Women as culture

[imomus]

Brian Eno—a man both refreshing and right, a rare combination—said in an interview about 15 years ago that it was important for him to have a studio in Kentish Town because it brought him into close contact with a stream of beautiful, fashionable young women, and that women were underestimated as cultural objects; it was just as important, Eno thought, to pay attention to the fashions and hairstyles of attractive women as to note what was playing at, well, the English National Opera (ENO). Perhaps more so.

On the face of it, that doesn't seem like a very controversial stance. It seems semiotic, democratic, and slightly erotic; the comment of a man who loves women, and loves culture, and is prepared to see women—or at least the strangers passing by his door—as culture. The logical extension of this is that one would "review" women, or the cultural signifiers they display, in exactly the same way as one reviews, say, a classic record by Caetano Veloso. And of course newspapers and blogs do this; papers have fashion coverage, and back in August I ended my Click Opera Beauty Week with a paen to the beauty of a girl called Nine.

Well, today I'd like to tell you that it's had a significant impact on the quality of my week to discover that Kumi Okamoto of Paris-based band Konki Duet has grown her hair long, as you can see from the photo above, where she's modelling a raw silk blouse from Paris Chinatown company Hoaly (reduced from €25 to just €16, hurry hurry!).

Of course, treating women as culture is problematical. Here are some of the problems, abstracted from complaints that arose when I "reviewed" Nine (not from Nine herself, mind you, but from "feminist" male friends of hers):

1. Women are cultural, of course, but they're not just culture. They're people too!
My response: But of course culture isn't just culture either. It's people too, and when you review it you hurt or help people.

2. How can you, as a man, distinguish your aesthetic appreciation of a woman from your sexual appreciation of her?
My response: I can't. The pleasure parts of our brains are so intimately connected with bodily pleasures—our appetites for sex and food—that it's silly to even try to disentangle the aesthetic from the sensual. But please don't assume I'm trying to seduce every woman I express appreciation of.

3. The woman may not like to be appreciated, and your girlfriend may not like you to speak about your admiration for other women!
My response: This argument comes from men, not from the women I'm "reviewing" and not from my girlfriend, who's quite capable of discussing the beauty of other women with me. The women in question have posted images of themselves in public places, seeking aesthetic admiration... as we all do. It makes the world a better place.

4. You're paying too much attention to how people look, and not enough to how they are inside!
My response: If you look at 2, you'll see that I don't dissociate the aesthetic and the sensual. Similarly, I tend to be endorsing what people do as well as how they look. Kumi, for instance, has made really wonderful pop records with Konki Duet, Shinsei, Crazy Curl, and so on. What's more, beauty (and this is something you can't see in photographs) is also about a way of being. I've known Kumi as a friend since 2001, and her way of being is simple (she works in a bakery), virtuous, sincere, serious, and slightly ingenue. These, along with things like body posture, voice, and so on, all add to the effect. Body and soul can't, in the end, be separated, and nor can a person's outside be detached from her inside, her surface from her depth.

5. Your "appreciation" might sit better in France or Japan than Britain or America, and might sit better in the 60s than now.
My response: You might be right there. One of the things that most marks one epoch from another, and one culture from another, is the way men relate to women. One of the most interesting parts of the discussion between curator Philippe Vergne and Atelier Bow-wow's Yoshiharu Tsukamoto linked from Thursday's comments section is when they talk about Yoshiharu's impressions of walking around Minneapolis, and how it compares with Tokyo. The main difference is sexuality: in Tokyo sexuality is open, on the surface, whereas in Minneapolis it's hidden, sublimated. Perhaps this explains, they speculate, why architecture made in Japan (and Europe) is more social, architecture made in America more psychological.

The kind of objections I'm rebutting here tend to come from Anglo-Saxon men, speaking, with what they think is a "feminist" mindset, on behalf of women they claim to be defending. I wonder, though, if this sort of "feminism" isn't part of the problem, not the solution. It comes from a culture where women are treated as private property, born with the names of their fathers, taking the names of their husbands, disappearing from circulation. This cautionary attitude to their public celebration might even be a kind of "veiling" of women, a desire to exclude them from the cultural process, to rule their sexuality or beauty out-of-order as a cultural signifier.

These problems arise more often in Anglo-Saxon cultures (you'll search English-language blogs in vain for the celebratory, non-sexist vagina seen on Toog's blog this week, for instance) because what poses here as feminism is actually a post-protestant, puritan attitude to women and to beauty. You see it when rockist music fans talk about music made by attractive women, and insist that the music's all that matters, or that attractiveness must somehow equate with superficiality, a link you could find pretty much anywhere, but I most recently found on Marxy's blog in a comment about Relax magazine. "For those worried about the current state of subcultural sophistication in Japanese youth culture," he said sarcastically, "you'll be happy to know the new issue of Relax is dedicated to that eternal source of depth and artistic inspiration: modeling." Somehow I think Brian Eno wouldn't be sneering; he wouldn't see a magazine about modeling as in any way diminishing subcultural sophistication. I'm with Eno; "Sometimes I think that Japanese hairdressers are generating more basic new forms than pop stars," I told Modern Painters magazine in 2003.

No apologies at all, then. Click Opera will continue to endorse beautiful women just as it endorses beautiful music, architecture, design and art. Some of which—unsurprisingly, really—also happens to be made by beautiful women.

Comments

___ and nothing other.

[(Anonymous)]

seeing beauty a woman as beautiful is fine, as long as the other manifestations of beauty in that individual aren:t clouded by that observation.
best,
r.

Re: ___ and nothing other.

[(Anonymous)]

An artist needs to think differently but Click Opera is a singing journalist, so stick to the ideal of women here, it is norm and lad's magazine.

[slime-slime-sly.livejournal.com]

Dude, nick, like i agree with a lot of what you say, but as someone who doesn't fully belong with any of either posses, I don't think it's cool that you keep on bringing up the topic of that certain girl. You use the attacks on you about that to defend your in my opinion very valid and legitimate posture, but the fact is the girl doesn't take this kind of attention so well and you end up sounding more like a moralizing tabloid terrorizing some innocent's life for selling papers. I don't mean it personally, it doesn't really affect me. But you could use some other example from somewhere further in the public sphere, I don't know, you're well cultured so there must surely be another example around.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Like Kumi Okamoto, perhaps?

[slime-slime-sly.livejournal.com]

Sure!She seems cool with the attention. And she's supercool too.

[starmeat.livejournal.com]

Oh Momus, please do post more of these 'attractive women', as you say.
To indulge in the physical, intimate or not, is nothing new to mankind. Especially in regards as to what is artistic, what is beautiful, pleasurable. Personally, I place green tea ice cream right up on the same list as freckles dotted across the bridge of a young girl's face; they both evoke similar feelings.
Society, culture, it's all circular.
I am a woman girl, not held to any standards of beauty or belonging to any one person, &I understand exactly what you are speaking of.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Your wish is my command!

Of course, images remain problematical, for all sorts of reasons.
There's the morality of bandwidth-stealing, for instance, when using images from elsewhere (my rule of thumb is that it's fine when it's Google or a business site). But then there's also the idea that cameras steal your soul. For instance, I just heard today that a girl who was photographed on a street fashion site I visit a lot, Style Arena (http://www.style-arena.jp/english/street/daikanyama/index.htm), is sueing the company, claiming big money in damages and emotional injury. They posted a photo of her wearing a shirt that said "SEX", and then some other site linked it and the girl saw it and got very angry that people were looking at her. But, you know, people look at other people on the street without getting sued. Personally, I think the girl is being selfish, especially if her suit forces the site to close, because that site is a valuable resource and a pleasure for lots of people. Of course, they should be getting their models to sign release forms... But, you know, just how bureaucratic does the world have to get? Just how much about ourselves do we define as "property"? Is every glimpse someone gets of me my property? Should I be in control of every context I'm displayed in, every impression people have of me? And should I expect money when I lose control of these processes? The world's gone so control freaky, it really has...

Beauty and aesthetic experience

[addicted2sushi.livejournal.com]

This post certainly dives into waters that are both muddy and passionate.
The nature of beauty, and its relation to aesthetic experience is a long-standing debate.
Perhaps all that is necessary is that you enjoy the artwork. “De gustibus non est disputandum”.” However, is it enough to just “like” something? I like boxing and dislike carrots. Are they, respectively, beautiful and ugly? “Liking” therefore may be necessary but not sufficient.
A wide view of beauty, and one that includes the pleasure brought to the viewer is advanced by J.Ruskin. “Any material object which can give us pleasure in the contemplation of its outward qualities without any direct and definite exertion of the intellect, is in some way or in some degree beautiful.”
But would it not make better sense to regard beauty as 1 positive attribute among the rest, rather than a dominant genus?
These photos could be considered beautiful because they are appealing to an implicit cultural standard. A standard that has evolved over time and place, and one that include a series of past judgments and deductions.
Aristotle said that, “Beauty is a matter of size and order.” This would be the beginning of defining what beauty is.
St Thomas Aquinas added integrity, perfection, due proportion and clarity.
These objectivist views tried to set a standard of beauty, while subjectivists such as David Hume and I. Kant analyzed beauty by characterizing its inward effects.
So….
If these pictures (or people) are to be held up as a standard of beauty they will have to meet 2 criteria:
1) The standard will have to be able to be defended against aesthetic controversy
2) The object will have to meet the qualifications given in the standard.

Lots to think about.
I did not wish to enter into the arena of gender issues. That’s another debate.

Enography

[jasongtokyo.livejournal.com]

Is it true that Brian Eno has one of the largest pornography collections in the world?

Re: Enography

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I am:
a mammal
a father
a European
a heterosexual
an artist
a son
an inventor
an Anglo-Saxon
an uncle
a celebrity
a masturbator
a cook
a gardener
an improviser
a husband
a musician
a company director
an employer
a teacher
a wine-lover
a cyclist
a non-driver
a pragmatist
a producer
a writer
a computer user
a Caucasian
an interviewer
a grumbler
a 'drifting clarifier'
- B. Eno

re: women as culture

[matissered.livejournal.com]

We certainly see Eno's point when he argues that watching hairstyles and fashions is on par with other kinds of cultural spectatorship. (That it's the WOMEN'S styles that need to be watched is part of a deeper problem with the orientations and biases of the fashion industry, and not Eno's fault.)But it seems that your post, under the cover of Eno's (relatively) unproblematic idea, is sneaking in an argument based on a different and rather disconcerting inclination.It's hard, we know, to avoid entanglement in larger debates within aesthetic theory, e.g. discerning subjective from objective judgment, the definition of taste, etc. Still, it seems to us as if you're trying to pass off your evaluation of women's PHYSICAL attractiveness---your imperious right, in other words, to stare at hot Asian chicks---as an argument about 'democratic' cultural appreciation. Then, as an aesthete who can "review" women's beauty (enhanced, of course, by their use of fashion) and not to be any more reprehensible for it. But there's only a difference of degree in jargon between this guy and the guy who publicly "admires" women on the street. The world would be a better place, you feel, if this reviewing would be thought as high-minded and culturally engaged as writing a book review for the New Yorker.
In affirming Nine or Kumi Okamoto's beauty you DO assert that you are looking beyond surface qualities (if you didn't, you'd be getting into some explosive territory; reminds us in particular of the series of articles that Life Magazine ran during WWII trying to distinguish Japanese facial features from Chinese. With reference to these, you might make judgments according to how symmetrical a woman's jaw is, the width of her nose, the distance from her eyebrow to her eyelid---but you seem, at least in theory, to have rejected this method). Instead, you want to evaluate them in terms of the 'style' they display. Okamoto, we read, is simple (she works in a bakery), virtuous, sincere, serious, and slightly "ingénue"-- But what we find unsettling even in this case is not the question of whether these qualities are good or whether she in fact has them---it is that, in them, you are implicating, (and by nature of a review 'series'--socializing), yet another standard that Asian women should follow.

-ann lee & catherine hansen

Re: women as culture

[imomus.livejournal.com]

what we find unsettling even in this case is not the question of whether these qualities are good or whether she in fact has them---it is that, in them, you are implicating, (and by nature of a review 'series'--socializing), yet another standard that Asian women should follow.

I'm going to assume that when you say "implicating" you mean "implying". And I don't see how a description of one person becomes a prescription that others can or feel they should follow. Isn't that a bit like saying that—to keep up the admittedly provocative and problematical culture metaphor—if I praise a Beethoven symphony for its Romantic intensity, I must implicitly be dissing Bach as a cold fish?