Lack of beauty frees a woman from self-objectifying and toward pure intellectual life.

Evidence

Misfortune and distress are often learning experiences in this sense: it was isolation that enabled Emily Brontë to write a powerful and unbridled book; in the face of nature, death, and destiny, she relied on no one’s help but her own. Rosa Luxemburg was ugly; she was never tempted to wallow in the cult of her image, to make herself object, prey, and trap: from her youth she was wholly mind and freedom. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1950

Categorization

• QUESTION: Beauvoir treats Rosa Luxemburg’s ugliness as liberation, not tragedy — does this claim hold up against contemporary body-positivity frameworks, or does it quietly accept the premise that beauty is objectifying?
• XREF: connects to: Beauty’s powerlessness becomes the negative image of redemptive hope — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from…, 250; Narcissistic self-fashioning lets woman express personality without being beautiful — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1800; The mirror assimilates to the self only for woman, whose beauty is passive immanence — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1787 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Woman’s traits stem from her situation, not biology #expands (0.90) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1740