“The Terrestrial and Infernal Venus” (and other thoughts)

A while ago a male friend and I were talking and the direction of our conversation led me to share some of my struggles with low self-esteem and self image. To my surprise he told me that he had also struggled with negative self image. We began to discuss how western society has influenced our ideal of beauty. He told me that he did not know what real beauty was because the media and western culture had decided this for him. He had been robbed of the chance to discover his own opinions about beauty and attraction. In a sense, he felt brainwashed. Society had given him a model of beauty for twenty two years of his life.  He explained that he desired to break free from societies ties and discover the real meaning of the word “beauty”. 

This was an extremely encouraging conversation for me. As a woman I have often judged men and assumed that most (if not all) are shallow.  I decided long ago that men care mainly about the physical appearance. This (almost subconscious) opinion of men has caused me to judge many male acquaintances.  However, this conversation made me see a man’s perspective in a different light.  I think there may be more to the world’s standard of beauty than we fully understand.

I have been on a bit of a C.S. Lewis kick this summer. In The Screwtape Letters there is a particular chapter entitled “The Terrestrial and Infernal Venus”.  Here is a excerpt from the chapter that I found quite interesting (if you do not know what the book is about you may want to read a quick synopsis before reading this):

“It is the business of these great masters to produce in every age a general misdirection 

of what may be called sexual "taste". This they do by working through the small circle of

 popular artists, dressmakers, actresses and advertisers who determine the

 fashionable type. The aim is to guide each sex away from those members of the

other with whom spiritually helpful, happy, and fertile marriages are most likely. Thus we have now for many centuries triumphed over nature to the extent of making certain secondary characteristics of the male (such as the beard) disagreeable to nearly all the females—and there is more in that than you might suppose. As regards the male taste we have varied a good deal. At one time we have directed it to the statuesque and aristocratic type of beauty, mixing men's vanity with their desires and encouraging the race to breed chiefly from the most arrogant and prodigal women. At another, we have selected an exaggerated feminine type, faint and languishing, so that folly and cowardice, and all the general falseness and littleness of mind which go with them, shall be at a premium. At present we are on the opposite tack. The age of jazz has succeeded the age of the waltz, and we now teach men to like women whose bodies are scarcely distinguishable from those of boys. Since this is a kind of beauty even more transitory than most, we thus aggravate the female's chronic horror of growing old (with many excellent results) and render her less willing and less able to bear children. And that is not all. We have engineered a great increase in the license which society allows to the representation of the apparent nude (not the real nude) in art, and its exhibition on the stage or the bathing beach. It is all a fake, of course; the figures in the popular art are falsely drawn; the real women in bathing suits or tights are actually pinched in and propped up to make them appear firmer and more slender and more boyish than nature allows a full-grown woman to be. Yet at the same time, the modern world is taught to believe that it is being "frank" and "healthy" and getting back to  nature. As a result we are more and more directing the desires of men to something which does not exist—making the role of the eye in sexuality more and more important and at the same time making its demands more and more impossible.

...the unhappiness produced is of a very lasting and exquisite kind.”

I admit that out of these societal pressures I am often guilty of vanity. I find myself focusing far too much on the pressure to be thin.  I become extremely unhappy when I feel that I have failed at this and cannot measure up to this standard. In this particular chapter, Lewis reveals many schemes behind societal pressures.  He looks into the spiritual rather than material side of the matter.  I find it interesting that the concept of physical beauty has effected men and woman equally, but in entirely different ways.  Women often end up wanting to be something that they are not and never will be.  Men often end up wanting something that they cannot have because it doesn’t exist.

This makes me think that maybe there is no such thing as “beauty” (at least in terms of how society defines the word).  What if we erased all the magazines, websites, pornography, television shows, etc. along with the spiritual schemes that may arise from them? what is we were born into a world without a previously defined concept of beauty? (This is speaking mainly in terms of physical attractiveness).  I wonder if we would simply find physical attractiveness in every person. An “average looking” person might be just as beautiful to an ignorant and “untrained” eye as a super model.  This is a bizarre concept (and forgive me if it is an extremely poor argument), but maybe there is something to it.  

The last thing I want to mention is society’s changing concept of beauty. This is yet another clue that the Western definition of “beauty” is deceiving. Now, I am in no way saying that a super model is not stunningly gorgeous.  However, I want to look back at the first woman ever created. None of us can know for sure what Eve looked like, but to Adam she must have been the most beautiful creature he had ever laid eyes on. All we are sure of, according to biblical text, is that when he laid eyes on this woman he said “This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh” (Genesis 2:23). He said this because she was indeed these things, but to my understanding this was his way of betrothing himself to her.  Now in order for this to happen Adam must have had a strong physical attraction to her that was not necessarily based on her body type or facial structure. 

What I can conclude is that God made the first woman and said she was good. Eve was the only woman to exist before sin entered the world.  A perfect, spotless specimen.  She was beautiful.  She was a woman. She was not labeled by a worldly limit or standard of beauty.  She was God’s definition of beauty and (to make my conclusion super cheesy) aren’t we all in fact God’s definition of beauty?  Maybe we need to start asking God to show us beautiful things in one another. Maybe if we desire to see physical beauty through God’s perspective, and not our own tainted eyes, our concept of beauty might change.

What do you think about Michelangelo’s depiction of Eve? Can you see how absolutely stunning she is?