Studies in the Psychology of Sex Volume Iv Part 13

Rounded calves.

Slender ankle.

Small toes.

Long second and short fifth toe.

Broad middle incisor teeth.

(Stratz, Die Schonheit des Weiblichen Korpers, fourteenth edition, 1903, p. 200. This statement agrees at most points with my own exposition of the secondary s.e.xual characters: Man and Woman, fourth edition, revised and enlarged, 1904.)

Thus we find, among most of the peoples of Europe, Asia, and Africa, the chief continents of the world, that the large hips and b.u.t.tocks of women are commonly regarded as an important feature of beauty. This secondary s.e.xual character represents the most decided structural deviation of the feminine type from the masculine, a deviation demanded by the reproductive function of women, and in the admiration it arouses s.e.xual selection is thus working in a line with natural selection. It cannot be said that, except in a very moderate degree, it has always been regarded as at the same time in a line with claims of purely aesthetic beauty. The European artist frequently seeks to attenuate rather than accentuate the protuberant lines of the feminine hips, and it is noteworthy that the j.a.panese also regard small hips as beautiful. Nearly everywhere else large hips and b.u.t.tocks are regarded as a mark of beauty, and the average man is of this opinion even in the most aesthetic countries. The contrast of this exuberance with the more closely knit male form, the force of a.s.sociation, and the unquestionable fact that such development is the condition needed for healthy motherhood, have served as a basis for an ideal of s.e.xual attractiveness which appeals to nearly all people more strongly than a more narrowly aesthetic ideal, which must inevitably be somewhat hermaphroditic in character.

Broad hips, which involve a large pelvis, are necessarily a characteristic of the highest human races, because the races with the largest heads must be endowed also with the largest pelvis to enable their large heads to enter the world. The white race, according to Bacarisse, has the broadest sacrum, the yellow race coming next, the black race last. The white race is also stated to show the greatest curvature of the sacrum, the yellow race next, while the black race has the flattest sacrum.[140] The black race thus possesses the least developed pelvis, the narrowest, and the flattest. It is certainly not an accidental coincidence that it is precisely among people of black race that we find a simulation of the large pelvis of the higher races admired and cultivated in the form of steatopygia. This is an enormously exaggerated development of the subcutaneous layer of fat which normally covers the b.u.t.tocks and upper parts of the thighs in woman, and in this extreme form const.i.tutes a kind of natural fatty tumor. Steatopygia cannot be said to exist, according to Deniker, unless the projection of the b.u.t.tocks exceeds 4 per cent of the individual's height; it frequently equals 10 per cent. True steatopygia only exists among Bushman and Hottentot women, and among the peoples who are by blood connected with them. An unusual development of the b.u.t.tocks is, however, found among the Woloffs and many other African peoples.[141] There can be no doubt that among the black peoples of Africa generally, whether true steatopygia exists among them or not, extreme gluteal development is regarded as a very important, if not the most important, mark of beauty, and Burton stated that a Somali man was supposed to choose his wife by ranging women in a row and selecting her who projected farthest a tergo.[142] In Europe, it must be added, clothing enables this feature of beauty to be simulated. Even by some African peoples the posterior development has been made to appear still larger by the use of cushions, and in England in the sixteenth century we find the same practice well recognized, and the Elizabethan dramatists refer to the "b.u.m-roll," which in more recent times has become the bustle, devices which bear witness to what Watts, the painter, called "the persistent tendency to suggest that the most beautiful half of humanity is furnished with tails."[143] In reality, as we see, it is simply a tendency, not to simulate an animal character, but to emphasize the most human and the most feminine of the secondary s.e.xual characters, and therefore, from the s.e.xual point of view, a beautiful feature.[144]

Sometimes admiration for this characteristic is a.s.sociated with admiration for marked obesity generally, and it may be noted that a somewhat greater degree of fatness may also be regarded as a feminine secondary s.e.xual character. This admiration is specially marked among several of the black peoples of Africa, and here to become a beauty a woman must, by drinking enormous quant.i.ties of milk, seek to become very fat. Sonnini noted that to some extent the same thing might be found among the Mohammedan women of Egypt. After bright eyes and a soft, polished, hairless skin, an Egyptian woman, he stated, most desired to obtain embonpoint; men admired fat women and women sought to become fat. "The idea of a very fat woman," Sonnini adds, "is nearly always accompanied in Europe by that of softness of flesh, effacement of form, and defect of elasticity in the outlines. It would be a mistake thus to represent the women of Turkey in general, where all seek to become fat. It is certain that the women of the East, more favored by Nature, preserve longer than others the firmness of the flesh, and this precious property, joined to the freshness and whiteness of their skin, renders them very agreeable. It must be added that in no part of the world is cleanliness carried so far as by the women of the East."[145]

The special characteristics of the feminine hips and b.u.t.tocks become conspicuous in walking and may be further emphasized by the special method of walking or carriage. The women of some southern countries are famous for the beauty of their way of walk; "the G.o.ddess is revealed by her walk," as Virgil said. In Spain, especially, among European countries, the walk very notably gives expression to the hips and b.u.t.tocks. The spine is in Spain very curved, producing what is termed ensellure, or saddle-back-a characteristic which gives great flexibility to the back and prominence to the gluteal regions, sometimes slightly simulating steatopygia. The vibratory movement naturally produced by walking and sometimes artificially heightened thus becomes a trait of s.e.xual beauty. Outside of Europe such vibration of the flanks and b.u.t.tocks is more frankly displayed and cultivated as a s.e.xual allurement. The Papuans are said to admire this vibratory movement of the b.u.t.tocks in their women. Young girls are practiced in it by their mothers for hours at a time as soon as they have reached the age of 7 or 8, and the Papuan maiden walks thus whenever she is in the presence of men, subsiding into a simpler gait when no men are present. In some parts of tropical Africa the women walk in this fashion. It is also known to the Egyptians, and by the Arabs is called ghung.[146] As Mantegazza remarks, the essentially feminine character of this gait makes it a method of s.e.xual allurement. It should be observed that it rests on feminine anatomical characteristics, and that the natural walk of a femininely developed woman is inevitably different from that of a man.

In an elaborate discussion of beauty of movement Stratz summarizes the special characters of the gait in woman as follows: "A woman's walk is chiefly distinguished from a man's by shorter steps, the more marked forward movement of the hips, the greater length of the phase of rest in relation to the phase of motion, and by the fact that the compensatory movements of the upper parts of the body are less powerfully supported by the action of the arms and more by the revolution of the flanks. A man's walk has a more pushing and active character, a woman's a more rolling and pa.s.sive character; while a man seems to seek to catch his fleeing equilibrium, a woman seems to seek to preserve the equilibrium she has reached.... A woman's walk is beautiful when it shows the definitely feminine and rolling character, with the greatest predominance of the moment of extension over that of flexion." (Stratz, Die Schonheit des Weiblichen Korpers, fourteenth edition, p. 275.)

An occasional development of the idea of s.e.xual beauty as a.s.sociated with developed hips is found in the tendency to regard the pregnant woman as the most beautiful type. Stratz observes that a woman artist once remarked to him that since motherhood is the final aim of woman, and a woman reaches her full flowering period in pregnancy, she ought to be most beautiful when pregnant. This is so, Stratz replied, if the period of her full physical bloom chances to correspond with the early months of pregnancy, for with the onset of pregnancy metabolism is heightened, the tissues become active, the tone of the skin softer and brighter, the b.r.e.a.s.t.s firmer, so that the charm of fullest bloom is increased until the moment when the expansion of the womb begins to destroy the harmony of the form. At one period of European culture, however,-at a moment and among a people not very sensitive to the most exquisite aesthetic sensations,-the ideal of beauty has even involved the character of advanced pregnancy. In northern Europe during the centuries immediately preceding the Renaissance the ideal of beauty, as we may see by the pictures of the time, was a pregnant woman, with protuberant abdomen and body more or less extended backward. This is notably apparent in the work of the Van Eycks: in the Eve in the Brussels Gallery; in the wife of Arnolfini in the highly finished portrait group in the National Gallery; even the virgins in the great masterpiece of the Van Eycks in the Cathedral at Ghent a.s.sume the type of the pregnant woman.

"Through all the middle ages down to Durer and Cranach," quite truly remarks Laura Marholm (as quoted by I. Bloch, Beitrage zur aetiologie der Psychopathia s.e.xualis, Teil I, p. 154), "we find a very peculiar type which has falsely been regarded as one of merely ascetic character. It represents quiet, peaceful, and cheerful faces, full of innocence; tall, slender, young figures; the shoulders still scanty; the b.r.e.a.s.t.s small, with slender legs beneath their garments; and round the upper part of the body clothing that is tight almost to the point of constriction. The waist comes just under the bosom, and from this point the broad skirts in folds give to the most feminine part of the feminine body full and absolutely unhampered power of movement and expansion. The womanly belly even in saints and virgins is very p.r.o.nounced in the carriage of the body and clearly protuberant beneath the clothing. It is the maternal function, in sacred and profane figures alike, which marks the whole type-indeed, the whole conception-of woman." For a brief period this fashion reappeared in the eighteenth century, and women wore pads and other devices to increase the size of the abdomen.

With the Renaissance this ideal of beauty disappeared from art. But in real life we still seem to trace its survival in the fashion for that cla.s.s of garments which involved an immense amount of expansion below the waist and secured such expansion by the use of whalebone hoops and similar devices. The Elizabethan farthingale was such a garment. This was originally a Spanish invention, as indicated by the name (from verdugardo, provided with hoops), and reached England through France. We find the fashion at its most extreme point in the fashionable dress of Spain in the seventeenth century, such as it has been immortalized by Velasquez. In England hoops died out during the reign of George III but were revived for a time, half a century later, in the Victorian crinoline.[147]

Only second to the pelvis and its integuments as a secondary s.e.xual character in woman we must place the b.r.e.a.s.t.s.[148] Among barbarous and civilized peoples the beauty of the breast is usually highly esteemed. Among Europeans, indeed, the importance of this region is so highly esteemed that the general rule against the exposure of the body is in its favor abrogated, and the b.r.e.a.s.t.s are the only portion of the body, in the narrow sense, which a European lady in full dress is allowed more or less to uncover. Moreover, at various periods and notably in the eighteenth century, women naturally deficient in this respect have sometimes worn artificial busts made of wax. Savages, also, sometimes show admiration for this part of the body, and in the Papuan folk-tales, for instance, the sole distinguishing mark of a beautiful woman is b.r.e.a.s.t.s that stand up.[149] On the other hand, various savage peoples even appear to regard the development of the b.r.e.a.s.t.s as ugly and adopt devices for flattening this part of the body.[150] The feeling that prompts this practice is not unknown in modern Europe, for the Bulgarians are said to regard developed b.r.e.a.s.t.s as ugly; in mediaeval Europe, indeed, the general ideal of feminine slenderness was opposed to developed b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and the garments tended to compress them. But in a very high degree of civilization this feeling is unknown, as, indeed, it is unknown to most barbarians, and the beauty of a woman's b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and of any natural or artificial object which suggests the gracious curves of the bosom, is a universal source of pleasure.

The casual vision of a girl's b.r.e.a.s.t.s may, in the chastest youth, evoke a strange perturbation. (Cf., e.g., a pa.s.sage in an early chapter of Marcelle Tinayre's La Maison du Peche.) We need not regard this feeling as of purely s.e.xual origin; and in addition even to the aesthetic element it is probably founded to some extent on a reminiscence of the earliest a.s.sociations of life. This element of early a.s.sociation was very well set forth long ago by Erasmus Darwin:-

"When the babe, soon after it is born into this cold world, is applied to its mother's bosom, its sense of perceiving warmth is first agreeably affected; next its sense of smell is delighted with the odor of her milk; then its taste is gratified by the flavor of it; afterward the appet.i.tes of hunger and of thirst afford pleasure by the possession of their object, and by the subsequent digestion of the aliment; and, last, the sense of touch is delighted by the softness and smoothness of the milky fountain, the source of such variety of happiness.

"All these various kinds of pleasure at length become a.s.sociated with the form of the mother's breast, which the infant embraces with its hands, presses with its lips, and watches with its eyes; and thus acquires more accurate ideas of the form of its mother's bosom than of the odor, flavor, and warmth which it perceives by its other senses. And hence at our maturer years, when any object of vision is presented to us which by its wavy or spiral lines bears any similitude to the form of the female bosom, whether it be found in a landscape with soft gradations of raising and descending surface, or in the forms of some antique vases, or in other works of the pencil or the chisel, we feel a general glow of delight which seems to influence all our senses; and if the object be not too large we experience an attraction to embrace it with our lips as we did in our early infancy the bosom of our mothers." (E. Darwin, Zoonomia, 1800, vol. i, p. 174.)

The general admiration accorded to developed b.r.e.a.s.t.s and a developed pelvis is evidenced by a practice which, as embodied in the corset, is all but universal in many European countries, as well as the extra-European countries inhabited by the white race, and in one form or another is by no means unknown to peoples of other than the white race.

The tightening of the waist girth was little known to the Greeks of the best period, but it was practiced by the Greeks of the decadence and by them transmitted to the Romans; there are many references in Latin literature to this practice, and the ancient physician wrote against it in the same sense as modern doctors. So far as Christian Europe is concerned it would appear that the corset arose to gratify an ideal of asceticism rather than of s.e.xual allurement. The bodice in early mediaeval days bound and compressed the b.r.e.a.s.t.s and thus tended to efface the specifically feminine character of a woman's body. Gradually, however, the bodice was displaced downward, and its effect, ultimately, was to render the b.r.e.a.s.t.s more prominent instead of effacing them. Not only does the corset render the b.r.e.a.s.t.s more prominent; it has the further effect of displacing the breathing activity of the lungs in an upward direction, the advantage from the point of s.e.xual allurement thus gained being that additional attention is drawn to the bosom from the respiratory movement thus imparted to it. So marked and so constant is this artificial respiratory effect, under the influence of the waist compression habitual among civilized women, that until recent years it was commonly supposed that there is a real and fundamental difference in breathing between men and women, that women's breathing is thoracic and men's abdominal. It is now known that under natural and healthy conditions there is no such difference, but that men and women breathe in a precisely identical manner. The corset may thus be regarded as the chief instrument of s.e.xual allurement which the armory of costume supplies to a woman, for it furnishes her with a method of heightening at once her two chief s.e.xual secondary characters, the bosom above, the hips and b.u.t.tocks below. We cannot be surprised that all the scientific evidence in the world of the evil of the corset is powerless not merely to cause its abolition, but even to secure the general adoption of its comparatively harmless modifications.

Several books have been written on the history of the corset. Leoty (Le Corset a travers les Ages, 1893) accepts Bouvier's division of the phases through which the corset has pa.s.sed: (1) the bands, or fasciae, of Greek and Roman ladies; (2) period of transition during greater part of middle ages, cla.s.sic traditions still subsisting; (3) end of middle ages and beginning of Renaissance, when tight bodices were worn; (4) the period of whalebone bodices, from middle of sixteenth to end of eighteenth centuries; (5) the period of the modern corset. We hear of embroidered girdles in Homer. Even in Rome, however, the fasciae were not in general use, and were chiefly employed either to support the b.r.e.a.s.t.s or to compress their excessive development, and then called mamillare. The zona was a girdle, worn usually round the hips, especially by young girls. The modern corset is a combination of the fascia and the zona. It was at the end of the fourteenth century that Isabeau of Bavaria introduced the custom of showing the b.r.e.a.s.t.s uncovered, and the word "corset" was then used for the first time.

Stratz, in his Frauenkleidung (pp. 366 et seq.), and in his Schonheit des Weiblichen Korpers, Chapters VIII, X, and XVI, also deals with the corset, and ill.u.s.trates the results of compression on the body. For a summary of the evidence concerning the difference of respiration in man and woman, its causes and results, see Havelock Ellis, Man and Woman, fourth edition, 1904, pp. 228-244. With reference to the probable influence of the corset and unsuitable clothing generally during early life in impeding the development of the mammary glands, causing inability to suckle properly, and thus increasing infant mortality, see especially a paper by Professor Bollinger (Correspondenz-blatt Deutsch. Gesell. Anthropologie, October, 1899).

The compression caused by the corset, it must be added, is not usually realized or known by those who wear it. Thus, Rushton Parker and Hugh Smith found, in two independent series of measurements, that the waist measurement was, on the average, two inches less over the corset than round the naked waist; "the great majority seemed quite unaware of the fact." In one case the difference was as much as five inches. (British Medical Journal, September 15 and 22, 1900.)

The b.r.e.a.s.t.s and the developed hips are characteristics of women and are indications of functional effectiveness as well as s.e.xual allurement. Another prominent s.e.xual character which belongs to man, and is not obviously an index of function, is furnished by the hair on the face. The beard may be regarded as purely a s.e.xual adornment, and thus comparable to the somewhat similar growth on the heads of many male animals. From this point of view its history is interesting, for it ill.u.s.trates the tendency with increase of civilization not merely to dispense with s.e.xual allurement in the primary s.e.xual organs, but even to disregard those growths which would appear to have been developed solely to act as s.e.xual allurements. The cultivation of the beard belongs peculiarly to barbarous races. Among these races it is frequently regarded as the most sacred and beautiful part of the person, as an object to swear by, an object to which the slightest insult must be treated as deadly. Holding such a position, it must doubtless act as a s.e.xual allurement. "Allah has specially created an angel in Heaven," it is said in the Arabian Nights, "who has no other occupation than to sing the praises of the Creator for giving a beard to men and long hair to women." The s.e.xual character of the beard and the other hirsute appendage is significantly indicated by the fact that the ascetic spirit in Christianity has always sought to minimize or to hide the hair. Altogether apart, however, from this religious influence, civilization tends to be opposed to the growth of hair on the masculine face and especially to the beard. It is part of the well-marked tendency with civilization to the abolition of s.e.xual differences. We find this general tendency among the Greeks and Romans, and, on the whole, with certain variations and fluctuations of fashion, in modern Europe also. Schopenhauer frequently referred to this disappearance of the beard as a mark of civilization, "a barometer of culture."[151] The absence of facial hair heightens aesthetic beauty of form, and is not felt to remove any substantial s.e.xual attraction.

That even the Egyptians regarded the beard as a mark of beauty and an object of veneration is shown by the fact that the priests wore it long and cut it off in grief (Herodotus, Euterpe, Chapter x.x.xVI). The respect with which the beard was regarded among the ancient Hebrews is indicated in the narrative (II Samuel, Chapter X) which tells how, when David sent his servants to King Hanun the latter shaved off half their beards; they were too ashamed to return in this condition, and remained at Jericho until their beards had grown again. A pa.s.sage in Ordericus Vitalis (Ecclesiastical History, Book VIII, Chapter X) is interesting both as regards the fashions of the twelfth century in England and Normandy and the feeling that prompted Ordericus. Speaking of the men of his time, he wrote: "The forepart of their head is bare after the manner of thieves, while at the back they nourish long hair like harlots. In former times penitents, captives and pilgrims usually went unshaved and wore long beards, as an outward mark of their penance or captivity or pilgrimage. Now almost all the world wear crisped hair and beards, carrying on their faces the token of their filthy l.u.s.t like stinking goats. Their locks are curled with hot irons, and instead of wearing caps they bind their heads with fillets. A knight seldom appears in public with his head uncovered, and properly shaved, according to the apostolic precept (I Corinthians, Chapter XI, verses 7 and 14)."

We have seen that there is good reason for a.s.suming a certain fundamental tendency whereby the most various peoples of the world, at all events in the person of their most intelligent members, recognize and accept a common ideal of feminine beauty, so that to a certain extent beauty may be said to have an objectively aesthetic basis. We have further found that this aesthetic human ideal is modified, and very variously modified in different countries and even in the same country at different periods, by a tendency, prompted by a s.e.xual impulse which is not necessarily in harmony with aesthetic cannons, to emphasize, or even to repress, one or other of the prominent secondary s.e.xual characters of the body. We now come to another tendency which is apt to an even greater extent to limit the cultivation of the purely aesthetic ideal of beauty: the influences of national or racial type.

To the average man of every race the woman who most completely embodies the type of his race is usually the most beautiful, and even mutilations and deformities often have their origin, as Humboldt long since pointed out, in the effort to accentuate the racial type.[152] Eastern women possess by nature large and conspicuous eyes, and this characteristic they seek still further to heighten by art. The Ainu are the hairiest of races, and there is nothing which they consider so beautiful as hair. It is difficult to be s.e.xually attracted to persons who are fundamentally unlike ourselves in racial const.i.tution.[153]

It frequently happens that this admiration for racial characteristics leads to the idealization of features which are far removed from aesthetic beauty. The firm and rounded breast is certainly a feature of beauty, but among many of the black peoples of Africa the b.r.e.a.s.t.s fall at a very early period, and here we sometimes find that the hanging breast is admired as beautiful.

The African Baganda, the Rev. J. Roscoe states (Journal of the Anthropological Inst.i.tute, January-June, 1902, p. 72), admire hanging b.r.e.a.s.t.s to such an extent that their young women tie them down in order to hasten the arrival of this condition.

"The most remarkable trait of beauty in the East," wrote Sonnini, "is to have large black eyes, and nature has made this a characteristic sign of the women of these countries. But, not content with this, the women of Egypt wish their eyes to be still larger and blacker. To attain this Mussulmans, Jewesses, and Christians, rich and poor, all tint their eyelids with galena. They also blacken the lashes (as Juvenal tells us the Roman ladies did) and mark the angles of the eye so that the fissure appears larger." (Sonnini, Voyage dans la Haute et Ba.s.se Egypte, 1799, vol. i, p. 290.) Kohl is thus only used by the women who have what the Arabs call "natural kohl." As Flinders Petrie has found, the women of the so-called "New Race," between the sixth and tenth dynasties of ancient Egypt, used galena and malachite for painting their faces. Jewish women in the days of the prophets painted their eyes with kohl, as do some Hindu women to-day.

"The Ainu have a great affection for their beards. They regard them as a sign of manhood and strength and consider them as especially handsome. They look upon them, indeed, as a great and highly prized treasure." (J. Batchelor, The Ainu and their Folklore, p. 162.)

A great many theories have been put forward to explain the Chinese fashion of compressing and deforming the foot. The Chinese are great admirers of the feminine foot, and show extreme s.e.xual sensitiveness in regard to it. Chinese women naturally possess very small feet, and the main reason for binding them is probably to be found in the desire to make them still smaller. (See, e.g., Stratz, Die Frauenkleidung, 1904, p. 101.)

An interesting question, which in part finds its explanation here and is of considerable significance from the point of view of s.e.xual selection, concerns the relative admiration bestowed on blondes and brunettes. The question is not, indeed, one which is entirely settled by racial characteristics. There is something to be said on the matter from the objective standpoint of aesthetic considerations. Stratz, in a chapter on beauty of coloring in woman, points out that fair hair is more beautiful because it harmonizes better with the soft outlines of woman, and, one may add, it is more brilliantly conspicuous; a golden object looks larger than a black object. The hair of the armpit, also, Stratz considers should be light. On the other hand, the pubic hair should be dark in order to emphasize the breadth of the pelvis and the obtusity of the angle between the mons veneris and the thighs. The eyebrows and eyelashes should also be dark in order to increase the apparent size of the orbits. Stratz adds that among many thousand women he has only seen one who, together with an otherwise perfect form, has also possessed these excellencies in the highest measure. With an equable and matt complexion she had blonde, very long, smooth hair, with spa.r.s.e, blonde, and curly axillary hair; but, although her eyes were blue, the eyebrows and eyelashes were black, as also was the not overdeveloped pubic hair.[154]

We may accept it as fairly certain that, so far as any objective standard of aesthetic beauty is recognizable, that standard involves the supremacy of the fair type of woman. Such supremacy in beauty has doubtless been further supported by the fact that in most European countries the ruling caste, the aristocratic cla.s.s, whose superior energy has brought it to the top, is somewhat blonder than the average population.

The main cause, however, in determining the relative amount of admiration accorded in Europe to blondes and to brunettes is the fact that the population of Europe must be regarded as predominantly fair, and that our conception of beauty in feminine coloring is influenced by an instinctive desire to seek this type in its finest forms. In the north of Europe there can, of course, be no question concerning the predominant fairness of the population, but in portions of the centre and especially in the south it may be considered a question. It must, however, be remembered that the white population occupying all the sh.o.r.es of the Mediterranean have the black peoples of Africa immediately to the south of them. They have been liable to come in contact with the black peoples and in contrast with them they have tended not only to be more impressed with their own whiteness, but to appraise still more highly its blondest manifestations as representing a type the farthest removed from the negro. It must be added that the northerner who comes into the south is apt to overestimate the darkness of the southerner because of the extreme fairness of his own people. The differences are, however, less extreme than we are apt to suppose; there are more dark people in the north than we commonly a.s.sume, and more fair people in the south. Thus, if we take Italy, we find in its fairest part, Venetia, according to Raseri, that there are 8 per cent. communes in which fair hair predominates, 81 per cent. in which brown predominates, and only 11 per cent. in which black predominates; as we go farther south black hair becomes more prevalent, but there are in most provinces a few communes in which fair hair is not only frequent, but even predominant. It is somewhat the same with light eyes, which are also most abundant in Venetia and decrease to a slighter extent as we go south. It is possible that in former days the blondes prevailed to a greater degree than to-day in the south of Europe. Among the Berbers of the Atlas Mountains, who are probably allied to the South Europeans, there appears to be a fairly considerable proportion of blondes,[155] while on the other hand there is some reason to believe that blondes die out under the influence of civilization as well as of a hot climate.

However this may be, the European admiration for blondes dates back to early cla.s.sic times. G.o.ds and men in Homer would appear to be frequently described as fair.[156] Venus is nearly always blonde, as was Milton's Eve. Lucian refers to women who dye their hair. The Greek sculptors gilded the hair of their statues, and the figurines in many cases show very fair hair.[157] The Roman custom of dyeing the hair light, as Renier has shown, was not due to the desire to be like the fair Germans, and when Rome fell it would appear that the custom of dyeing the hair persisted, and never died out; it is mentioned by Anselm, who died at the beginning of the twelfth century.[158]

In the poetry of the people in Italy brunettes, as we should expect, receive much commendation, though even here the blondes are preferred. When we turn to the painters and poets of Italy, and the aesthetic writers on beauty from the Renaissance onward, the admiration for fair hair is unqualified, though there is no correspondingly unanimous admiration for blue eyes. Angelico and most of the pre-Raphaelite artists usually painted their women with flaxen and light-golden hair, which often became brown with the artists of the Renaissance period. Firenzuola, in his admirable dialogue on feminine beauty, says that a woman's hair should be like gold or honey or the rays of the sun. Luigini also, in his Libro della bella Donna, says that hair must be golden. So also thought Petrarch and Ariosto. There is, however, no corresponding predilection among these writers for blue eyes. Firenzuola said that the eyes must be dark, though not black. Luigini said that they must be bright and black. Niphus had previously said that the eyes should be "black like those of Venus" and the skin ivory, even a little brown. He mentions that Avicenna had praised the mixed, or gray eye.

In France and other northern countries the admiration for very fair hair is just as marked as in Italy, and dates back to the earliest ages of which we have a record. "Even before the thirteenth century," remarks Houdoy, in his very interesting study of feminine beauty in northern France during mediaeval times, "and for men as well as for women, fair hair was an essential condition of beauty; gold is the term of comparison almost exclusively used."[159] He mentions that in the Acta Sanctorum it is stated that Saint G.o.delive of Bruges, though otherwise beautiful, had black hair and eyebrows and was hence contemptuously called a crow. In the Chanson de Roland and all the French mediaeval poems the eyes are invariably vairs. This epithet is somewhat vague. It comes from varius, and signifies mixed, which Houdoy regards as showing various irradiations, the same quality which later gave rise to the term iris to describe the pupillary membrane.[160] Vair would thus describe not so much the color of the eye as its brilliant and sparkling quality. While Houdoy may have been correct, it still seems probable that the eye described as vair was usually a.s.sumed to be "various" in color also, of the kind we commonly call gray, which is usually applied to blue eyes encircled with a ring of faintly sprinkled brown pigment. Such eyes are fairly typical of northern France and frequently beautiful. That this was the case seems to be clearly indicated by the fact that, as Houdoy himself points out, a few centuries later the vair eye was regarded as vert, and green eyes were celebrated as the most beautiful.[161] The etymology was false, but a false etymology will hardly suffice to change an ideal. At the Renaissance Jehan Lemaire, when describing Venus as the type of beauty, speaks of her green eyes, and Ronsard, a little later, sang:

"Noir je veux l'il et brun le teint, Bien que l'il verd toute la France adore."

Early in the sixteenth century Brantome quotes some lines current in France, Spain, and Italy according to which a woman should have a white skin, but black eyes and eyebrows, and adds that personally he agrees with the Spaniard that "a brunette is sometimes equal to a blonde,"[162] but there is also a marked admiration for green eyes in Spanish literature; not only in the typical description of a Spanish beauty in the Celestina (Act. I) are the eyes green, but Cervantes, for example, when referring to the beautiful eyes of a woman, frequently speaks of them as green.

It would thus appear that in Continental Europe generally, from south to north, there is a fair uniformity of opinion as regards the pigmentary type of feminine beauty. Such variation as exists seemingly involves a somewhat greater degree of darkness for the southern beauty in harmony with the greater racial darkness of the southerner, but the variations fluctuate within a narrow range; the extremely dark type is always excluded, and so it would seem probable is the extremely fair type, for blue eyes have not, on the whole, been considered to form part of the admired type.

If we turn to England no serious modification of this conclusion is called for. Beauty is still fair. Indeed, the very word "fair" in England itself means beautiful. That in the seventeenth century it was generally held essential that beauty should be blonde is indicated by a pa.s.sage in the Anatomy of Melancholy, where Burton argues that "golden hair was ever in great account," and quotes many examples from cla.s.sic and more modern literature.[163] That this remains the case is sufficiently evidenced by the fact that the ballet and chorus on the English stage wear yellow wigs, and the heroine of the stage is blonde, while the female villain of melodrama is a brunette.

While, however, this admiration of fairness as a mark of beauty unquestionably prevails in England, I do not think it can be said-as it probably can be said of the neighboring and closely allied country of France-that the most beautiful women belong to the fairest group of the community. In most parts of Europe the coa.r.s.e and unbeautiful plebeian type tends to be very dark; in England it tends to be very fair. England is, however, somewhat fairer generally than most parts of Europe; so that, while it may be said that a very beautiful woman in France or in Spain may belong to the blondest section of the community, a very beautiful woman in England, even though of the same degree of blondness as her Continental sister, will not belong to the extremely blonde section of the English community. It thus comes about that when we are in northern France we find that gray eyes, a very fair but yet unfreckled complexion, brown hair, finely molded features, and highly sensitive facial expression combine to const.i.tute a type which is more beautiful than any other we meet in France, and it belongs to the fairest section of the French population. When we cross over to England, however, unless we go to a so-called "Celtic" district, it is hopeless to seek among the blondest section of the community for any such beautiful and refined type. The English beautiful woman, though she may still be fair, is by no means very fair, and from the English standpoint she may even sometimes appear somewhat dark:[164] In determining what I call the index of pigmentation-or degree of darkness of the eyes and hair-of different groups in the National Portrait Gallery I found that the "famous beauties" (my own personal criterion of beauty not being taken into account) was somewhat nearer to the dark than to the light end of the scale.[165] If we consider, at random, individual instances of famous English beauties they are not extremely fair. Lady Venetia Stanley, in the early seventeenth century, who became the wife of Sir Kenelm Digby, was somewhat dark, with brown hair and eyebrows. Mrs. Overall, a little later in the same century, a Lancashire woman, the wife of the Dean of St. Paul's, was, says Aubrey, "the greatest beauty in her time in England," though very wanton, with "the loveliest eyes that were ever seen"; if we may trust a ballad given by Aubrey she was dark with black hair. The Gunnings, the famous beauties of the eighteenth century, were not extremely fair, and Lady Hamilton, the most characteristic type of English beauty, had blue, brown-flecked eyes and dark chestnut hair. Coloration is only one of the elements of beauty, though an important one. Other things being equal, the most blonde is most beautiful; but it so happens that among the races of Great Britain the other things are very frequently not equal, and that, notwithstanding a conviction ingrained in the language, with us the fairest of women is not always the "fairest." So magical, however, is the effect of brilliant coloring that it serves to keep alive in popular opinion an unqualified belief in the universal European creed of the beauty of blondness.

We have seen that underlying the conception of beauty, more especially as it manifests itself in woman to man, are to be found at least three fundamental elements: First there is the general beauty of the species as it tends to culminate in the white peoples of European origin; then there is the beauty due to the full development or even exaggeration of the s.e.xual and more especially the secondary s.e.xual characters; and last there is the beauty due to the complete embodiment of the particular racial or national type. To make the a.n.a.lysis fairly complete must be added at least one other factor: the influence of individual taste. Every individual, at all events in civilization, within certain narrow limits, builds up a feminine ideal of his own, in part on the basis of his own special organization and its demands, in part on the actual accidental attractions he has experienced. It is unnecessary to emphasize the existence of this factor, which has always to be taken into account in every consideration of s.e.xual selection in civilized man. But its variations are numerous and in impa.s.sioned lovers it may even lead to the idealization of features which are in reality the reverse of beautiful. It may be said of many a man, as d'Annunzio says of the hero of his Trionfo della Morte in relation to the woman he loved, that "he felt himself bound to her by the real qualities of her body, and not only by those which were most beautiful, but specially by those which were least beautiful" (the novelist italicizes these words), so that his attention was fixed upon her defects, and emphasized them, thus arousing within himself an impetuous state of desire. Without invoking defects, however, there are endless personal variations which may all be said to come within the limits of possible beauty or charm. "There are no two women," as Stratz remarks, "who in exactly the same way stroke back a rebellious lock from their brows, no two who hold the hand in greeting in exactly the same way, no two who gather up their skirts as they walk with exactly the same movement."[166] Among the mult.i.tude of minute differences-which yet can be seen and felt-the beholder is variously attracted or repelled according to his own individual idiosyncrasy, and the operations of s.e.xual selection are effected accordingly.

Another factor in the const.i.tution of the ideal of beauty, but one perhaps exclusively found under civilized conditions, is the love of the unusual, the remote, the exotic. It is commonly stated that rarity is admired in beauty. This is not strictly true, except as regards combinations and characters which vary only in a very slight degree from the generally admired type. "Jucundum nihil est quod non reficit variatas," according to the saying of Publilius Syrus. The greater nervous restlessness and sensibility of civilization heightens this tendency, which is not infrequently found also among men of artistic genius. One may refer, for instance, to Baudelaire's profound admiration for the mulatto type of beauty.[167] In every great centre of civilization the national ideal of beauty tends to be somewhat modified in exotic directions, and foreign ideals, as well as foreign fashions, become preferred to those that are native. It is significant of this tendency that when, a few years since, an enterprising Parisian journal hung in its salle the portraits of one hundred and thirty-one actresses, etc., and invited the votes of the public by ballot as to the most beautiful of them, not one of the three women who came out at the head of the poll was French. A dancer of Belgian origin (Cleo de Merode) was by far at the head with over 3000 votes, followed by an American from San Francisco (Sybil Sanderson), and then a Polish woman.

[134]

Figured in Mau's Pompeii, p. 174.

[135]

As a native of Lukunor said to the traveler Mertens, "It has the same object as your clothes, to please the women."

[136]

"The greatest provocations of l.u.s.t are from our apparel," as Burton states (Anatomy of Melancholy, Part III, Sec. II, Mem. II, Subs. III), ill.u.s.trating this proposition with immense learning. Stanley Hall (American Journal of Psychology, vol. ix, Part III, pp. 365 et seq.) has some interesting observations on the various psychic influences of clothing; cf. Bloch, Beitrage zur aetiologie der Psychopathia s.e.xualis, Teil II, pp. 330 et seq.

[137]

History of Human Marriage, Chapter IX, especially p, 201. We have a striking and comparatively modern European example of an article of clothing designed to draw attention to the s.e.xual sphere in the codpiece (the French braguette), familiar to us through fifteenth and sixteenth century pictures and numerous allusions in Rabelais and in Elizabethan literature. This was originally a metal box for the protection of the s.e.xual organs in war, but subsequently gave place to a leather case only worn by the lower cla.s.ses, and became finally an elegant article of fashionable apparel, often made of silk and adorned with ribbons, even with gold and jewels. (See, e.g., Bloch, Beitrage zur aetiologie der Psychopathia s.e.xualis, Teil I, p. 159.)

[138]

A correspondent in Ceylon has pointed out to me that in the Indian statues of Buddha, Vishnu, G.o.ddesses, etc., the necklace always covers the nipples, a s.e.xually attractive adornment being thus at the same time the guardian of the orifices of the body. Crawley (The Mystic Rose, p. 135) regards mutilations as in the nature of permanent amulets or charms.

[139]