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đŸȘ” The Threshold

Fashion restraints function less to beautify than to render women's bodies powerless

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tagsja-picks, addendum, deepthinking, causal_relationships, trade, singleton, xref, category/causal-relationships
aliases@de_beauvoir_second_1949, loc. 351

2 min read

Fashion restraints function less to beautify than to render women’s bodies powerless

Evidence

Even in civilizations of a more subtle sensibility, where notions of form and harmony come into play, breasts and buttocks were prized objects because of the gratuitousness and contingency of their development. Customs and fashions were often applied to cut the feminine body from its transcendence: the Chinese woman with bound feet could barely walk, the Hollywood star’s painted nails deprived her of her hands; high heels, corsets, hoops, farthingales, and crinolines were meant less to accentuate the woman’s body’s curves than to increase the body’s powerlessness. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 351

Categorization

  • ADDENDUM: Directly extends the ‘Complaints About Immodesty Go Way Back’ article — the corset/crinoline/farthingale material here is the same lineage of bodily discipline as the sumptuary-law and dress-panic examples, now given Beauvoir’s causal mechanism: powerlessness over adornment aesthetics.
  • DEEPTHINKING: Beauvoir’s claim that fashion functions causally to cut the female body from transcendence — that ornament is not decoration but political disempowerment — is dense enough to sit with for days.
  • XREF: connects to: Femininity is an artificial, inculcated product rather than a natural instinct — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1037; Women’s dress expresses social stance but is still constrained within the established order; Women who claim freedom reject being reduced to their bodies as passive flesh — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1041 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

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