Beauty isn’t moral, morality isn’t beautiful, and capitalist patriarchy is bad
On September 12th of 2023, musician Liam Miller posted a Tiktok, captioned “pov: the nice friend and the mean friend.” In the video, Liam, the nice friend, appears to be giving his somewhat nuanced and sensitive take on an acquaintance when someone behind the camera, the mean friend, interrupts him with “she’s also ugly!” Liam appears taken aback by this and responds that “[he] [doesn’t] think that was necessary.” Because it wasn’t.
We have long associated physical beauty with moral goodness and a lack thereof with the opposite. We speak of someone having an “ugly” episode when they lash out or having a “beautiful” soul when they are kind-hearted, as though the aesthetics of those things is what marks them as right or wrong, good or bad. In our stories, the hideous orcs of Mordor fought against the elegant elves; the haggard witch poisoned the apple of the pristine snow white; the brutish Goliath fought against the noble David; and so on. Even when this association is outright untrue, in the perception of the characters of their respective worlds, the Elephant Man belonged in the freak show, Quasimodo was unfit for the public eye, and the Beast had to isolate himself until his appearance “matched” his pure heart. This phenomenon is so pervasive that even characters deliberately written to be unattractive are often portrayed by very attractive actors as a matter of selection bias in the film and TV industry, undercutting stories bold enough to confront this conflation of vibes and virtue.
Superficial, “pretty privilege” is not a relic of the past, nor something relegated to fascist propaganda and “retvrn” edits, rather it remains pervasive, even beyond the hegemonic zeitgeist. Far too often, failing to meet dominant aesthetic standards renders one a legitimate target, regardless of one’s character or morals. These appeals to aesthetics are consequently irredeemable and ought to be rejected out of principle.
One of the more recent relevant examples of this phenomenon is the “why do poly people look like that” trend. On January 12th of this year, Tiktok user Andrew posted a video asking why people in open/non-monogamous/polyamorous relationships look “like that,” to which some poly people responded asking Andrew what he meant by that. These responses were quickly hounded for being examples of what Andrew was talking about, including in a Tiktok by user Reyah going through the comments of one such video, which included statements like “thank you im a visual learner” and “i love when examples pop up.”
I expected this trend to have been spearheaded by the same group leading the charge against other groups of queer people, but I was surprised to find it was just the opposite: most creators who made content about this topic appeared to be somewhere on the left.
Even thoughtful commentary on the subject, like that offered by Lee Tepper on Tiktok, has been lambasted. In their video, Lee observes how it makes sense that people who buck the romantic and sexual norms of the dominant society would do the same to its norms of personal expression and appearance. They also make the connection between how the same creators commenting on polyamorous people speak about neurodivergent people who don’t mask. Both groups deserve dignity and respect, irrespective of how they are perceived by others.
But it doesn’t matter. They look “like that” and are thus deserving targets of ridicule.
Granted, not all poly people took Andrew’s Tiktok and the subsequent conversation around it personally. It’s also possible my reading of the situation is committing the goomba fallacy, as internet discourse is often messy and loses nuance and direction fast. Still, this discourse is at best mean-spirited, though more accurately, it is an attack on queer people with a striking resemblance to anti-trans rhetoric being pushed by conservatives today. What’s more, to stereotype this group assumes all people of that given experience look a particular way, again conflating presentation with lifestyle and sexuality.
The biggest question I want to ask those who perpetrated this trend is, why bother with any of it? What have these people done to hurt you? Why does it matter? I am not polyamorous, but just because that lifestyle isn’t for me doesn’t mean that it can’t be for anyone else. Instead of seeking to understand the perspectives of polyamorous people, those who joined the dogpile deemed an entire section of the population as ugly and thus unworthy. What is stopping them from simply accepting people for who they are?
At the root of this is a rejection of difference and an appeal to hegemonic standards. To say that someone looks “different” is to imply that there is a normative, standard, non-different way to appear. These standards are not neutral, nor do they exist concretely; they are the product of social norms, resultant of our current social order.
Patriarchy under capitalism binds us all at the disproportionate expense of some. It fabricates a dominant culture contrasted against those who detract from it by refusing to fully embrace it. It boxes us into gendered, sexed roles and sells us the means to conform to them, only to then shift the goalposts on what is “in” vs “out”. Men are expected to loudly display their masculinity through aggression and strength by separating themselves from women – except for as sexual objects to conquer – and from gay men – a label which is made to include anyone “not man enough”. Women are expected to conform to contradictory conditions, exist foremost in relation to their children and husband, and either become active facilitators of the patriarchy or submit to it entirely. Moreover, capitalist patriarchy replicates racial and sexual colonial dynamics that frame East Asian men as weak and sexually impotent, East Asian women as passive sexual objects, Arab men as sexually deviant and brutal, Arab women as mysterious objects, Black men as dangerous predators against white women, Black women as seductive but also manish, the whitest white people as the standard for beauty, and other such racial and sexual notions. Those who meet these standards are viewed as more respectable, attractive, and morally worthy than those who do not.
These standards constantly and superficially change, such as with fast fashion retailers and their unrealistic models incentivizing entirely unsustainable consumerism, yet they always retain their core colonial, racial, and sexual foundations. The problem is not simply that these standards are inexorably colonial, racist, and sexist in nature, but that the broad imposition of standards in the first place inevitably marginalizes the aesthetics of some over others, very often those already at the margins. What’s more, the tendency of the capitalist patriarchy to demand a performance of its standards to earn moral worthiness is itself inherently problematic, as it creates a cycle wherein those in the dominant classes are always elevated because they are always dictating the standards by which worthiness is evaluated. With its necessarily oppressive and unjust structure, any and all appeals to capitalist patriarchy and its standards for personal, sexual, and otherwise aesthetic presentation are doomed to fail and cannot effectively challenge the hegemonic order; you cannot defeat the patriarchy by becoming a part of it.
Take, for instance, the meme of “I would let her ruin my life.” While I understand that these memes are generally not to be taken literally, analyzing it reveals something deeper about our understanding of power.
By positioning one’s self as a legitimate and willing target of violence for an attractive person – implicitly so that this person could, in the process of taking advantage of them, provide the subject some sexual release – they directly reinforce the idea that the sexiness of a person corresponds to the legitimacy of the harm they cause. The subject conditions the moral legitimacy of and consent to violence against them on the beauty of the perpetrator. In other words, it conflates self-detrimental submission with expressing desire. Letting someone get away with terrible things is not justified because you think they are hot. It’s “not that deep” until you’ve said, read, and felt it enough times that you start to believe it.
The implicit assumptions in these posts reinforce aesthetic justifications for rape culture. They blur the lines between consenting parties living the crazy life and outright abuse while reframing sexual attraction by dangerously conflating it with love. You deserve better.
What’s more, beauty standards are not neutral; they are dynamic, subjective, and part of the superstructure informed by the material conditions and economic realities of a given society. In 19th-century Persia, women would often draw thin mustaches on themselves while men would be cleanly-shaven. In ancient Greece, women sported thick, AD-esque eyebrows. In different nations across pre-colonial, sub-Saharan Africa, women were idealized as having long necks and extravagant hairstyles. In what is now Austria, dozens of thousands of years ago, a figurine found at an archaeological site of a fat, curvy woman may hint at the larger nature of their idealized female form. Today, hegemonic American culture values a thin but sturdy figure for women and a larger, muscular form for men, yet there are also many threads and trends of bodies being valued as a reflection of the greater society, such as “dad bods” and to “plus-size” modeling.
This diversity in standards does not merely show a natural variance in body types and society's ideas about them, but also the subjectiveness of what is considered beautiful. We speak of beauty as though it is some objective fact, even as we understand that not everything nor everyone we find beautiful is understood as such for others; you are someone’s “type”, but not everyone’s. Why limit the scope of this intuitive understanding to the individual level?
There is beauty to be found all around us and in all of us. There are also many people who ought to be criticized for the things they do and say, yet there are a multitude of ways to do so without trying to hijack a system of racialized, gendered, sexed, and classed hierarchy for one’s own ends. Why, then, do so many continue to appeal to these deeply objectionable notions all the same?
Take, for instance, calling people “virgins” for displaying “loser behavior”. This reifies the standard of sexual dynamism by correlating it with morality. These patriarchal standards imply that this person must either prove their sexual virtue or be shamed for the lack thereof. Bad people “get some” too – and that should not be a legitimate point of shame for them either.
Another example is the assumption that people who drive around in big trucks are overcompensating for their small penises. This weird, pseudo-freudian standard attempts to leverage the patriarchal notion of penis size equating to virtue – another historically-variable standard. I think assumptions about people made at face value are often too quickly accepted as fact, but it’s also true that I’ve never seen a reasonable bumper sticker on a vaulted pickup. Why, then, bring the genitals of the driver into it? Body shaming is bad, even if the target places undue value onto the part of their body being scrutinized. Just as aesthetics do not make one virtuous, a lack of virtue does not make targeting the aesthetics of the target legitimate. I would rather criticize the driver of a truck with a Trump sticker in the rear window for being racist or xenophobic than for potentially lacking a magnum dong.
Then again, “they say two wrongs don’t make it right, but it damn sure makes it even,” and so I do not mean to imply here that the transgressions I describe are “just as bad” as the actions of the person they are calling out or that we ought to police the ways people call out their oppressors. Incels have created an entire toxic culture around hatred of women for not having sex with them, and I will not come to their defense when they are met with mockery from those calling out this pathetic behavior as such. It also makes sense to create propaganda depicting, for example, fascists as snakes or insects, given these creatures lack consciences, much like fascists; there is artistic and moral merit in illustratively dehumanizing those who structurally dehumanize others.
Instead, I aim here to create conversation around the ways in which aesthetics are needlessly deployed against targets that do not deserve it and/or would be better addressed if criticized for their actual heinous actions. There is a time and place for conversations about the boundaries of these principles, hence why this is here on The Rose to be read on one’s own time, or better yet, on the boss’ dime.
Some have attained a false consciousness when it comes to accepting other people for how they present themselves. They have transcended hegemonic standards to welcome alternative styles and aesthetics. They have even moved past the petty and needless ridicule of those who meet hegemonic standards and have accepted that some are comfortable conforming while others are not. Yet they refuse to move beyond patriarchal capitalist thought on beauty itself, continuing to place moral worth on the attractiveness of others, as though those notions have a causative relationship. They are not beyond the scope of this conversation, in spite of what they may falsely believe.
It is one thing to not personally find something attractive or beautiful, as your taste in something may differ from someone else’s, but it is another to continue enforcing ideas about what it means for something to be beautiful or not. It is one thing to share frank and honest aesthetic advice if it is welcomed by the recipient, but you can do that without asserting yourself over them like a petulant middle manager. If you want to accept others for who they are, you cannot make your respect for their presentation conditional on their perceived virtue, especially if you cannot separate the two. Don’t just say “let people enjoy things;” mean it.
Ultimately, there is no one standard of beauty. There are things humans tend to find beautiful, like shiny metals and geometric patterns, yet not all do. There are things humans tend not to find beautiful, like blemished skin, snakes, and spiders, yet some do. Beauty is not an objective fact; it is a social construct, reified across generations and composed of endless threads of styles, genres, artists, notions, and cultures. It is an expression of ourselves and the vast diversity across humanity, united not by one standard of beauty, but by many.
In a similar vein, there is no singular objective morality; it is not merely relative but is culturally-constitutive. When exactly it is permissible to kill, displace, reward, and so on is not perfectly defined in any culture and varies greatly across them. Someone of one experience may not comprehend the moral reasoning of another from another, yet neither are illegitimate and both can be understood.
Here, the absurdity of morality as beauty, particularly the petty aesthetic articulations of that idea, are seen at their core. What justifies the assumption you have assigned to this individual’s particular self-expression? Why did you feel the need to address a matter only as related to the problem at hand as you have constructed it to be? What makes your standards better than theirs? Who cares if they’re hot?
None of this is to say that you can’t enjoy thirst traps of Pedro Pascal or whatever devious smut you’ve dredged up from AO3, rather we should avoid the problematic inability to separate the aesthetics of a person from their character, even in ways that may appear harmless or even liberatory. It is one thing to rightfully observe that all art is political and therefore that the political and the aesthetic are entangled. It is another to allow aesthetics to supplant substantive critique and moral accountability – even in tiny, petty, insidious ways. So long as someone’s self-expression doesn’t bring relevant harm to others, let them be. Let people discover themselves – even in ways they may later find cringey or regrettable or in ways you don’t really understand or appreciate. Let people get lip filler or use neopronouns or shave their head or wear hiking boots everywhere or try a throuple. Call them out for the actual transgressions they commit.
Who cares if “she’s also ugly”. It doesn’t matter. We all look ugly to someone.
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