Art provides a hypocritical aesthetic alibi for selling female sexuality

Evidence

There has always been a vague connection between prostitution and art, because beauty and sexuality are ambiguously associated with each other. In fact, it is not Beauty that arouses desire: but the Platonic theory of love suggests hypocritical justifications for lust. Phryne baring her breast offers Areopagus the contemplation of a pure idea. Exhibiting an unveiled body becomes an art show; American burlesque has turned undressing into a stage show. “Nudity is chaste,” proclaim those old gentlemen who collect obscene photographs in the name of “artistic nudes.” … Of course there are showgirls, taxi dancers, nude dancers, escorts, pinups, models, singers, and actresses who do not let their sexual lives interfere with their occupations; the more skill and invention involved in their work, the more it can be taken as a goal in itself; but a woman who “goes onstage” to earn a living is often tempted to use her charms for more intimate commercial ends. Inversely, the courtesan wishes to have an occupation that will serve as her alibi. Rare are those like Colette’s Léa who, addressed by a friend as “Dear artist,” would respond: “Artist? My lovers are truly most indiscreet.” — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1682

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the earlier chapter discussion of the ‘eternal feminine’ myth and to ‘Complaints About Immodesty’ article’s cross-cultural moral panics over dress and display. — connects to: Orientalist paintings sexualized and humiliated women to justify Western rescue narratives; Orientalist art eroticized dying women to make violence consumable; Beautiful art can transfigure atrocity and thus justify suffering aesthetically (+2 more)
• SEED: Essay angle: the ‘artistic nude’ as a recurring alibi — how each era’s aesthetic discourse launders commercialized female display, from burlesque to glamour photography to modern streaming/OF aesthetics.

Broader Connections

• Orientalist art eroticized dying women to make violence consumable #corroborates (0.88)
• Orientalist paintings sexualized and humiliated women to justify Western rescue narratives #corroborates (0.85)
• European depictions marked Black women as sexual objects unworthy of love #corroborates (0.85) — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 365
• Beautiful art can transfigure atrocity and thus justify suffering aesthetically #corroborates (0.80)