On Wed, 16 Jul 2003, Kelley wrote:
> i agree that these are socially, historically constituted standards. what
> i'm not comfortable with is the implication that over those 1000s of years
> of which you speak there were no attempts to adorn oneself and that those
> attempts were simply about class society. i'm pretty sure you don't mean
> this, though, do you?
>
No, I'm not quite that dogmatic. Obviously beauty and adornment are not evil things that emerged because of capitalism.
> all we really know is that hegemonic norms of beauty and attractiveness
> have accompanied class society and that those norms have often been defined
> by an elite.
> we don't really know if the desire to adorn oneself or to make one's
> surrounding and self as nice looking as possible is caused by class society.
>
Either I'm not making my point very clearly or people are (unconsciously?) propping up a straw man to knock down. I'm not arguing that "looking nice" is a social invention that only exists in class based societies. I'm just mentioning that modern beauty standards are not simply innocent or natural or inevitable: like Kel says, the specific norms of adornment are socially produced and sustained.
Miles