re: beauty

Men’s opinions of and approaches to beauty have always been laced with this kind of paradoxical judgement and masculine showmanship. Beauty has been a method to display the violence of masculinity and possessiveness throughout the empires; men lesser than Alexander used it, too. The Romans had an entire slave class who would apply perfumes to their slavers and their weapons before war; beauty rituals were as much part of violent practices as putting armor on. The Britons would use dyes and pigments, like woad, to make their bodies elegantly fearful, drenched in blue. So you see, what’s volatile about beauty when possessed by men is that they use it as this weapon to mark their territory: to remind everyone else in the room who’s in charge.

[...]

Beauty was always a possession — an ephemeral one never meant to be controlled by women. It’s been defined by the limits of men from the start. To possess. To pursue. To judge. Beauty has been gendered and controlled in a way that actually limits its own potential — it’s an insecure divide between men and women, a violent one.

[...] Beauty is failing us, because gender already has.



-- Beauty is Broken – Matter. Arabelle Sicardi.







ALSO: Made me think of a ... not conversation... interaction? Or just something I saw? About how healing/cooking is seem as "women's work", a woman's role. But chefs and doctors are men, mainly -- male roles. If you say a man and a woman work at a restaurant; one is a chef and one is waitstaff, you'll assume the chef is the man and the waiter is the woman. Why? I guess it's because healing/cooking was only a woman's role when it was domestic. A woman's role is submission, devotion. But once it becomes a field of professional expertise and prestige, it's appropriated by men.