The Moral Dilemma of the Queen’s Mirror

So far as I have experienced, bodies, when they appear, are never haloed, like in Renaissance frescoes; still, they are not always so broken, so hideous, so crippled as they are made to appear in much of the past century’s left-leaning art. By noting this difference, I do not mean to support the argument that one should depict only beautiful bodies; rather, I mean to put my finger on what precisely is the aesthetic of self-pity, that indulgent lament which is derogatorily and colloquially called “emo.” What is the force of appeal for the injured, the disfigured, and the ugly body which finds its way into so much of our everyday representations? One hypothesis is that the funhouse mirrors which were once presented to us–slimming and stretching, distorting our forms in so many ways–have been replaced with the advent of realism. This is the hypothesis that argues in favor of representing “ugly” bodies as a vehicle against “unrealistic standards of beauty.”

The progressive-minded, in favor of expanding representation, brackets the term “ugly,” substituting for it such euphemisms as “non-conventionally attractive.” Yet it remains to be seen whether observers can successfully or reliably manage the difference between what are their honest opinions and what are their inherited opinions; in many cases, it may be that the term “non-conventionally attractive” pops into one’s mind due to an unwillingness to label ugliness as it is seen. The ultimate thesis of this essay, the thought which first provoked it, is that there is a tight correlation between the taboo of ugliness and the social event where disabled people ask that they be called disabled, while their families sidestep such language. In counseling, disabled clients express frustration with the naivety of their family, who so deeply fear pitying others, who are so egalitarian that they are unable to address the unequal distribution of capabilities, and thereby erase inequities in needs.

(Counseling is itself a privileged discursive space, where secrets are kept, and shame is bracketed. Most models of counseling use the client-practitioner relationship as a Hegelian mirror, with continuous reflexive change. The assumption is that we keep many of our worst features, because they are unknown to us. As an example, I grow tired of the Einstein quote circulated ad nauseam: “The definition of insanity is repeating the same act over again and expecting the results to change.” There is an important factor which this banal, likely apocryphal adage misses: it’s never clear whether one’s decisions are the same, because the reasons why maybe-this-time will be different have a bad habit of multiplying. Should jilted lovers reject all relationships, lest they bear the repetition of broken-heartedness? Or should they reject a specific form of relationship? The counselor-client reflexivity is supposed to reveal what behaviors are repetitive–the stereotypic behaviors we unwittingly use to soothe ourselves, the many tics kept secret by our own forgetfulness and lacunae. With a few choice yet kindly intoned phrases, we hit the wall of our own ugliness in counseling.)

In other words, the argument against “unrealistic beauty standards” takes for granted that the faculty of discernment–the literal and unconscious casting director, which places certain bodies on the page or stage, the screen or canvas–has simply faded; bias is gone. However, even if such an absence of conscious and unconscious choice were possible, one would still have to prove that such preferences indeed are absent in today’s hyper-realism, in the hybridized domains of our virtual and multi-cultural expansions in representation. Moreover, one might wonder: what is the function of the literary, the artistic, if not to privilege those forms, those bodies, which are most appealing?

One approach to this line of questioning is to affirm: “Yes, I am not the most beautiful, nor is my life the most appealing. Still, I cannot leave it. Therefore, you may as well entertain me while I remain within this cage. Star-gazing is a delight to those earth-bounded.” The great privilege of the camera is that everyone may see the inside of the palace, even if its inhabitants remain few in number; today’s rabble are fortunate that Helen of Troy may be televised. The political critique to this line of thought is obvious. As a thoroughly entertained spectator, one risks becoming happy in one’s cage, one risks internalizing the narratives of one’s oppressor.

Although, even if the oppressor were to dictate the name used to refer to the force which pulls objects together, the oppressor does not invent gravity, cannot force these objects together. The psychological torment of internalizing oppressive narratives is as follows: the hegemonic narrative has already laid claim to that which is truthful, but one does not know the extent to which the hegemonic was indeed truthful. One does not have the luxury of utterly disregarding one’s schoolteachers, lest one become fooled by a sophomoric attitude of rebellion. The best guides are those who are precise, as accuracy is hard to come by. The fact remains that much art is beautiful, even when inaccessible. Despite the nobility behind such democratic drives–it remains petulant, short-sighted and futile to require that accessibility be a criterion for beauty. In many instances, one should loot, rather than torch, the palace.

An extremist version of this political critique is to argue that observation is always passive, and that such passivity inherently breeds self-loathing. But, importantly, the act of observing cannot be regarded wholly as self-effacing, insofar as to be is to be observing. To disregard the beauty of the Other qua Other is to risk a potent and destructive narcissism–that is to say, one must acknowledge the fact that one’s gaze is always directed outward. A neurotic with this perspective can only achieve the statement “I am beautiful” after first silencing any possible pleasure which might whisper the secrets of another’s beauty. The insecurity behind such a position is not that of the narcissist who covers one’s mirrors for fear of discovering one’s ugliness, nor is it akin to the one who demands compliments; it is like a tyrant who commands all visitors to hide their visages. To deny oneself “all things that are not me,” under the presupposition that denial of the Other is necessary for authenticity and self-love, is ultimately to deny oneself all forms of entertainment.

But the inverse of the “unrealistic standards of beauty” argument is rarely heard, because to discuss another’s physical features is on the one hand to betray a girly obsession with the superficial; on the other, it betrays a penetrative, masculine desire for domination and control. The prior criticism rests on the fact that our compliments may reduce others to mere objects–without the profundity to appear as independent, meaningful agents and correspondents; the latter criticism rests on the fact that our compliments may objectify others insofar as our words enter their private spaces, make them lose their autonomy. (And, mind you, these are the drives against compliments; the drives against criticism are even greater.) For this reason, beyond adolescent infatuations for bands, models and movie stars, people very rarely express the extent of their attractions.

The Power of a Pleasant Smile

The above course of thought describes one, and only one, explanation for attraction’s covert status: impropriety. We fear compliments, lest they come across rudely. But let us picture in our minds the shy adolescent, whose adoration is silent and self-conflicted. The archetype of the lover-too-timid-to-ever-be-successful makes clear that one fears compliments also because they render us powerless. As Schopenhauer put it: “man can do as he wills, but not will what he wills.” Beauty and desire reside within a domain of abjection: we cannot choose what we will enjoy. In a puritanical environment, the shame of desire is always coupled with this abjection, the realization of our powerlessness: we should have resisted temptation, but did not. The potency of such shaming finds its foundation in that the other’s beauty strikes a narcissistic wound to our ability to control ourselves. To find another beautiful is not only to find oneself subject to the whims of another (because the experience of beauty becomes dependent, then, on the beautiful person’s decisions), but also to find oneself surprised by one’s very body. One cannot choose to laugh.

Pleasure is always guilty, insofar as pleasure is inexplicable. We can never give a sufficient account for our enjoyments. The desire to control, when it makes itself manifest, will always cover over and repress our experiences of beauty. Again, if this is true for our pleasures, they must surely be even more applicable for our disgust. Disgust, ugliness, revulsion–whatever name one chooses–carries the guilt of one’s being unable to experience beauty, while being unable also to account for one’s sorrow. Regret is the fear of one’s powerlessness.

Humility: Repression of, or Pride for, One’s Ugliness?

Now, the question remains whether–deep in the silent unconscious, or reserved for jokes whose seriousness may be denied–many spouses cannot but feel the comparative flaws of their partner and despair. To love others in spite of their flaws is to be moved by a spiritual fervor that exceeds what is visible or explicable. Dante describes pure, divine love as being trapped with no chains, absolutely rapt, unable to shift one’s gaze from the loved object. One becomes rooted in one’s existence because nothing could be better. Yet the phrase “nothing could be better,” has both optimistic and pessimistic readings. To state that you love someone despite their flaws cannot but be heard as an admonition towards “settling.” On some level, to speak the reasons of one’s disapproval to a partner is to say, “you should be grateful; I am settling for you.” Obviously, this is not true in toto; correction is a requirement of collaboration. For this reason, it is most rude to draw attention to those flaws which cannot be corrected. (Ironically, the statement “beauty fades, stupid is forever” neglects that beauty is often unattainable, while education remains accessible. That pleasant appearances come at the cost of intelligence is a fable which quells the insecure heart.)

The despair of those who settle is silent, but potent. And yet, born into a body whose desires outnumber its satisfactions, people must settle. So when does “settling” cease to be the reality principle, and start to become a self-destructive tendency? Again, one thinks of the counseling relationship. We rely on others to judge our worth, to tell us when we are settling for less than we deserve. But to state what you think someone deserves is taboo: one must always give a far greater estimate than what anyone deserves. Contemporary society forces its subjects to make aesthetic decisions at nearly every moment; yet, it punishes anyone who is so indecorous as to make these decisions known.

The last remaining hypothesis in favor of true love and domesticity, despite all cultural obsessions with celebrity, explicates attraction as a phenomenon caught somewhere between an addiction and spiritual ecstasy. According to one, attraction is a matter of circumstance and history. Over time, faces grow more attractive to us; we enjoy the familiar. We need to choose someone, and then it is simply a matter of our commitments–our efforts at preserving and repairing our relationships–bearing fruit in time. According to the other, attraction is an emotive event which occurs as a result of another person’s holistic character–everything from behavior, to pheromonal chemistry, to personal affect. “I cannot see my wife’s stretch marks and not adore them as the mark of the one who bore my children.” “I love the pearl earring I gave to her on our first anniversary,” “the jacket I gave to him on his birthday.” “I love his big arms, the arms that carried me home when I got too drunk.”

The first argument would seem to indicate that narcissism is habitual, because one is one’s own most constant companion. It fails to explicate those scenarios wherein one desires novelty, and where one pities one’s own image. It seems to me that the second theory belies an inner conflict, that one relies on personality, history and behavior as an attempt to make up for the absence of physical attraction. One can be grateful for these factors, but they still do not account for attraction. It seems enormously naive to believe that otherwise ungainly features will suddenly glimmer upon discovering another’s saintly charity, as if there were a spiritual form of love which is able to forego the physical event of attraction like a fairy-tale potion which blinds one to another’s flaws.

In her enormously popular advice to couples, Esther Perel recommends that one focus on those moments when one’s partner appears most attractive–try to ignore, miss, or forget those moments when they are less so. E.G.: Unless you have a scatological fetish, don’t shit in front of each other. It’s not that the plusses of another’s personality somehow bleed into attraction, but that these favors make us more willing to be in the other’s presence. Then, once our attention is drawn to the other, upon closer inspection, we may discover the grains of the image–the quirks and minutia which we find endearing. Prisoners may have a favorite cranny in their cells, but this is not freedom.

In fine, I can conclude only the following: We don’t enjoy our partners’ ugliness. We can’t accept such ugliness on two fronts: one, it makes us evil, traitors to the loyalty of our partner; two, it contaminates us with ugliness, as beings unworthy of a more beautiful love. The first voice tells us that we should not let appearance hold power over us; the second voice tells us that not only does appearance matter, but we are doomed to be surrounded by appearances which fail to appease. We therefore obscure our own preferences towards others’ appearances because we are afraid of what our preferences say about us. This statement evokes, more than a casual dishonesty about what we find appealing, the image of the closeted homosexual. Social repression is particularly strong regarding male-male attraction, at least in our era. In some circumstances, for a man to speak positively of another man’s appearance would be as indecorous as presenting one’s ass; in others, it’s as obscene as sniffing another man’s ass. (And one must wonder: what is the particular character of our species and our society that makes these acts so illicit?)

Puzzle Pieces and Pageantry

One must acknowledge the fact that watching a movie in the presence of others has deep social ramifications. What does it mean to speak during a movie? To comment on the course of events? With the advent of cinema, there is no longer a storyteller who must hold the narrative for all to behold; all hands are free to work simultaneously. Movie-goers who talk during the film, as I am wont to do, converse in messages which before had time to be delivered only in bodily signs, but which now may find an active voice. Though streaming services and wireless headphones have increasingly made media absorption a solitary activity, compatriots of cinema conduct group analyses of the kind which would otherwise be reserved for the priest, the coach or the therapist–every thought is surrendered to the public, in a space of one’s intimates and peers. The face on the billboard becomes an object of our daily commentary; in earlier ages, such talk was always confined to whispers, to the libel and slander of samizdat letters.

In other words, when attraction is made available only as a 1st- or 2nd-person discourse, it remains a shameful topic of conversation, relatively silent (for the reasons listed in the above line of thought about love and abjection). However, once the widespread use of the screen allows for an expansion in 3rd-person discourse–“What do you think about him/her/them?”–there is a subsequent explosion of attraction as an object of study, a return of the repressed.

What follows is a series of speculations about how people experience the beauty of others during their movie and TV-watching. These observations are necessarily speculative because we do not talk openly about our attractions.

Some deny that the model or movie-star is more attractive than the everyday person. By this I do not mean that you could not find an ugly actor, nor a pretty person on the street. Rather, they deny that there exists another class of celebrity, the “star” whose beauty categorically differs from all others, the semi-divine glow which one can find only in films. Their names populate pop songs and make hearts throb. But many of those who deny a substantial difference between the star and the everyday lover do so with the caveat that such stars do in fact appear more beautiful, but that such beauty is illusory. There is a level of beauty which one only ever achieves under the conditions of a model or movie star. In other words, some take it for granted that clever camera angles, numerous teams of aestheticians, and photoshop touch-ups are responsible for any beauty to be found among those paid to pose. They still accept a difference between everyday life and the silver screen, but they remain agnostic as to the source of such difference.

More silently, some believe (or wish to believe, and censor discussions of this belief at the risk that others may disagree, may prove them wrong) that there are many people whom one encounters in everyday life, who, if given alternate circumstances, would become models. For most of human history, this would be an effective way of achieving closure, of discarding self-doubt. In moments of great confidence, one’s daydreams may even cast oneself into this spotlight. With a few good pumpkins, Cinderella could win the heart of even a prince. For all the gifts that Vermeer has bestowed upon her, the girl with the pearl earring is not royalty. But such a line of thought has become debilitated by the prevalence of instagram and its “influencers,” which renders the gap in beauty more palpable and less deniable.

Again, one hears in this reference to instagram a complaint, that it falls prey to those “unrealistic standards of beauty,” and that there are many who are beautiful and yet fail to receive likes. This can only be so true. For the slouch, the simple slogan “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” serves as a facile escape, allowing one to side-step one’s insecurity; for the artist, it is a terrible, disorienting blow to one’s confidence. Fortunately, artists succeed despite all natural propensities towards sloth and despair.

In one of the most powerful thought experiments for the study of economics, one that in some ways prefigures the instagram like, J.M. Keynes gives the analogy of a beauty pageant, where judges must decide not only which contestant they find most attractive, but must decide which contestant they think is most likely to be considered attractive to everyone. Put differently, the beauty pageant exemplifies what Marx once called commodity fetishism–the miser collects gold not for any aesthetic purposes, but to have what others desire. Exchange values are prioritized over use-values; ultimately, this is destructive for human happiness, given how most values that we experience cannot be shared. Attraction is only one example, or it may be the example, of the personal event of value.

The thought experiment of the beauty pageant is potent because it demonstrates, despite all economic and utilitarian arguments to the contrary, that people do not know what they want. There are a few possible scenarios at play. In the first, the judges at the pageant may transfer/project their desires onto another person. For the reasons discussed above, it is less shameful to say what another person desires than to confess one’s own attractions; 3rd person dialogue is easier than 1st person. It gives one deniability. “I’m sorry, I think you are beautiful, but my hands are tied; I wish I could convince them.” Or, in a more pessimistic reading of the scenario, the judges may fail entirely to identify their own desires, because they have repressed that 1st person monologue in favor of 3rd person dialogue. The emperor has no clothes, but everyone repeats the statement they hear, which is that the emperor’s garments are lustrous; “the reviews are dazzling.”

Depending on its application, the “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” argument can serve either to suppress or give license to introspective, 1st person awareness. The case of suppression: One perpetuates the saying that the emperor’s raiment is absolutely spectacular, with the caveat that one personally disagrees. (In other words, one accepts one’s own visions of the emperor’s nudity as being subjective, realizes that this view is not shared, and therefore decides to never share it.) Or, the case of license: One says what one personally enjoys, with the caveat that someone somewhere may see the emperor as being fully clothed.

What is at play is the difference between a hierarchical and a puzzle-piece definition of beauty. The pageant has a hierarchical structure: who is the most appealing bachelor/bachelorette? However, attraction itself, or so it is rumored, has a puzzle-piece structure, such that each form has a corresponding audience. No piece is better than any other, but certain pieces fit better with other pieces. This is the kind of relativism which promotes self-acceptance through the logic that one does not have to be the recipient of one’s own puzzle-piece, nor does one have to fit with all other pieces; rather, one is seeking only a reciprocal fit. The puzzle piece analogy of love finds its most salient representation in Plato’s Symposium, where the myth is presented that in some earlier age, a sudden act of God separated beings who were once wholes into halves; soulmates are the reunification of those halves. The heteronormative politics of sexual difference assumes that anatomy has the same form-follows-function logic as connecting puzzle-pieces.

To apply this puzzle-piece logic to the beauty pageant: The judge at the pageant is charged with being the representative of those who watch and do not vote. The judge must decide the pageant winner by answering the question: which contestant fits the most [of the audience’s] puzzle-pieces? If it were designed as a direct democracy, every audience member would simply respond whether it was a proper “fit” for them. But direct democracy remains impossible, not only because we are unaware of our own preferences, but because our preferences are not known to others. Therefore, unfortunately, the condition of the pageant judge is equivalent to that of the critic or producer who must predict others’ tastes.

As utile as the puzzle-pieces analogy may be, it risks falling into the naive optimism of “every man’s trash is another man’s treasure,” or “there is someone for everyone.” Some pieces just do not fit. Some pieces fit more than others. Some trash is just trash. These adages are normally deployed as part of a strategy to release an agent from responsibility over one’s appearance. To a large extent, they prescribe complacency as a way of placating despair. “You can’t control how your image is received, so you must accept yourself. Indeed, your image may be received by others better than it currently is by yourself. Every trash is another man’s treasure.” But this logic can also have pessimistic consequences: “No matter what I do, I cannot and I never will be loved. My treasure is everyone else’s trash.” One can mitigate this pessimism by re-focusing on the statement that “some pieces fit better than others.” It may not be the case that some people will not find a match at all, but one should still accept the fact that some people will be fortunate to find more, and more fluid, organic, frictionless matches than others.

Let’s return to the example which first stirred this investigation into puzzle-pieces and beauty pageants, the scenario where some receive more likes than others. To a limited extent, this event serves as a useful example for the fact that some people’s appearances have a more positive impact, or at least a more widely positive impact, than others’. But the observation also risks becoming overly superficial to the extent that these likes may parallel the emperor’s nudity.

Let me explain. Cultural critics often put particular emphasis on the public nature of these platforms insofar as one feels pressure to post. But the more important social pressure may rather be on the pressure of how, when and what to like. The great difference between socializing before and after the advent of digital media is not just that appearing in public is now available to a wider array of individuals at a greater variety of times, but that now one’s reactions to public events are similarly visible. I can see who liked a post. I can see what posts you liked. I no longer have to read a sea of poker-faces, because I can see who liked my post. We are now pressured to perform through what we show ourselves to enjoy. The choice of whether to like a post may be comparable to that of the beauty pageant judge who must guess what the majority of people will enjoy. Because we actively participate in this process of “liking,” we risk, to a greater extent than before, internalizing the narratives of what we assume people enjoy. The border between what is honestly mine and what is inherited becomes even more blurry.

The contemporary event of TikTok’s popularity is relevant to this discussion of performing one’s likes, insofar as the platform makes it difficult to actively seek out or filter posts, and insofar as one’s likes are relatively private. Subcultures grow quickly on the platform not only because the algorithm works to sort content, but because these likes are anonymous. People do not need to make a conscious effort to seek out each other. They simply have to indicate a preference towards something that they would otherwise have been ashamed to share. Suddenly posts of half-naked men and women will appear more frequently to the “heterosexual,” or “bicurious” viewer. Suddenly accounts of abusive relationships will appear to the victim who was too afraid to admit that she deserved better. It’s an entirely new form of communication, insofar as there is very little conscious mediation between the communicator and the communicant.

Other social media platforms besides TikTok–such as Reddit, Twitter and Tumblr–which are conducive to anonymity have similar effects. Usernames should not be taken for granted as a sociological phenomenon. Why is it that people partition their public and digital selves? Swipes on Tinder are almost always secretive, and there are far more private than public playlists. Tinder itself represents the great extent to which our preferences are more socially repressed than ever before, as well as the extent to which social media demands to know our preferences (other people may not know who our matches are, as opposed to earlier days when dates were arranged by mutual friends and families; but, the very existence and proliferation of matches indicates also that our attractions are more frequently announced.)

These observations may appear superficial in the extreme. “Attraction is taboo. Boo-hoo.” But many of those who remain within abusive environments later express “I didn’t know I deserved better.” This thought, of course, was not heard by family, friends or coworkers–whom the victim of abuse is too afraid to consult, and whom the victim is not liable to trust, even if they were to advise in favor of leaving the abuser. The faculty of judgment suffers from learned helplessness. To prefer is to desire change and/or control–when either is impossible, it feels easiest to not have any preferences at all. Indifference is the repression of the oppressed, but it is also the vehicle for oppression. We don’t talk about what we like. The appeal of the contemporary algorithm is that it may observe our preferences for us. The mess of introspection is handled by an electric secretary who schedules, who pencils in our every behavior–like an auctioneer alert to even the smallest bid.

Some might say that we ought to want more for ourselves.