). Another dish—an “edible food sculpture”—refuses the use of knife and fork in order to “give
prelabial tactile pleasure” in eating with the hands (Marinetti 1932/1991, 39).
8
He includes a sixth sense, “physical desire, which draws the two sexes together so that they may pro-
create” and should not be “confused with … the sense of touch” (Brillat-Savarin 1825/1949, 25).
Chewing can also provide proprioceptive enjoyment felt in the jaws and teeth, espe-
cially if one attends to these chewing movements and shapes them harmoniously or
rhythmically, perhaps even in synchrony with one’s eating partner’s chewing. Tongue
movements and swallowing motions offer further kinaesthetic enjoyment. The famil-
iar pleasure of gulping down drinks with long swallows (known by the term “chug a
lug”) is largely a proprioceptive and tactile affair, as the liquid is swallowed too quickly
for properly savoring the taste.
Moreover, the pleasure of eating’s proprioceptive movements is not confined to the
mouth. We can enjoy the grip of our hand on a wine glass, the kinaesthetic smoothness
of our hand and arm movements when we adroitly use our eating tools and vessels,
elegantly sipping from a cup, skillfully cutting our meat, deftly bringing our chopsticks
to our mouth in a fluent, graceful motion. Proprioception includes not only feelings of
muscle tension and movement but also feelings of inner body temperature. If we are
attentive, we can sometimes feel a pleasant sensation of inner warmth in eating as dis-
tinguished from the external warmth of the food that we feel through our sense of
touch; similarly we can sometimes feel a refreshing body coolness after quenching our
thirst with a cool drink. Still more familiar may be the feelings of a caffeine buzz or a
blood rush from alcohol or sugar. But I will not insist on these as central pleasures of
the art of eating, first because they arguably belong more to digestion than ingestion
itself; and second, because they cannot be artfully controlled to the same degree that
we can artfully shape or induce other proprioceptive pleasures of eating.
14.4 Elements of the Fine Art of Eating

Having outlined the benefits of the art of eating and the different senses it employs and
cultivates, I next analyze the different elements or aspects of this art and then offer an
account of how it is successfully practiced. A comprehensive analysis of these elements
would go far beyond the scope of this essay, so I provide a mere provisional, rudimen-
tary classificatory scheme of some basic categories, along with brief comments about
some of them.
1. The first category of elements in the somaesthetic art of eating pertains to pos-
ture. How do we properly position our bodies in the act of eating so as to maximize the
aesthetic value of this experience? Should it be in a seated position, and if so, then how
should one sit? As eating is often done in other positions than sitting, what then are the
aesthetic advantages and disadvantages of those other postures? Beyond such basic
questions of body position, the category of posture extends also to one’s bearing, car-
riage, or demeanor in eating. Before discussing this category in more detail, I should
briefly outline four others.
2. The second category comprises the movements of eating. I confine these to
voluntary movements, since art implies voluntary action even when such action is
spontaneous or improvised. This category can be divided into external versus internal
bodily movements. The subcategory of external bodily movements covers all the
voluntary bodily movements of eating that one makes in spaces outside the body.
These include primarily movements of the arms, hands, and fingers involved in the
actions of bringing food to the mouth and in passing food to others but also in
deploying the instruments of eating (including such accessories as napkins, bibs, or
finger-rinsing bowls). Such actions, however, also involve other bodily movements in
space, the leaning, turning, or twisting of the torso, the flexing or arching of the back,
the swiveling of the pelvis, the bending or lifting of the neck, the turning of the head,
and so on. In somaesthetically artful eating, these movements are done with grace that
provides both proprioceptive pleasure to the diner herself and some degree of visual
pleasure to an attentive observer who can appreciate fine qualities of movement. In
contrast, awkward movements can detract from our pleasures of the table.
No less important are the voluntary movements within the body’s inner space.
These include actions such as biting, sipping, sucking, slurping, chewing, swallow-
ing, licking one’s teeth (as opposed to licking an object outside one’s mouth), and
smelling. Breathing should also be included, because its essential respiratory move-
ments must be coordinated with chewing, swallowing, smelling, and other eating
actions. In recognizing breathing’s role here, we see how eating’s inner bodily actions
can extend beyond the mouth, nose, and throat area to include the rib cage and dia-
phragm, which can be voluntarily controlled to affect our breathing and coordinate
it with the ingestion of food. As with external movements, artful diners can enhance
the aesthetic experience of eating by attentive shaping or stylization of these inner
bodily movements. One can adjust the speed and rhythm of one’s chewing and swal-
lowing (or even one’s breathing) in order to make these movements more harmoni-
ous (not only in terms of the diner’s own eating but in tune with the rhythms of
others); one can also intentionally vary these rhythms to add proprioceptive interest
of novelty. Likewise, one can attentively notice and vary the parts of the mouth
where one chews and tastes so that more areas can partake in the aesthetic enjoy-
ment of eating.
3. A third category concerns the accessories of eating, the choice of eating imple-
ments. Which eating and serving utensils make for an aesthetically enjoyable ingestion
of food? This goes beyond visually attractive presentation. Certain eating and serving
instruments are tactilely and proprioceptively more pleasing to use because of their
shape, weight, size, surface, volume, or other material qualities that relate to agreeable
sensory perceptions and ease of handling. Think of the difference of tactile aesthetic
quality, for example, between drinking tea from a Styrofoam cup and drinking from
fine china, not only in the hands but on the lips. Think of stirring one’s espresso with a
sleek little spoon as compared with a bland, flat plastic stirrer. (Here we should note
that stirring one’s cup of coffee can contribute to the pleasures of eating as an art, as can
other anticipatory acts of ingestion such as dunking one’s croissant tip in that
coffee.) Compare the pointy hard metal feel of a forkful of rice in one’s mouth to the
soft wooden feel of Japanese chopsticks in ingesting the same bowl of rice. Besides
these sensory aesthetic differences there are aesthetic differences of cultural symbol-
ism in one’s choice of implements: using a fork for some kinds of noodles and chop-
sticks for others. Even among chopsticks, there are choices between the pointy metal
Korean style and the wood or enamel Japanese. These differences reflect different tra-
ditional habits of eating. Korean food is traditionally rich in hot, meaty dishes and
stews where wooden chopsticks could get burned and broken, while ancient Japanese
cuisine typically relied more on cold foods, including many uncooked varieties such
as raw fish.
Accessories of eating also include utensils not meant for ingesting food but for plac-
ing the waste products of eating—the shells of nuts and seafood, fruit and vegetable
peels and pits, fish and animal bones, etc. Other eating accessories are not for food at
all—such as finger bowls, wet wipes, or napkins used for cleaning the hands. In at least
some cultures, eating also included bowls for rinsing the mouth. Combined with fin-
ger bowls, this mouth-rinsing custom was practiced in “highly fashionable” dining
during Brillat-Savarin’s time. But he strongly deplored it, claiming it “equally useless,
indecent, and disgusting.” “It is useless, because the mouth of anyone who knows how
to eat properly is clean at the end of a meal . . . either by fruit or by the last tastes of
wine. . . . It is indecent, because . . . cleanliness [should be] maintained in the privacy of
the dressing room. It is above all a disgusting innovation, because” it makes even “the
prettiest and freshest of mouths” imitate “the functions of the excretory organs”
(Brillat-Savarin 1949, 378). Underlying this argument is the implicit recognition that
there is an art of eating in which an aesthetics of cleanliness, discreet decency, and
attractive decorum are maintained without the need for cleansing practices that are
unattractively out of place at the dining table.
4. The fourth general category in the art of eating concerns the selection of foods
and their sequencing. It involves not only what foods to order at a restaurant but also
what food choices to make once the dishes are set on the table or placed on a buffet at a
restaurant or private home, and in what order or combinations one eats them. This
category of issues or elements is too familiar to warrant extensive discussion. Examples
of such matters easily come to mind. Does one choose to have butter or olive oil with
one’s bread or instead have it plain; one’s coffee black or with milk or cream; one’s baked
potato with butter or sour cream? Many of these choices, in artful eating, are largely
shaped by context. French butter gourmets who love buttered bread for breakfast and
afternoon “goûter” will understandably eschew it at the lunch or dinner table; just as
lovers of morning bowls of café au lait will typically prefer a neat espresso as their
after-dinner coffee. Though red wine is typically best to drink with cheese, there may
be times when one would want a chilled white wine instead.
Selection and sequencing choices are often shaped by different cultures of eating.
Does one start a meal with a salad (the American way) or serve it near the end (as in
France)? Does one select a menu with a strict sequencing order as is common in the
West (take the Italian antipasto, il primo, il secondo, often with contorni or side dishes,
and finally il dolce or dessert)? Or does one eat in the Chinese style of ordering multiple
dishes and then eating them more or less in the order in which they come? This
form of eating, which can also be practiced in Western restaurants (most easily by
simply ordering varieties of appetizers rather than a set series of courses), allows
for more complex sequencing choices because the foods already served remain on the
table for continued tasting when the newly prepared dishes are added, so that one
can resample an earlier dish to more clearly compare or combine its tastes with
those of the new dishes, thus adding further varieties of selection for enriching the
dining experience.
The category of selection and sequencing should also cover acts of non-selection.
Apart from foods proscribed for health motives or by religious laws, artful dining will
eschew certain foods for aesthetic reasons other than mere taste. For example, eating a
given dish may make an aesthetic diner uncomfortable because it is difficult to handle
with adequate elegance or because its ingestion causes immediate physical discomfort
or unsightliness.9 Here again context plays a significant role. One may love chomping
on crabs in casual dining with friends or family but avoid them in a refined dining situ-
ation because they make for messy eating. The same steaming soup enjoyed on a cold
winter night can be agonizingly unpleasant if served in a sweltering summer setting
where ingesting it induces profuse sweating that is somatically disagreeable to the
diner and visually unpleasant for the dining companions who witness it. Artful eating
will pay attention to these aesthetic dimensions and contexts, but ingrained eating
habits (either personal or more generally cultural) often override them. From my teen-
age years in Tel Aviv I remember a scorching mid-August afternoon, when Polish
immigrants, proud of their traditional cuisine, treated me to a festive Sabbath meal of
hot soup, heavy stew, and kishke. It proved an unforgettable torture, as perspiration
poured down my steamy red face and into the fatty chicken soup and dumplings,
which might have been tasty eaten in December.
That many selection and sequencing choices are made spontaneously by habit
(rather than through reflective deliberation) does not entail their being unaesthetic
choices. Habits can be intelligent and aesthetically creative if they are the sedimented
product of intelligent, aesthetic training in how to eat. People can be trained in the art
of eating, though it currently lacks a clear curriculum or established corpus of instruc-
tional texts (this essay being but an initial exploratory sketch of a very complex field).
Artful eating, I believe, involves some combination of spontaneous selections and
sequencings (prompted by appetite, habit, impulse, opportunity) and more delibera-
tive choices. Deliberating critically over every forkful (whether we should impale this
or that green bean, whether it should be followed by another forkful of something else
9
A remark by Marinetti indirectly suggests another possible aesthetic reason for non-selection: height-
ening “curiosity . . . and imagination.” Marinetti, however, locates his strategy of non-selection not with the
choice of the persons dining but with the host who organizes which of the presented dishes will or will not
be allowed to be selected for actual eating. “Rapid presentation between one dish and the next, before the
nostrils and the eyes of the dinner guests, of the few dishes they will eat, and others they will not, to facili-
tate curiosity, surprise, and imagination” (Marinetti 1932/1991, 40).
or instead a sip of wine or water) would make eating a cognitive burden and impair the
spirit of free play that adds zest to our sensory pleasures.
Selection and sequencing involves also choosing the moment when one stops one’s
selections by recognizing that one has had enough not simply of a particular dish but
more generally of the entire meal. If the art of dining involves knowing when to pause
or stop, then this knowledge involves the fifth and final category of elements I outline
here—perceptions; in this case a somaesthetic perception that further eating or drink-
ing will distract from the aesthetic quality and enjoyment of the meal.
5. Perceptions, of course, are already implied in the other four categories of elements
already outlined. Perceptions form a necessary part of the complex sensorimotor sys-
tems that regulate our posture (through proprioceptive sensing of balance, muscle
tension, and joint movement); they direct our external movements of limbs and other
body parts (guided especially by sight but also by other external senses and proprio-
ception); they guide our internal movements (mainly through perceptions of touch,
taste, smell, and proprioception); they enable appropriate recognition and handling of
eating accessories; and they govern our selection and sequencing of foods by identify-
ing them and their qualities through diverse sensory perceptions. Similarly, the
impulse to conclude such selection and sequencing by ending the meal is guided by the
sensory perception of being satiated.
How can we classify the very different perceptions involved here? One way is to dis-
tinguish them in terms of the different spaces to which perception is directed in the art
of eating: those outside the body from those inside the body; and we can cultivate per-
ceptual skills with respect to both kinds of spaces. Perception can obviously be trained
to identify with precision various kinds of food and dining accessories in the external
space of the table in order to optimize selection and sequencing but also to facilitate
movements in external space needed to bring those selections gracefully into one’s
plate and mouth; for instance to gauge whether a slice of pie is too large for one’s plate
or a forkful of meat too large to fit easily into the mouth without further cutting.
Equally important for the art of eating (and indeed far more important from the per-
spective of traditional gastronomy) is cultivating and sharpening perceptions of inner
bodily space, especially those within the mouth, nose, and throat where biting, tasting,
chewing, smelling, and swallowing take place. Such fine discriminations of flavors,
aromas, textures, and ingredients comprise perhaps the most crucial component of
gastronomical expertise and surely the most prominent in the lore of gastronomical
literature. Hume’s (1757/1963) classic “Of the Standard of Taste” invokes Cervantes’
(1605/2003, 537) story of Sancho Panza’s alleged acuity of oenological perceptions that
enabled him to “know where [the wine] comes from, its lineage, its taste, its age, and
how it will change” by “just [a] smell” of it. Brillat-Savarin, who extols the human tongue
for providing “clearer and more precise” perceptions of taste than those of other ani-
mals, notes how its skilled sensitivity can be trained “to such a degree of perfection that
the gourmands of Rome could tell by the flavor whether fish was caught between the
city bridges or lower down the river” (Brillat-Savarin 1949, 45).
Though they receive much less gastronomical attention, inner bodily perceptions
beyond those of the nose, mouth, and throat are also important for maximizing the
aesthetic quality of our eating experience. To discriminate the point, when one’s
stomach is now adequately filled from the point at which immediate further eating
will yield less enjoyment than discomfort is a crucial dimension of the art of eating.
It instructs us to pause so that we can later continue our eating pleasures either in
resuming this meal or waiting till the proximate one; it promotes good health and
avoidance of obesity; it distinguishes a refined gastronome from an insensitive piggish
gourmand. Other gastric perceptions—incipient feelings of flatulence or indiges-
tion from certain foods one is presently eating—can help guide our food selection
and sequencing to avoid somaesthetic distress to both ourselves and our eating
partners. The pleasure we take in a hot or cold drink or dish can be heightened by
mindful attention to inner visceral sensations of agreeable warmth or refreshing
coolness that can be felt in body parts beyond the nose, mouth, and throat. The
same goes for giddy inner feelings from a sugar rush, a coffee buzz, or alcohol,
which are not only pleasant in themselves to attend to but also serve as useful per-
ceptual warnings that we are more prone to aesthetic gaffes since our normal bal-
ance has been challenged.
Perceptions relevant to the art of eating can also be classified in terms of the dif-
ferent kinds of quality perceived. One subcategory could cover the basic sensory
qualities perceived through the different sensory modalities of taste, smell, touch,
sight, hearing, and proprioception. It should, however, be emphasized that our
sensory perceptions in eating are predominantly transmodal in actual experience,
even if we distinguish their different modalities in retrospective analysis, consider-
ing the tartness of an apple as distinct from its crunchy texture, sound, and aroma.
Besides such ordinary sensory perceptions (including complex transmodal ones),
we could further recognize a category of emergent aesthetic qualities that are super-
venient on the sensory: properties of rhythm, harmony, tension, richness, energy,
drama, and so on. In many cases, these emergent aesthetic perceptions also rely on
another kind of perception: that of the cultural or symbolic meaning of foods and of
eating accessories. The aesthetic qualities of contemporary fusion cooking emerge
not only from the sensory effects of mixing ingredients from different food cultures
but also from the symbolic significance of combining the cultural meanings of
those different food cultures in one dish, say wrapping sushi in a tortilla or using
wasabi instead of beet-based horseradish as a garnish to gefilte fish. Such cultural
meanings are no less important for the aesthetic qualities that are perceived in tra-
ditional, regional cuisine. Here the use of certain time-honored ingredients,
old-fashioned eating accessories, or styles of ingestion carries symbolic significance
of shared local pride and communal memory that bestow a strong aesthetic sense of
depth and authenticity. As posture comprises one of the culturally symbolic and
ethnically diverse dimensions of eating-style, we return to it for more detailed
analysis in this context.
14.5 Posture and Mindful Practice

Today it seems obvious that artful dining demands a seated posture, but historically
this was not always so. In ancient Greek and Roman cultures (and allegedly still earlier
in the Middle East) festive eating was done in a reclined position on couches. The rea-
son may be largely symbolic. Reclining symbolizes leisure, ease, and comfort which
highlight the pleasurable dimension of eating by marking it off from the context of
labor (which usually precludes lying down on the job) and also from the more hurried
or narrowly functional styles of eating that labor demands. This symbolic meaning of
reclined dining still finds traces today in the Jewish Passover tradition, where the ritual
Seder meal (celebrating the Hebrews’ liberation from Egyptian slavery) explicitly calls
for the diners to eat in a reclined posture to express their freedom from toil and their
entry into the joys of the land of milk and honey. The Greek and Roman origins of
reclined dining (which stem from religious rites of feasting with the gods) express the
same sense of divine leisure and pleasure. Brillat-Savarin calls this reclining posture
lectisternium (Brillat-Savarin 1949, 305–6). It is based on the Latin ritual feast of that
name (derived from the words lectum sternere, meaning to spread or drape a couch) in
which food was set out before images (little statues, dolls, etc.) of gods laid out on
couches; the earlier Greek ritual of this kind was called theoxenia (ϑεοξένια), meaning
entertaining or hospitality to gods.
As Brillat-Savarin remarks, this reclining Roman position in which festive diners
“lay upon their left sides, leaning upon that elbow” does not seem optimally suited for
comfortable eating. We can easily see how it makes balance more difficult and muscu-
larly stressful than sitting, because it concentrates the full burden of one’s upper body
weight on the single elbow joint. It also essentially limits eating to the use of one’s free
right hand, and the angle of the reclining body seems less advantageous for the
mechanics of drinking and of swallowing. We should recognize however that proper
training and habituation in reclined eating might render this posture much more com-
fortable than we can currently imagine it. Our bodies (as essentially structures of hab-
its) have a great capacity to learn to inhabit new habits. We should also note that
reclining offers a better trajectory than sitting does for the act of vomiting, which
Romans apparently integrated into their comprehensive art of festive eating. In any
case, if this eating posture’s origins were religious, then so were the reasons for later
abandoning it (at the dawn of the fourth century, according to Brillat-Savarin):
Christianity’s moral objections to the intemperance, venality, and sloth that such com-
munal reclining encouraged (Brillat-Savarin 1949, 305–6).
We should not, however, limit the issue of posture to the contrast of reclined eating
on couches versus sitting in chairs; important options exist beyond this dualism. In
some eating contexts, standing has special aesthetic charms. In Paris and Rome, many
individuals prefer to take their morning espresso and croissant while standing at the
bar rather than having it served while seated at a table. I share this preference, which is
not reducible to saving time and money. Rather, this position offers the multisensory
pleasure of hearing, seeing, and smelling how your espresso is made and delivered at
close range; further there is a sense of dynamic mobility, of stretching one’s legs before
one’s long day of work at a desk; there is also an agreeably special sense of momentary,
noncommittal solidarity with other diners at the bar, most often strangers, an option
for sociality that one can take or leave, depending on one’s mood. Evening drinks at a
standing bar offer similar advantages, the standing posture offering again a break from
a day of sitting at one’s workstation and a sense of mobile freedom. Cocktail parties, for
comparable reasons, present another context where standing may be the most aesthet-
ically rewarding position for drinking and snacking.
East Asian culture presents still other postural options. While China shares the
Western preference for sitting and eating in chairs, Japanese and Korean culture tradi-
tionally use other positions for eating. Consider the Japanese position called seiza (正
座). Though the term literally means proper sitting, seiza is more like a kneeling posi-
tion on the floor (typically covered with a tatami mat) in which one’s knees rest forward
on the floor with the legs folded behind, underneath the thighs, and one’s buttocks sit
on one’s heels, while the tops of one’s feet press flat on the floor; one’s spine is held
straight but not rigidly stiff. Though steadily decreasing in everyday eating contexts,
the seiza position is extremely prominent in the traditional martial arts, and is still
employed for the ritual art of tea ceremony and other formal contexts of traditional
ritual or festive dining. The posture is meant to convey respectful thanks, particularly
toward the host, but also an attitude of modesty, humility, or reverence. Marking the
socially important difference of gender, women in seiza sit with knees held together
while men’s knees are slightly separated.
The Japanese also employ a more casual sitting position for eating, which is sitting
cross-legged on the floor (again typically covered by tatami) with the knees bent and
the crossed legs in front of the torso, each foot beneath the other leg. This sitting pos-
ture, which they call agura (胡座, literally foreign/barbarian sitting), is considered far
less refined, and regarded as inappropriate for women, for whom the preferred infor-
mal manner of sitting is with both knees and legs to one side and the body resting on
the opposite hip that lies on the floor. Different eating contexts call for different eating
postures, and sometimes one can even pass from one context to another within the
same meal, starting or ending with a formal dimension while allowing for a time of
more relaxed eating through a more casual, comfortable posture. The choreography of
such transitions can add both meaning and beauty to the art of eating, as I’ve witnessed
in different dining contexts in Japan.
Before discussing my experience with Japanese dining, I should note that Western
culture also presents contexts where seated eating is done without chairs and is aestheti-
cally superior for not using them. I am thinking of picnic meals in beautiful natural
settings where the feeling of sitting on a simple blanket close to the earth’s natural sur-
face (or even sitting flush on that surface) adds to the aesthetic charm of the dining
atmosphere, while the placing and use of chairs on a fresh flowering meadow or an idyllic
sandy beach would seem awkwardly out of place, both visually and proprioceptively.
Here again, we see the strongly contextual character of the art of eating, an art with
variant genres or styles, even within a given ethnic culture or tradition. I have empha-
sized styles of refinement because such styles are most likely to claim conviction for the
very notion of eating as an aesthetic art. We should, however, consider the case for a
more popular aesthetic of eating that eschews refinement for boisterously unbuttoned,
wildly free, or clownishly buoyant feasting that one might describe in Bahktinian
terms of the carnivalesque banquet (Bakhtin 1965/1984, chapter 4).10 I have neither
space nor desire to consider it here. Nor is there space to consider further details of
eating posture.11 Instead, since gastronomical writers typically introduce anecdotes to
illustrate their message, I conclude by recounting my most memorable experience of
the fine art of eating that highlights the points I’ve been theorizing here.
I first learned to appreciate the art of eating through its practice at a Zen dojo, on the
coast of Japan’s Inland Sea near Hiroshima, where I trained with Zen-master (Roshi)
Inoue Kido during my year as a researcher at Hiroshima University in 2002–3. The
university wished to explore my project of somaesthetics, and I was interested in what
that project could learn from Japan’s rich traditions of body disciplines that range from
diverse martial arts through theatrical dance to Zen meditation. I came to Roshi’s dojo
to train in zazen or sitting meditation, but quickly saw that eating would also be a focus
of instruction. Sitting seiza in his study, I handled myself well enough at our first for-
mal tea-drinking interview to be accepted as his student. But then at our very first meal
together he brutally critiqued my eating style. “You are technically quite skillful at
using chopsticks,” he noted, “perhaps because your wife’s family is Japanese. But for a
professor of aesthetics you eat in a most ugly manner. You have a lot more than zazen to
learn here!” Too stunned and shamed to venture a reply, I listened while Roshi
explained how my competent dexterity with chopsticks was ruined by the sloppily
thoughtless manner in which I picked them up and set them down but also by the
graceless way I handled my rice bowl and tea cup—the inelegant positioning of my
hands on these vessels and the ungainly postural manner in which I brought their con-
tents to my mouth by excessively bending and lowering my head. Roshi then patiently
showed me what he considered the aesthetically proper way to pick up and put down
one’s chopsticks and to hold one’s rice bowl and cup. When I tried to emulate his
method, inaccurately at first, he demonstrated and explained again, till I grasped the
10
In contrast to Bakhtin’s focus on the popular culture aesthetic, the futurists advocate breaches of
refined table manners for avant-garde aesthetic shock effect, as in one dinner recipe where “a buxom coun-
try girl” pours “a huge bowl of strawberries floating in well-sweetened Grignolino wine” on “the heads” of
“three young men dressed in white”, who then start “eating, licking, drinking, mopping themselves up,
fighting across the table” (Marinetti 1932/1991, 105).
11
For instance, if we take sitting on a chair as the optimal posture for Western contexts of formal dining,
the question still remains what sort of sitting posture is best for enhancing the pleasures of eating. How
erect should we sit? How far forward should we be on the seat of the chair, how far from the table, how wide
should be the stance of our feet, where should we rest our hands, at what angle should we hold our heads,
so that we sit most comfortably and efficiently for making our eating movements enjoyable both to our-
selves and to our fellow diners who observe us eating? This list does not exhaust the relevant postural
questions.
principles and method, which I subsequently applied in actual practice at the dojo’s
three daily meals.
On the one hand, such meals were paradigms of ordinary simplicity. We sat on the
dojo’s bare kitchen floor (without the grace of a tatami carpet), huddled close around
a humble, low wooden table with no one formally serving us. The food—plain and
unimaginative, though of passable taste, was presented in the most simple and unem-
bellished way, without any visual adornment. The bowls and serving utensils were
equally humble, the kind one could find in a Japanese dollar store, and were old with
use and sometimes even slightly chipped or damaged. But in contrast to the lowly set-
ting and shabby props, the actual action of the meal was extraordinary in performative
grace and thoughtful elegance, as each movement was meant to be executed and expe-
rienced as the focus of careful, mindful, aesthetic attention.
Rather than simply being necessary breaks for physical nourishment and relief from
the trainee’s essential activity of meditation, the dojo meals were in fact an extension of
our training in awakened awareness, but by other means than sitting meditation and in
other venues than the meditation hall or zendo. Meals provided an opportunity to test
and demonstrate one’s awakened mindfulness in active everyday movement rather
than simply in meditative sitting; a rigorous training context in which one’s instinctive
appetites and unconscious habits are fully aroused and thus especially potent for dis-
tracting focused attention from the performed movements and qualities of experience
in eating; a context that further provides social training by involving a collaboration of
coordinated movement and shared experience with others. As we ate, Roshi’s pene-
trating and authoritative gaze would gauge our general progress in mindful awareness
from the particular qualities of our eating style, and especially from the focused grace
of our movements—the way we handled our bowls and chopsticks, how we chewed
and swallowed, how we passed food and drink to our dining companions, whether we
noticed when they were interested in receiving a dish that was in our reach. Knowing
Roshi was judging our mindfulness in eating, we trainees would also critically exam-
ine each other’s dining performance while seeking to maximize the mindful grace of
our own eating style. The result was that everyday ordinary meals became an extraor-
dinary experience of mindful, coordinated action; a sophisticated, elegant choreogra-
phy of dining movements pursued with heightened attentiveness to graceful motion
and careful respect for one’s dining companions and one’s food.
Initially daunted by the challenge of dining under Roshi’s demanding scrutiny, my
first meals were shadowed by the fear that sloppy eating might stain my clean white
training shirt, inviting my teacher’s condemnation and the ridicule of my fellow train-
ees. I thus resolved to eat as carefully, deliberately, and mindfully as I could, despite
being haunted by the worry that my eating movements would be rendered still more
awkward, graceless, and sloppy precisely by thinking about them while performing
them. The dominant theories on body consciousness repeatedly insisted that explicit,
focused attention on one’s movement was an impediment to its smooth and graceful
execution by destroying the effective spontaneity of our habits of coordinated motion
that perform our ordinary desired actions with such marvelous yet thoughtless
efficacy.
But since it seemed foolish to ignore Roshi’s mindfulness teaching while training
with him, I took the path of explicit, deliberate attention to my movements in eating—
with excellent results. My shirt remained spotless, and the heightened attention to my
actions of eating magnified the aesthetic satisfactions derived from those actions,
including those shared, reflective pleasures of reciprocal aesthetic recognition from
appreciative fellow diners. With skillfully focused purpose, my consciousness would
smoothly shift its attention from the clump of sticky rice, fermented soy beans, and
pickled daikon held on the tips of my chopsticks to the opening of my mouth, while
appreciating the trajectory of movement to bring the food there; it would then move to
the diverse sensory perceptions of tasting and chewing the food (such as reflectively
savoring the contrast of the tart crunchy pickle, the soft, bland rice, and the squashy
pungent beans), before turning, with similarly heightened awareness, to the tactile and
proprioceptive feelings of swallowing. As this attention to tasting, chewing, and swal-
lowing enhanced the sensory pleasures of these activities, so my focused awareness of
the hand- and body-movements involved in taking and passing the food made these
movements likewise more enjoyably graceful; while coordinating them with the din-
ing motions of my training colleagues provided a valuable dimension of collaborative
interaction that further enriched the dining experience. My mealtime anxiety gradu-
ally diminished, displaced by my burgeoning gratification from this gustatory, com-
munal choreography.
Because this lived experience of improved action through greater awareness of
movement so clearly contradicted the theoretical arguments against the practical effi-
cacy of heightened body consciousness, I could more confidently find the flaws in
those arguments and subsequently articulated them in my book Body Consciousness
and other writings. The same lived experience awakened me to the aesthetic value of a
fine art of eating that goes beyond the preparation, presentation, selection, and tasting
of food. In offering here a brief outline of its features and importance, I hope to promote
more substantial efforts to theorize, teach, and practice it for the aesthetic enrichment
of our lives.12
References
Bakhtin, Mikhael. 1965/1984. Rabelais and His World. Translated by Hélène Iswolsky.
Brillat-Savarin, Jean Anthelme. 1949/1825. The Physiology of Taste. Translated by M. F. K. Fisher.
New York: The Heritage Press.
12
A preliminary version of this essay was delivered on April 4, 2013, at the Università degli Studi di
Scienze Gastronomiche. I am grateful to Professor Nicola Perullo for inviting me to address the transdisci-
plinary audience of gastronomical experts he gathered there. I also thank him for insightful discussions on
the aesthetics of food.
Cervantes, Miguel de. 1605/2003. Don Quixote. Translated by Edith Grossman. New York:
Harper Collins.
Denker, Christian. 2015. “Unterscheidungen von Freud zu Shusterman.” In Vom Geist des
Bauches: Für eine Philosophie der Verdauerang. Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag.
Ferguson, Priscilla Parkhurst. 2006. Accounting for Taste: The Triumph of French Cuisine.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Feuerbach, Ludwig. 1862/1960. “Das Geheimnis des Opfers oder Der Mensch ist, was er isst.”
In Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, Schriften zur Ethik und nachgelassene Aphorismen. Stuttgart:
Frohmann Verlag.
Fisher, M. F. K. 1990. The Art of Eating. New York: Macmillan.
Fourier, Charles. 1971. The Utopian Vision of Charles Fourier: Selected Texts on Work, Love, and
Passion. Translated by Jonathan Beecher and Richard Bienvenu. Boston: Beacon Press.
Hume, David. 1757/1963. “Of the Standard of Taste.” In Essays Moral, Political, and Literary.
Korsmeyer, Carolyn. 2002. Making Sense of Taste: Food and Philosophy. Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press.
Legge, James (trans.) and Ch’u Chai and Winberg Chai (ed.). 1967. Li Chi: Book of Rites. An
Encyclopedia of Ancient Ceremonial Usages, Religious Creeds, and Social Institutions. New
Hyde Park, NY: University Books. (Legge translation originally published in 1885.)
Marinetti, F. T. 1932/1991. The Futurist Cookbook. Translated by Sue Brill. San Francisco:
Chronicle Books.
Montanari, Massimo. 2006. Food is Culture. New York: Columbia University Press.
Oettinger, Eduard Maria. 1852. Mademoiselle Mars und ihr Hof. Stuttgart: Verlag-Comptoir.
Saito, Yuriko. 2008. Everyday Aesthetics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Shusterman, Richard. 1992. Pragmatist Aesthetics: Living Beauty, Rethinking Art. Oxford:
Blackwell.
Shusterman, Richard. 2008. Body Consciousness: A Philosophy of Mindfulness and Somaesthetics.
Shusterman, Richard. 2012a. “Muscle Memory and the Somaesthetic Pathologies of Everyday
Life.” In Thinking through the Body: Essays in Somaesthetics. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Shusterman, Richard. 2012b. “Somatic Style.” In Thinking through the Body: Essays in
Somaesthetics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
15
Sexual Desire, Inequality, and the
Possibility of Transformation
Ann J. Cahill
In the final chapter of my recent book (2011), I attempt to sketch out a positive sexual
ethics, one that approaches sexuality as a site of bodily interaction that can enhance a
person’s sense of flourishing. Such a positive sexual ethics attempts to counter the sus-
picion that many sexual ethicists, including feminist ones, seem to hold toward sexual-
ity in general, a suspicion that I associated with a typically Western distrust of both the
body and relations. Grounding my analysis in Irigaray’s notion of sexual difference,
I identify the presence of wonder as the hallmark of an ethical sexual interaction. From
this perspective, the sexual subject that requires their sexual partners to fit into a cer-
tain mold is acting unethically, because they are failing to recognize sufficiently their
partner’s ontological specificity; without such recognition, and the willingness to allow
the distinctiveness of each partner to shape the interaction in profound ways, what
ought to be an interaction devolves into mere monologue.
This approach to sexuality allows for a different grounding of sexual ethics, one that
does not assume an atomized, individualized, essentially non-embodied subject. Yet it
raises other difficulties as well. For one, if all human beings are to be seen as ontologi-
cally distinct, non-reducible to other beings, and if ethical sexual interactions require
recognition of this ontological distinctiveness, are sexual subjects ethically required to
be attracted to bodies of all sorts? If it is wrong to judge the sexual appealingness of
other persons solely according to the ways in which those persons align with our own
preferences, are sexual preferences themselves ethically suspect? In short, is there an
ethics of sexual desire?
In this chapter, I will approach only a small fraction of these concerns. I will narrow
my exploration to a subset of sexual desires, namely those that intersect with various
forms of political and social inequality. I will argue that it makes sense to view these
sets of preferences, understood as sexual desires in the sense of “these are the kinds of
people I desire,” as embedded in political and social structures. It therefore stands to
reason that those sets of preferences will be marked by those structures, often in ways
that perpetuate structures of dominance and subordination. I will then argue for a
282 Ann J. Cahill
t heory of the sexual self that allows for the possibility of a transformation of sexual
preferences on the basis of ethical concerns. In some ways, then, my goal for this dis-
cussion is fairly modest: I aim to demonstrate that a sexual subject can, in fact, under-
take the transformation of at least some sorts of sexual desires on the basis of ethical
commitments. While this conclusion does not imply that all examples of sexual desires
are amenable to such transformation, nor that the transformation that may occur will
match the subject’s intentions perfectly, it does establish the appropriateness of sexual
desires as objects of ethical analysis.
These sets of questions distinguish my analysis from much of the philosophical
literature that addresses the ethics of sexual desire. For example, I am setting aside
the question of whether sexual desire in any form is ethical (see Soble 2001 for a
presentation of a variety of approaches to this question, inspired by Kant’s moral
suspicion of sexuality itself). Nor am I interested in engaging in the philosophical
discussion regarding the ethical distinctions between heterosexuality and other
sexual orientations that are culturally recognized as undesirable or even pathological;
in this discussion, I assume a commitment to a non-heteronormative sexual ethics.
Some virtue ethicists (see Badhwar 2007; Benn 1999; Halwani 2007, 2010; Jacobs
2007; Sihvola 2007) discuss the difference between virtuous and vicious sexual desires,
or the distinction between sexual temperance and intemperance, but not in the
context of political structures of inequality, and few if any address the question of
transformation itself.
Feminist critiques of heterosexuality as a political institution provide some of the
few discussions of the feasibility and/or desirability of transforming one’s sexual
desires. Joyce Trebilcot, for example, argues that the political meanings of heterosexu-
ality, together with a recognition that sexuality is socially constructed, combine to
create a mandate for “tak[ing] responsibility for the whole range of erotic/sexual/gen-
der phenomena that are aspects of one’s actions, attitudes, thoughts, wishes, style, and
so on” (1984, 422). For Trebilcot, what one does or prefers ought to be subject to politi-
cal interrogation, so that “one might discover/create one’s own sexuality on the basis of
one’s feeling and one’s politics, on the basis of reasons, on the rational-emotional
weighing of all one deems relevant” (1984, 424). That one has a certain set or pattern of
sexual feelings does not require that one’s actions align with those feelings: “Granting
that some women are sexually aroused only by men, they are not therefore locked into
any of the familiar identities or excluded from any. Such women may, in the first place,
choose for or against heterosexual activity” (1984, 425–6, emphasis in original).
Yet there are several troubling aspects to positions such as Trebilcot’s. As Sandra Lee
Bartky (1990, 57) pointed out, the ethical mandate to undertake an individual project
of self-transformation is itself beholden to a liberal view of the self that is in tension
with feminist understandings. Moreover, Trebilcot’s approach seems to be downright
dismissive of the lived meanings of sexual desires, both in relation to sexual acts and to
identity, to the extent that she points out that “we need not assume either that erotic
feelings should lead to lovemaking or that lovemaking ought to occur only where there
Sexual Desire, Inequality, and Transformation 283
are erotic feelings” (1984, 425). The prospect of sexual acts in the absence of sexual
desires, while not always or necessarily unethical, should at least give feminists
pause—as should the relegation of all sexual acts and orientation to a regime dictated
by reason. Trebilcot’s approach seeks to corral the wayward body, and to deny its
demands and inclinations, in favor of political, and ultimately intellectual, commit-
ments, and as such it perpetuates the very Western somatophobia that is so closely
associated with sexual and gender inequality.
The purpose of this discussion is to reanimate and broaden the question of the eth-
ics of sexual desires in a way that honors both embodiment and intersubjectivity, while
also bringing to the fore the ways in which sexual bodies are embedded in a multitude
of systems of inequality.
Multiplying Sexual Orientations

In normal parlance, and in fact in most philosophical discourse, sexual orientation
refers to whether one identifies as heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual. Despite some
attempts to expand upon the possibilities of sexual orientation (for example, pansexual-
ity and polysexuality), the assumption that what orients one’s sexual orientation is the
sex/gender of those to whom one is attracted is persistent. Here, echoing the work of
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (1990), I want to argue that this sexual orientation monopoly is
problematic. Most obviously, this conceptual framework assumes that sex/gender is a
stable, fixed element of identity, one that is easily recognizable among individuals. Once
we understand both sex and gender as fluid, as markers of identity that shift in their
expression and their meanings, then the notion of being sexually oriented toward either
one of two possibilities or both becomes disorienting indeed.
The sex/gender monopoly on sexual orientation has other difficulties as well.
Importantly for this discussion, it fails to recognize other patterns/structures of sexual
preferences that may be just as significant as sex/gender, but that remain unnamed. For
example, while one might identify as heterosexual, and thus understand and present
oneself as someone who is attracted solely or primarily to members of the supposedly
opposite sex, it may also be the case that one is attracted solely or primarily to members
of a particular economic class. Indeed, it’s possible that that set of sexual preferences is
more intransigent than the gendered set of preferences. But because the sex/gender
distinction is understood to be the primary focus of sexual orientation, the role that
class plays in the sexual subject’s sexual preferences may remain not only unnamed,
but in fact not even perceived: the sexual subject may not know, and may not notice,
that they find only members of a certain economic class sexually appealing, while find-
ing members of other classes consistently unappealing.
Once the monopoly of the sex/gender category has been undermined, it is easy to
imagine other identity markers factoring into a sexual subject’s set of sexual preferences.
The fact that a sexual subject is only attracted to persons within a certain age range may
284 Ann J. Cahill
be fundamental to that subject’s choice of partners—even if that subject never is con-

sciously aware of that boundary, and never has to name it as an element of the subject’s
identity. Economic status, degree of physical and/or cognitive ability, ethnic identity
(and the degree to which one does or does not identify with said ethnic identity)—all of
these and more may play not just a peripheral, but in fact a central, role in the experi-
ence of finding a person sexually appealing or not. Nor are such preferences merely
individual. Instead, they can be deeply implicated in structures of inequality.
For the purposes of this discussion, I am claiming that sexual preferences (not for
particular acts, but for specific kinds of people to whom the sexual subject is attracted)
that are not represented in the categories of heterosexuality, homosexuality, and bisex-
uality are nevertheless relevant, both in terms of the lived experience of sexual subjects
and in terms of sexual ethics. For the most part, I will use the terms “sexual prefer-
ences” and “sexual orientation” more or less interchangeably. Although it could be
argued that preferences are more fluid and even fleeting than orientations, much of my
analysis will question the very fixedness that is associated with readily recognized sex-
ual orientations, thus blurring the line between the two.
Sexual Desires as the Focus of Ethical Analysis

It is important to note here that several contemporary theorists of sexuality may well
argue that it is only actions, and not desires, that are appropriately subject to ethical
analyses (for analyses that either implicitly or explicitly make this claim, see
Goldman 2013 and Primoratz 1999). This argument could develop along several pos-
sible lines. One could argue that the structure of sexual desire that a subject develops is
ingrained very early in life, with little conscious effort or control, and as such, is quite
beyond the subject’s capacity to change. Thus, in this framework, the pedophile’s sex-
ual preference for children is not itself ethically condemnable. It is a bare fact of the
pedophile’s nature, over which the pedophile has no control. Ethics enters into the
conversation when that pedophile acts upon that desire by sexually engaging with a
child: now, because acting upon that desire is not necessary, but one choice among
many, we are free to condemn the pedophile for committing an unethical act.
Another objection might be made to subjecting patterns of sexual preferences to
ethical analysis on the basis of history. From the medieval practices of bodily mortifi-
cation to Kant’s seeming inability to square the sexual desire for another’s body with
the ethical demand for respect, Western approaches to sexuality have regarded the
experience of sexual desire as contrary to religious devotion and reason in equal meas-
ure. This suspicion of sexual desire has contributed to misogyny, homophobia, racism,
and other social ills, and the countering of that suspicion, even if incomplete, is surely a
move toward greater human flourishing. Viewing certain kinds of sexual preferences
as ethically problematic seems to be not only a step backward, but a dangerous one at
that, one that could reinforce and reify systems of sexual inequality that are only now
showing signs of crumbling.
Finally, there could be an objection from a consequentialist perspective that would

claim that desires cannot impose harm, and therefore cannot be considered to have
any ethical meaning whatsoever. For what does it matter that a certain sexual subject
has a certain set of sexual preferences? The preferences themselves do not harm
another being (because, after all, no individual has the right to be sexually attractive to
another); in fact, they do not do anything at all, except, if they are unwanted and/or
unable to be fulfilled, cause pain and frustration to the sexual subject. But even in this
case, it is not the desires themselves that are problematic, but their effects.
I would respond to each of these three lines of argument in different ways. The first
line of argument—the claim that sexual orientation is either hardwired (i.e. biologi-
cally determined) or so deeply ingrained as to be functionally hardwired—poses the
greatest challenge. I will therefore address the other two somewhat briefly before pro-
viding a lengthier response to the first.
In terms of distinguishing desires from actions, such that the former is viewed as
exempt from ethical analysis while the latter is not, I would argue that certain forms of
patterns of sexual preferences inevitably lead to actions—or even inactions—that con-
stitute harms. The desexualization of disabled persons is a case in point. As I’ve written
elsewhere (Cahill 2011), one of the many harms imposed upon disabled persons by an
ableist culture is the imposition of a sexual invisibility. Persons who are visibly identifi-
able as disabled are often socially constructed as inappropriate objects of sexualizing
gazes (this dynamic is often described in gendered ways; disabled men are viewed as
sexually impotent, and thus emasculated, whereas disabled women are seen, perhaps,
as too weak and fragile to withstand a sexualizing gaze, which is then understood as
disrespectful by virtue of the person’s disability). That is, an ableist culture discourages
abled individuals from viewing disabled persons as potential sexual partners; or, to put
it another way, an ableist culture inhibits the development of sexual desire for disabled
persons. Again, because this particular structure of sexual preference—the preference
for abled rather than disabled persons—is neither named nor generally remarked
upon, an abled individual may not be aware of harboring such a preference. In contem-
porary culture, where sexuality is constructed as a necessary element of full person-
hood (such that the experiences and preferences of asexual people are roundly ignored
and marginalized), to be viewed as asexual is to be infantilized and dehumanized.
Therefore, a socially and politically constructed situation wherein sexual desire for
disabled bodies is rare, or even pathologized, inevitably harms disabled persons. While
one could argue that it is the actions that are ethically questionable—the aversion of
the gaze, the failure to perceive the disabled person as a potential sexual partner—
I would argue that the ethical wrong occurs at the level of desire, and that the actions
that ensue are virtually inevitable unless and until the social and political nature of the
sexual preference at work is interrogated.
The concern that further restrictions on sexual desire will only fuel a somatophobic
culture with heterosexist and misogynist overtones is one that should not be underes-
timated. This is a particularly pressing concern with regard to women, whose sexual
286 Ann J. Cahill
desires have been denied, ignored, and pathologized. However, I think that to cite
this concern in favor of simply not asking the question of the ethical meanings of
sexual preferences is misguided. For one, doing so risks the continued mystification
of the intersection of sexuality and various forms of inequality. If structures of sexual
preferences are to remain immune from ethical analysis, it will be difficult if not
impossible to understand one crucial way in which racism, ableism, ageism, etc.,
are perpetuated and sustained. Thus, while I aim to keep this concern at the fore-
front of my analysis, I am not convinced that it is a sufficient reason to reject the
question entirely.
The matter of whether sexual preferences/orientations can be changed is central to
my analysis, and as such requires a more lengthy response. In crafting that response,
I will rely heavily on William Wilkerson’s Ambiguity and Sexuality (2007), a compel-
ling and detailed consideration of the ontology of sexual orientation. While thinkers
such as Foucault (1990) and Sedgwick (1990) have also addressed both the moldability
and the political meanings of sexual desires, Wilkerson’s focus on the role of the sexual
subject as an active agent in the shaping of sexual orientation makes his approach par-
ticularly useful here.
Like Wilkerson, I understand the need to establish the hardwired nature of sexual
orientation as having primarily social and political motivations: “The idea that sexual
orientation, homosexuality in particular, involves choice is anathema to the main-
stream gay, lesbian, and bisexual community, because it opens the door to the criti-
cisms that our life is a sin of our choosing” (2007, 3). In arguing against the notion that
being gay or lesbian or trans*1 is a “choice,” pro-LGBTQIA forces have attempted to
establish identities that deviate from heteronormative ideals as existing prior to any
decisions that could be subject to ethical consideration. And when it comes to
LGBTQIA rights, equality, and dignity, I am hard pressed to be anything other than
pragmatic: if the “this is who I am, I can’t help it” argument helps to dismantle a set of
social and political practices that have oppressed LGBTQIA individuals for so long,
then I endorse its strategic use. But to confuse its strategic use with its philosophical
strength would be a mistake.
As Wilkerson demonstrates, the notion of a stable set of sexual desires existing out-
side of social institutions, norms, and relations is incoherent. Sexual subjects don’t
develop in a vacuum, and sexual identities aren’t bare facts about an individual’s being.
Instead, as is the case with perhaps virtually all elements of subjectivity, sexual desires,
orientation, and identity emerge from a rich and dynamic intersection of materiality,
social norms, historical location, and even choice. Wilkerson describes his theory of
sexual orientation as “emerging fusion”:
Sexuality stabilizes as individuals interpret their desires through contact with others and
their own culturally specific norms. As an individual interprets experiences in light of social
1
I include trans* identity here only because the political argument regarding LGBTQIA rights includes
trans*. Of course, the identity of trans* is not related to sexual desire, but to sex/gender identity.
categories, he or she makes continual choices about the meaning and place of these experi-
ences, and through interaction with others develops an identity that is real, chosen, and socially
located. Neither the desires, nor the social categories, nor the chosen responses are primary,
but instead all of them are coconstitutive and coeval in the process by which sexual orientation
and sexual identity fuse together. . . . Once biological factors are seen to relate to social catego-
ries, for example, neither can be seen independently of the other; biology will be social and the
social will reflect the biological. Similarly, once experience is seen to be conditioned by social
context and choice, it cannot be understood apart from this context, nor from the interpretive
choices we make in coming to terms with it, and these choices are themselves motivated by
context and experience. (2007, 4–5)
Several aspects of Wilkerson’s theory of sexual orientation are crucial to my concerns.

First, in discussing sexual identity as the result of an ongoing process that necessarily
engages with social norms, biological processes, and choices made by the subject, he
does not mean to imply that sexual identity is easily changed, or is malleable to a limit-
less extent. For Wilkerson, sexual identity is “real”: it serves as a powerful, meaningful
way in which the human subject orients itself in the world, and is in fact a “central force
in our lives” (2007, 130). With specific regard to homosexuality, the social ramifica-
tions of assuming a gay or lesbian identity are negative enough to indicate that it is only
a central element of one’s sense of self that would justify the significant social risks
involved in such self-identification (2007, 129–30). In arguing for a more dynamic,
fluid model of the emergence of sexual identity, Wilkerson is in no way underplaying
its centrality to contemporary human subjectivity.
Second, while, for Wilkerson, choice does play a role in the formation of sexual
identity, the choice that is involved is distinct from the modern sense of choice that
both privileges and assumes the possibility of “full disclosure.” Following de Beauvoir,
Wilkerson understands the human subject as embedded in a situation that is simulta-
neously not of that subject’s making and requiring that subject’s interpretation to gain
meaning. It is in interpretative acts—in choosing, for example, the meaning of one’s
desires—that human agency is instantiated, which means that agency always occurs in
the context of relations and contingencies (2007, 96). Given the complexity of the situ-
ation in which the human subject is becoming, choices can never be made from an
omniscient perspective; nor are they made in isolation from bodily forces. The dyna-
mism of the human situation also necessarily implies (although Wilkerson does not
emphasize this point) that the meanings and ramifications of the choices that human
subjects make are never completely predictable or known. They are thrown into the
mix, to encounter once again a variety of entities and responses, encounters that pro-
duce new opportunities for interpretation. Wilkerson is at pains to point out that none
of the factors that are involved in the emergence of sexual desires, orientations, and
identities are determinate, and choice is no exception.
Third, while Wilkerson frequently distinguishes between sexual desires, sexual ori-
entation, and sexual identity, he emphatically does not limit the role of choice to, say,
the process of coming out, that is, of explicitly adopting a specific sexual identity.
288 Ann J. Cahill
Rather, he claims that the act of interpretation is foundational to the experience of

having desires themselves:
Experience is a structured pattern of focal points and backgrounds. Sexual desire, as an expe-
rience, requires context and interpretation to have sense. The feelings of sexual and emotional
connection some feel for people of their gender form in a context that conditions their mean-
ing. The common coming out narrative of “discovering” sexual orientation distorts the actual
process, which does not so much discover sexuality as consolidate it through interpretation
and the creation of a new identity and a new project of the self. Even though we think that our
feelings were always there before coming out, we forget, in the very process of this remember-
ing, that our memory reconstructs the previous feelings in light of what they become. We now
feel this way, and this new context projects itself backwards into our past, even without a choice
to make a new past for ourselves, and our very feelings change retroactively. (2007, 49)
For Wilkerson, there is no bare desire, but only desire as experienced by a subject that
must and does interpret that desire in order to sense it. And precisely because interpreta-
tion is necessary, it is not determinate: that is, similar desires can be experienced in a
variety of ways. Depending on the social context and one’s relation to it, the desire to
interact sexually with someone of the same sex may produce shame, or a sense of elation,
or relief; but the desire cannot be experienced without the subject who is feeling it being
involved in that meaning-making. And where there is meaning-making, Wilkerson is
implying, there is agency—not the agency of autonomy and self-containment, but the
agency that derives from the necessary indeterminateness of intersubjectivity.
Wilkerson’s phenomenological and existential approach captures the complexity
of sexuality as a lived experience in a more astute and comprehensive way than much
of the existing scholarship on sexual desire. Note, however, that his analysis is relent-
lessly focused on the familiar categories of sexual orientation that frame contemporary
conversations in sexual ethics (heterosexuality, homosexuality, and bisexuality). Thus
his discussion does not include the kinds of sexual desires that I am concerned with
here, desires that in our current taxonomy do not rise to the level of either sexual ori-
entation or sexual identity. Yet I would argue that his general approach to sexuality
would speak to these sorts of desires as well. After all, just as one’s emerging sexual
identity must, in contemporary Western culture, orient itself to socially constructed
categories of gender, so too must such an identity interact with other socially con-
structed elements of identity such as ability, race, gender, and class. That these other
identity factors are not socially constructed as central to one’s sexual identity (we do
not have a commonly used term for the person who is only attracted to members of
that person’s own race) does not mean that they are irrelevant. And while it may seem
dubious that they are as central to emerging sexual identities as the category of gen-
der, they may well be more salient than they first appear. In any case, it seems fair to
extrapolate from Wilkerson’s analysis the conclusion that other types of sexual desires
and preferences (i.e. desires and preferences that are not gender-based) would
develop and emerge in a similar way that gender-based desires and preferences do.
And in fact, if those sorts of desires and preferences are less worked on and worked
out than the gender-based desires and preferences, it may even be possible that they
are somewhat less intractable.
Perhaps the most obvious point of divergence between my analysis and Wilkerson’s
is that the latter does not address the ethical questions potentially involved in exercising
the limited form of choice that is utilized in the formation of sexual desires, orienta-
tions, and identity. That is, Wilkerson gives no guidance as to how a sexual subject may,
in becoming aware of the acts of interpretation that are enmeshed in the emergence of
one’s sexual identity, adopt an ethical perspective and framework in relation to those
acts. The question, really, is twofold: one, how could a sexual subject understand the
ethics involved in such interpretive acts (i.e. which ethical principles may be seen as
desirable and effective in such a context); and two, how would a sexual subject go about
imbuing these acts of interpretation with ethical meanings? In short, can a sexual sub-
ject adopt a specifically ethical agency with regard to their emerging sexuality?
Motivations for the Transformation

of Sexual Preferences
There are several positive reasons to consider transforming one’s desires rather than
one’s actions. Let us take as an example a sexual subject who, much to their dismay,
realizes that their sexual attraction to women of Asian descent is reducible to racist
stereotypes that associate Asian women with submissiveness, passivity, and fragility.
Rather than setting out to transform the sexual preference itself, this person merely
sets out to transform the actions that can be inspired by that preference. Such a person
might refrain from engaging in sexual interactions with Asian women, perhaps even
to the extent of avoiding Asian women in social contexts. In a sense, this sexual subject
is attempting to abstain from a particular sexual interaction in order to avoid instanti-
ating racist ideologies.
But the focus on the behavior rather than the sexual preference itself is problematic
in several ways. For one, it seems to invoke, perhaps necessarily, a structure that associ-
ates sexual desires with the body and a commitment to racial justice with the mind,
thus perpetuating mind–body dualism. Perhaps even more worrisome, the ethical
mandate that results from the seeming contradiction between the two—namely the
requirement to align one’s bodily behavior with one’s ethical commitments—invokes a
mind–body hierarchy.2 Suddenly we are back in a distinctly Western framework where
2
One might point out here that there are many embodied practices that would seem to invoke the very
mind–body dualism and hierarchy that I’m warning against here. Embodied subjects, for example, choose
not to eat delicious but unhealthy food, go running when they really don’t feel like it, and smile through
gritted teeth in order to keep their jobs. I would argue that in many of these cases, framing the choices that
these subjects are making through a model of a desiring body that ought to be controlled by a superior
mind is both problematic and limiting. The point I am making, however, is slightly different. When we
develop an ethical analysis that requires a desiring subject to transform behavior, but not desires, I hold
that we are necessarily buying in to a mind–body dualism that ought to give us pause.
290 Ann J. Cahill
the desires of the body are those which must be controlled and denied by the superior
powers of the mind. As I and many other feminist philosophers have argued, the
mind–body hierarchy is not only contrary to much of human lived experience, but is
deeply implicated in inequalities of all sorts, particularly those associated with sex/
gender, sexual orientation, and disability. For these reasons, any response to an inter-
section of sexuality and structural injustice that invokes a mind–body hierarchy ought
to raise suspicions.
In fact, upon reflection, it’s important to discern that it is not the sexual subject’s
attraction to Asian women that is necessarily problematic. What is ethically question-
able (at least, to this sexual subject) is the sexually charged, racist association of Asian
women with passivity and meekness. That is, in seeking to align their sexual prefer-
ences with their commitment to racial equality, this sexual subject ought not to aspire
to sexual indifference toward Asian women, as such sexual indifference on the basis of
race would be just as dehumanizing, and therefore just as ethically questionable, as
sexual attraction based on racist associations. Instead, this sexual subject should seek
to develop the capacity to perceive and appreciate Asian women as sexual beings with-
out invoking or relying on racist associations.
It seems crucial to note here that one of the most familiar examples of attempts to
transform sexual preferences on the basis of ethical concerns is profoundly disturb-
ing. So-called “conversion therapy,” which has been roundly denounced by the
American Psychiatric Association (2000), sets out to transform LGBTQIA individu-
als into God-fearing heterosexuals, and while it takes many forms, it generally does so
by trying to replace sexual attraction with sexual aversion, and vice versa. It seems
clear that conversion therapy is aimed at transforming desires, not actions: the point
of the various programs is to “liberate” LGBTQIA individuals from the “wrong”
desires that are imprisoning them, not merely to convince LGBTQIA individuals to
refrain from certain actions. The programs have been shown to be both futile (with
few to no credible reports of “success”) and destructive, often deepening the feelings
of shame and self-loathing that the individual who is subjected to them was already
feeling (Haldeman 2002).
The phenomenon of conversion therapy seems to be a cautionary tale indeed. If one
of the few intentional, sustained efforts to transform sexual preferences leads to such
disastrous and harmful outcomes, perhaps the very possibility of embarking on an
attempt to transform any sexual preference ought to be abandoned. Yet this conclusion
would involve willfully ignoring certain crucial aspects of conversion therapy. First of
all, and perhaps most crucially, it is often coerced, either directly (in the case of parents
forcing their children to engage in such programs) or more implicitly (in the case of
individuals who recognize that renouncing their LGBTQIA preferences and identities
is the only way to remain a member of a community that they value). Second, it cannot
be said that such conversion therapy seeks to undermine structural injustices. In its
vilification of non-heteronormative sexual desires and practices, it is clearly and
indeed unabashedly heteronormative; moreover, it locates the source of the unethical
desire as solely in the individual. It is the individual (mis)desiring subject that needs
individual transformation in order to bring that individual into alignment with the
right, the good, and the true.
The direct coercion described here would render any such attempt to transform
one’s sexual preferences unethical. But in this current analysis I am not asking whether
being forced by others to transform one’s sexual preferences might be ethical;
I am asking whether undertaking, in as close to a voluntary state as our existential
condition allows, to transform one’s sexual preferences could be ethical. Already,
then, that places conversion therapy well outside the realm of the phenomenon under
consideration here. However, the implicit coercion is a more troubling matter. After
all, what if the community to which one belongs, and which one values, is committed
to anti-racist beliefs, and yet one discovers that one’s sexual preferences are distinctly
but consistently racist? Is it possible to distinguish the queer desiring subject who
would gladly trade (were it possible) those queer desires for a more complete, honest,
and authentic sense of belonging in a heteronormative community from the racist
desiring subject who would similarly trade the racist desires for that same sense of
belonging in an anti-racist community?
It is not clear that such a distinction can be made without imbuing heteronorma-
tivity with a negative ethical value and anti-racism with a positive ethical value. And
while I don’t have time to defend such imbuing in depth here, in general I would
want to do so. Yet I also think that such a move is not necessary if the scope of the
motivation for the kind of transformation under consideration is narrowed. That is,
I could reframe the question in this way: “Might it be ethically desirable for a sexual
subject to set out to transform patterns of sexual desires that the subject considers to
be associated with structures of inequality for the primary purpose of undermining
those structures?” The clear articulation of the motivation for the transformation
precludes (as far as consciousness allows) the motivation of transforming those pref-
erences for the purpose of pleasing a community, impressing another individual, or
any other ulterior motive. Note that the motivation does not demand that trans-
forming one’s sexual preferences actually succeeds in undermining those structures
of inequality; such causality would be difficult, if not impossible, to determine. The
point is that it is the structures of inequality that provide both the motivation for the
transformation (i.e. in the desiring subject’s wish to undermine them) and the expla-
nation for the desires themselves. This is another striking contrast with the framework
of conversion therapy, which names the desiring individual as the site of the ethical
flaw. Here, while the desiring subject may be the site of the experience of the sexual
preference, the roots of that preference are clearly understood as existing beyond the
desiring subject, namely in political and social structures that render certain kinds
of people more likely to be the recipients of sexualizing gazes. From such a perspective,
certain sexual preferences would be cause for neither surprise nor shame; instead,
they would be viewed as the predictable, but regrettable, outcomes of unequal polit-
ical structures.
292 Ann J. Cahill
The Process of Transformation: Learning

When to Laugh
Wilkerson’s analysis of sexual preferences, orientations, and identities has allowed for
the inclusion of the role of choice in the development of the sexual subject. Yet, as
I have emphasized, the choice that is involved does not align with the model of Western
autonomy: whatever choices the sexual subject makes are necessarily embedded in a
social and political context, and the meanings and ramifications of those choices are
not fully available to the subject even as they are being made. So how are we to under-
stand the process by which a sexual subject may set out to transform their sexual
desires? What might this transformation look like?
Throughout the literature on sexual desire, there is a persistent, although not unchal-
lenged, tendency to view sexual desire as similar to hunger (Badhwar 2007, for example,
extrapolates from Aristotle’s discussion of hunger to develop an analysis of the virtues
and vices associated with sexuality; see also Sihvola 2007; Jacobsen 1993; Moore 1995;
Nagel 1984; Shaffer 1978). The appeal of such a comparison is obvious: it allows philoso-
phers to distinguish between the generalized, allegedly universal desire for sex and the
particular forms that desire takes in different social and political contexts. Just as distinct
human cultures respond to the universal need for food in different ways, thus construct-
ing different sets of preferences in the process, so too do those cultures take up what is
supposedly a universal need for sexual interaction. Moreover, the comparison effectively
undermines the Western tendency to view sexual desire as itself ethically problematic, by
constructing it as a relatively value-neutral aspect of human existence.
And if the comparison were an effective one, the ethical questions regarding sexual
desires might well be simplified; hunger, after all, can be satiated in a variety of ways,
particularly in contemporary Western society, and so just as an eating subject can
choose what kind of food will be ingested, so too a sexual subject could choose
the means of fulfilling sexual desires. However, it turns out that the analogy has some
serious flaws. For one, not every human being experiences the need for sex or sexual
interaction; unlike nutrition, sex is not a necessary element to individual human exist-
ence. Second, the analogy seems to get something about both hunger and sexual desire
wrong, which is that distinguishing between the general desire and the specific means
of fulfilling it is not so easy. This is especially true once one distinguishes among
different forms of hunger: the hunger of the chronically malnourished is a different
phenomenon from the hunger of the person who is eating lunch two hours later than
usual. In many cases, at least, hunger is not experienced in an anything-will-do sort of
way; one can easily imagine hungry persons who refuse to eat certain foods because
they find those foods repulsive, just as one can easily imagine being hungry for specific
kinds of food. Similarly, while it’s possible to imagine a person whose desire for sex is
completely generalized (such that any sex act with any partner would do the trick), it
seems more likely that sexual desire usually manifests itself as a desire for a specific
partner or kind of partner, or a specific act.
Karen Davis (1990) explicitly rejects the sexual-desire-as-hunger paradigm, and

seeks a new approach to sexuality that would break the philosophical stalemate that
resulted from radical feminists’ description of heterosexuality as necessarily imbued
with sexualized domination, such that a feminist heterosexuality seemed to be a con-
tradiction in terms. She finds her new metaphor in the human experience of laughter:
Laughter also transcends the categories of how sex is experienced as desire or as violation in the
direction of what people idealize for their sexuality: mutuality, intimacy, self-presence, inter-
subjectivity, the breakdown of boundaries which separate subject from object, self from other.
Shared laughter presupposes only that there is some degree of shared meaning and some
shared recognition, which may in turn occasion the possibility of trust and love and equality.
I envision as liberating the move from objectifying laughter (I laugh at you) or controlling
laughter (I make you laugh) to mutuality in laughter (we laugh together). (1990, 16)
Davis’ analysis is rich and replete with implications, only a few of which I will address
in this limited space. Primarily, I want to argue that her notion of sexuality-as-laughter
provides a helpful framework for understanding the transformation of sexual
preferences.
Laughter, as Davis emphasizes, is a necessarily social act: what we laugh at, and how,
and where, are all framed by social norms and expectations. Yet laughter is not reducible
to those norms and expectations. Human beings can refuse to laugh at that which is pre-
sented as humorous, and can laugh at persons and situations that are expected to be met
with respect and deference. Laughter can be experienced as involuntary (as anyone who
has experienced a giggle fit in a social space requiring silence knows) and is necessarily
embodied. Moreover, humor plays a crucial role in structural inequality of all sorts. Who
gets to laugh, and at whom, and with whom, and on what basis, are questions that can
illuminate the ways in which domination and subordination are sustained.
A culture that privileges certain groups of persons over others will produce indi-
viduals whose sense of humor is related to the privilege itself and to that individual’s
social position vis-à-vis that privilege. Privileged persons would thus be more likely
to find humorous jokes that align with and perpetuate the privilege those individuals
enjoy; unprivileged persons would be more likely to find jokes humorous that point
out the irrationality of the privilege. Prior to any interrogation of the privilege in
question, the privileged laughing subject may enjoy the experience of laughing at
such jokes: it will be pleasurable, both as an embodied experience and as a form of
social interaction and connection.3 Yet it is possible that such a laughing subject will
encounter ideas or persons that question the humor that has previously been such an
occasion for pleasure, by pointing out its heretofore unperceived reliance on systems
3
Given the limitations of space, I am oversimplifying what is obviously a much more complex social
and political phenomenon here. For example, in the context of a racist society, some examples of racist
humor may be seen as socially acceptable while other examples may not. Here I am merely pointing out
that a privileged person may well become aware of the injustices that ground such humor, and that that
awareness may transform their relation to such jokes.
294 Ann J. Cahill
of injustice. There are a wide variety of possibilities in terms of response to this

challenge: the laughing subject may reject the connection out of hand, either explicitly
or implicitly refusing to accept its dependence on unjust social structures; or the
laughing subject may concede that dependence, but ultimately value the pleasurable
elements of the laughing experience over its ethical provenance; or the laughing
subject may engage in a process of self-reflection that results in a desire to change
their laughing preferences.
It is that last possibility that, for obvious reasons, interests me here. For while this
process of self-reflection may be, in some social contexts, mocked or denigrated, it is
certainly constructed as possible. That is, there is no inherent contradiction perceived
in the project of trying to become less racist, or sexist, or ableist, in one’s humor.
Moreover, such a project would probably be seen as overly limited if the goal were
merely to refrain from laughter as the outward expression of finding certain lines of
humor funny. Instead, the laughing subject in question would almost certainly want to
transform themselves into a person who wasn’t tempted to laugh at, say, ageist jokes—
someone who simply no longer found them funny.
Such a project, I would argue, would be structurally similar to that undertaken by a sex-
ual subject who has realized that some of their sexual preferences not only align with but
perpetuate structural inequalities. Here too the goal would not be merely to refrain from
specific sexual behavior, but to transform one’s sexual preferences so that the behavior in
question (say, consuming racist pornography) would no longer be appealing. That is, the
object of the ethical transformation would not be the behavior, but the desire itself.
Davis’ analysis of sexuality as laughter makes such an ethical project coherent. But
how possible is such a project? Are sexual preferences of this sort amenable to attempts
at transformation?
Recent scholarship regarding the complex nature of racial privilege and implicit
bias offers some hope—as well as some caution—on this point. Shannon Sullivan’s
approach to white privilege (2006), although it does not address sexuality or sexual
desires directly, illuminates white privilege in a way that can be used to account for
racist sexual desires. According to Sullivan, white privilege functions not as a cognitive
mistake (thinking consciously that certain ethnic or racial groups are superior to oth-
ers) or a gap in knowledge (being unaware of the experiences of individuals belonging
to certain ethnic or racial groups), but rather is a set of largely unconscious, psychoso-
matic habits that both emanate from and construct a racialized world. Such habits are
not, as Sullivan points out, “some sort of veneer lacquered onto a neutral human core.
They are dispositions for transaction with the world, and they make up the very beings
that humans are” (2006, 2). George Yancy agrees: “My point is that acting whitely is not
limited to possessing occurrent racist beliefs or feeling hatred for (or having that
hatred directed toward) a particular Black person encountered on an elevator. Acting
whitely might be described as a form of orientation that comes replete with a set of
sensibilities that unconsciously or prereflectively position or configure the white self
vis-à-vis the nonwhite self ” (2008, 24).
For both Sullivan and Yancy, the ontological, habitual, embodied qualities of white
privilege do not justify despair. However, those qualities do indicate that attempts to
undermine or eradicate white privilege through conscious methods will largely fail.
Sullivan in particular argues for more indirect methods of transformation, while
Yancy focuses more on the constantly shifting set of practices that white anti-racists
must engage in:
One might say that being a white antiracist is never completely in one’s control because such an
identity is deferred by the sheer complexity of the fact that one is never self-transparent, that
one is ensconced within structural and material power racial hierarchies, that the white body
is constituted by racist habits that create a form of racist inertia even as the white body attempts
to undermine its somatic normativity, and that the white self undergoes processes of
interpellation even as the white self engages in agential acts of racist disruption. This does not
mean, though, that all is hopeless or, as one white student commented, that “since racism is so
powerful that we [whites] just might as well be racists.” One ought to exercise vigilance and
DuBoisian “long siege” even while complicity with whiteness is still possible or precisely
because one is always already complicit with whiteness. (2008, 231)
Sullivan’s description of the ways in which the habits of white privilege work to keep
themselves hidden, while simultaneously perpetuating and reinscribing racial
inequality, constitutes a compelling model of the ways in which sexual desire and
systematic inequality intersect. Take, for example, her analysis of the racialized nature
of space; in the following extended quotation, try replacing “spatiality” with “sexuality,”
and “space” and “place” with “sex,” and notice how coherent the analysis remains:
Both psychically and somatically, white people’s privilege is in part derived from the ways that
they live their spatiality. That privilege is not merely lying at the fringes of awareness, waiting
for the spotlight of consciousness to bring it to reflective attention. Often it instead hides, for
example, in habits of controlling space, including the way that other people live space. These
habits can seem unrelated to race; they often operate through the language of development,
modernization, and progress. As such, they often are able to thwart conscious attempts to see
them, operating invisibly to perpetuate the spatial aspects of white privilege.
And yet, white people cannot give up striving to become aware of the racialization of space and
place. This is a crucial first step toward taking responsibility and being accountable for the ways
in which they live space as the raced bodies that they are. (2006, 158–9)
Sullivan’s analysis emphasizes that a specific culture’s messages regarding racial inequal-
ity and white privilege are rarely communicated directly or explicitly; their potency lies
in the ways in which they are inculcated through bodily behavior, gestures, and norms
masquerading as neutral reality.
If Sullivan’s take on white privilege is correct (and much of the even more recent
scholarship on implicit bias indicates that it is),4 and if Wilkerson is correct about the
4
The scholarship on implicit bias is too extensive to cite in any comprehensive way here. For an excel-
lent overview of recent scholarship and its relevance to philosophical questions, see Crouch and
296 Ann J. Cahill
necessary role of interpretation and experience vis-à-vis sexual desires, then it would
make sense that individuals’ sexual desires would be an example of the kinds of habits
Sullivan is describing. Such a conclusion resonates with the analysis offered by
Laurence Thomas (1999), who argues that privileging members of one’s own racial or
ethnic group in matters regarding friendship and romance is not only unethical, but
cannot be conceptually or practically separated from structural inequality in the pub-
lic realm. Thomas tends to use the more cognitively focused language of privileging,
however, whereas my concern is with the more embodied phenomenon of sexual
desire. In short, I claim that sexual desires are not, as some philosophical approaches
have assumed, merely mental states that are both clearly distinguishable from actions
and impervious to transformation. They are ways of being in the world that are impli-
cated and embedded in social and political structures; but because they are habitual,
and not primarily cognitive beliefs, a conscious attempt to transform those desires (or,
in Trebilcot’s approach, to ignore them entirely) would be unlikely to be successful.
As deeply ingrained as these habits are, however, Sullivan refuses to consider them
as intractable. In a move that aligns well with both Wilkerson’s and Davis’ approach to
sexuality, she notes that the fact that habits are formed in relation to one’s environment
means that
changing unconscious habits of white privilege requires altering the political, social, physical,
economic, psychological, aesthetic, and other environments that “feed” them. Correspondingly,
a white person who wishes to try to change her raced and racist habits would do better to
change the environments she inhabits than [to attempt] to use “will power” to change the way
she thinks about and reacts to non-white people. (2006, 9)
Changing one’s environment in order to starve the beast that is the habit of white priv-
ilege does not guarantee, however, that one has left those habits behind. Indeed, as
Sullivan points out, one of the hallmarks of white privilege is the assumption of “onto-
logical expansiveness” (2006, 11) that allows, say, a white person to consider moving
into an other-than-white neighborhood. And the white person who seeks to enter into
communities that will not nurture the habits of white privilege must take care to ensure
that those communities are not primarily constructed as the means to the white per-
son’s redemption—a particularly noxious form of racial commodification that mas-
querades as a commitment to racial equality. To translate this insight to the sexual
realm, a sexual subject wishing to transform her desires so that they do not align as
well with structural inequality cannot blithely assume that all, or even any, members of
the subordinate group in question are willing to be her sexual partners. That assump-
tion, especially when enacted with and among sexual bodies, solidifies the very habits
of privilege that are allegedly to be undermined.
There is no doubt, then, that setting out to transform those sexual desires that have
manifested themselves as implicated in systems of inequality is to engage in a process
Schwartzman 2012; that volume includes an article by Jules Holroyd (2012) which argues that the presence
of implicit bias does not constitute a lack of responsibility for one’s views.
that will require not only remarkable levels of self-reflection, but also the recognition
that the privilege expressed in those desires is unlikely to be eradicated completely—
and perhaps most troubling for individuals accustomed to a high degree of control
over their lives and selves, cannot even be troubled significantly without ontologically
challenging experiences.
The difficulty of the attempt does not, however, undermine my claim that such an
attempt may be the result of an ethically sound decision. As I have demonstrated, sex-
ual desires and preferences, precisely because they develop in social and political situ-
ations, can reflect and perpetuate inequalities of all sorts. They are habits, as Sullivan
understands them; and habits, even those that are entrenched and endorsed by the
dominant culture, can be weakened. Sexual ethics, then, should not be limited to
the consideration of actions, but may also coherently extend to the considerations
of desires.
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16
Sex Objects and Sexy Subjects
A Feminist Reclamation of Sexiness
Sheila Lintott and Sherri Irvin
Feminists frequently lament the fact that women are too often viewed primarily,
and in some cases exclusively, as sex objects and valued primarily or exclusively in
terms of an externally dictated and generalized conception of sexiness. Sexual
objectification in a male-dominated and heteronormative society functions to
reduce women to objects to be used at the discretion of men. Women are socialized
to believe that sexiness is essential to their value as persons and are moreover
socialized to accept a narrow conception of sexiness, one that excludes large
portions of the population from being considered sexy. Under these conditions,
sexiness is not something a woman can secure for herself; it is not “up to her.” To be
sexy, in this ordinary sense, is to satisfy a set of standards for appearance and
behavior that are the outgrowth of a specific, societally shaped, heterosexual male
gaze. It is extremely unlikely that any particular woman will fully satisfy all of these
standards, and more unlikely still—probably impossible—that she’ll be able to
sustain the ideal throughout her lifetime. Even if embodying the ideal were
possible, many women would not wish to shape themselves in the required ways, as
doing so demands considerable effort, cost, sacrifice, suffering, and conformity.
Even those who “willingly” strive to shape themselves to meet the ideal of sexiness
will incur these costs. As sexiness is commonly understood, its ultimate arbiter is
not the woman herself and not even her most intimate and loving partners; rather
it is an externally dictated, fixed standard that is set for all women without any
sensitivity to variable factors that help distinguish women from one another, such
as age, race, size, interests, and personality. Thus, the kind of sexiness expected of
women leaves little room for and basically ignores the woman’s individual
autonomous sexual agency.
Given the socialization of women to believe that sexiness is essential to their value
as persons, and given the narrow conception of sexiness prescribed, it is not surpris-
ing that some feminists suggest we give up on sexiness altogether: calling a person
“sexy” in the standard sense at best ignores and sometimes even denies the person’s
300 Sheila Lintott and Sherri Irvin
agency, subjectivity, and autonomy. In other words, to say someone, especially a

woman, is sexy is to reduce them to an object—a thing.
However, feminists are not in complete agreement here. For example, Martha
Nussbaum (1995) has argued that sexual objectification is not necessarily incompati-
ble with respect and egalitarian interaction. Though we argue along different lines
than Nussbaum, we too believe that completely giving up on sexiness is a mistake. We
maintain that, rather than accepting the common notion of sexiness that links sexi-
ness with objecthood, feminists should reclaim and redefine sexiness and its domain.
This is not a new idea: disability theorists have long been talking about the tension
between feminism and disability theory concerning women’s differing relationships
with beauty standards relative to how “normal” they are read as being (e.g. Garland-
Thomson 1997, 2009). Whereas some women rightly find sexual attention objectify-
ing, others, such as disabled, elderly, or pregnant women, may find a lack of sexual
attention disturbing and dehumanizing. A persistent failure to apprehend another’s
sexiness can be tantamount to a failure to recognize them as a subject—as a person. As
Ann Cahill (2011, 84) points out:
Because sexuality necessarily entails intersubjectivity, and because sexuality is a crucial ele-
ment of selfhood, to be on the receiving end of a sexualizing gaze can enhance one’s sense of
self. To have that gaze skip over you, to be rendered sexually invisible by society at large, is to
have your full personhood denied.
So, whereas many feminists express concern over sexiness because finding someone
sexy often involves treating that person as an object, we are here concerned about the
failure to notice a person’s sexiness because it can involve ignoring that another per-
son is a subject.
Admittedly, we should resist the prescribed standards of sexy looks and sexy behav-
ior, such as those prevalent in contemporary media. As Gail Dines (2010, 107) argues
in Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality:
With headlines every month promising “Hot New Sex Tricks,” “21 Naughty Sex Tips,” “Little
Mouth Moves That Make Sex Hotter,” “67 New Blow-His-Mind Moves,” “8 Sex Positions You
Haven’t Thought Of,” and so on, women seem to experience no authentic sexual pleasure; rather,
what she wants and enjoys is what he wants and enjoys. . . . In Cosmopolitan, as in much of pop
culture, her pleasure is derived not from being a desiring subject but from being a desired object.
Here we seek to make room for women as sexy subjects who are free to desire and
pursue the sorts of pleasure they find worthwhile.
In this spirit of articulating an authentic notion of sexual pleasure and a holistic
conception of autonomous sexual agency, for women in particular but not exclusively,
we propose a revisionist notion of sexiness that treats people not merely as sex objects,
but as sexual subjects. Our project is revisionist, not descriptive of what people typi-
cally mean when they make attributions of sexiness: we agree with the feminist cri-
tique that there is very often something ethically corrupt at work in such attributions.
We are interested in the mutuality and respect invoked in Cahill’s characterization of
A Feminist Reclamation of Sexiness 301
the intersubjectivity of sexualizing another. We argue for a normatively infused con-

ception of sexiness that accommodates respect for persons while remaining in touch
with the core connection of sexiness to the idea of sexual pleasure linked to desire.
We argue that full-fledged sexiness, normatively conceived, is not a property that
can be attributed to a person without attention to their subjectivity: sexiness is a way
of being, a process, not a possession. Just as the truth conditions of “They are happy”
include the status of some of the subject’s mental states and attitudes, so do the truth
conditions of “They are sexy.”1 Sexiness in our sense (as opposed to the appearance of
sexiness), then, is most properly attributed to persons and only derivatively, tangen-
tially, or metaphorically to other animate or inanimate objects.
Sexiness as we are conceiving of it here is a powerful aesthetic notion with neces-
sary connections to ethics. Sexiness is an aesthetic notion because it is a property that
we attribute through practices of appreciation, and it relates in part to the attractive-
ness of the person to whom it is attributed—though, as we shall argue, it should not be
tied to judgments of conventional bodily attractiveness. We argue there is an ethical
imperative to shape one’s aesthetic judgments regarding the sexiness of others so as to
respect their subjectivity, rather than just assessing their physical attractiveness or
their appeal as objects for sexual use. This is not to advocate an ethical imperative to be
sexually attracted to others; indeed, the way of thinking about sexiness we advocate
here is divorced from the instrumental, thus making sense of attributing the property
of sexiness to persons to whom one is not sexually attracted.
16.1 The Biological Sense of Sexiness: Sexy as Fertile

Before developing our own revisionist conception, we engage in some descriptive
analysis by introducing two conceptions of sexiness that are in common usage: the
biological sense and the prurient sense. The biological sense of sexiness links the attri-
bution of sexiness to the ability to reproduce. This is the sense that is often espoused by
evolutionary psychologists. Their analyses rely on speculation (sometimes on rather
dubious grounds) about how our aesthetic standards and related attitudes and behav-
ior have been shaped by evolution. This notion of sexiness is implicit in many attempts
to explain and justify our sexual attractions. In Survival of the Prettiest, Nancy Etcoff
explores the evolutionary roots of human attractiveness:
Evolutionary psychologists suggest that men are automatically excited by signs of a woman
who is fertile, healthy, and hasn’t been pregnant before. . . .
A man may have no interest in getting a woman pregnant, he may take elaborate precautions
not to, but his mate detectors are still firing, and he is still inexplicably turned on by the woman
1
We here and at various other points use “they” and “their” to indicate a singular subject regardless of
gender. “[T]he use of plural pronouns to refer back to a singular subject isn’t new: it represents a revival of
a practice dating from the 16th century” <http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/words/he-or-she-versus-
they> (accessed November 2015).
who flashes abundant evidence of her fertility. And women are still imitating the appearance
of this visually preferred age group, even if they never want to be pregnant at all. (1999, 72, 74)
Considering sexiness as tied to reproductive health helps to explain why youthfulness

is often such an attractive trait. Women are youthful in appearance during their most
fertile years. It also explains why pregnant, elderly, and disabled women are often
excluded from the category of sexiness. A woman who is obviously pregnant cannot
be impregnated again; for the time being at least, she is unavailable for that purpose.
Elderly women are likely to be past their fertile years. Similarly, some forms of disabil-
ity are assumed, often wrongly, to involve infertility; and the further assumption is
often made that the disabled individual is incapable of and/or uninterested in sex.
Notably, this conception of sexiness is based on a reductive understanding of sex as
heterosexual, genital, and penetrative. If pregnant, elderly, and disabled women are
ever rightly considered sexy, as we hold they are, the biological sense of sexiness does
not explain when or why. It leaves out completely women who are, or are often taken
to be, infertile. The biological sense of sexiness is thus clearly insufficient as a full con-
ception of sexiness.
Other problems, too, confront the biological conception of sexiness. As Stephen
Davies (Chapter 7, this volume) notes, it ignores the extensive interaction between social
factors and attributions of sexual attractiveness. Insofar as it ties the judgment of sexiness
to a “natural” desire, albeit possibly unconscious or disavowed, to reproduce, this notion
of sexiness seems to render same-sex attribution of sexiness nonsensical. Indeed, it
appeals to an unconfirmable heteronormative evolutionary past with a rigid gender iden-
tity binary. But this appeal is speculative, not scientific, as Kim Hall (2012, 35) argues:
The fact that there were female evolutionary ancestors who had sex with male evolutionary
ancestors does not preclude the possibility that they also had same-sex sexual relations.
Moreover, it does not preclude the possibility that at least some had exclusively same-sex sex-
ual relations. Did our female and male evolutionary ancestors understand themselves to be
“women” and “men”? Were they recognized by other members of their group as “women” and
“men” to the extent that they conformed to then-existing gender norms? Were there some
“females” and “males” who were not recognized as (and did not understand themselves to be)
“women” or “men”? Were there intersex members of ancestral environments who were per-
ceived to be (and who perceived themselves to be) neither “male” nor “female”? My point is
that the complex relation among sex, gender, and desire is precisely that for which no evolu-
tionary evidence exists. Evolutionary psychology can only speculate about the gender and
sexual identities of our evolutionary ancestors.
At worst, the biological account ignores and at best it vastly underplays the cultural
and learned aspects of standards of personal appearance and comportment. As a
result, it cannot explain the sexiness that, in our culture, is often attributed to
extremely thin women. The representations of supermodels whose Photoshopped
images perpetuate the ideal of the impossibly thin female body make them appear
unlikely to be able to conceive a child, and they certainly do not advertise fertility via
any of the signs evolutionary psychologists appeal to in this context (large breasts,
fleshy buttocks, a curvaceous figure, and so on). Indeed, infertility is one of the earliest
and most typical outcomes of eating disorders and excessive diet and exercise. This
account not only precludes the possibility of elderly, pregnant, and/or disabled wom-
en’s sexiness; it also leaves unexplained current widespread beauty standards and the
familiar practice of noticing sexiness in men and women, regardless of one’s own sex-
ual orientation.
Even more problematic are the broader moral implications of the biological sense
of sexiness. This way of conceiving of sexiness ties a women’s sexiness to her perceived
ability to serve a particular function. Regardless of whether the evolutionary psy-
chologist is correct about the roots of sexual attraction, the fact that certain behaviors
and attitudes were perpetuated in our past hardly justifies a failure to reevaluate them
today (cf. Hall 2012, 32).
Etcoff admits that the “medical science of fertility and reproduction now makes it
possible for women to have babies into their sixties.” She wonders if “these changes
altered our tastes in beauty and made age and fertility cues in women obsolete.”
She says:
In a world guided solely by thought, not instinct, the answer would be yes. But we are products
of evolution and cannot change instincts as quickly as we can change our tastes or update our
information. The frenzy over beauty and the enormous business in mimicking youth show
that we are still turned on by the usual suspects. (1999, 74)
Though Etcoff is correct that this is not a world guided solely by thought, it is equally cor-
rect (and perhaps more important) to point out that this is not a world guided solely by
instinct. Human beings are social, cultural, and intelligent beings, and social, cultural,
and intellectual factors heavily influence—some would say all but determine—what we
find sexy (cf. Davies, Chapter 7, this volume). Moreover, the appeal to evolutionary roots
to explain our current tastes ignores the fact that there is no universal, cross-cultural
agreement about sexiness. There are cultural differences in preferences for faces and bod-
ies, and even where we find commonalities in taste, the underlying cause of preference
may differ from culture to culture (Cunningham et al. 1995).
There is also good reason for feminists to resist this notion of sexiness precisely
because of its emphasis on reproduction. The feminist movement is in part a movement
to earn reproductive freedom—including freedom from reproduction—for women. It
is perfectly reasonable, then, for women to resist being considered sexy in this manner,
since it is based on, and perhaps even reduces women to, their reproductive fitness. Sex
and sexuality are not reducible to reproduction; women are more than reproduction
machines, even when considered as sexual beings. Feminists have worked and continue
to work hard to divorce sex from reproduction. Why should we accept a notion of sexi-
ness that, when applied to us, reinstates that connection in a reductive manner? We
shouldn’t, and we’re right to resist this conception of sexiness for its inability to account
for all the ways in which people can and do value one another sexually.
16.2 The Prurient Sense of Sexiness: Sexy as Arousing

The second notion of sexiness in common currency is the prurient sense. Sexiness in
this sense has to do with sexual pleasure and satisfaction and does not necessarily
appeal to biology or reproduction (although it may). It understands sexiness as imme-
diately captivating and stimulating our prurient interests, stoking a desire for a sexual
encounter. Attributing the property of sexiness in this sense to someone says some-
thing about the person described and about ourselves: they are sexy; we are aroused.
Whereas seeing someone as sexy in the biological sense doesn’t necessarily entail one’s
own arousal, an attribution of sexiness in the prurient sense is definitely linked with
arousal and with seeing someone as a potential instrument for one’s own sexual
gratification.
Feminists should not reject this sense altogether. As Nussbaum, following Cass
Sunstein, points out, in such matters context is everything: “Under some specifica-
tions, objectification . . . is always morally problematic. Under other specifications,
objectification has features that may be either good or bad, depending upon the over-
all context” (Nussbaum 1995, 251).2 Whereas a woman being presented in a submis-
sive or degrading manner to the general public as an object to stoke prurient interests
is objectionable, it may be perfectly appropriate for such interests to be stoked in a
variety of ways in the context of an intimate, consensual encounter.
Yet current standards of prurient sexiness are unduly narrow, excluding many
women. As did the biological notion, the prurient conception of sexiness classifies
pregnant, disabled, and elderly women as asexual, as unable or unfit to engage in
sexual intercourse and give or receive sexual satisfaction. Pregnant, elderly, or dis
abled women often aren’t even considered candidates for being accurately described
as sexy in the prurient sense. Sexuality and sexual pleasure are important aspects of
many human lives; and given the importance people often place on their sexuality
and the effort people often funnel into cultivating their sex appeal, ignoring the sexu-
ality of an individual can involve a failure to recognize a central aspect of the full-
fledged humanity of that person. As Nathaniel Adam Tobias Coleman3 argues in “The
Political Power of Sexual Preference,” such failures can reinforce stigmas, particu-
larly race-based ones, that diminish people’s self-worth and reinforce their subordi-
nate social position. As he says:
[O]ne’s capacity as a sexual being for affirming the sexual attractiveness of another sexual
being is, in the hands of a member of some social group that is dominant in society, not merely
2
Kathleen Stock (2015) agrees, and argues that the dispute among feminists over the acceptability of
objectification is only apparent: Nussbaum uses the term to name both acceptable and problematic modes
of engaging with others, while some other feminist thinkers use the term to name only modes that are
ethically compromised.
3
For an explanation of Coleman’s choice to strike through his surname, see here: <http://www.ucl.ac.
uk/philosophy/people/nathaniel-adam-tobias-coleman-explanation> (accessed November 2015).
a personal privilege, but a significant political power. It is significant because it can contribute
to ending a trend of social stigmatization in that society.4
For these reasons, another notion of sexiness is needed to supplement these common
uses, one that allows for the appreciation of a plurality of bodies, sees sexiness as tied
to subjectivity, and is not morally suspect. To this end, we suggest a conception of
sexiness that appreciates sexiness as a matter of both embodiment and subjectivity
and accords sexual beings the respect due to all persons.
16.3 The Ethics of the Respectful Notion of Sexiness:

Sexy as Subjective
The respectful notion of sexiness merges a concern for the subjective and embodied
life of a person with an assessment of their body as a sexualized one. To find a person
sexy in this sense is to see their body as infused with an expression of self and ani-
mated by their own sexual identity. This will involve finding someone sexually appeal-
ing although not necessarily sexually arousing. In this sense of sexiness, sexuality can
be divorced from fertility and the prurient interests of another.
Respecting sexiness involves seeing others not (only) as sex objects but necessarily
as sexual subjects: human beings who are in charge of their sexual agency. Their
appeal is intrinsic to them: it comes from them, rather than being defined by exter-
nally imposed standards, especially those associated with oppressive social forces. To
sexualize persons respectfully, it may be necessary to work intentionally to expand,
perhaps greatly, the kinds of bodies we find appealing. It is important to be clear about
what kind of expansion is relevant: it is not just starting from the “center” of conven-
tionally attractive bodies and moving outward in concentric circles to detect the
appeal of bodies that resemble these along various dimensions. The idea is, rather, to
distance ourselves from the very standards that define some bodies as conventionally
attractive; to jettison those standards and seek, instead, the magnificence5 that is man-
ifest here and now. Ann Cahill (2011, 103) expresses the idea as follows:
[O]ne must look with wonder. One must take bodies on their own terms, without imposing a
pre-existing standard upon them. The ethical sexual gaze hungrily seeks out the particular, the
surprising, the nowhere-else-but-here-ness that marks each incarnation of the sexed human.
To make ethically sound attributions of sexiness, appreciation of the sexual particu-

larity of a wide variety of bodies needs to be developed to ensure that our sexualized
4
Coleman (unpublished, 1). Coleman argues, for this reason, that white men have a duty to divest
themselves of sexual aversions to black women. He does not argue for a duty to cultivate sexual attraction
toward them. We, on the other hand, do argue for a duty to cultivate a habit of recognizing sexiness,
although not necessarily a subjective sexual desire for or attraction toward, when sexiness is properly
understood in the respectful sense.
5
We draw this term from Mia Mingus (2011), who sees the magnificent as more closely aligned with
the “ugly” than with the conventionally beautiful.
awareness takes into account not bodies exclusively, but rather embodied subjects. To
find someone sexy, in the respectful sense, is to recognize the sexualized subject ani-
mated in a body and to respect the subject in part for how they choose or choose not to
infuse their own version of sexuality into their own body.
But when it comes to respecting subjectivity in sexuality, should we aim for univer-
sal appreciation, or is there a certain model of subjectivity that we should be drawn to?
In adopting this revisionist notion of sexiness, we are trying to create space to value
people as they are and strive to be rather than in virtue of conformity to narrow exter-
nal standards. It makes sense, then, to cultivate sensitivity, awareness, and an ability to
recognize the attractiveness of people on their own terms. Genuine sexual expression
comes from and is for the sake of individuals, as opposed to aiming to conform to
some external ideal. Obviously, in practice it can be difficult to ascertain the extent to
which another person’s sexual expression is genuine. Yet we can and do aim to detect
genuineness (or lack thereof) in others in a broad range of contexts. Interestingly, we
do this by trying to understand the person behind whatever expression or behavior is
under consideration. Identifying genuineness in sexuality, then, involves empathy.
Genuineness is not an all-or-nothing achievement; it is best understood on a con-
tinuum. Although there will admittedly be unclear cases, there will also be expres-
sions at or approaching either end of the spectrum that are pretty obviously genuine
or not. Evidence of genuineness will be found in originality, comfort, confidence,
playfulness, and a sense of improvisation, whereas conformity, discomfort, insecurity,
and strict adherence to norms will be evidence of a lack of genuineness in sexual
expression. Celebrating genuine sexiness will then result in a greater diversity of
embodied expressions of sexuality. Of course, there are limits here—genuine expres-
sions that hinge on exploitation or non-consensual sexual activity, such as that of the
pedophile or rapist, must be partly repressed rather than allowed free rein—and this is
underscored by the empathy requirement just mentioned. Understanding a child’s
perspective and feelings should impede the pedophile’s comfort with sexualizing that
child in ways a child cannot understand and would not independently desire. This
allows for children’s sexuality, which is an important although rarely discussed aspect
of childhood. As Mark Vopat (2003, 157) insists: “Children are sexual beings, and that
aspect of their lives requires the same type of care and concern that we attach to other
aspects of their well-being.”
In general, to appreciate the extent to which a person achieves a degree of self-
understanding and comfort as a sexual being, and the ways they infuse energy and
flavor into the self they are exploring, is to respectfully appreciate another’s sexiness.
16.4 Considering Objections

Not every way of incorporating a person’s subjectivity into assessments of their sexi-
ness strikes the target we are indicating here. As Susan Bordo (1999) argues, much
objectionable pornography functions not by objectifying women, but by attributing

to them a form of subjectivity that expresses active desire for whatever treatment a
male sexual partner might choose to offer, no matter how degrading.6 Attributions of
sexiness that evoke narrow requirements to fit a compromised mode of subjectivity
are not fully respectful; they are more akin to the prurient judgments discussed earlier.
Ethical attributions of sexiness should look for flexible but self-possessed subjectivi-
ties, just as they should take into account the magnificence of a wide variety of bodies.
Much mainstream pornography also provides an illustrative example of precisely
what we want to diminish: that is, when it depicts sex acts that are seemingly painful
and degrading to the woman involved while conveying that her negative feelings—
her pain and shame—are irrelevant or, if relevant, serve to increase the pleasure of
male participants and viewers. If someone is presented as sexy in this manner, it is
not in the sense we are advocating here, as the scenes incorporate no respect for her
subjectivity; indeed, it may be that respecting her subjectivity would interfere with
deriving sexual pleasure from the scene in the prescribed way.
One might wonder whether it is really possible to shape what we find sexy. Can we
come to experience as attractive kinds of bodies that we don’t already experience in
this way? Can we learn to experience as sexy not just bodies, but embodied persons?
We have spoken of the requirement to expand the scope of the sorts of bodies we find
attractive to encourage the appreciation of a larger complement of embodied beings.
Some might balk at the suggestion that we should do anything of the sort, claiming
that since we can’t control to whom we are attracted, we can’t be held morally account-
able when we are or are not attracted.
But the effects of media on beauty standards and the contours of sexualization are
evidence that sexual desire does not arise unmediated in us. People can take an active
role in shaping their desires rather than just passively acquiescing to desire as a simple
given. Which bodies are found attractive is influenced by society, and can change over
time for a variety of reasons. For example, as we age, we may naturally come to find
older people sexy.7 We can come to find someone sexually attractive after initially
being drawn to their personality and only then turning our attentive and receptive
gaze upon their body. We may have a casual sexual encounter with someone we did
not find especially attractive, but find the sex so satisfying and pleasurable that their
body now presents itself to us as highly desirable. The fact that these changes happen
suggests that there are levers for the shaping of sexual desire, and once this is admitted
there is no reason to think that we cannot work to manipulate some of those levers
6
We are grateful to Amy Coplan for this point.
7
An analyst for the dating web site OkCupid found gender differences in how dating preferences
change with age: women, as they age, tend to indicate a preference for and send messages to men within
their own age group; men, on the other hand, continue to indicate a preference for and send messages to
women who are significantly younger. As the author suggests (and, indeed, recommends), it is open to
men consciously to change their dating behavior in order to rectify the resulting decline in dating oppor-
tunities for women as they age (Rudder 2010).
ourselves. As Davies (Chapter 7, this volume) notes, “When we become aware of the
way biology generates the preferences that pull and push us, we can interrogate those
preferences. If we choose not to own them, we can frequently override them, having
higher preferences more generally about the kind of person we want to be.” The same,
we suggest, is true, and probably a fortiori, for preferences that are culturally shaped.
As Coleman (unpublished, 15–16) argues, societal support may be helpful or even
necessary as we attempt to reshape our preferences. Media can assist in this endeavor
by reinforcing healthy and diverse sexuality, exposing audiences to diverse manifesta-
tions of sexuality in diverse groups of persons, though mainstream media typically
fails to do so.
The objection that we cannot reshape our conception of sexiness relies on a naïve
and ahistorical view of taste that fails to realize the extent to which our aesthetic tastes,
broadly understood, are mediated by various cultural and personal factors. Our tastes
come from our individual and cultural histories, and when such histories fail to
expose us to or to encourage us to value broad and diverse objects of appreciation, the
responsibility falls to individuals to demand such exposure and encourage others to
do the same. If a person’s family of origin and community are racially homogeneous
and the race with which the person identifies is the dominant race (which is also the
race most often and most favorably represented in the media), they may be less likely
to find persons of other races attractive, and may even feel aversion to them. We would
hold this person, in adulthood, responsible for whether they go beyond their upbring-
ing to unlearn the prejudice they were surrounded by, and, importantly, for encourag-
ing others to do the same.
Moreover, we clearly do hold people accountable for their sexual tastes, for example
when we maintain that the pedophile or the rapist ought not only not molest or sexu-
ally assault, but not want to molest or assault. Not just the actions, but their motivating
desires and feelings are morally inappropriate (cf. Cahill, Chapter 15, this volume). Of
course, the actions and the feelings are not morally identical. But in a culture that
increasingly sexualizes young girls and eroticizes violence against women, society
bears part of the responsibility for the violence—sexual and otherwise—and degrad-
ing attention that befalls girls and women.
If we can accept the idea that we are rightly held morally responsible for certain
tastes that we ought not to have, why is it so difficult to accept the idea that we are
rightly held morally responsible for certain tastes we ought to have? Each time we
sexually admire a body, whether in person or in an image, we both express and
reinforce our current sexual preferences. When we allow our admiration to be
directed toward a certain narrow range of bodies, we reinforce an association
between those bodies and sexiness. But it is in our power to make different choices:
we can choose to admire or contemplate real or imagined bodies that do not fit the
narrow mold of attractiveness that has been societally inculcated. Our suggestion,
here, is not that one can simply change one’s desires by fiat through rational argument:
we do not expect that after reading this paper anyone will magically find themselves
with a different desire set. Instead, the aim of our argument is to supply motivation to
engage in a form of ethical and aesthetic practice: a practice by which one consciously
and gradually explores and expands the boundaries and habits of taste and desire.
Such practices of cultivating taste succeed in other domains: people can learn to
appreciate foods and forms of art that were previously distasteful or foreign to them,
and people can also learn to shift their preferences from one set of objects to a differ-
ent set for expressly ethical reasons, as the life history of many vegetarians attests.
Perhaps this project is more difficult for sexual desire than for gustatory taste, but
this is not reason to reject our view.8 What we advocate is an ethical/aesthetic practice
that is geared toward expanding and shifting desires, not a practice of self-deception,
of masochistic self-denial, or of pursuing sexual interactions with those to whom one
is not attracted. The fact that some people may experience smaller or slower shifts in
their tastes and desires is not a reason to think that the ethical imperative to undertake
the practice does not apply.
Another important question, related to the issue of lability of taste and desire, concerns
sexual orientation and gender. Should heterosexually or homosexually identified indi-
viduals work to reshape their desires only in relation to members of the sex or gender they
experience themselves as attracted to? Or does the project extend to coming to experi-
ence sexual attraction to people they understand as being outside that sex or gender?
Two issues arise here. First, attributions of sexiness in a respectful manner are not
always linked to the attributor’s own experience of sexual desire. As Davies (Chapter 7,
this volume) notes, once we acknowledge the broader social role of sexual attractive-
ness, “it becomes possible to decouple the notion of sexual attractiveness from the
desire to have sex or mate, so that it can be a common assessment of oneself and others
without being tied to a disposition to display overtly sexual behavior.” A lesbian can say
of a man that he is sexy, meaning not necessarily that she experiences desire for him but
that she recognizes that he is desirable. Likewise, to say appropriately of someone that
he is sexy, if I do not myself feel sexually attracted to him, is to say that I recognize that
he possesses physical features that are magnificent in their particularity (in the sense
discussed earlier), and that I recognize his body as infused with his sexual subjectivity.
Such an attribution might be indexed to the desires of some other subject: it might be a
recognition that another would be sexually attracted to him. Or it might be cued to a
counterfactual version of myself: to say of him that he is sexy might be to say that if
I were sexually interested in men, or if I were in a different mood, or if I had the energy,
and so on, I imagine I would experience desire for him, or that I can fully understand
why and how someone sexually desires him even if I do not.
8
Perhaps this malleability is, on average, more difficult for men than for women, but we aren’t sure. It
is possible that research on the malleability of female sexual desire is driven in part by a heterosexual male
interest in lesbian sex, and the appearance of fixed male sexuality may be due as much to the strong social
policing of male sexual preference as to any innate mechanism. Everything we say here is compatible with
the possibility that the difference between male and female sexual malleability is either a fiction or a reality
that is socially rather than biologically constructed. See Diamond (2008) for related discussion.
However, the possibility of appropriate attributions of sexiness without experiencing

desire does not mean that we need not concern ourselves with our desires as well. It will
not do to say, “He is sexy, and by that I mean that I would experience sexual desire for
him if I were attracted to fat men”; “She is sexy, and by that I mean that a person who
finds it possible to experience desire for elderly women would desire her.” Such attribu-
tions of sexiness keyed to counterfactual or hypothetical desire do not secure true sexual
recognition for people who do not satisfy conventional standards of attractiveness. We
must genuinely do the work of reshaping our desires by going beyond postulating an
abstract hypothetical appreciator and actually engaging in practices of appreciation of
sexual subjects embodied in diverse bodies; this is the primary way of adopting a more
ethically and aesthetically adequate notion of sexiness.
This leads us back to the second issue related to sexual orientation and gender; we
suggest that gender is one of the boundaries we should aim to stretch as we reshape
whom we find sexy. Conventional standards of attractiveness are unduly constraining
by requiring compliance with rigidly defined gender roles. Withholding or diverting
sexual attention from gender noncompliant people is a form of punitive social control
functioning as a strong incentive to refrain from exploration of or beyond the socially
acceptable gender presentation associated with our assigned gender. Space con-
straints don’t allow us the room to argue for all of the ways this form of social control is
undesirable, but we can note a few. First, it sustains patriarchal power structures by
conveying a sharp distinction between women and men, thus creating competition,
insecurity, and distrust. Second, it disproportionately inflicts undesirable constraints
on women, as women’s bodies and appearances are most fervently and frequently
policed. Third, it harms anyone who is unable or unwilling to stay within the “middle
ground” of a particular gender identity, or who experiences great discomfort there.
Finally, it forces self-denial and even self-deception because in reality we are each gen-
dered (and classed, racialized, etc.) in diverse and constructed ways. Reshaping our
sexual attractions so as not to contribute to the policing of gender boundaries is thus
ethically and personally desirable.
Moreover, attending to embodied persons in all their physical and subjective par-
ticularity, moving attention away from the highly gendered conventional markers of
attractiveness, might allow us to experience the freedom to move away from the “mid-
dle ground” of assigned gender. The “center” of conventional attractiveness and the
“middle ground” of gender can be oppressive and stultifying. For example, the most
conventionally attractive women are also those seen as most feminine and vice versa,
leaving women little room for playfulness or creative expression. Enjoying the appre-
ciation of particular embodied subjects on their own terms, seeking the rich complex-
ities manifest in different ways of being, one might find permission and even
inspiration to transcend gender boundaries previously experienced as unforgiving
and unsurpassable.
The prospects for such shifts in taste and presentation will vary from person to per-
son and from group to group based on a range of factors, including motivation to
change and openness to exploration. This does not support empirically debunked
phenomena such as “ex-gay” therapies, which standardly aim to extinguish attrac-
tions to people of one’s own sex and/or establish attractions to people of another sex,
while also reinforcing conventional connections between assigned sex and gender
presentation. Our focus is on appreciation, not attraction. And our motivation is to
enlarge the domain of sexiness, not prescribe any one way anyone ought to feel and
behave. We advocate neither extinction of attractions nor an aim of igniting attrac-
tions to members of a sex or gender one is not attracted to; rather, we advocate culti-
vating greater appreciative abilities for a diversity of ways in which personhood might
be embodied sexually.
Other questions remain about the morality of the work required to shape desires in
the ways we advocate. Presumably, this work will involve real and/or imaginative
engagement with others: shaping what we experience as sexy seems to involve looking
at and contemplating actual people with an aspiration to appreciate them as embod-
ied sexual persons and, in at least some cases, to experience some desire. Is there
something troubling, even creepy, about this sort of sexualized attention? Does such a
project inappropriately sexualize too many of our interactions? In directing “aspira-
tional” sexual attention toward people we don’t yet find sexy, do we run the risk of
wronging or offending them? Is it just wrong to go around directing sexualized atten-
tion toward people regardless of whether they notice it or not?
These worries can be defused, we think, if the project of shaping what one finds sexy
is undertaken, and understood, in the right way. The fact is that we are public entities
in a public world, and we do direct sexualized attention at each other. This attention is
sometimes subtle and fleeting, other times overt and flirtatious. It is often uncon-
scious and not critically examined. It is problematic when it comes in the form of
an objectifying gaze, treating the individual as though their only value for us is in
the sexual use we might make of them. But directing sexualized attention toward
someone seen as a full, embodied person rather than a mere body, with an aim of
respectfulness, is not, in general, a particularly problematic form of interpersonal
engagement. Moreover, consciously directing this sort of attention has the advantage
of making our sexual attractions and repulsions available to us for critical scrutiny. To
be seen as a sexualized being, as a candidate for sexiness, can be part of being recog-
nized as a full person, as disabled people and disability theorists (e.g. Wilkerson 2002)
have often pointed out. This doesn’t mean that every moment, every person, or every
relationship is well suited to sexualized attention; there are good ethical reasons not to
direct sexualized attention toward one’s employees, one’s patients, one’s students, or
people who present as asexual or nonsexual, for instance. But to think that there is
always something inherently troubling about even respectful sexualized attention,
sensitively and empathetically directed in appropriate contexts, excessively curtails a
fundamental ground of human social interactions.
This picture is complicated by the realization that some individuals will present
themselves in ways that subvert received standards of sexiness in order to avoid
becoming objects of sexualized attention. Given that we recommend aiming to appre-

ciate bodies that do not fit neatly into norms of sexiness, we run the risk of calling
sexual attention to those very individuals who do not want it. One way to think toward
a remedy here is to see subversions of sexiness as unique and personal expressions of
sexiness and to recommend then that to appreciate such an individual's sexiness
appropriately is to ignore it.
Another, more specific version of this worry is that some people, women mostly,
find the sexual attention already directed at them excessive and unwanted. Will
encouragement to reshape sexual tastes, especially as these pertain to women, eventu-
ate in even more excessive and unwanted sexual attention?9 A first thing to note is that
expression of respectful sexual attention should cease with any indication it is unwel-
come. It is not a lecherous sexual attention that is necessarily tied to desire. In most
contexts, it will be quite subtle, perhaps so subtle as to be undetectable by the person
toward whom it is directed. In addition, persons who feel the weight of excessive sex-
ual attention are likely those whose self-presentation conforms to present standards
aligned with biological or prurient sexiness. Therefore, an expansion of the domain of
sexiness promises to give them the relief they desire by directing sexual attention to a
wider array of sexually appealing persons. If people come to appreciate a broader
range of body types, then their attentions should be dispersed over a larger class of
persons, with the result that some of the excessive attention now directed to a few
would be more evenly distributed.
Virtual appreciation is also an option. In the age of the Internet, there are sexualized
still and moving images, pornographic and otherwise, of a wide variety of bodies, often
freely released by the people whose bodies they are, that we can access without interac-
tion. There is, of course, the danger that in using such images to retrain our own desires,
we reduce the person to an object. We can guard against this by expressly focusing on
the subjectivity of the person depicted. Endeavors such as Sins Invalid,10 a performance
project in which disabled performers present themselves as sexual subjects, provide
non-pornographic resources for expanding our conceptions of who is sexy without
objectification. The appreciative practices we advocate could also be supported by
pornography that features a diverse array of both bodies and subjectivities.
Is reshaping sexiness relevant for people who are stably partnered in sexually
exclusive relationships? Are they, due to commitment to their partner(s), exempt
from the duty to examine and perhaps reshape their tastes? Do they have a moral
obligation not to direct sexual attention toward others? Is it, perhaps, even mis-
leading or cruel for them to direct sexual attention toward others whom they do
not see as real candidates for sexual relationships? The latter worry, we think, is
misplaced. Directing respectful sexual attention toward those whom we don’t intend
to form relationships with, for any number of reasons, can be playful and flirtatious.
We are grateful to Anne Eaton and Aili Bresnahan for raising versions of this concern.
9
<http://www.sinsinvalid.org/> (accessed November 2015).

10
It can be pleasurable for the recipient of the attention and boost their self-esteem.
Indeed, when such attention comes from a person known to be “off the market,” it can
be enjoyed without the pressures and uncertainties of sexualized attention that may
lead somewhere. This mode of sexual interaction may, at times, be valuable precisely
because the element of stress that often comes with sexual attention is absent.
Moreover, the kind of attention we are recommending need not involve an invitation
or willingness to engage in sexual relations, as perhaps sexualized attention in the
prurient sense would. Therefore, the attention we recommend need not be experi-
enced as more than it is: an interest in the person as a genuine embodied being.
Persons in sexually exclusive relationships have an obligation to cultivate the ability
to experience others as sexy in the respectful sense, even leaving aside the reality that
relationships change. Insofar as people who are exclusively partnered participate in
discourse about sex and attractiveness, they help reinforce or resist the prevalent
norms. Attitudes about a variety of matters have recently been shown to be subject to
social contagion effects,11 and this suggests that shifting attitudes about sexiness in
a positive direction may affect the attitudes of others, including friends of friends
whom they have never met. The power each of us has to shape the attitudes and related
behaviors of others lends further support for the ethical importance of revising our
conceptions of sexiness.
We also have specific duties to our partners that generate a duty to expand and
reshape our notion of sexiness. After all, we all age, and our bodies are vulnerable to
change as a result of factors such as pregnancy and childbirth, injuries, illnesses, and
environmental exposure. We all want to be known, loved, and desired by our partners
in our particularity, despite, indeed because of, our faults and blemishes. So, in a
monogamous relationship, although we may have a duty to our partners not to culti-
vate sexual interest in others in the prurient sense, we may also have a duty to our
partners to cultivate sexual interest in others in the respectful sense.
Moreover, we send each other messages of sexual validation (or the contrary) all
the time, even when we are not seeking out sexual partnerships or aiming to commu-
nicate sexual messages. This is a reason to cultivate respectful experiences of sexiness,
so this attitude may become more habitual than those associated with the less respect-
ful notions of sexiness. As Laurence Thomas (1999) argues, our sexual attractions
influence our overt behavior, with powerful consequences: if we are attracted to a job
candidate, we are more likely to see them as the better hire independent of their quali-
fications or interview performance. We pay more attention to people we are attracted
to and are more likely to notice their positive contributions. Moreover, as Davies
(Chapter 7, this volume) notes following Etcoff 1999, “Treating people as attractive
gets a better social performance from them.” These are not benign effects; they influ-
ence people’s concrete social and professional lives and are a force through which racial
11
Christakis and Fowler 2007; Fowler and Christakis 2009. Thanks are due to Amy Coplan for pointing
out the relevance of these contagion effects.
injustice is reinscribed. For these reasons, the ethical imperative to cultivate respectful
experiences of sexiness applies to everyone, not just to people who are actively seek-
ing, or expect to be seeking, sexual partnerships.
16.5 The Aesthetics of the Respectful Notion

of Sexiness: Sexy as Subjective
Having discussed some of the ethical implications, we turn to aesthetic questions. Is
sexiness, in the respectful sense we advocate, really an aesthetic notion at all? Are we
stripping away the aesthetic content by advocating the cultivation of attraction to
types of bodies that do not satisfy conventional standards, and the incorporation of
the person’s subjectivity into the experience of sexiness? Does the fact that attribu-
tions of sexiness are usually tied up with sexual desire disqualify them from the aes-
thetic realm?
Let’s begin with the last question. Traditional understandings of aesthetic judgment
as involving disinterest and distance appear to rule out the idea that attributions of
sexiness, interwoven as they are with sexual desire, could be aesthetic. But there has
been a move over the last several decades to reject this restriction. We belong to the
camp of those who think that the aesthetic is, or at least can be, a matter of engaged
attraction and desire. According to Eddy Zemach (2001, 53, 54–5):
Aesthetic predicates . . . describe the degree to which, and the manner in which, objects are
good qua objects: what features make them perceptually salient (or non-salient) and to what
degree they achieve that salience. . . . What makes an object perceptually salient? Obviously, the
single most potent enhancer of salience of an object is relevance to us. We see things in terms
of their significance to us, and that is why we perceive the situations we encounter as having
some emotion-properties. . . . The same is true of things we perceive: an adorable thing is one
that we see as justifying adoration, a delicate thing is a thing that we see as justifying care, a
pitiful thing is a thing we see as justifying pity, and so on.
Noticing that an entity has a certain aesthetic property, according to Zemach, “displays
it at the heart of our human sphere of interests and immediately invokes complex strat-
egies and manners of appropriate behaviour with respect to it” (2001, 55).
For Zemach, the connection with our interests is inevitable. Furthermore, noticing
aesthetic properties primes us to behave in certain ways. That is, appreciating a prop-
erty readies us for certain complex forms of behavior. The relevance of this analysis to
sexiness as an aesthetic property is clear: attributions of sexiness occur through
appreciative practices and involve perceptual salience, relevance to the self, emotional
responses, and behavioral dispositions.
Obviously, aesthetic properties thus construed have ethical implications. It is for
ethical reasons that we advocate the cultivation of experiences and attributions of
sexiness that differ from those that may “come naturally,” but this is unproblematic
from an aesthetic perspective: admonitions to cultivate one’s taste are common in the
aesthetic tradition. More troubling from a traditional aesthetic perspective is that we

advocate a situation in which attributions of sexiness branch out in many different
directions, tracking appreciation of the particularities of a diverse array of subjects,
rather than one in which everyone’s experiences and attributions of sexiness converge
on some set of sexy persons. We address this worry shortly.
A related question concerns whether the ethical case for altering aesthetic tastes is
misdirected insofar as ethical reasons aren’t relevant to aesthetic taste: telling some-
one that x is ethically compromised does nothing to show it is not aesthetically valua-
ble. Reasons for thinking that factory farming is ethically abhorrent are not prima
facie reasons for thinking that tofu is tasty or that the flavor of meat is disgusting.
But, in fact, ethical considerations interact extensively, and appropriately, with and
within aesthetic experience. If in the midst of enjoying a delicious meal with you we
announce that we are all dining on human flesh, your reaction will predictably be one
of aesthetic revulsion. The very taste you were savoring a moment ago is now repul-
sive. Further, if convinced that eating animal flesh is no more acceptable than eating
human flesh, one would lose, partly or wholly, the taste for meat.12 Other examples of
the role of knowledge and ethics in aesthetic judgment can be found in environmental
aesthetics. Take, for example, the invasive plant purple loosestrife: once one learns of
its invasive tendencies, its little purple flowers can come to appear much less attrac-
tive.13 And there are many examples where the appreciation of a natural entity on its
own terms can increase its aesthetic appeal: bats, wetlands, and carnivorous plants,
just to name a few (Lintott 2006).
There are also ethically relevant assumptions influencing many failures to appreci-
ate an individual’s sexiness. For instance, associations between evil and bodily disabil-
ity (reinforced in scores of Hollywood films among other places) dehumanize disabled
persons. Rejecting this stereotyping reasserts the humanity of disabled people and
may allow for the recognition and appreciation of their sexiness.
Does the absence of objective standards undermine the status of the respectful
notion of sexiness as aesthetic? To give a full answer to a question with deep meta-
aesthetic underpinnings is beyond the scope of this chapter. But we note, first, that it is
not uncommon, in contemporary aesthetic thought, to celebrate aesthetic responses
that reflect divergent individual sensibilities rather than widely shared tendencies or
standards (e.g. Cohen 1993; Melchionne 1998). Second, there is a significant empha-
sis on objectivity in our proposal. Attributions of sexiness, on our view, should be
responsive to the person as they actually are, not merely as they seem to us. These
attributions are objective in the sense of being object-directed (to a person, including
their subjectivity). Respectful attributions of sexiness are based on relevant aspects
of the subject, especially of their subjectivity, and celebrate the person’s manifest
12
We are grateful to Danny Nathan for discussion of this response.
13
For insightful discussion of “the purple loosestrife problem” and its implications for the disinterested
tradition of aesthetic appreciations, see Marcia Muelder Eaton (1999).
complexities, without reducing them through projection or fantasy. Attributions of

sexiness, then, can be either appropriate or inappropriate: they are appropriate when
they emerge out of the appreciation of an embodied person in all their sexualized
particularity, and they are inappropriate when they neglect the person’s subjectivity
and/or impose external standards of attractiveness. For this reason, attributions of
sexiness to people who are relatively genuine may be more likely to be appropriate,
because it is easier to respond to a genuine person as they truly are.
In conclusion, appreciating the sexiness of others in the respectful sense is both an
aesthetic and an ethical practice. It is also a site of political resistance, given that our
society inculcates narrow and oppressive conventions of sexiness. To put it plainly,
appreciating sexiness is part of recognizing a person’s full humanity. Cultivating one’s
own sexiness, too, is a worthwhile aesthetic and ethical project—but one whose explo-
ration we must leave to another occasion.14
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Index
Abercrombie & Fitch 37, 41, 60 appearance-related practices 4, 81–90

ableism 39, 44, 285, 286 as expressive action 118
Abramović, Marina 158, 160 feminist critiques 82, 83–6, 113
Achebe, Chinua 22 financial costs 83, 113
achievement/accomplishment 244 health risks 83–4, 113
“activist-oriented” aesthetics 237–8 nineteenth- and early twentieth-century
Adichie, Chimamanda 75 debates 81–3
Adidas 95, 102, 103 refocusing critiques 89–90
advertising and advertisements: responses to critiques 86–9
colonial, of soap 98–9 as revelatory of the soul 116–17
Ennis and 4, 94, 102, 105, 106 Apple of Eris 111–12, 114
and fat bodies 37, 38, 55 Aquinas, Thomas 204
gay Asian men as “supportive” partners 3, 71–2 Ariel 94, 95, 98, 99, 100
image of “woman” 210–13 Big Sprint 98
Kwakye and 4, 98–9, 100 Aristotle 49–53, 146–7, 148, 149, 202–3, 214,
misleading appearance-based 83, 90 265, 292
aesthetic education 238–9 art (painting):
“aesthetic of morals” 227 effortlessness 182, 183, 186, 187
“aesthetic welfare” 239–40 fat bodies 53–5
Aesthetica (Baumgarten) 226–7 history of the female body in 203–10
African Americans 26, 28, 143, 200, 246 art installations 26–34
African people, European construction 22–6 Artist is Present, The (Abramović) 158
Agassiz, Louis 246 Asian male bodies 3–4, 60–76
age, role in sexual desire 283–4 Asian men as queer wives 70–2
ageism 39, 286, 294 see also elderly women challenges to stereotypes through
Aguilar, Laura 54–5 masculinization 74–5
agura position 276 as the comic punch line 69–70
Ahmed, Sara 96 feminization 3–4, 61, 65–8, 69, 71–2, 74
All About That Bass 56 in gay media 63–5
Alyson Adventures 72 infantilization 68–9, 72, 74
Ambiguity and Sexuality (Wilkerson) 286–9 meaning of “Asian” 63
American Psychiatric Association 290 racialized objectification 61–2, 74
American College of Obstetricians racism towards gay 64–5
and Gynecologists 198 small, juxtaposed with larger white 67–8
American Medical Association 198 and white male supremacy 72–4
Ancient Art and Ritual (Harrison) 178 “yellow peril” fear 69
Anderson, CeeFu 61 Asian women, racial stereotypes 289–90
androgen insensitivity syndrome 198 Astaire, Fred 184
androstenol 130 Athena 203
anorexia nervosa 46 “athletic identity” 7, 217, 218–19
Antoni, Janine 171 Augustine, St. 204
Aphrodite see Venus
Aphrodite of Knidos 204, 205 Fig. 11.4 Baartman, Saartjie (“Hottentot Venus”) 17–18,
appearance: 34–5
vs. action 169–70, 177 Bailey, Steven 67
bodies as 142 Baldwin, James 247, 254, 255, 256
and discrimination 4, 81, 84–6, 90, 113 Barr body test 197–8
and eating well 266 Bartky, Sandra Lee 48, 54, 282
and gay men’s gay status 64 Bates, Robert 252–3
see also beauty; physical attractiveness Bathhouse Blues 64–5
320â•… index
beautyâ•‡ 4–5, 110–24 use to advertise soapâ•‡ 98–9

of African Americansâ•‡ 143 and white powerâ•‡ 244
“architectonic” distinguished from and white suturingâ•‡ 253–4, 256–7, 258–9
graceâ•‡227–8 and white un-suturingâ•‡ 255, 256–9
athleticâ•‡ 7, 193, 200, 213–14, 219 see also Black/white “mixed race”; bodies
and Black/white “mixed race” racial black dialectâ•‡ 28–9
ambiguityâ•‡ 95, 101 Black Female Body, The (Willis and
and disabilityâ•‡ 149, 150–1 Williams)â•‡15–20
and effortlessnessâ•‡ 190 Black Power movementâ•‡ 143
and expressive actions vs. natural Black Venus narrativeâ•‡ 101–2
expressionâ•‡117–18 Black/white “mixed race” bodies
and expressive vs. non-expressive blackness as part ofâ•‡ 101
featureâ•‡ 115–16, 118–19 disgust/contempt forâ•‡ 97, 100–1, 102,
Greek suspicion ofâ•‡ 111–12 105, 107
“halo effect”â•‡ 42–3, 112–13, 116, 120, 133 Ennis’s racial ambiguityâ•‡ 94, 97, 100, 101, 102,
and immoral actionsâ•‡ 119 103, 104, 105, 106, 107
and injusticeâ•‡ 1, 112–13 black womenâ•‡ 3, 15–35
in mannersâ•‡ 228 agency and demand for respectâ•‡ 251–2, 253
Merrickite viewâ•‡ 5, 120–4 agentic imagesâ•‡ 16–17, 20
misleading aesthetic normsâ•‡ 7, 192–219 depiction in adsâ•‡ 213
need for reformâ•‡ 114–16 didactic representationsâ•‡ 17–18, 20
as pleasing perfectionâ•‡ 5, 111 didactic pornography, anti-racist (Walker)â•‡ 3,
problems in havingâ•‡ 113–14 15, 21, 26–34
“race”, nation andâ•‡ 4, 94–107 didactic pornography, colonialâ•‡ 15, 18–20,
racialized standardsâ•‡ 1, 4, 7, 85, 98, 99, 104, 24–6, 34
105–6, 193, 201, 213, 214 as domestic workersâ•‡ 4, 99
and sexualityâ•‡ 120 double marginalization in artâ•‡ 206
and social mobilityâ•‡ 105 early use of cosmetics condemnedâ•‡ 81
of the soul in the bodyâ•‡ 4–5, 114–20 and the erotic as resistanceâ•‡ 20
on trialâ•‡ 110–11 eroticized depiction as slavesâ•‡ 208–10
viability of objective standardsâ•‡ 2 as “marked women”â•‡ 249
and virtueâ•‡ 81 as “other”â•‡ 15, 18, 26, 96–7, 99, 100, 101, 102,
as a weaponâ•‡ 114 104, 106, 107
see also appearance-related practices black women athletesâ•‡
Beauty Bias, The (Rhode)â•‡ 85 beauty, “race,” nationâ•‡ 4, 94–107
Beauty Myth, The (Wolf)â•‡ 83, 115 and gender stereotypesâ•‡ 217
Beckles, Hilaryâ•‡ 98 and racialized norms of femininityâ•‡ 7, 98,
Benecke, Ernestâ•‡ 24, 25 Fig. 1.4 200–1, 216
Beren, Susan E.â•‡ 64 sex testing and athletic misidentityâ•‡ 7, 194–5,
Bergson, Henriâ•‡ 6, 181, 184–5, 189, 190 196, 214, 215
Berleant, Arnoldâ•‡ 237 Bland, Sandraâ•‡ 251–2, 253, 258–9
Bernier, Celeste-Marieâ•‡ 31 Bloomer, Ameliaâ•‡ 82
Berry, Halleâ•‡ 105 Bluest Eye, The (Morrison)â•‡ 246–7
Big Bang Theory, Theâ•‡ 70–1, 75 bodies:
Bilal, Wafaaâ•‡ 156–7, 157 Fig. 9.1, 160, 168 aesthetic assessment, and oppressionâ•‡ 1–2
Bitch Mediaâ•‡61 aesthetic responses in artâ•‡ 143
Black bodies: aesthetic responses in everyday lifeâ•‡ 142–3
corporeal and spatial policingâ•‡ 250–3 appearance vs. actionâ•‡ 169–70, 177
and disgustâ•‡ 8, 99, 245–7, 248 intertwined with identityâ•‡ 1
linked to “crime” “drugs,” and see also Asian male bodies; Black bodies;
“danger”â•‡248–50 Black/white “mixed race” bodies
objectificationâ•‡ 3, 34, 35, 104 body aestheticsâ•‡ 1–10
oversexualization of maleâ•‡ 61, 62 lookâ•‡4–5
representation of femaleâ•‡ 3, 15–35, 206, and oppressionâ•‡ 1–2
208–10, 213 performanceâ•‡5–7
touching white bodiesâ•‡ 255 practiceâ•‡7–10
transmogrified dimensionsâ•‡ 247–8 representationâ•‡2–4
index 321
body aesthetics, and the cultivation of moral cognitive bias 193

virtue 7–8, 225–40 Coleman, Nathaniel Adam Tobias 304–5, 308
moral significance of body aesthetics 225–8 Collins, Patricia Hill 15
practicing 7–8, 234–9 colonialism:
respect for humans 228–33 and Brand GB 96
respect for non-humans 233–4 household work and darker-skinned
self-improvement 236, 239, 240 women 99
world-making 8, 239–40 pigmentocracy 97
Body Consciousness (Shusterman) 279 and racial branding 96
Book of the Courtier (Castiglione) 180–2 racialized soap advertising 98–9
Boone, Joseph 65 representation of black women 17–26
Bordo, Susan 88, 306–7 selective forgetting 96, 104
Brain Song (Sigman) 161–3, 164 Fig. 9.6, 165 sexual politics of 65
Fig. 9.7 superior West/inferior East mentality 69
Brand, Peg see Weiser, Peg Brand Commonwealth Games, Jamaica 1996 197
Brand GB see nation Confucianism 227, 239
breakdancing 184 Conger, Cristen 61
Breslauer, Jan 86, 88 conversion (“ex-gay”) therapies 9, 290–1, 311
Brillat-Savarin, Jean Anthelme 263, 264, 266, Cooky, Cheryl 213
267, 268, 271, 273, 275 cosmetic surgery 210
British Airways (BA) ad (2012) 102 and cultural pressures to conform 87–8,
Brownmiller, Susan 87, 88 89–90
Brundage, Avery 197 and the fear of age 87
Burdsey, Daniel 62 feminist dilemmas 86
Burke, Edmund 203 and gender inequality 85
Burnyeat, Miles 49 health risks 46, 83
Buss, Sarah 227, 240 and women’s agency 86
Butler, Judith 251, 255, 256, 259 cosmetics:
Butoh 185 early attitudes 81
Buzuvis, Erin E. 200 and glamorous femininity 103
and women’s agency 82, 87
Cahill, Ann 300–1, 305 Cox, Renée 16–17, 16 Fig. 1.1
Cahn, Susan 194–5, 214 “cultural genitals” 214, 218
Calhoun, Cheshire 227 culture:
Camptown Ladies (Walker) 27, 28 Fig. 1.5, 30 and the art of eating 262–3, 271–2, 274,
Caplan, Arthur 195–6 275–7
Caro, Isabelle 46 and masculine identity 60
Carpenter, Cheryl 249 and preoccupation with appearance 81, 83,
Carter, Robert 233, 238 84, 88
cartography, European 22–4 and taste in bodies 37–8, 43, 134, 302, 303, 308
Castiglione, Baldassare 180–1, 182, 189 Cunningham, Merce 187
categorical perception (CP) 215 Cuvier, Georges 17
Cervantes, Miguel de 273 dance 2
Chagall, Marc 183 effortlessness 180, 181, 183, 184, 186, 187
Chan, Jackie 66–7 see also live body-based performance
Chapkis, Wendy 86
children’s sexuality 306 Daoism 182
China 261, 276 David (Michelangelo) 183
Choi, Na Yeon 188 Davis, Jordan 8, 250
choreography 155, 163–4, 165, 170, 180, 187 Davis, Karen 9, 293
communal, of eating 8–9, 231, 266, 276, de 182
278, 279 de Kooning, Willem 206–8
Chow Yun Fat 67 Death of Sardanapalus (Delacroix) 206, 211
Christianity 204–6, 275 Fig. 11.9
class, role in sexual desire 283, 288 “deep ecology” 168
Clinton, Hillary 84–5, 86 Descartes, René 203
closing windows or doors 228–30 didactic images 15, 17–18, 20, 23–4
322â•… index
didactic pornography: external bodily movementsâ•‡ 270

colonialâ•‡ 15, 18–21, 24–6, 34 food appreciation and criticismâ•‡ 262
Walkerâ•‡26–35 food preparation and presentation (“the art of
Dines, Gailâ•‡ 300 cuisine”)â•‡261–2
disability: and healthâ•‡ 266
association with evilâ•‡ 315 inner bodily perceptionâ•‡ 273–4
as definition of human conditionâ•‡ 151 internal bodily movementsâ•‡ 270
and desexualizationâ•‡ 285, 300, 302, 303, 304 and mindfulnessâ•‡ 230–1, 278–9
invisibleâ•‡142 modes and manners of ingestionâ•‡ 262
and sexinessâ•‡ 312, 315 and moral attitudesâ•‡ 230
visibleâ•‡142 and perceptionâ•‡ 273–4
disability aestheticsâ•‡ 145, 149, 151 as a performative artâ•‡ 264, 265
disability on the stage, 5–6, 141–51 postureâ•‡ 269, 275–8
and aesthetic disruptionâ•‡ 144–5, 147, 148 as praxisâ•‡265
as aesthetic resourceâ•‡ 6, 143, 145, 148–9, 151 and proprioceptionâ•‡ 268–9
and beautyâ•‡ 150–1 reclined (lectisternium)â•‡275
hypervisibilityâ•‡ 5, 141 respect for humansâ•‡ 230–2
and in/visibilityâ•‡ 141, 142 respect for ingredientsâ•‡ 233–4
as metaphorical signifierâ•‡ 144, 145 seated without chairsâ•‡ 276–7
non-disabled actors portrayingâ•‡ 6, 145, 146 selection and sequencing of foodâ•‡ 271–3
as an obstacleâ•‡ 143–5, 145–6 and self-knowledgeâ•‡ 266
and pleasure in imitationsâ•‡ 146–7, 148 social benefitsâ•‡ 266–7
presumed inability to “pass”â•‡ 6, 144, 145–6 somaesthetic self-cultivationâ•‡ 267
disability oppressionâ•‡ 1, 142 standingâ•‡275–6
disability prideâ•‡ 143 temporal qualitiesâ•‡ 263–4
disability studiesâ•‡ 142 theatrical analogyâ•‡ 264
discrimination: as total sensory phenomenonâ•‡ 267–8
and appearanceâ•‡ 4, 81, 84–6, 90, 113 transmodal perceptionsâ•‡ 274
and disabilityâ•‡ 142 values ofâ•‡ 265–9
and mannersâ•‡ 226 effortlessness, aestheticâ•‡ 6, 169, 180–91
and sexual orientationâ•‡ 72, 200 avoiding superfluous muscle useâ•‡ 186
and weightâ•‡ 3, 38, 40, 43–4, 82, 84, 85 call to further studyâ•‡ 190–1
disgust: and difficultyâ•‡ 6, 186–7, 188
and contempt at “mixed race”â•‡ 97, 100–1, 102, and efficiencyâ•‡ 185–6
105, 107 and fluidityâ•‡ 184–5
and fat negativityâ•‡ 43–4, 48 medium, representation and processâ•‡ 182–4,
as negative of toleranceâ•‡ 99 186–7
sublimated to contemptâ•‡ 100 objective, apparent and intentional
towards Black bodiesâ•‡ 8, 99, 245–7, 248 easeâ•‡188–9
Dōgenâ•‡ 231, 233–4, 235, 236 perception and pleasure ofâ•‡ 189–90
Domestic Tension (Bilal)â•‡ 156–8, 157 Fig. 9.1 as a social valueâ•‡ 182
Dove Campaign for Real Beautyâ•‡ 55 Egyptian revolutionâ•‡ 159
dress reformâ•‡ 82 elderly women, desexualizationâ•‡ 300, 302, 303, 304
dromenonâ•‡178 Eliot, T. S.â•‡ 183–4
Drummond, Murray J. N.â•‡ 64 elite women’s sports:
DSD (disorder of sex development)â•‡ 195 beauty, “race,” nationâ•‡ 4, 94–107
Duffy, Maryâ•‡ 6, 149–51, 150 Fig. 8.1 perceptual sexism inâ•‡ 7, 192–219
Dunn, Michael Davidâ•‡ 250, 254, 255 Elliott, Missyâ•‡ 56
DuRocher, Kristinaâ•‡ 246 Encinia, Brianâ•‡ 251–3, 254, 255, 258–9
English, Janeâ•‡ 193
eating, art ofâ•‡ 8–9, 261–79 Ennis, Alisonâ•‡ 103
accessoriesâ•‡270–1 Ennis, Jessicaâ•‡ 4, 94–5, 96, 97, 100, 102–6, 107
Buddhist approachesâ•‡ 230–1, 235–6, 277–9 beautyâ•‡105–6
cultural shapingâ•‡ 262–3 as Black Venusâ•‡ 101–2
definingâ•‡262–4 Black/white “mixed race” ambiguityâ•‡ 97, 100,
elements ofâ•‡ 269–74 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107
eschewing foods for aesthetic reasonsâ•‡ 272 as brand ambassadorâ•‡ 94, 95, 97, 102
index 323
as (exceptional) “other” 96, 97, 101, 102, 107 Black/white “mixed-race” 101
feminine glamour 102–3, 105 and glamour 103
MBE 105 racialized and heteronormative images 201,
as national/Olympic icon 94, 98, 100, 101, 216
102, 103, 104, 106 reclaiming/rejecting conventional
passing/not passing into whiteness 104, 106 emblems 83
as a patriot 104–5 rejection by gay men 63–4
threat of return to blackness 101, 107 feminism:
“whitening” in British Airways ad 102 and appearance 4, 81–90, 113
Ennis, Vinnie 103 and “bra-burning” 82
Ensler, Eve 86, 87 critique of heterosexuality as a political
estrogen 129 institution 282–3
Etcoff, Nancy 301–2, 303, 313 divorce of sex from reproduction 303
ethnic identity, role in sexual desire 284 first-wave 82
European Cup Track and Field event, Kiev implications of arguments around sexual
1967 197 attraction 134–5
European Track and Field Championships, reclamation of sexiness 9–10, 299–316
1966 197 second wave 82, 83
Eve, as seducer or embodiment of shame 204–6 suspicion of sexuality 281
everyday aesthetics 41–2 third-wave 83
evolutionary psychology: and women’s relationship to sport 193
views on sexual attraction 2, 127, 128–32, feminization of Asian men 3–4, 61, 65–8, 69,
301–2 71–2, 74
views critiqued 2, 5, 132–4, 302–3 Ferguson, Priscilla Parkhurst 267
Expulsion from Paradise (Masaccio) 206, 207 Feuerbach, Ludwig 266
Fig. 11.5 Fiddler on the Roof 158
Filipinos, as “little brown brothers” 69
Fanon, Frantz 31, 246, 248–9 Finger, Anne 142
fat activism 82 Fisher, M. F. K. 261
Fat is a Feminist Issue (Orbach) 90 Fitzgerald, Zelda 82
fat oppression (fatism) 3, 37–56, 117 Flash Gordon 65–6
Abercrombie & Fitch 38 Fletcher Report (1930) 100
aestheticizing fat 53–6 Flory, Dan 246, 247
and economic inequality 85 flower arrangement 233
effect on women 47–8, 85 Fonda, Jane 86
fat, as value-neutral term 39 For Anne Gregory (Yeats) 113–14, 116, 122
and habituation 39, 49–52 Foucault, Michel 244, 286
and healthcare 43 Freud, Sigmund 89, 147, 148, 149
“health objection” as justification 4, 44–7 “Full Body Project, The” (Nimoy) 54
and “lifestyle choices” 46–7 Fung, Richard 68
manifestations 39–40 fusion cooking 274
resistance to rational argument 48
role of sentiments 38, 40–1 Gamble, James 95
and self-hatred 48 Gangnam Style 3, 61
strategies for combatting 3, 38–9, 48–53 Garner, Eric 247–8, 250, 251, 253
and taste 38, 39–48 Garvey, Marcus 81
thought to be driven by false beliefs 38 gastronomy, three dimensions 261–2
at work 84 gay media 63–5, 71–2
fat positivity 55–6 gay men:
Fat Pride Community 39 anti-feminine attitude 63–4
Fat Studies 39, 40 body dissatisfaction 64
Fausto-Sterling, Anne 217–18 feminization of Asian 67–8, 71–2, 72
Feagin, Joe 248 masculinization of white 67–8, 71–2, 74
Federer, Roger 185 racial hierarchies 72–3
Felshin, Jan 200 racism towards Asian 64–5
femininity: gay porn 68
and athletic muscularity 98, 101, 200 Gay Thailand 72
324 index
gay travel companies 72–3 usefulness of associated physical

Great Britain (Brand GB) see nation qualities 121, 122–3, 124
geisha training 238 “Health at Every Size” movement 45
gender attribution, and “cultural genitals” 214 Heilbrun, Carolyn 87
gender identity: Hendrickson, Andrew T. 215
configuration by men 213 Hera 203
and discrimination/oppression 3, 72 heterae 203–4
women in elite sport 7, 192, 193, 217, 218 heteronormalization of gay white desire 67–8,
gender misidentity, in elite sport 193, 194–9, 71–2, 74
214–15, 219 heteronormativity 286, 290, 291, 299, 302
gender non-compliance: heterosexism 212–13
and attribution of sexiness 310 heterosexuality, feminist call for political
and oppression 1 interrogation 282–3
gender/sexual inequality 55, 85, 283, 284, 290 Higgins, Kathleen 110, 114
gender stereotypes 210, 217, 226 high heels:
gender testing see sex testing feminist ambivalence 88
genealogical inquiry 244 health risks 84
Gier, Nicholas F. 227 Hildegarde of Bingen 206
Gilgamesh 263 Hoang, Nguyen Tan 66
Gilman, Sander 17, 18 Holdforth, Lucinda 226, 228
Giuliano, Traci A. 201, 213 homosexuality:
glamour 102–3, 105 and “choice” 286–8
Golden Gate Bridge 181, 183, 186, 187 see also gay men
Goldstone, Robert L. 215 “Hottentot Venus” (Saartjie Baartman) 17,
Gone with the Wind 26, 30 34–5
Gone, An Historical Romance . . . (Walker) 31, 32 Hottentot women 17–18
Fig. 1.6 Hume, David 273
Gould, Glenn 183, 187 Humphrey, Doris 155
grace 181, 184, 185, 189, 190, 227–8, 239 Hung, William 61, 75
Graham, Martha 155 Hurston, Zora Neale 28–9
Gran Torino 69 Hut Project, The (Sigman) 171–7
Greek Slave, The (Power) 208 Hut #6 172 Fig. 9.11
Greeks, ancient 111–12, 226–7, 275 Hut#7 172–6, 173 Fig. 9.13, 174 Fig. 9.14,
limited depictions of women 203–4 175 Fig. 9.15, 176 Fig. 9.16
restrictive definitions of “woman” 202–3 Hut #9 173 Fig. 9.12
Grey’s Anatomy 67 Hwang, David Henry 67
Grigely, Joseph 142 hyperandrogenism (HA) 199
Guillermo, Emil 75
ideology of ability 144, 145–6, 151
habituation 39, 49–52 Imperial Leather (McClintock) 22–5
Hall, Kim 302 Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom 69
halo effect 42–3, 112–13, 116, 120, 133 inequality:
Hamada Shōji 233 and humor 293–4
Hangover, The 70 intersection with sexual desire 281, 283, 284,
Harley, J. B. 22 286, 295, 296
Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle 70 transforming sexual desire to undermine 9,
Harris, Eric 252–3 291, 294–7
Harris, Jennifer 200 International Association of Athletic
Harris, Kamala 84 Federations (IAAF) 193, 194, 197, 198,
Harris, Katherine 86 199, 214, 215, 216, 217, 218–19
Harrison, Jane 178 International Bill of Gender Rights (IBGR) 217
health: International Olympic Committee (IOC) 193,
and eating 266 196, 197, 198, 214, 215, 216, 217, 218–19
as justification for fat oppression 44–7 “Stockholm Consensus” 199
risks of preoccupation with appearance 83–4 Irigaray, Luce 281
signifiers, and sexual attractiveness 128–9, Irvin, Sherri 236
130, 132 Italian Renaissance 206
index 325
Jackson, Michael 184 Lee, Bobby 70

Jackson, Peter 62 Lee, Irwin 94–5
James, Simon 234 Lehman, Karen 88
Japanese noodles 268 Leo X, Pope 183
Japanese tea ceremony 231–2, 276 Levinas, Emmanuel 247
Japanese traditions 228–33 Lewis, Denise 98
aesthetic 235 LGBTQIA community:
food and eating 230–1, 268, 271, 276 antipathy to “choice” discourse 286
Jeffreys, Mark 151 conversion therapy 290–1
Jeffries, Mike 37 Li, Jet 67
Jeong, Ken 70 limerence 127
Jewish Seder meal 275 Lindsay, Lisa 33–4
Jonah’s Gourd Vine (Hurston) 29 live body-based performance 6, 153–78
judgment of Paris 111–12 “being with” 160–1
Judgment of Paris (Cranach, Lucas the building huts 171–7
Elder) 206, 209 Fig. 11.7 changing the space 6, 153, 171, 175–7
Judson Dance Theater 170, 187 and compassion 153, 160–3, 164, 168
Jue, Nathaniel 75 and connectedness 6, 153, 161, 163, 164, 165,
168, 177
Kagan, Elena 85 how it works 163–7
Kalyan, Adhir 74 image vs. live performance 155–60
Kant, Immanuel 106, 181, 203, 235, 246, 282, 284 performance before performance 177–8
Kessler, Suzanne 214, 215 presence 161, 163, 165, 169
Kester, Alice Harris 246 “real time” 161
Kido, Inoue 277–9 reasons not to make 153–5
Kilbourne, Jean 210–13 and relationship to the natural world 168–9
Killing Us Softly (Kilbourne) 210–13 the shell game 169–70, 177
King Solomon’s Mines (Rider Haggard) 23–4, 23 why it matters 168–9, 177
Fig. 1.3 London Olympics 94, 96, 98
Kleege, Georgina 142 Capital Clean Up Campaign 4, 95, 98–9
Klobukowska, Eva 197–8 lookism 42–3, 113
Knight, Jennifer L. 201, 213 Lorde, Audre 20, 252
Korean food 271 Lucas, Demetria 34–5
Koubkova, Zdenka 197 Lucie-Smith, Edward 208
Kratochvílová, Jarmila 201 Luminosity (Abramović) 158, 159 Fig. 9.2
“Kroo Virgin” 19–20 Lury, Celia 95–6
Kwakye, Jeanette 4, 94–5, 97, 98–100, 107 lust 127
bounded off from whiteness 107
as brand ambassador for Ariel 94, 95, 98, Ma, Yo-Yo 181
99–100 Macaulay, Alastair 169–70
as “other other” 96 MAD TV“Flashlight” skit 62
and P&G Capital Clean Up Campaign “magic lantern” metaphor 21
4, 95, 98 major histocompatibility complex (MHC) 131
as “Proud Keeper of Our Country’s male gaze:
Colours” 100 and Western European art 54–5, 204
racial branding 97, 98 white, and didactic pornography 21
and women’s “sexiness” 299
La Rochefoucauld, François de 261 Mandingo stereotype 61
La Sylphide 183 manners 226–7, 228
LaChapelle, Dolores 168–9 Markham, Beryl 22
landscape gardening 233 Markova, Alicia 180
Laozi 180 Martin, John 155
LaRosa, Alex 55 Martin, Trayvon 8, 249–50, 253–4, 257–8, 259
last days/first field (Sigman) 161, 162 Fig. 9.3, Martínez-Patiño, María José 198
162 Fig. 9.4, 163 Fig. 9.5 masculinity:
laughter 9, 293–4 attractiveness to women in the fertile
Laverty, Megan 238 period 129
326 index
masculinity (cont.) Mustafa, Isaiah 61

challenging what is appropriate 75–6
conflation with muscularity 60 “naked parades” 197
perceived in appearance of female athletes 7, Narrative of James Curry 29–30
196, 200, 214 nation (Great Britain) 4, 94–107
racialized media construction 3–4, 60–76 anti-miscegenation regime 101
Masuno Shunmyo 233 as brand (Brand GB) 95–7
Matsukawa, Yuko 66 “browning” of 104–6, 107
Maugham, William Somerset 183 construction as tolerant and multicultural 4,
Mayer, Marissa 85 96, 99, 100, 103–4, 107
Mazrui, Ali 22 “post-race” racism 95, 103, 104, 107
McAllister, Heather 48, 53 “post-race” rhetoric 96, 97, 99,
McBride, Renisha 8, 248–9, 250, 253, 258 102, 103
McCartney, Stella 96 “race” melancholia 103–4
McClintock, Anne 21, 22–5 value of Black and Black/white bodies 107
McKenna, Wendy 214, 215 white nation and social change 98–102
McWhorter, John 29 National Collegiate Athletics Association
media: (NCAA) 201
and beauty standards 307 Newhall, Kristine E. 200
representations of Asian male bodies 3–4, Nietzsche, Friedrich 235
60–76 Nimoy, Leonard 54
role in reinforcing diverse sexuality 308 Noddings, Nel 225
men: non-heteronormativity 282
objectification and racialization of North American Task Force on Intersexuality
bodies 60–1, 74 (NATFI) 217–18
oversexualization of black 61, 62 NOW magazine 105
preferences in female sexual partners 127, Nude with Skeleton (Abramović) 160–1
129, 130, 131, 133, 302–2 Nussbaum, Martha 300, 304
see also Asian male bodies; gay men
Mencius 239 Obama, Barack 84
Merrick, Joseph (the “Elephant Man”) 4–5, Olay 94, 97, 99, 105
119–20 Olay Essentials 95, 102, 105
Merrickites 5, 120–4 Olay Glow Perfectors 95, 102, 105
Messner, Michael A. 213 Old Spice 61
metakinesis 155, 164 Olympia (Manet) 206, 210 Fig. 11.8
Michelangelo 183 Olympic Games 196, 198, 203, 214
Mill, John Stuart 47 first modern, 1896 195
Miller, Stuart Creighton 69 Berlin, 1936 197
mimesis 52 Mexico, 1968 198
mind/body dualism 122, 289 Atlanta, 1996 199
mind/body hierarchy 9, 289–90 Athens, 2004 196, 199, 214
mindfulness, whilst eating 230–1, 278–9 Sydney, 2012 199
Miss America pageant protests (1968) 82 see also London Olympics; Winter Olympics
Miss Representation 213 Onion, The 89
moral virtues, body aesthetics and 7–8, 225–40 opening gifts 232–3
moral significance of body aesthetics 225–8 oppression 1–2
practicing body aesthetics 234–9 black women’s alleged “complicity” 27, 30
respect for humans expressed and disgust 43–4
aesthetically 228–33 interlocking categories 83
respect for non-humans expressed see also discrimination; disability oppression;
aesthetically 233–4 fat oppression
Morrison, Toni 246–7 Orbach, Susie 90
Moy, Matthew 68–9 Osipova, Natalia 181, 186
Mudimbe, Valentin-Yves 22
Munster, Tess 55 Pak, Janet 75
music: Pan American Games 1967 197
and beauty 111 Pancholy, Maulik 73–4
effortlessness in performance 181, 183, 186, 187 Pantaleo, Daniel 248, 254, 255
index 327
Patrick, Danica 47 Powerade Zero 94, 95, 102

Paul, Saint 204 pragmatist aesthetics 265
peak shift effect 132 pregnant women, desexualization 300, 302,
pedophiles 284, 306, 308 303, 304
perception: Press, Irina 196–7
of ambiguous figures 215–16 Press, Tamara 196–7
bias in categorical (CP) 215 Procter, William 95
and eating 273–4 Procter and Gamble (P&G) 94–5, 99
education of 217 Capital Clean Up Campaign 4, 95, 98–9
perceptual sexism in elite women’s sports 7, proprioception 268–9
192–219 proprioceptive sympathy 189–90
perpetuating misleading aesthetic PSY 3, 61, 75
norms 199–213 Pujol, Ernesto 171, 176
and sex testing 194–9
understanding and reversing 213–19 race:
Perez, Daniel 55 beauty, nation and 4, 94–107
performance art 149–51 and beauty norms 1, 4, 7, 85, 98, 99, 104,
(Perma)Culture (Sigman) 165, 166 Fig. 9.8, 166 105–6, 193, 201, 213, 214
Fig. 9.9, 167 Fig. 9.10 intersection with gender and class
photographic images 15–20 99, 107
black women as agents 16–17 and sexual desire 288, 308
black women as colonized objects 17–20, “race” performativity 97, 106
24–6, 34 and brands 96
fat women 54–5 “race” melancholia 103–4
physical attractiveness: racial ambiguity 94, 95, 97, 100–1, 102, 103–4,
halo effect 42–3, 112–13, 116, 120, 133 107
modalities 42 racial branding 96–7, 98–9, 107
pressures on women 47–8 racial equality 103, 290, 296
role in people’s lives 47 racism 27, 116, 200–1
temporal and cultural variability in in advertising 61
standards 2 anti-African 96
and weight 43, 47 Ennis’s experience 103
zero correlation with intellectual and gay Asian men 64–5
competence 84 inherent in whiteness 294–5
see also appearance-related practices; paternalistic 69
beauty “post-race” 95, 103, 104, 107
Picasso, Pablo 206 rooting out through white un-suturing 8,
Pickens, James Jr. 67 254–9
Pindell, Howardena 27 and sexual preferences 289–90, 291
Plantation in the Postslavery Imagination, The in southern United States 245
(Russ) 31 and the white gaze 243–54
Plato 52, 110, 116, 202 Rainer, Yvonne 170
Playboy 210, 213 Ramirez-Jonas, Paul 171
“plus size” models 55 Raphael 183
Poetics (Aristotle) 146–7 Ratjen, Hermann 197
poiesis vs. praxis 265 Republic (Plato) 110
Pollitt, Katha 87, 88–9 Reston, Ana Carolina 46
polymerase chain reaction test 198–9 Rhode, Deborah 42
Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked our Sexuality Rice, Condoleezza 84
(Dines) 300 Richards, Janet Radcliffe 82
pornography 213, 294, 300, 307 Ringer, Jenifer 169–70
gay 68 ritual:
and relationship to the viewer 20–1 and connection 168–9, 177
vs. the erotic 20 transition to drama 178
see also didactic pornography Roberts, Dorothy 27
porno-tropics 24 Roman Slave Market, A (Gérôme) 208, 212
Portland, Maureen 200 Fig. 11.10
pottery 233 Roman festive eating 275
328 index
Romeo Must Die 67 and fertility signifiers 129, 130, 132, 301–3
Room of One’s Own, A (Woolf) 81 and good genes 128–30
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 203 and health and immune system
Rubens, Peter Paul 53–4 signifiers 128–9, 131, 132
Rules of Engagement 74 and human pheromones 130
Russ, Elizabeth 31 implications for feminism 134–5
importance to Abercrombie & Fitch 37
Said, Edward 22 individual differences and
Saltzman, Mark 181 idiosyncrasies 131–2, 132–3
Santander 92, 102, 105 and parenting skills 5, 135
Sartre, Jean-Paul 245 and self-presentation 134, 135
Savage, Michael 85 and sense of smell 131
Sceptical Feminist, The (Richards) 82 social and behavioral factors 5, 133–4, 302, 303
Schiller, Friedrich 227–8, 238–9 strangers to the group 130–1
Schinegger, Erik (formerly Erika) 197, 198 and symmetry 128, 130
Schopenhauer, Arthur 203 and waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) 129
Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky 283, 286 see also sexiness; sexual desire
Sei Shōnagon 228–9 sexual desire 9, 281–97
seiza 276, 277 analogy with hunger flawed 292–3
Semenya, Caster 194–5, 194 Fig. 11.1, 196, 199, analogy with laughter 9, 293–4
201, 202 Fig. 11.2, 214, 219 compared to sexual actions 284, 285
Servicemembers Legal Defense Network as focus of ethical analysis 284–9
(SLDN) 3, 71–2 interpretation foundational to 9, 288
sex/gender: intersection with inequality 281, 283, 284,
discarding the “binary model” 217–18 286, 291, 294, 295, 296–7
fluidity 283 Merrickites 120
Sex/Gender: Biology in a Social World motivation for the transformation 289–90
(Fausto-Sterling) 218 non gender-based sexual orientations 9,
sex testing female athletes 102, 194–9, 214, 215 283–4, 288–9
sexiness 9–10, 299–316 possibility of transformation 281–2, 286–9
aesthetics of 301, 314–16 process of transformation 292–7
biological sense: sexy as fertile 301–3 seen as beyond capacity to change 284
ethics of 301, 305–14 and somatophobic culture 284, 285–6
and genuineness 306 sublimation to the political 282–3
and objectification of women 299–300, 304 see also sexiness; sexual attraction and
prurient sense: sexy as arousing 304–5 attractiveness
respectful notion: sexy as subjective 9–10, sexual ethics 281
300–1, 305–16 sexual identity:
and social contagion 313 centrality to contemporary human
and stable exclusive relationships 312–13 subjectivity 287
and wonder 9, 281, 305 as “emerging fusion” 286–7
see also sexual attraction and attractiveness; fluidity 283
sexual desire sexual inequality see gender/sexual inequality
sexism 116, 200 sexual orientation:
historical 203 and attribution of sexiness 309–11
see also perceptual sexism in elite women’s sports and inequality 72, 290
sexual attention: non-gender based 9, 283–4, 288–9
appropriate and respectful 311–12 Wilkerson’s ontology of 9, 286–9
virtual 312 sexual preferences see sexiness; sexual attraction
sexual attraction and attractiveness 5, 127–35 and attractiveness; sexual desire
and averageness 128, 132 Shakespeare, William 182
and complementary genes 130–1 Sherman, Nancy 7, 226, 227, 238
decoupling from desire to mate 135, 309 shitsuke 236–7, 238
evolutionary psychology’s view 2, 127, Shteynberg, Catherine 21
128–32, 301–2 Shusterman, Richard 235–6
evolutionary psychology’s view critiqued 2, Sidler, Maren 197
5, 132–3, 302–3 Sills, Beverly 181
indexâ•… 329
Sins Invalidâ•‡ 312 training through habituationâ•‡ 49–52

skin tradeâ•‡ 95, 97, 98–102, 107 vegetable exampleâ•‡ 51
Slave Testimony (Blassingame)â•‡ 29 and virtueâ•‡ 49
slaveryâ•‡ 246, 250–1 taste in bodiesâ•‡ 3, 37–56
black women constructed as aestheticizing fatâ•‡ 53–6
“non-feminine”â•‡98 collectiveâ•‡ 37–8, 41
brutality and absurdityâ•‡ 29–30 four notable featuresâ•‡ 47–8
pigmentocracyâ•‡97 and oppressionâ•‡ 38, 39–48
and racial brandingâ•‡ 96 resistance to rational argumentâ•‡ 48
representations of “exotic” womenâ•‡ 208–10 and self-evaluationâ•‡ 42
selective forgettingâ•‡ 96, 104 social and moral significanceâ•‡ 42–4
Walker’s portrayalsâ•‡ 26–8, 30–4 strategies for changeâ•‡ 38–9, 48–53
Slavery! Slavery! (Walker)â•‡ 26 taste (of food), and smellâ•‡ 267
“Smell like a Man, Man” advertising taste, sexual see sexiness, sexual attraction and
campaignâ•‡61 attractiveness, sexual desire
Smith, Lillianâ•‡ 245 Team GB (Great Britain Olympic Team)â•‡ 4, 94,
Smith, Williamâ•‡ 24–5 95, 104
social aestheticsâ•‡ 237 as brandâ•‡ 95–7, 98, 99, 101, 102, 107
somaestheticsâ•‡ 8–9, 261–79 terror, and un-suturingâ•‡ 257–9
Spade, Davidâ•‡ 74 testosteroneâ•‡ 129, 195, 198, 199
Spencer, Herbertâ•‡ 6, 181, 185–6, 190 theatreâ•‡2
Spillers, Hortenseâ•‡ 249 analogy with art of diningâ•‡ 264
sportâ•‡2 Greek addition to orchestraâ•‡ 178
effortlessnessâ•‡ 185–6, 188 see also stage
see also elite women’s sports Their Eyes Were Watching God (Hurston)â•‡ 28–9
“sport feminists”â•‡ 200, 201, 219 thinness:
sprezzaturaâ•‡189 as aesthetic idealâ•‡ 47
stage: and fertilityâ•‡ 302–3
development ofâ•‡ 178 health risksâ•‡ 46, 83
disability on theâ•‡ 5, 141–51 30 Rockâ•‡ 73–4
see also theatre Thomas, Laurenceâ•‡ 296, 313
Stanton, Elizabeth Cadyâ•‡ 82 Titianâ•‡ 54, 206
steatopygiaâ•‡17–18 Title IXâ•‡ 192, 193
Stephens, Helenâ•‡ 196 trade cardsâ•‡ 66
Stohr, Karenâ•‡ 226 Trainor, Meghanâ•‡ 56
Stone, Emmaâ•‡ 105 transsexual participation in elite sportâ•‡ 195–6
Strong, Scott M.â•‡ 64 Treaty of Parisâ•‡ 69
Strother, Z. S.â•‡ 18 Trebilcot, Joyceâ•‡ 282–3, 296
Subtlety, A or the Marvelous Sugar Baby Tuxedo, Theâ•‡66–7
(Walker)â•‡ 32–5, 33 Fig. 1.7 2 Broke Girlsâ•‡68–9
sugar industryâ•‡ 32–4
Sullivan, Claireâ•‡ 198–9 Unbelievable (Ennis)â•‡ 103
Sullivan, Shannonâ•‡ 9, 294–6, 297 Union Jackâ•‡ 94, 96, 97, 100, 106
Sunstein, Cassâ•‡ 304 un-suturingâ•‡254–9
Survival of the Prettiest (Etcoff)â•‡ 301–2 aesthetics ofâ•‡ 255–6
sutured/un-sutured selvesâ•‡ 253–9 Us Weeklyâ•‡70
Taft, William Howardâ•‡ 69 Van Susteren, Gretaâ•‡ 89–90

tanning, health risksâ•‡ 46 Venus/Aphroditeâ•‡ 203, 204
taste: Black Venus narrativeâ•‡ 101–2
acquiredâ•‡50 Venus at Mirror (Rubens)â•‡ 54
attributed to beliefsâ•‡ 38 Venus at Mirror (Titian)â•‡ 54
and beautyâ•‡ 106 Venus de Miloâ•‡ 149
changing through representationâ•‡ 52–3 Duffy’s representationâ•‡ 6, 149–51, 150 Fig. 8.1
cultural and personal mediationâ•‡ 308 Venus of Urbino (Titian)â•‡ 206, 208 Fig. 11.6
definedâ•‡41–2 Venus of Willendorfâ•‡ 203
and everyday aestheticsâ•‡ 41–2 Virey, J. J.â•‡ 17
330 index
virtue: women:
and beauty 81 antidote to the “male gaze” 54–5
and taste 49 appearance-based discrimination 1, 4, 84–6
Vopat, Mark 306 and appearance-related practices 4, 81–90, 113
and biological sense of sexiness 301–3
Wackwitz, Laura A. 196, 197–8 degradation in pornography 307
Wafer, Theodore 248–9, 253, 254, 255, 258–9 desexualization of pregnant, elderly and
Walker, Kara 3, 15, 21, 26–34, 34–5 disabled 300, 302, 303, 304
Walking Dead, The 68, 71 discrimination in mate choice 127
Walsh, Stella (formerly Stanisława eroticized violence against 308
Walasiewicz) 196 and fat oppression 47–8 , 85
Ward, John 182 as “monstrous” 206–8
Warren, John 244, 257 pathologizing of sexual desires 285–6
weight loss industry 83 preferences in male sexual partners 129–30,
Weiser, Peg Brand 10 131, 134
West, Cornel 246 representation in advertising 210–13
White, Edmund 63–4 representation in Western art 203–10
white gaze 8, 243–59 restrictive definitions through history 202–3
and colonized black women 17–26, 34 and rigid gender boundaries 310
disruption through un-suturing 8, 254–9 as sex objects 299–300, 304
and embodied responses to Black bodies 8, as sexy subjects 300
245–54 unwanted sexual attention 310
as historical achievement/ see also black women; black women athletes;
accomplishment 243–5 elite women’s sport
and objectification of Black bodies 104 Woolf, Virginia 81
reflection back on itself 15, 29–34, 35 World Athletic Championships, 2017 94
as a species of attunement (stimmung) 245 Wright, Richard 28–9
white male bodies: wu-wei 180
constructed as superior to Asian 72–4
large, juxtaposed with smaller Asian 67–8 Yancy, George 9, 104, 294–5
masculinization 66, 67–8, 70, 72, 74 Yang, Jack 67
normalization 62 Yeats, William Butler 113–14, 122
white privilege 294–5, 296 Yeun, Steven 68
white supremacy 3, 4, 8, 27, 244, 245, 252, yin shi 261
255, 257 Yo Mama, The (Cox) 16–17, 16 Fig. 1.1
and Asian male bodies 72–4 Young, Iris Marion 193
Why Manners Matter (Holdforth) 226 YouTube 61, 158
Wilkerson, William 9, 286–9, 295–6
Will & Grace 71 zazen 235, 277
Williams, Carla 15–16, 18–19, 20, 21, 24 Zemach, Eddy 314
Williams, Patricia 88 Zen Buddhism 235
Willis, Deborah 15–16, 18–19, 20, 21, 24 eating traditions 230–1, 235–6, 277–9
Winter Olympics: Zhuangzi 180
Grenoble 1968 198 Zimmerman, George 249–50, 253–4, 255,
Albertville 1992 198 257–8, 259
Wolf, Naomi 4, 83, 113, 114–15, 119 Zofia, Femme du Caire (Benecke) 24, 25 Fig. 1.4

Sherri Irvin - Body Aesthetics (2016, Oxford University Press)

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OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 05/24/2016, SPi

This book is dedicated to the memory of Tobin Siebers

Introduction: Why Body Aesthetics? 1

Part I.â•‡ Representation

Part II.â•‡ Look

Part III.â•‡ Performance

viiiâ•… ï»¿c ontents

11. Misleading Aesthetic Norms of Beauty: Perceptual Sexism in Elite

Part IV.â•‡ Practice

1.1 Renée Cox. The Yo Mama, 1993. 16

xâ•… List of Illustrations

11.5 Masaccio (Maso di San Giovanni). Expulsion from Paradise.207

xiv list of contributors

Sherri Irvin is Presidential Research Professor of Philosophy and Women’s and

Barbara Gail Montero is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the College of

Glenn Parsons is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Ryerson University,

xvi list of contributors

list of contributors xvii

Why Body Aesthetics? 3

As Maria del Guadalupe Davidson discusses in “Black Silhouettes on White Walls:

Why Body Aesthetics? 5

The theater, then, may seem to be governed by an aesthetic of “passing”: disabled

Why Body Aesthetics? 7

In “Misleading Aesthetic Norms of Beauty: Perceptual Sexism in Elite Women’s

Why Body Aesthetics? 9

10 Sherri Irvin

Why Body Aesthetics? 11

Maria del Guadalupe Davidson

The Colonial Lens and the Colonized Image

16 Maria del Guadalupe Davidson

bodies in photography: as colonized bodies, as cultural bodies, as beautiful bodies, and

Figure 1.1 Renée Cox. The Yo Mama, 1993.

Kara Walker’s Magic Lantern 17

18 Maria del Guadalupe Davidson

audiences” apparently “found riveting” (Gilman 1985, 232). This leads Z. S. Strother to

Kara Walker’s Magic Lantern 19

Figure 1.2 The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.

20 Maria del Guadalupe Davidson

Kara Walker’s Magic Lantern 21

22 Maria del Guadalupe Davidson

Black Women, Colonization, and the Didactic

Kara Walker’s Magic Lantern 23

24 Maria del Guadalupe Davidson

Kara Walker’s Magic Lantern 25

Figure 1.4 The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.

26 Maria del Guadalupe Davidson

These images, produced by mainly white male photographers, clearly function as

Kara Walker’s Didactic Pornography

Kara Walker’s Magic Lantern 27

Is there a danger in using caricature or stereotypical images to make a point, especially

Pindell goes on to say, “Walker consciously or unconsciously seems to be catering

28 Maria del Guadalupe Davidson

Figure 1.5 Kara Walker. Detail of Camptown Ladies, 1998.

Kara Walker’s Magic Lantern 29

30 Maria del Guadalupe Davidson

Kara Walker’s Magic Lantern 31

32 Maria del Guadalupe Davidson

Kara Walker’s Magic Lantern 33

34 Maria del Guadalupe Davidson

Kara Walker’s Magic Lantern 35

36 Maria del Guadalupe Davidson

Taste in Bodies and Fat Oppression 39

2.1 Taste and Oppression

Taste in Bodies and Fat Oppression 41

Introduction: Why Body Aesthetics? 1

1.1 Renée Cox. The Yo Mama, 1993. 16

11.5 Masaccio (Maso di San Giovanni). Expulsion from Paradise.207