Cleaning is a negative action that expels foulness before beauty can appear

Evidence

This escape, this sadomasochism in which woman persists against both objects and self, is often precisely sexual. “The kind of housecleaning that calls for bodily gymnastics amounts to a bordello for women,” says Violette Leduc. It is striking that the taste for cleanliness is of utmost importance in Holland where women are cold, and in puritanical civilizations that juxtapose the joys of the flesh with an ideal of order and purity. If the Mediterranean Midi lives in joyous filth, it is not only because water is scarce there: love of the flesh and its animality is conducive to tolerating human odor, squalor, and even vermin. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1239 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Culturally puritanical societies develop obsessive cleanliness as displaced sexuality — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1239; Industrial capitalism erased female wantonness into hygienic respectability

Broader Connections

• Culturally puritanical societies develop obsessive cleanliness as displaced sexuality #expands (0.78) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1239
• Industrial capitalism erased female wantonness into hygienic respectability #exemplifies (0.75)