While the subject has become rather vulgarized by the contemporary conspiracy theory age of Holy Blood, Holy Grail and The DaVinci Code, from an aesthetic and philosophical perspective, it remains a legitimate line of inquiry. It is of interest that the word "beautiful" is often acquainted with the female idea and the female form, much more so than the male counterpart. I once read a comment on some political article debating the body-image of women in modern society, and one feminist commenter stated: "Why can't people realize that the fact that a woman is beautiful or not is irrelevant [to her personhood]?" The sentence struck me as being insightful, but at the same time uninformed and rash, as to assume that beauty is merely the physical and bodily manifestation of the fashionable moment.
Being one who worked in the modeling industry, photoshopping feminine features every day to make them more physically perfect, I can say that beauty is not, and never can be, physically embodied. This is because the mind will always strive more something more perfect, and more refined, so long as we take the physical body as ultimate reality; it is the infinite desire which drives the human being. This is an idea postulated in George Santayana's The Sense of Beauty, that the mind's creative force is its own destructive source of perpetual desire for perfection. The same idea is seen in Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story The Birth Mark, where even the slightest flaw upon the most beautiful woman beheld by the protagonist, is a cause of immense obsession to the point of death. While that is the most extreme case of such an idea, this is what currently occupies the contemporary world of feminine beauty: the unachievable, physical ideal, as seen in the digital world of photoshopped imagery. As such, this extreme, physical idea has caused contemporary feminists to abhor the idea of beauty, to reject their feminine identity to rival that of men, where supposedly beauty is of no importance, but only merit.
If we compare this concept with that of the Middle Ages, we see a complete opposite in the ideology of the feminine. To the medieval mind, the physical concept of beauty was merely a small part of the greater whole, for the mind, body and soul must harmonize with the beliefs, faith and hope of the medieval Christian faith. Physical beauty is often portrayed as symbol of the good, the pure and the the enlightened, for these were the supreme ideals of the Middle Ages; for they did not believe the physical body to be the ultimate as Santayana does. Medieval saw beauty as a manifestation of the holy, and therefore it penetrated various elements of the world, Nature, and of the spirit, Heaven. A person of beauty, therefore, is one who is reverent of all these things, and therefore, in art and poetry, is said to be a beautiful being. The archetypal beauty of this ideal can be seen in Dante's Beatrice, whose beauty becomes greater as his spiritual and intellectual understanding grows from within. The esoteric perception of beauty is one that manifests itself in the highly structured, secretive art of the middle ages, showing creations of multitudinous depth, where physical form and spiritual idea are closely intertwined. This is why art for the medieval was of such importance, it was a way to reconcile the physical, the mental and the spiritual into one experience of complete ecstasy. Beauty of the Middle Ages was not driven by a critical, desirous eye who takes the physical as ultimate reality, but an ever-seeking search for harmony in all things of existence, both worldly and otherworldy.
The desire for physical beauty alone shall always end in unhappiness, and indeed a woman possessed of immense physical beauty will find that if she is loved for only that, her existence will be filled with woe and wrought with fleeting appreciation. I have seen a film which so perfectly captured such a sad existence, Kenji Mizoguchi's The Life of Oharu, detailing the incredibly sad life of a woman used for her beauty, and even denied spiritual suffrage from its curse. Because of stories such as this, and the contemporary ideal of beauty, many modern women hold the idea of beauty with great disdain, however, if they could only come to understand beauty as it is fully intended, they could see beauty for its real meaning.
Fyodor Dostoevsky once said, "Beauty shall save the world." He was heavily derided for this comment, as in his time beauty was more and more coming to be seen as a symbol of indulgence, and not for the deeper concept he knew it to be. If we examine Dostoevsky's novels, we can find his idea of beauty, which is so in accord with the medieval ideal; indeed, Sonia's character in Crime & Punishment is of biblical parallel to Mary Magdalene herself. Dostoevsky, however, does not see this form of physical and spiritual beauty as being limited to women, but is also embodied in his male characters of Alyosha Karamazov and Prince Myshkin, who are described as being of a "wholly beautiful" nature, indeed, referencing that beauty is not only physical, but encompassing of a completeness of the soul and the self in harmony with the ideal. While the idea of beauty is heavily laced throughout The Idiot, it is not the tortured Natasha who embodies the ideal of beauty for Dostoevsky, but Myshkin himself, who's deep understanding of the idea informs his whole being. The feminine element of beauty is merely one of many sides, and is indeed beauty is always a subject of relevance, so long as human beings can ponder its values, for are not the pondering and appreciation are what make it so?
helen of troy...beauty is a curse...
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