The Beauty Dilemma: Gendered Bodies and Aesthetic Judgement

Abstract

When Pacteau above asks: ‘what exactly is beauty’ the answer is elusive. The question of beauty has entertained philosophers since the time of Socrates and Plato. Freud, too, considered beauty elusive, beyond explanation:

The science of aesthetics investigates the conditions under which things are felt as beautiful, but it has been unable to find any explanation of the nature and origin of beauty, and as usually happens, lack of success is concealed beneath a flood of resounding and empty words.

[N]o woman escapes ‘beauty’. Unavoidably, from her earliest years, beauty will be either attributed or denied to her. If she does not have it, she may hope to gain it; if she possesses it, she will certainly lose it. But what exactly is ‘beauty’?

(Pacteau, 1994)