Fey on the inside
When I was a kid I wanted to grow up looking all fey and lovely. I was at that age when reading lots of fairy tales had convinced me that it was possible to make the outside be the reality - that good people were by nature artistically beautiful people, and that if not, it was because of some spell or confusion that could be fixed. That bad people were by nature artistically ugly people, and that if not, their interior badness would eventually mark them, visually.
I was only about 7, you see. And I'd read a lot of Tolkien, and a lot of the sort of fairy tale where you know which sister is good because she's the pretty one. And I think that bit in Voyage of the Dawn Treader where the folks on the island had become somehow weird looking because of their habits didn't help.
So I think that the desire to be slender and sylph like and beautiful with flowing hair and perfect skin and nifty outfits was not just the aesthetic desire, but also an expression of a different desire: I wanted to be GOOD, and I wanted everyone to know it.
I wonder if little girls who want to be Princesses and dress up in Disney Dress Up Gear are expressing something like that? The desire to be the person in the middle of the story, the person who does the right thing, the one we look up to? I don't know and am too old to have the language to ask them.
But of course as we get older we become more aware of the tradeoffs of time and attention (Good Fairies and Good Princesses rarely spend hours in front of their mirrors combing their hair, hitting the gym, and getting botoxed - even in fairy tales obsessed with appearance, characters who are obsessed with their OWN appearance are rarely Good Guys). And we become more aware that part of that "good people show their beauty" thing is a function of our own attention, our knowledge of character: a man who strikes us as physically beautiful on first meeting seems less attractive as we learn about faults in his character, but he still seems JUST AS PRETTY to folks who meet him for the first time. So the people who hold on to that early feeling of beauty=goodness can only do so by warping it one way or another, because the metaphor just doesn't stretch that far.
I'm pretty clear on the helpfulness of letting go of the metaphor. Beauty is not equivalent to Goodness, though there is a certain good that comes from the contemplation of beauty, and a certain beauty that manifests in our contemplation of most good things.
What I'm less clear on is how to experience joy in aesthetic beauty as an adult without buying into the destructive beauty myths or causing pain to those who struggle with such myths. What's the adult equivalent of being Fancy Nancy for a day? Of being the person who just goes "today is a sparkle day, I'm full of sparkle feelings to share with everyone?" or "Today's a butterfly day" or "Today I'm a fairy with wings and I can fix things with my star wand"? When little kids do this we let ourselves feel the joy and goodness they are trying to share, but it feels more problematic when adults do it (ok in some contexts, with friends, or at certain settings, or during official holidays dedicated to such stuff). I want to figure out what the acceptable adult equivalent is.
I was only about 7, you see. And I'd read a lot of Tolkien, and a lot of the sort of fairy tale where you know which sister is good because she's the pretty one. And I think that bit in Voyage of the Dawn Treader where the folks on the island had become somehow weird looking because of their habits didn't help.
So I think that the desire to be slender and sylph like and beautiful with flowing hair and perfect skin and nifty outfits was not just the aesthetic desire, but also an expression of a different desire: I wanted to be GOOD, and I wanted everyone to know it.
I wonder if little girls who want to be Princesses and dress up in Disney Dress Up Gear are expressing something like that? The desire to be the person in the middle of the story, the person who does the right thing, the one we look up to? I don't know and am too old to have the language to ask them.
But of course as we get older we become more aware of the tradeoffs of time and attention (Good Fairies and Good Princesses rarely spend hours in front of their mirrors combing their hair, hitting the gym, and getting botoxed - even in fairy tales obsessed with appearance, characters who are obsessed with their OWN appearance are rarely Good Guys). And we become more aware that part of that "good people show their beauty" thing is a function of our own attention, our knowledge of character: a man who strikes us as physically beautiful on first meeting seems less attractive as we learn about faults in his character, but he still seems JUST AS PRETTY to folks who meet him for the first time. So the people who hold on to that early feeling of beauty=goodness can only do so by warping it one way or another, because the metaphor just doesn't stretch that far.
I'm pretty clear on the helpfulness of letting go of the metaphor. Beauty is not equivalent to Goodness, though there is a certain good that comes from the contemplation of beauty, and a certain beauty that manifests in our contemplation of most good things.
What I'm less clear on is how to experience joy in aesthetic beauty as an adult without buying into the destructive beauty myths or causing pain to those who struggle with such myths. What's the adult equivalent of being Fancy Nancy for a day? Of being the person who just goes "today is a sparkle day, I'm full of sparkle feelings to share with everyone?" or "Today's a butterfly day" or "Today I'm a fairy with wings and I can fix things with my star wand"? When little kids do this we let ourselves feel the joy and goodness they are trying to share, but it feels more problematic when adults do it (ok in some contexts, with friends, or at certain settings, or during official holidays dedicated to such stuff). I want to figure out what the acceptable adult equivalent is.