Studies in the Psychology of Sex Volume Iv Part 12

"Mr. Winwood Reade," stated Darwin, "who has had ample opportunities for observation, not only with the negroes of the West Coast of Africa, but with those of the interior who have never a.s.sociated with Europeans, is convinced that their ideas of beauty are, on the whole, the same as ours; and Dr. Rohlfs writes to me to the same effect with respect to Bornu and the countries inhabited by the Pullo tribes. Mr. Reade found that he agreed with the negroes in their estimation of the beauty of the native girls; and that their appreciation of the beauty of European women corresponded with ours.... The Fuegians, as I have been informed by a missionary who long resided with them, considered European women as extremely beautiful ... I should add that a most experienced observer, Captain [Sir R.] Burton, believes that a woman whom we consider beautiful is admired throughout the world." (Darwin, Descent of Man, Chapter XIX.)

Mantegazza quotes a conversation between a South American chief and an Argentine who had asked him which he preferred, the women of his own people or Christian women; the chief replied that he admired Christian women most, and when asked the reason said that they were whiter and taller, had finer hair and smoother skin. (Mantegazza, Fisiologia della Donna, Appendix to Cap. VIII.)

Nordenskjold, as quoted by Ploss and Bartels, states that the Eskimo regard their own type as more ugly than that produced by crossing with white persons, and, according to Kropf, the Nosa Kaffers admire and seek the fairer half-castes in preference to their own women of pure race (Ploss and Bartels, Das Weib, seventh edition, bd. 1, p. 78). There is a widespread admiration for fairness, it may be added, among dark peoples. Fair men are admired by the Papuans at Torres Straits (Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition, vol. v, p. 327). The common use of powder among the women of dark-skinned peoples bears witness to the existence of the same ideal.

Stratz, in his books Die Schonheit des Weiblichen Korpers and Die Ra.s.senschonheit des Weibes, argues that the ideal of beauty is fundamentally the same throughout the world, and that the finest persons among the lower races admire and struggle to attain the type which is found commonly and in perfection among the white peoples of Europe. When in j.a.pan he found that among the numerous photographs of j.a.panese beauties everywhere to be seen, his dragoman, a j.a.panese of low birth, selected as the most beautiful those which displayed markedly the j.a.panese type with narrow-slitted eyes and broad nose. When he sought the opinion of a j.a.panese photographer, who called himself an artist and had some claim to be so considered, the latter selected as most beautiful three j.a.panese girls who in Europe also would have been considered pretty. In Java, also, when selecting from a large number of Javanese girls a few suitable for photographing, Stratz was surprised to find that a Javanese doctor pointed out as most beautiful those which most closely corresponded to the European type. (Stratz, Die Ra.s.senschonheit des Weibes, fourth edition, 1903, p. 3; id., Die Korperformen der j.a.paner, 1904, p. 78.)

Stratz reproduces (Ra.s.senschonheit, pp. 36 et seq.) a representation of Kwan-yin, the Chinese G.o.ddess of divine love, and quotes some remarks of Borel's concerning the wide deviation of the representations of the G.o.ddess, a type of gracious beauty, from the Chinese racial type. Stratz further reproduces the figure of a Buddhistic G.o.ddess from Java (now in the Archaeological Museum of Leyden) which represents a type of loveliness corresponding to the most refined and cla.s.sic European ideal.

Not only is there a fundamentally objective element in beauty throughout the human species, but it is probably a significant fact that we may find a similar element throughout the whole animated world. The things that to man are most beautiful throughout Nature are those that are intimately a.s.sociated with, or dependent upon, the s.e.xual process and the s.e.xual instinct. This is the case in the plant world. It is so throughout most of the animal world, and, as Professor Poulton, in referring to this often unexplained and indeed unnoticed fact, remarks, "the song or plume which excites the mating impulse in the hen is also in a high proportion of cases most pleasing to man himself. And not only this, but in their past history, so far as it has been traced (e.g., in the development of the characteristic markings of the male peac.o.c.k and argus pheasant), such features have gradually become more and more pleasing to us as they have acted as stronger and stronger stimuli to the hen."[133]

[131]

"It is likely that all visible parts of the organism, even those with a definite physiological meaning, appeal to the aesthetic sense of the opposite s.e.x," Poulton remarks, speaking primarily of insects, in words that apply still more accurately to the human species. E. Poulton, The Colors of Animals, 1890, p. 304.

[132]

"The Arabs in general," Lane remarks, "entertain a prejudice against blue eyes-a prejudice said to have arisen from the great number of blue-eyed persons among certain of their northern enemies."

[133]

Nature, April 14, 1898, p. 55.

II.

Beauty to Some Extent Consists Primitively in an Exaggeration of the s.e.xual Characters-The s.e.xual Organs-Mutilations, Adornments, and Garments-s.e.xual Allurement the Original Object of Such Devices-The Religious Element-Unaesthetic Character of the s.e.xual Organs-Importance of the Secondary s.e.xual Characters-The Pelvis and Hips-Steatopygia-Obesity-Gait-The Pregnant Woman as a Mediaeval Type of Beauty-The Ideals of the Renaissance-The b.r.e.a.s.t.s-The Corset-Its Object-Its History-Hair-The Beard-The Element of National or Racial Type in Beauty-The Relative Beauty of Blondes and Brunettes-The General European Admiration for Blondes-The Individual Factors in the Const.i.tution of the Idea of Beauty-The Love of the Exotic.

In the const.i.tution of our ideals of masculine and feminine beauty it was inevitable that the s.e.xual characters should from a very early period in the history of man form an important element. From a primitive point of view a s.e.xually desirable and attractive person is one whose s.e.xual characters are either naturally prominent or artificially rendered so. The beautiful woman is one endowed, as Chaucer expresses it,

"With b.u.t.tokes brode and brestes rounde and hye"; that is to say, she is the woman obviously best fitted to bear children and to suckle them. These two physical characters, indeed, since they represent apt.i.tude for the two essential acts of motherhood, must necessarily tend to be regarded as beautiful among all peoples and in all stages of culture, even in high stages of civilization when more refined and perverse ideals tend to find favor, and at Pompeii as a decoration on the east side of the Purgatorium of the Temple of Isis we find a representation of Perseus rescuing Andromeda, who is shown as a woman with a very small head, small hands and feet, but with a fully developed body, large b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and large projecting nates.[134]

To a certain extent-and, as we shall see, to a certain extent only-the primary s.e.xual characters are objects of admiration among primitive peoples. In the primitive dances of many peoples, often of s.e.xual significance, the display of the s.e.xual organs on the part of both men and women is frequently a prominent feature. Even down to mediaeval times in Europe the garments of men sometimes permitted the s.e.xual organs to be visible. In some parts of the world, also, the artificial enlargement of the female s.e.xual organs is practised, and thus enlarged they are considered an important and attractive feature of beauty.

Sir Andrew Smith informed Darwin that the elongated nymphae (or "Hottentot ap.r.o.n") found among the women of some South African tribes was formerly greatly admired by the men (Descent of Man, Chapter XIX). This formation is probably a natural peculiarity of the women of these races which is very much exaggerated by intentional manipulation due to the admiration it arouses. The missionary Merensky reported the prevalence of the practice of artificial elongation among the Basuto and other peoples, and the anatomical evidence is in favor of its partly artificial character. (The Hottentot ap.r.o.n is fully discussed by Ploss and Bartels, Das Weib, bd. I, sec. vi.)

In the Jaboo country on the Bight of Benin in West Africa, Daniell stated, it was considered ornamental to elongate the l.a.b.i.a and the c.l.i.toris artificially; small weights were appended to the c.l.i.toris and gradually increased. (W. F. Daniell, Topography of Gulf of Guinea, 1849, pp. 24, 53.)

Among the Bawenda of the northern Transvaal, the missionary Wessmann states, it is customary for young girls from the age of 8 to spend a certain amount of time every day in pulling the l.a.b.i.a majora in order to elongate them; in selecting a wife the young men attach much importance to this elongation, and the girl whose l.a.b.i.a stand out most is most attractive. (Zeitschrift fur Ethnologie, 1894, ht. 4, p. 363.)

It may be added that in various parts of the world mutilations of the s.e.xual organs of men and women, or operations upon them, are practiced, for reasons which are imperfectly known, since it usually happens that the people who practice them are unable to give the reason for this practice, or they a.s.sign a reason which is manifestly not that which originally prompted the practice. Thus, the excision of the c.l.i.toris, practiced in many parts of East Africa and frequently supposed to be for the sake of dulling s.e.xual feeling (J. S. King Journal of the Anthropological Society, Bombay, 1890, p. 2), seems very doubtfully accounted for thus, for the women have it done of their own accord; "all Sobo women [Niger coast] have their c.l.i.toris cut off; unless they have this done they are looked down upon, as slave women who do not get cut; as soon, therefore, as a Sobo woman has collected enough money, she goes to an operating woman and pays her to do the cutting." (Journal of the Anthropological Inst.i.tute, August-November, 1898, p. 117.) The Comte de Cardi investigated this matter in the Niger Delta: "I have questioned both native men and women," he states, "to try and get the natives' reason for this rite, but the almost universal answer to my queries was, 'it is our country's fashion.'" One old man told him it was practiced because favorable to continence, and several old women said that once the women of the land used to suffer from a peculiar kind of madness which this rite reduced. (Journal of the Anthropological Inst.i.tute, August-November, 1899, p. 59.) In the same way the subincision of the urethra (mika operation of Australia) is frequently supposed to be for the purpose of preventing conception (See, e.g., the description of the operation by J. G. Garson, Medical Press, February 21, 1894), but this is very doubtful, and E. C. Stirling found that subincised natives often had large families. (Intercolonial Quarterly Journal of Medicine and Surgery, 1894.)

A pa.s.sage in the Mainz Chronicle for 1367 (as quoted by Schultz, Das Hofische Leben, p. 297) shows that at that time the tunics of the men were so made that it was always possible for the s.e.xual organs to be seen in walking or sitting.

This insistence on the naked s.e.xual organs as objects of attraction is, however, comparatively rare, and confined to peoples in a low state of culture. Very much more widespread is the attempt to beautify and call attention to the s.e.xual organs by tattooing,[135] by adornment and by striking peculiarities of clothing. The tendency for beauty of clothing to be accepted as a subst.i.tute for beauty of body appears early in the history of mankind, and, as we know, tends to be absolutely accepted in civilization.[136] "We exclaim," as Goethe remarks, "'What a beautiful little foot!' when we have merely seen a pretty shoe; we admire the lovely waist when nothing has met out eyes but an elegant girdle." Our realities and our traditional ideals are hopelessly at variance; the Greeks represented their statues without pubic hair because in real life they had adopted the oriental custom of removing the hairs; we compel our sculptors and painters to make similar representations, though they no longer correspond either to realities or to our own ideas of what is beautiful and fitting in real life. Our artists are themselves equally ignorant and confused, and, as Stratz has repeatedly shown, they constantly reproduce in all innocence the deformations and pathological characters of defective models. If we were honest, we should say-like the little boy before a picture of the Judgment of Paris, in answer to his mother's question as to which of the three G.o.ddesses he thought most beautiful-"I can't tell, because they haven't their clothes on."

The concealment actually attained was not, however, it would appear, originally sought. Various authors have brought together evidence to show that the main primitive purpose of adornment and clothing among savages is not to conceal the body, but to draw attention to it and to render it more attractive. Westermarck, especially, brings forward numerous examples of savage adornments which serve to attract attention to the s.e.xual regions of man and woman.[137] He further argues that the primitive object of various savage peoples in practicing circ.u.mcision, as other similar mutilations, is really to secure s.e.xual attractiveness, whatever religious significance they may sometimes have developed subsequently. A more recent view represents the magical influence of both adornment and mutilation as primary, as a method of guarding and insulating dangerous bodily functions. Frazer, in The Golden Bough, is the most able and brilliant champion of this view, which undoubtedly embodies a large element of truth, although it must not be accepted to the absolute exclusion of the influence of s.e.xual attractiveness. The two are largely woven in together.[138]

There is, indeed, a general tendency for the s.e.xual functions to take on a religious character and for the s.e.xual organs to become sacred at a very early period in culture. Generation, the reproductive force in man, animals, and plants, was realized by primitive man to be a fact of the first magnitude, and he symbolized it in the s.e.xual organs of man and woman, which thus attained to a solemnity which was entirely independent of purposes of s.e.xual allurement. Phallus worship may almost be said to be a universal phenomenon; it is found even among races of high culture, among the Romans of the Empire and the j.a.panese to-day; it has, indeed, been thought by some that one of the origins of the cross is to be found in the phallus.

"Hardly any other object," remarks Dr. Richard Andree, "has been with such great unanimity represented by nearly all peoples as the phallus, the symbol of procreative force in the religions of the East and an object of veneration at public festivals. In the Moabitic Baal Peor, in the cult of Dionysos, everywhere, indeed, except in Persia, we meet with Priapic representations and the veneration accorded to the generative organ. It is needless to refer to the great significance of the Linga puja, the procreative organ of the G.o.d Siva, in India, a G.o.d to whom more temples were erected than to any other Indian deity. Our museums amply show how common phallic representations are in Africa, East Asia, the Pacific, frequently in connection with religious worship." (R. Andree, "Amerikansche Phallus-Darstellungen," Zeitschrift fur Ethnologie, 1895, ht. 6, p. 678.)

Women have no external generative organ like the phallus to play a large part in life as a sacred symbol. There is, however, some reason to believe that the triangle is to some extent such a symbol. Lejeune ("La Representation s.e.xuelle en Religion, Art, et Pedagogie," Bulletin de la Societe d'Anthropologie, Paris, October 3, 1901) brings forward reasons in favor of the view that the triangular hair-covered region of the mons veneris has had considerable significance in this respect, and he presents various primitive figures in ill.u.s.tration.

Apart from the religions and magical properties so widely accorded to the primary s.e.xual characters, there are other reasons why they should not often have gained or long retained any great importance as objects of s.e.xual allurement. They are unnecessary and inconvenient for this purpose. The erect att.i.tude of man gives them here, indeed, an advantage possessed by very few animals, among whom it happens with extreme rarity that the primary s.e.xual characters are rendered attractive to the eye of the opposite s.e.x, though they often are to the sense of smell. The s.e.xual regions const.i.tute a peculiarly vulnerable spot, and remain so even in man, and the need for their protection which thus exists conflicts with the prominent display required for a s.e.xual allurement. This end is far more effectively attained, with greater advantage and less disadvantage, by concentrating the chief ensigns of s.e.xual attractiveness on the upper and more conspicuous parts of the body. This method is well-nigh universal among animals as well as in man.

There is another reason why the s.e.xual organs should be discarded as objects of s.e.xual allurement, a reason which always proves finally decisive as a people advances in culture. They are not aesthetically beautiful. It is fundamentally necessary that the intromittent organ of the male and the receptive ca.n.a.l of the female should retain their primitive characteristics; they cannot, therefore, be greatly modified by s.e.xual or natural selection, and the exceedingly primitive character they are thus compelled to retain, however s.e.xually desirable and attractive they may become to the opposite s.e.x under the influence of emotion, can rarely be regarded as beautiful from the point of view of aesthetic contemplation. Under the influence of art there is a tendency for the s.e.xual organs to be diminished in size, and in no civilized country has the artist ever chosen to give an erect organ to his representations of ideal masculine beauty. It is mainly because the unaesthetic character of a woman's s.e.xual region is almost imperceptible in any ordinary and normal position of the nude body that the feminine form is a more aesthetically beautiful object of contemplation than the masculine. Apart from this character we are probably bound, from a strictly aesthetic point of view, to regard the male form as more aesthetically beautiful.[139] The female form, moreover, usually overpa.s.ses very swiftly the period of the climax of its beauty, often only retaining it during a few weeks.

The following communication from a correspondent well brings out the divergences of feeling in this matter:

"You write that the s.e.x organs, in an excited condition, cannot be called aesthetic. But I believe that they are a source, not only of curiosity and wonder to many persons, but also objects of admiration. I happen to know of one man, extremely intellectual and refined, who delights in lying between his mistress's thighs and gazing long at the dilated v.a.g.i.n.a. Also another man, married, and not intellectual, who always tenderly gazes at his wife's organs, in a strong light, before intercourse, and kisses her there and upon the abdomen. The wife, though amative, confessed to another woman that she could not understand the attraction. On the other hand, two married men have told me that the sight of their wives' genital parts would disgust them, and that they have never seen them.

"If the s.e.xual parts cannot be called aesthetic, they have still a strong charm for many pa.s.sionate lovers, of both s.e.xes, though not often, I believe, among the unimaginative and the uneducated, who are apt to ridicule the organs or to be repelled by them. Many women confess that they are revolted by the sight of even a husband's complete nudity, though they have no indifference for s.e.xual embraces. I think that the stupid bungle of Nature in making the generative organs serve as means of relieving the bladder has much to do with this revulsion. But some women of erotic temperament find pleasure in looking at the p.e.n.i.s of a husband or lover, in handling it, and kissing it. Prost.i.tutes do this in the way of business; some chaste, pa.s.sionate wives act thus voluntarily. This is scarcely morbid, as the mammalia of most species smell and lick each others' genitals. Probably primitive man did the same."

Brantome (Vie des Dames Galantes, Discours II) has some remarks to much the same effect concerning the difference between men, some of whom take no pleasure in seeing the private parts of their wives or mistresses, while others admire them and delight to kiss them.

I must add that, however natural or legitimate the attraction of the s.e.xual parts may be to either s.e.x, the question of their purely aesthetic beauty remains unaffected.

Remy de Gourmont, in a discussion of the aesthetic element in s.e.xual beauty, considers that the invisibility of the s.e.xual organs is the decisive fact in rendering women more beautiful than men. "s.e.x, which is sometimes an advantage, is always a burden and always a flaw; it exists for the race and not for the individual. In the human male, and precisely because of his erect att.i.tude, s.e.x is the predominantly striking and visible fact, the point of attack in a struggle at close quarters, the point aimed at from a distance, an obstacle for the eye, whether regarded as a rugosity on the surface or as breaking the middle of a line. The harmony of the feminine body is thus geometrically much more perfect, especially when we consider the male and the female at the moment of desire when they present the most intense and natural expression of life. Then the woman, whose movements are all interior, or only visible by the undulation of her curves, preserves her full aesthetic value, while the man, as it were, all at once receding toward the primitive state of animality, seems to throw off all beauty and become reduced to the simple and naked condition of a genital organism." (Remy de Gourmont, Physique de l'Amour, p. 69.) Remy de Gourmont proceeds, however, to point out that man has his revenge after a woman has become pregnant, and that, moreover, the proportions of the masculine body are more beautiful than those of the feminine body.

The primary s.e.xual characters of man and woman have thus never at any time played a very large part in s.e.xual allurement. With the growth of culture, indeed, the very methods which had been adopted to call attention to the s.e.xual organs were by a further development retained for the purpose of concealing them. From the first the secondary s.e.xual characters have been a far more widespread method of s.e.xual allurement than the primary s.e.xual characters, and in the most civilized countries to-day they still const.i.tute the most attractive of such methods to the majority of the population.

The main secondary s.e.xual characters in woman and the type which they present in beautiful and well-developed persons are summarized as follows by Stratz, who in his book on the beauty of the body in woman sets forth the reasons for the characteristics here given:-

Delicate bony structure.

Rounded forms and b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

Broad pelvis.

Long and abundant hair.

Low and narrow boundary of pubic hair.

Spa.r.s.e hair in armpit.

No hair on body.

Delicate skin.

Rounded skull.

Small face.

Large orbits.

High and slender eyebrows.

Low and small lower jaw.

Soft transition from cheek to neck.

Rounded neck.

Slender wrist.

Small hand, with long index finger.

Rounded shoulders.

Straight, small clavicle.

Small and long thorax.

Slender waist.

Hollow sacrum.

Prominent and domed nates.

Sacral dimples.

Rounded and thick thighs.

Low and obtuse pubic arch.

Soft contour of knee.