Personal Beauty and Racial Betterment

Front matter

PERSONAL BEAUTY

AND

RACIAL BETTERMENT

Foreword

FOREWORD

From several persons who have read the manuscript of this essay, and from a larger number who have read the first part, I have received criticisms which are reducible to two main points: First, that I make the procreation of children the predominant ideal in marriage, minimizing companionship and other “spiritual” factors. Second, that although I call attention to various unsatisfactory conditions of sex relations, I have no practical reform program to propose.

Both of these points I admit without apology, and to both of them I wish to direct the readers’ attention. I agree thoroughly with the position of the Church (as I understand that position), in declaring that the highest “spiritual” values of marriage result when it is most perfectly adapted to its primary end. As a psychologist, I have the psychologist’s prejudice, that ideals, intellectual analysis, and education are the fundamental forces of progress, and that laws, conventions, and customs serve to consolidate and make secure the gains achieved through these forces.

The first part of this essay consists, with some additions, of an address delivered in April, 1917, before the Association of Physical Directors of Women’s Colleges, the Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology, and the Faculty and Students of Randolph-Macon College, at Lynchburg, Va.; and published in the Psychological Review for May, 1918.

K. D.

Baltimore, Md. January 1, 1920.

The Significance of Beauty

PERSONAL BEAUTY AND RACIAL BETTERMENT

6

PART I

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF BEAUTY

Human beauty is something which is perennially celebrated in poetry, in song, in romance, and in the petrified conception of the sculptor, but less frequently considered in the cold analysis of science. We are usually content to leave the topic to the artist and the lover, as one of the interesting and thrilling, but nonessential, matters of life. I wish to suggest a different conception of beauty: a conception of beauty as something which, whatever its importance for the individual, is for the race and for civilization of such profound importance that no other fundamental consideration of human welfare and progress can be divorced from it. I shall not touch upon the theme with the golden fingers of the artist, but with the unemotional digits of the psychologist. To some, without doubt, this procedure will seem as sacrilegious as the piercing of the anatomist’s knife into the dead human form; but where the wel and progress of humanity are at stake, even these brutal methods must be employed.

Beauty is a term of variable meaning; in fact there is a group of terms—handsome, pretty, attractive, charming, etc.—whose exact relationship is often discussed, and never settled. The way in which I use the term will not be acceptable to many persons, but one may reformulate my conclusions in his own way, using whatever terms he chooses, and the validity of the conclusions will not thereby be affected. I think it will be agreed, when I am through, that I have been discussing something rather definite under the name of beauty, and I hope further, that it will be conceded that, after all, what I have been discussing is that which in the common, and therefore vital, usage is actually designated by the term.

The familiar proverb tells us that “beauty is only skin deep,” which nicely exemplifies the mendacity of proverbs; ugliness, it is true, is often skin deep, but beauty, never. Beauty, as I hope to be able to show, is something which depends upon the whole organism.

The conditions of beauty are in part negative, in part positive. That is to say, there are certain conditions which a person must satisfy in order to be classed as beautiful, yet which do not in themselves contribute to beauty; other conditions, such that their fulfillment constitutes beauty, or at least constitutes a certain elements in the total beauty. Among the negative conditions are, for example, the lack of deformity. A hunchbacked woman or a baldheaded man is debarred by the deformity mentioned from being classed as beautiful, but the fact of having a straight back or of having hair on the head is not necessarily in itself a positive element of beauty. The negative condition is one which may be fulfilled, and yet the individual not be beautiful and not even have the corresponding detail of beauty. The positive conditions, on the other hand, are those which taken together in their fulfillment cause the person to be classed as beautiful. Some of these details may be present, and yet on account of other negative or positive factors, the total may not constitute beauty. Nevertheless we say that, in these details at least, a person does possess beauty.

This distinction between positive and negative elements, I am well aware, is not fundamental; it is at best a distinction of degree and convenience. But it is a convenience, for purposes of presentation at least, and we may make use of it while noting the fact that too great dependence upon it is fallacious. I shall consider first, therefore, the general negative conditions in order to clear the way for a treatment of the more detailed conditions, which, although involving both positive and negative elements, are better treated from the positive point of view.

I shall consider herein, primarily, only visible details. Qualities of voice, peculiarities of odor, tactual details, and so on, I shall notice only in so far as they are directly associated with visual characters. This is in accordance with the usual practice which makes beauty essentially a visible phenomenon and only secondarily a phenomenon which appeals to other senses.

General Negative Characters

1. Signs of race. There are certain negative details of stature, feature, color and movement and habits which are important because they indicate in the first instance a race of species of the human family against which, for reasons which may be instinctive or due to education, there is a prejudice. Facial proportions, for instance, which in themselves have no value, may yet indicate or suggest a branch of the human family against whom we entertain a certain bias. If we despise the Irish, an Irish cast of countenance cannot be beautiful to us. If we have an antipathy to the German or Russian or the French people, the type of face which suggests these people, even though there is no indication of actual blood of the race, is a factor making against beauty. The commonest instance of this sort of negative condition is found in the negroid characters. Here, where the suggestion or indication is of an inferior race, the negative condition is especially important.

2. Signs of disease, deformity or weakness. Any indication, not merely of physical weakness, but even in some instances of mental or moral weakness or disease is of decided negative effect. One who looks like an imbecile or like a criminal is never beautiful; one who seems to have, or suggests, a deadly disease, is to that extent lacking in beauty. To a certain degree, these mental and moral standards are relative to the grade of the observer. A weak-minded person has not the objection to the weak-minded person of his own grade that the more normal person has, but I suspect that the person of low mental grade has a certain preference for the normal person. As regards disease and deformity, there is no question. A hunchbacked or an anemic man regards his characteristic as a decided bar to beauty.

3. Significant deviation from the average is a negative characteristic, even if the deviation cannot be classed as a “deformity.” Dwarfs and giants, exceedingly thin and unusually broad individuals; those whose legs are too long for their bodies, or vice versa; those whose ears are misplaced, or whose hair is of an unearthly shade, are ruled out by their oddity, regardless of what these peculiarities signify. They may be good, clever, or admirable, but never beautiful.

These details are in part relative. Among certain African tribes, where men are uniformly over seven feet tall, and as thin as a rail, a normal Anglo-Saxon is probably not beautiful. Among other African tribes, and certain islanders of the Pacific, a woman is not considered beautiful unless she reaches a degree and a distribution of fatness which makes her either repulsive or comical to European eyes. This relativity is, however, only superficial. The type which is highest in value tends to approximate the European type, wherever the European type becomes known. All dark races prefer white skin, and it is a general rule that the female of the inferior race prefers the male of the superior race to the male of her own race, no matter how striking the difference. That the inferior male considers the superior female more beautiful than the female of his own race is indicated everywhere, and clearly demonstrated among the Turks.

Deviation from the common type, then, is a drawback only when it is not a deviation towards the acknowledged superior type of another race. The conservative dislike for the unusual in general is tempered by approval when the unusual is clearly a mark of racial superiority. This will find its ready explanation when we consider the positive side of beauty.

4. Misplaced sex characters. A specific form of the abnormal, but one which is important enough to justify separation from the foregoing class, is the possession of individuals of one sex of characteristics properly belonging to the other. This is an invariable negative qualification in the eyes of healthy observers. The effeminate man and the masculine woman can be beautiful only to the moral pervert. The importance of this indication is very great, as we shall see later, and however little it may mean consciously to a given individual, the habit of reacting against it has been strongly developed in the human race.

Detailed Characters of Beauty

So much, in brief, for the general negative characters of beauty. We come now to more detailed characters, which have on the whole a positive value, although some of them have negative aspects as well.

1. Stature. From the point of view of the female, the male must be large, although not a giant, since, as we have seen, too great a deviation from the usual is a negative condition. I have at various times overheard women, who were discussing the relative handsomeness of two or several men, settle the point by such an observation as “A is fully an inch taller than B.” By carefully put questions I have succeeded in eliciting a considerable amount of information on this point without revealing the actual purpose of the interrogation. For example, if I inquire of a woman concerning the handsomeness of a man who has a general combination of desirable and undesirable characteristics, but who is a trifle below medium height, I very frequently obtain, in her first statement, a criticism of his stature, followed by a consideration of his other attributes; indicating that in her estimation size is of paramount importance. The determining factor is not, of course, mere height but height combined with lateral development not deviating markedly from the average proportion. The tall man of bean-pole build is not considered attractive. Yet, a positive element of height can outweight a considerable element of disproportion, and a taller man, whose proportions are in themselves worse than those of a shorter man, is usually considered the handsomer.

This preference for stature undoubtedly harks back to more primitive times, when it was above all important that man should be a fighter and hunter, in order to secure food for his wife and children, and protect them against wild beasts and against the designs of other males. Especially was this important during the periods when the woman was pregnant, or nursing a child. It is highly probable that in ancient times the negative rule against abnormal size did not apply, since every increase in physical power, even if carried to the extreme of gigantic development, was a distinct advantage.

It is sometimes alleged that the woman’s preference is not for the large man in an absolute sense, but for the man larger than herself; either because of a natural wish for a husband to whom she is inferior; to whom she can give a tribute of worship and deference; or else, that it has developed through the necessity of the greater strength on the part of the man in order that he might capture the woman, and carry her away from her parental habitat, to his own dwelling. Both of these suggestions are highly unplausible. Marriage by capture, although a good hypothesis for popular writers, probably never was at any time an institution of any more importance or actuality than it is at the present day. Psychologically, the theory is based on the assumption that woman is naturally opposed to the marital relation, which assumption is a merry jest, to say the least. Historically, there is no evidence for the theory of capture except as a limited and temporary phenomenon. As for the supposition of an unexplained instinct to prefer a dominant partner, I see no support for it, except in so far as the practical consideration I have advanced may itself lead to this preference as a secondary manifestation. It is true that there are women today who openly state that the mates they want are those who can completely dominate them; and that such potential masters are the only men who interest them. These cases (a number have been directly reported to me) are not all to be explained on the same basis, although the primary factor in every case is the admiration for the strong man. In some cases, the preference is distinctly a pathological development; in others, it is pretended by the woman as an explanation for the fact that men are not interested in her. In many cases, however, the preference is the expression of an arbitrary standard which is manfiested usually in less egotistical ways. Where a scale of values is accepted, there is commonly a more or less explicit adoption of a minimal acceptable value; the stronger man is the more desirable; a man who measures up to a certain minimum will be acceptable. In most cases, the minimal standard adopted is the father, a brother, or some other impressive individual in real life or in fiction. In the case of a strongly egotistical woman, who sets a high value on her own potentialities, the standard is herself; the man less forceful than herself is below the minimum.

In this, I seem to be confusing physical strength with various sorts of power; perhaps I am; but, as I am trying to point out, the basis of power is muscular, and admiration for physical prowess still retains a primacy when it is a matter of the fundamental attraction of the woman to the man; and all I am trying to establish at this point is that there is no primary desire of the woman for a man who is able to dominate her physically. On the contrary, the woman would prefer, if other considerations did not prevent, the mate whom she can control physically and in every other way, for the instinct to dominate is inherent in every normal human being.

Under present conditions, the preference of the large woman is accentuated, and that of the small woman reduced, by social factors, especially the fear of ridicule. The weakness of the small man is made conspicuous by the contrast with a giant wife; compared, on the other hand, with a diminutive wife, his inefficiency is less emphasized.

From the point of view of the male, the question of stature is less simple. There seems to be no general preference for small women or for large women; but a truly relative preference for smaller women. Of course, I am well aware that there is a wide range of individual preferences, not all of which are explicable from available data; but I am speaking of generalities, which are certainly discoverable, in spite of individual differences. This general relative preference in the matter of stature is complicated by the curious double preference of the male, which is so strik-ingly demonstrated by theatrical studies, and to which I shall make brief reference later.

The primitive reason which leads woman to prefer a large man has no correspondence in the necessities of the male. The male has not the need for protection at certain periods which the woman has. While the addition of a husky female to the savage’s fighting force would seem to be a prime advantage, the advantage is largely lost because at the precise times when the aggressive resources of the family are most fully needed, the woman is not in condition to exert her strength, without serious injury to herself. The physical strength of the woman is not to be counted on, and hence the stronger woman is not a greater asset to the family, and hence no more desirable.

It is true, there have been and still are, races in which the physical strength of the women has been counted on, especially for agricultural duties (e. g., the American Indians); and among them, possibly (I am not certain on this point), stature has been a mark of beauty. But where female strength is counted on, it is necessarily utilized at times when grave damage is done to the woman, and those races which have counted on it have gone down. The races which have early developed chivalry, as we may well desig the protective attitude, are the races which have developed civilization, and which must continue to dominate the world unless civilization is to be abandoned, and the human race plunged downward into bestial degeneracy.

Stature, therefore, except in so far as it may be involved indirectly in some of the factors which I shall yet consider, is not and cannot be a mark of female beauty in a civilized race. On the other hand, by this very fact, the preference for a partner whom he can dominate is allowed full sway in the male. The woman would have the same preference, as I pointed out a moment ago, were it not checked by other factors.

I may digress for a moment, to remind you that in a family one person must control. This is not a theory, but an empirical fact against which argument is futile. Economic conditions which are as yet but dreamed of, especially those conditions which result from the greater and greater use of machinery, may in future change this; but it was the law of the primitive family, and even yet we have not reached a stage of civilization in which a joint legislative authority is possible. In the past it has been, the male who has controlled, but that may be changed in the future. It is true that Bachofen and others have tried to establish the doctrine of the matriarchiate (the rule of women) as the primitive family system, but the confusion on which this theory was based has been readily exposed. Never in the history of the globe did woman have the political and social power she holds today, and suffrage cannot increase it.

2. Bodily proportions. In modern civilization there has grown up an immodesty which was lacking in more ancient cultures. We are ashamed of our bodies. Whether the practice of concealing the body is the cause of our uncleanness of mind, or whether our obscenity is rather the cause of the concealment, is a debated question. Whatever may be my general estimate of the Japanese, I cannot but admire their wonderful cleanness of mind, which makes for them clothing a detail which has no bearing on modesty.

Among the Greeks, who, as you know, were in many respects more pure-minded than we are, bodily conformation was an important detail in beauty. And, in fact, it is today amongst us, both in a shame-faced way in daily life, and more creditably when we throw off our prudishness in the presence of plastic and pictorial art, and in the theater. We are skirting here a vital and pressing problem of the present moment, on which I should like to take the time to make you face some problems we all tend to ignore, but I must not digress further.

Our standards of bodily development are still, in the main, Greek. There are certain proportions which are judged both by the artist and the layman to be the ideal of beauty. In this we are of course swayed largely by the limitations of our education, which on these matters is artificial; probably there would be a greater difference in racial ideals, if conditions were more natural.

The simplest explanation for the accepted ideal of form would be that it is the average form of the healthy individual. This explanation, I think, is not supportable. Among the Greeks and Romans, for example, the ideal ankle, for a woman at least, was a small ankle, not a medium-sized one. Among us, a small foot has been desirable; so much so that women have been compelled to wear shoes which, by raising the heel several inches, make the ground-base of the shoe about two thirds the real length of the foot. This procedure makes the foot seem shorter, or at least it did until the recent shortening of the skirt brought the artifice out where it cannot be over- looked. One of the most important and desirable effects of the permanent adoption of sensible clothing by women will be the allowing of the foot to retain its natural form. Of body-form, which is by rights the fundamental consideration in beauty, I shall say nothing further, because our standards are so obscure. The subject is in need of thorough investigation by the methods of comparative anatomy, and above all, of social psychology.

3. The Features. Whatever the cause of our concealment of the body, it has led to an emphasis on the anatomical details of the face which could not be found in more primitive times. Leaving out of consideration the general shape of the face and head, which are probably important mainly as racial signs, we may consider briefly the chin, the nose, the eyes and the ears.

That there is a preference on the part of both sexes, and in the consideration of both sexes, for a well-developed chin, is a matter of common knowledge. The reason for this preference is less evident, and in fact I can here indicate only a strong probability. Racial factors are involved, of course, but there seems to be a more general foundation which is vaguely involved in the commonplace statement, that the possession of a chin is one of the conspicuous points which differentiate man from the beasts. This is obviously true; the vital question is: What are the direct consequences of this structural peculiarity? This question can be answered by reference to comparative anatomy and to the psychology of the thought processes. The projecting chin gives room in the mouth cavity for the human tongue, which is strikingly different from the brute tongue. The tongue of the lower animal is a long thin strip of muscle; the tongue of homo sapiens is a thick muscular mass. A somewhat exaggerated comparison is to a leather strap, in one case, and a frog seated in the mouth in the other case. We have now advanced the question one step farther, to ask what may be the advantage, if any, in the form of the human tongue.

The animal tongue is certainly just as well adapted to the purposes of obtaining and preparing food, as the human. In some cases, it is even more efficient. But the human tongue is an important instrument in the production of the most human of all attributes, language. Language is not merely the means of communicating thought; it is, as philologists have long known, and as psychologists have been forced somewhat unwillingly to admit, the principal means of thinking. While it is possible to think without language, languageless thought is primitive and inefficient in the complex conditions of civilization, and it is by no means an exaggeration to say that the development of language is a large part of the development of thought.

Of course, it is not to be said that in any specific case a large tongue is an index of efficient thinking, or that a relatively smaller chin indicates necessarily a relatively smaller tongue, or that the converse of either of these propositions is true. But on the whole, the development of the chin is concomitant with the development of thought, and hence, in races or large groups, an index of mental development. It is worthy of note here, that the marks of beauty will be found throughout to be these generalized characters, which in specific cases may not be associated with the fundamental factors which have made them important.

The nose and the mouth are beauty-characters which are probably more exclusively racial in their significance than the chin. The broad flat nose and the thick wide lips are often repulsive because they suggest the African, if for no other reason. But I suspect that the thick lips are also a defect because they are in themselves a hindrance to efficient speech, and more vitally because they connote an inefficient formation of the mouth, palate and glottis. Yet it is necessary here again to point out that any of these details may be faulty in a particular case, and yet the others be so well adapted that they more than compensate; and that there may be in many cases language, efficient for thinking, but inefficient for communication. Here as everywhere, our beauty judgments are based on conditions which are general, and to which there are many sharp exceptions.

As regards the teeth, we are in no serious doubt. The beautiful teeth are the sound, regular weapons, which by their form and color give unmis evidence of being efficient for chewing as well as for primitive methods of warfare.

While the practical indications of the mouth are important, as I have pointed out, we should by no means overlook the probability of a sexual significance to the evaluation of which the consideration of other beauty characters will rapidly drive us. I need not remind you that popular theory as passed from mouth to mouth and as embodied in literature of all ages, considers both the mouth and the nose as practical indexes of the sex-organs; I should like to express the opinion that popular theory, even popular superstition, is the smoke which always indicates some fire. This particular popular belief is one on which it seems to me it would be worth while for directors of physical culture to make statistical observations.

I need not point out the sexual function of the olfactory organ in the nose of the lower animal; but I ought to warn you against the fallacious opinion that in the human animal the nose has universally lost that function. On the contrary, in a large proportion of the species that function has become more complex. I may add also, that in addition to the significant fact that the membrane lining a large part of the nasal cavities is erectile tissue, there are definite psychological observations, (none published, I believe), which throw experimental light on the sexual relations of the nose.

That both the eyes and ears are beauty marks, and that, in the female especially, they have been selected for especial emphasis by lovers and poets, you are well aware. Both love and poetizing, as most of us well know from our own experience, are conditions of irresponsibility in which the fundamental instincts and habits have large sway; and the first condition usually brings on the second; accordingly the beauty-points which fix the attention of poets demand our attention. But there is little to offer at present in the way of analysis of these. Aside from the indication of physical condition which the eyes afford (and every physician makes use of these indications), the importance of the eye is probably largely racial. The blue or the black, the large or the small, are not in themselves of moment, but they indicate stocks from which we expect certain other characters, mental and physical. The same general consideration is probably involved in ear preferences. This is however by no means the whole story. Anyone who has studied the religious and art symbolism of primitive peoples, and of people not so primitive (I do not refer to the crude and artificial studies of the Freudians) cannot help but see very definite reasons for the fascination of the eye and ear, reasons which are more appropriately discussed amongst psychologists than before a general audience.

Before passing on to the next topic, I wish to protect myself from possible misapprehension by disclaiming any taint of phrenology or blackfordism in the preceding discussion. The significance of cranial and facial characters must be worked out on the lines of physiology and genetics; psychologists have no sympathy with the various systems of so-called character analysis which attempt to decide from a casual examination of an individual what his intellectual and moral peculiarities are in detail.

4. Hair. The hair which adorns the human body (or disfigures it, as the case may be), is of two sorts, in regard to its physiological conditions and significance, as well as to its regional distribution. The hair of the head, or pate-hair, is the one sort, and the body-hair, including the face-hair, is the other.

The conditions which govern the growth of the pate-hair are not definitely known, but are probably connected with bodily changes which have other important effects. That is to say, the stimulation of the growth of the hair, or the failure of its vitality, are probably due to changes in the internal secretions (hormones) of the organism, although it is not known which of the secretions are the important ones in this connection. It is probable that another effect of the internal changes which produce baldness is a lessening of the resistance of the organism, so that the baldheaded man cannot stand the muscular exertion or the nervous strain of which the hairy-headed man is capable. At any rate, baldness is a fatal bar to beauty, both in the male and the female, although to many persons (men especially) an individual of the opposite sex whose pate-hair is exceptionally abundant is repulsive. Another indication of the dependence of the pate-hair on metabolism in other regions is found in the apparent connection between hair and temperament. It is difficult to conceive of a baldheaded musical genius or artist; although even to the rule implied here, exceptions do occur. Temperament, and all emotional factors, as we now know, depend largely on the bodily metabolism, especially on the functions of the internally secreting glands. The quantitative hair character, therefore, may in all probability be reduced to an indication of physical vigor; and physical vigor is far more important, as a beauty asset, than mental ability. Whether the popular belief that the mental ability of a child is in the inverse proportion to the growth of his hair, has any foundation, and whether a similar rule holds for adults, I shall not discuss, as I might be accused of being prejudiced.