Perfect Me: Beauty as an Ethical Ideal

by Heather Widdows

How looking beautiful has become a moral imperative in today’s world

The demand to be beautiful is increasingly important in today's visual and virtual culture. Rightly or wrongly, being perfect has become an ethical ideal to live by, and according to which we judge ourselves a success or failure. Perfect Me explores the changing nature of the beauty ideal, showing how it is more dominant, demanding, and global than ever before. Arguing that our perception of the self is changing, Heather Widdows shows that more and more, we locate the self in the body. Nobody is firm enough, thin enough, smooth enough, or buff enough―not without significant effort and cosmetic intervention. To understand these rising demands, we need to recognize their ethical aspect and seek out new communal responses.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Feminism, Psychology, Womens, Gender, Theory

360 pages, Paperback

Published February 25, 2020

Reviews

[Lindy · Rating 1 out of 5]

1) Widdows is far from the only person who does this, but it still confuses me every time when people argue that beauty ideals are expansive, coercive, and affect every woman, only in the next paragraph to write that women who choose to espouse countercultural ideals do so as a function of their privilege and their very existence (??? Widdows isn't clear about what exactly it is they do) makes others feel ashamed of themselves and that's bad. Radicalization isn't necessarily a bad thing and lots of different types of people can be radicalized! And sometimes people should feel ashamed! In lieu of expanding on this here, I will point readers towards Sara Ahmed's Living a Feminist Life.

2) In Chapter 10's conclusion, Widdows writes that she has "(mostly) rejected the claim that conforming to beauty ideals is a form of gendered exploitation, done to men by women, and to create and signal women as a subordinate class" (251). She is only able to argue this for two reasons. The first is that she has previously delineated a "beauty ideal" as distinct from a sexual ideal mostly because female runway models are sometimes considered beautiful without being sex symbols. The second is that she claims women now look at men the way men look at women. What I think I'm getting at is that Widdows fails to situate heterosexuality as a related and intertwined coercive force, but so is intra-gender competition to become the most perfect woman/man in the eyes of others of the same gender.

3) It's really a shame that this book was published without even a single glance from an editor. The author's syntax is awful and she often fails to adhere to nonfiction writing conventions that enhance readability, such introducing a text from which one is quoting. There are even basic errors like homonym confusion and missing words, plus a weird fungibility/fundabilty switcheroo. Honestly, did a draft get published by accident?

[Margaret · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a non academic but someone with a facial disfigurement I found this book interesting. Those who do not look different really don’t understand the discrimination and looks I get. Surgery is always a risk and I will never understand someone who wants to enhance their looks to satisfy society. Dermal fillers and Botox ugh. We hope this pandemic might make women realise what is essential in life. But as it ends you still have tv programmes encouraging unnecessary cosmetic surgery! I cannot agree with many reviewers who have given this book a low rating!

[Dee · Rating 3 out of 5]

I agree with Widdows's overall premise that the beauty ideal is turning into an ethical imperative, and I find the overall argumentation lucid and important. However, there were some serious shortcomings about the work. Most surprising to me, and totally unexpected for a book published with Princeton UP, was the incredibly sloppy editing. There were punctuation errors on almost every page, along with some strange word choice errors that should have been caught. Second, the book is unnecessarily bogged down by a long initial disclaimer about method and intent, as well as by pages and pages of endless summary of argument in every single chapter. That summary disrupts the flow and seriously reduces the enjoyment of reading. Third, at times Widdows's thinking is surprisingly basic--some of her argumentation falls into the positive/negative dichotomy that she herself criticizes elsewhere, and I felt I was reading work by one of my undergrads rather than polished philosophy writing. Fourth, Widdows has failed to convince me that the beauty ideal is actually becoming more stringent and labor-intensive. Across large swathes of this long book, she simply assumes (and repeats and repeats and repeats) that the beauty ideal is increasingly demanding and dominating, but I can't shake the feeling that she's mostly talking about a very specific demographic: white, Western, affluent, educated women who are steeped in social-media culture in the late 2010s. The historical thinking and predictive power of the work might not be very strong--also judging from the surprisingly short bibliography for a book of such length. Fifth, and finally, her writing is sometimes less precise than it should be when it comes to matters of consent and sexual assault. In the chapter on the relationship between beauty and rape culture, she often uses "sexual desire" as a loose placeholder term when gesturing towards the causes of assault or rape. Fifty years of scholarship on the issue show that rape isn't caused by "desire"--it's a crime of power, and Widdows has done so much writing on objectification and choice that she should know better.

[Liebeskind · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am glad that I read this book. I orignially bought it and started reading it because I was in recovery from an eating disorder and the premise of the book (that being beautiful is a moral imperative) resonated with me. In that aspect, I was not disappointed – more often than not, I could see myself in the stories Widdows told and the claims she made. For me, it was refreshing to read about the want (or need) to look beautiful not from a psychological, but from a philosophical point of view – most often, the desire to be beautiful, as well as eating disorders and other types of illnesses that stem from this desire, are seen as an individual‘s problem or fault. Widdows, on the other hand, makes it clear that those problems are inevitable in a society which values looks above all else and not the fault of an elephant person. She also argues that nothing could be less trivial than being beautiful, as it is a requirement for almost all social mobility, social standing, and just being a worthy or „good-enough“ person. Before reading this book, I sometimes felt alienated because of my ED and the way I think about things like being thin and beautiful. While reading „Perfect me“ I sometimes was overwhelmed with gratitude, because the book told me that the pressure I felt wasn‘t just in my head. It felt very true to my lived experience most of the time. At times, the points were well argued, other times they weren‘t, but overall the conclusions she draws from her arguments seemed logical and true. The author did lots of research and the book contained lots of sources which I am excited to check out. I loved this book for what it gave me as well as for its social scientific content. Now for the negative parts:
I expected this book to be, if nonfiction, still entertaining and easy to read. This was not the case, as it was written in the style of an academical thesis… i.e. every chapter has an introduction, stating the intent of the chapter and the arguments (which is also frequently made clear in the middle part), and a conclusion, which does essentially the same thing. You have to get over that in order to read the book, and I imagine it would put a lot of people off, since it makes the writing drag on and on. There also were lots of errors in the writing, to the point where you had to ask yourself if this book had been proofread or not. They made it harder to forget the fact that I was reading. The book is unnessecarily long and repetitive and took me even longer to read.
In conclusion: I disliked the writing style of the book as well as the apparant carelessness of the publisher. I liked the philosophical content of the text, and most of all I liked the fact that it made me feel like I understood my lived experience better for it.

[Ietrio · Rating 1 out of 5]

shallow research based on comparing some dubious research with a virtual reality imagined by Widdows and assumed as "the past".

[Hayden Fisher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Executes on exactly what it intends to execute on. I do fully intend to adopt the frameworks this book is pushing. Let me tell you, she is absolutely cooking in the final quarter of this book. Heather Widdows firmly makes the case that beauty ideals are converging globally, are becoming an ethical ideal, and the minimum we expect of people to maintain their appearance is rising steadily, which is cause for concern.

But I have to admit, this was a tough read. This is not a commercial book in the slightest, it is steeped in academia, more focused on being bulletproof than well-paced. I don’t think I’ve read a purely academic book front to back in my life, so hopefully this will get easier over time as I read more feminist philosophy. Didn’t help that the book itself was poor quality, with the cover degrading in my hands after a bit.

Amazing work, i highly recommend it, but id be remiss to say I enjoyed reading it

[Kim Schulze · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not impressed. Too much space devoted to telling us what this chapter will tell us. Then telling us what the chapter did tell us. Over and over. I found the notes more interesting.

In addition, this could really have used a proofreader. Tons of mistakes. Missing words, wrong words. Even the notes: Example: MYA is discussed in chapter 000 note 000 and Meg Matthew's threadlift in chapter 000 note 000. I found this multiple times.

Anyway, I had high hopes for this book; sad it wasn't up to my expectations.

[Gia (지아) · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this after having 3 simultaneous thoughts: (1) “wow this is a pretty deep wrinkle in my forehead” (2) “should I get Botox?” (3) “did I actually just ask myself if I should get Botox!? what the FUCK”

This was the kind of book that - if you’re a woman who grew up in the social media age - kind of doesn’t tell you anything you didn’t already know (on some level at least). It was a bit repetitive, but overall a good way to summarise and understand some concepts that feel nebulous at the best of times.

[H · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not badly written but redundant. From the ABC podcast Professor Heather Widdows did make some good points, which are the reasons why I chose to read this book. It’s a disenchantment, have to admit.

[kavya · Rating 3 out of 5]

“For very many of us, when we say we are “good” for engaging in beauty work we do mean that we are “morally good”; that these actions are good in themselves. The implication is that we have not merely done something good instrumentally (i.e., for a prudential reason such as for better health), but something good in general, something we value for, and believe is good, in itself, a moral good.”

“As the beauty ideal becomes more dominant, its ethical aspect increases, and beauty activity becomes required activity; less a personal preference and more an ethical duty.”

“Moreover, I suspect that those women who do succeed in rejecting and resisting the beauty ideal either do so at significant cost and some effort, or they are protected from the costs of nonconformity by membership in a community that endorses some other competing beauty ideal or other ideals that oppose the dominant beauty ideal. These communities are increasingly rare, and often privileged.”

“There may be enclaves of certain professions and ways of life where the demands of beauty do not apply—and where women do not suffer external costs for not conforming to the beauty ideal and where nonconformity may even be rewarded. For instance, academics often tell me (sometimes a little too smugly) that they never wear make-up, and cannot imagine why anyone would consider cosmetic surgery or straighten their hair or engage in other beautifying practices. Underlying such statements is the implication that to engage in beauty practices is somehow beneath them, for lesser beings. However, often, such rejection of the beauty ideal is not the whole story. For example, they may reject make-up but diet obsessively, ostensibly for health reasons, but nonetheless they maintain a thin figure (and benefit from all the assumptions that go with thinness). Such behavior allows conforming to a key aspect of the beauty ideal while simultaneously dismissing it. Alternatively they may conform in settings “outside” academia (for instance, at special events) or over time, and under pressure from others. Even when such protestations are genuine, and adhered to consistently, rejection might not be the “pure” rejection it seems. For instance, the claim that beauty matters less in academia, because all are equal in the “life of the mind,” is belied by the gender disparities in academia and the difficulty that women find succeeding in an overwhelmingly male environment (at least in some disciplines). In addition, it ignores other hierarchies of power that a rejection of beauty invokes, particularly but not only, those of race and class. As Ruth Holliday and Jacqueline Sanchez Taylor note, the hierarchy of beauty has promoted certain types of beauty as true and natural (good) and other forms of beauty as false and artificial (bad). Such categorizations are a means by which some groups distance themselves from others. In particular, middle-class white women assert their superiority over working class women and women of color. Such a rejection of beauty is only possible in relatively privileged groups and is a form of demarcating “them” from “us”[.]”

“We are forced by law to do all kinds of things, but very few of these are beauty-related. Rather we tend, especially if we are uncorrupted by feminism, to articulate our engagement in beauty practices as if they were freely chosen, as if they were practices we wish to engage in. This does not mean that we do not sometimes feel they are burdensome (we often do) or that they are not sometimes done grudgingly (sometimes they are). But even when we say that we have to do something (such as diet for a wedding, shave before going to the swimming pool, or put on make-up before a big night out), we still tend to think of these practices as prima facie chosen, as things we could equally not do if we chose. This rhetoric of choice is dominant, and often unquestioningly assumed to be accurate, despite our feelings about having to do these things that belies the choice narrative.”

“The scope and the ethical nature of the ideal are mutually reinforcing. As the beauty ideal becomes more dominant, it becomes more accepted, unquestioned, and unquestionable. The more it is unquestioned, the more it is established as a value framework, and the more such moral values are normalized and appear natural. In turn, as the ethical function increases, it becomes harder to resist and reject the beauty ideal, without regarding yourself and others as morally failing, which in turn serves to make the ideal more dominant. These features act in tandem to strengthen the power of the ideal and to make the ideal different from previous beauty ideals. The scope makes it possible for beauty to function as an ethical ideal (enough individuals must conform for the ideal to become embedded and assumed such that it can provide shared standards for ethical judgment). In turn, the ethical nature of the ideal, which promises success and condemns failure as moral failure, encourages increasing investment in the beauty ideal as an important, and perhaps primary, value framework. The ultimate extension of scope is to a global beauty ideal.”

“Every step of this process must be learned, and successfully mastering these practices requires the development of a not insignificant skill set. You need to learn to buy the right products: an increasingly demanding and individualized process as you buy for your skin type (oily, t-zone, dry, or sensitive); for your lifestyle (high maintenance and glamorous, fun and flirty, outdoorsy, grungy, and so on); and for your budget (while more expensive products are presented as superior, made with more costly ingredients or developed by more skilled and dedicated scientists (and here the lines between beauty products and medical products blur), alternatives are available for those on a budget). Similarly, there is a skill set to be mastered when it comes to dress: you need to learn your body shape, your colors, your style. Do you follow fashion and change your wardrobe with the changing collections of the season? Or is your style “classic” and your “capsule wardrobe” made up of investment pieces that will always be in style?”

“Increasingly in makeover culture the choice is not to have cosmetic surgery rather than to have it. Just as a contemporary woman attending an important public event will probably feel the need to wear make-up, the middle aged women of the mid twenty-first century may well live in an environment where cosmetic surgery is the absolute norm. For middle- and upper-class women the decision not to have cosmetic surgery will be a political (or aesthetically perverse) one, a resolution that says certain things about the bearer of wrinkles or the carrier of jowls. In other words, a face unmarked by cosmetic surgery—or rather a face that retains the marks of age—will be a face that makes a statement.”
—Meredith Jones, Skintight

“In addition, she notes that there are some wholly new accounts: for instance, narratives that focus on surgical beauty. Rather than just to improve, the intention is to look as if work has been done; showing financial resources and self-care. However, this is still fairly rare, and “with the occasional exception of breast augmentation, cosmetic surgery is generally deemed ‘best’ when it produces an improved (e.g., younger, slimmer, more ideally feminine) appearance, but not one that has been obviously surgically altered.”
—Debra Gimlin, Cosmetic Surgery Narratives: A Cross-Cultural Analysis of Women’s Accounts

“Nonsurgical, sometimes called noninvasive, procedures also have physical risks. Physical complications of fillers listed by Keogh include infection, lumpiness, ulcers, blood vessel blockages, tissue death, allergic reactions, prolonged swelling and bruising, and, in some cases, blindness. If getting accurate data on cosmetic surgery is hard, then accurate data for nonsurgical procedures are even more difficult to find. Again the survey commissioned by the Keogh Review is one of the few sources of data that is not anecdotal or from very small studies. Those who responded to Keogh reported that they saw complications most commonly from Botox, laser treatment, and dermal fillers. Another study, by BAPPS in 2012, reported that 69 percent of its members had seen patients following temporary fillers, and 49 percent following semipermanent or permanent fillers. To this, we can add anecdotal evidence from GPs, surgeons, and accident and emergency staff, all of whom report addressing injuries from beauty practices. Moreover, these go beyond nonsurgical practices, and medics report burns and abscesses from routine practices such as waxing as well as the well documented harmful consequences of practices such as tanning or skin lightening, for example. The most dramatic of such injuries are a constant source of interest in women’s magazines and the press, which routinely document failures. Thus there is evidence of physical harm to individuals, although it is patchy, partial, and exceedingly limited.

In terms of physical benefit, cosmetic surgery does not result in direct physical benefit if this is understood as improving physical health or health functioning, although there may be some knock-on physical benefits. For instance, the woman who, after liposuction, feels confident enough to wear gym clothes and exercise regularly for the first time may experience physical benefits. But, for the most part, nonphysical benefits are weighted against physical benefits, and it is primarily psychological benefits that are focused upon.”
Department of Health, “Review of the Regulation of Cosmetic Interventions: Final Report (Keogh Review), https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads...
_Cosmetic_Interventions.pdf.

“Dermal fillers are a particular cause for concern as anyone can set themselves up as a practitioner, with no requirement for knowledge, training or previous experience. Nor are there sufficient checks in place with regard to product quality—most dermal fillers have no more controls than a bottle of floor cleaner.”
—Keogh Review

“Beauty practices are one of the few acceptable places in which nonsexual caressing is acceptable and widely available. For example, the only tender and prolonged, nonmedical, human touch an elderly person may receive is the hour a week she spends having her hair and nails done. In many beauty practices—performed by professionals, friends, and family—touch is central. Think of the hours mothers and friends spend braiding hair, painting nails, painting henna, and so on. At least some of the reason we spend time on such practices is to touch and caress.”

“Girls often establish relations of intimacy by exchanging clothes; sisters and roommates raid each other’s closets, sometimes unpermitted; daughters’ feet clomp around in their mothers shoes. I love my sweater, and in letting you wear it you wear an aspect of me.”
—Iris Marion Young. On Female Body Experience: “Throwing Like a Girl” and other Essays.

“This type of objectification does not need a male gaze, or internalized male gaze, indeed in many contexts this is a largely women’s domain—scrutinizing women’s magazines, devouring celeb twitter feeds, and posting and monitoring our image in retouched selfies. While sexual desire shadows beauty (beauty norms are in part instances of what is sexually desirable), it is not always a part of objectification. Sexual desire might be a part of beauty objectification: you might be attracted to the model or, more likely, focus on what will make you more sexually attractive, and to be sure this is sexual self-objectification, although without the sexual threat therefore potentially less harmful. But, just as easily you might focus on the image, the object, and want to be it not overtly for sexual desirability but because this would be an improved, better version of you. The fact that we connect sexual rewards with beauty success (particularly with regard to finding and keeping a partner) does not mean that sexual desire is always involved in objectification. We can be objectified and objectify in nonsexual ways.”

“In a parallel, but nonsexual way, just as Nicollette Sheridan was turned into a sexual object, we can be turned into beauty objects. The young actress thinks she’s displaying herself as a skilled artist or performer at a film premier, but she’s actually displaying herself as an example of achieving (or failing to achieve) the beauty ideal. Likewise, the female politician or sportswoman thinks she’s displaying herself as a professional or expert in one field or another, but all the while she’s actually displaying herself as an example of achieving (or failing to achieve) the beauty ideal. Indeed, given the increasing prevalence of beauty objectification, the actress and politician might be well aware she is presenting in part as a beauty object. The common practice of seeking to identify flaws and beauty failures exemplifies this gaze. For instance, Gill refers to the “red circles,” which are used in magazines or online to draw attention to the flaws in the bodies of those they depict. The type of flaws that might be highlighted include unshaved armpits, cellulite, wrinkles or too much Botox. In such instances, the person is being reduced to a body, or body parts, but not in a sexual way. This is objectification without—or with very little sexual—element. Sexual objectification only potentially enters the picture insofar as sexual attractiveness is related to beauty norms. In this sense then objectification, the denial of autonomy and subjectivity, as well as instrumentalization is present in beauty, but without sexual connotations. Similarly, the self can be reduced to an object, judged as such, but not straightforwardly as a sexual object.”
Rosalind Gill, “Postfeminist Media Culture: Elements of a Sensibility,” European Journal of Cultural Studies 10 (2): 147– 166.

“Third, not all beauty gazes are the same, and a particularly worrying trend is the “surveillant gaze,” identified by Gill and Elisa. This is a technological gaze, like the surgical gaze, or what Bernadette Wegenstien calls the cosmetic gaze; this is not a human gaze. It is inhuman, unforgiving, critical, clinical, and cold. If this gaze becomes predominant and overwhelms the positive aspects of the self and the possibilities for the self, we will be destroyed by it. We will become, in the language of Estella Tincknell, abject, “a collection of disparate body parts to be endlessly worked on or even replaced as part of the plenitude of consumer choice.” Under this gaze, beautification will rarely be fun, and even the best advertising will struggle to convince us that it is: Gill argues that current advertising hides the discipline and high expectations by presenting beauty as playful and a pleasurable hobby. If this gaze becomes dominant, the dual nature of the self under the beauty ideal, and the dual nature of the ideal itself, will collapse. It will no longer be dual. This gaze will destroy, highlighting our failures and offering standards we can never even begin to attain. At this point, the burdens of beauty will no longer be compensated by pleasures, and I would expect that eventually women will reject such norms. However, for the time being we have to live with and under an increasingly technical and inhuman gaze, which while more demanding and punishing is not yet intolerable.

Thus, ultimately and collectively, beauty objectification might be more harmful than sexual objectification. Because we buy, and embrace, beauty objectification, we are more subject to it, it is more difficult to resist, it is, as I have argued throughout, more dominant, more demanding and defining of ourselves (in a way sexual objectification is not). Accordingly, some harms might be mitigated and the ideal made bearable, but the overall harms of a demanding and dominant beauty ideal functioning as an ethical ideal remain and increase. For now, what is important to recognize and respect is that there are positive aspects of the self as an object/subject (actual, transforming and imagined), which need to be understood if the continued dominance of the beauty ideal is to be explained.”
—Bernadette Wegenstien, The Cosmetic Gaze.
—Estella Tincknell, “Scourging the Abject Body: Ten Year Younger and Fragmented Femininity Under Neoliberalism,” in New Femininities: Postfeminism, Neoliberalism and Subjectivity, eds. Rosalind Gill and Christina Scharff (Basing-stoke: Palgrave Macmillan , 2011 2013), 83–95, 86.

“Those who engage in risky beauty practices may well know the risks, in that they have the information, and indeed may even know the risks in great detail. However, the question is whether this is the same as understanding. Individuals do not expect the side-effects of botched surgery to happen to them. Likewise, studies show that those who have had cosmetic surgery commonly report that they would not have changed their mind, no matter what information had been given to them at the point of consent; implying that at this point had they been alerted to additional risks they would still have gone ahead. For example, Davis’s interviewees reported that more information would not have altered their decision. This suggests that the point of consent is not a point at which people seeking cosmetic surgery are likely to change their mind and consider alternatives (if this is the case, effective intervention needs to be earlier in the decision-making process).”

“As an individual I cannot—whatever I personally feel—make it suddenly beautiful to be big-waisted, with bingo or bat wings, cankles, and cellulite. I can of course still feel beautiful if I have all these features, for instance, if I have high self-esteem, perhaps from a great relationship, in which I feel attractive and desired or from valuing my body for what it can do rather than how it looks. I might even resist appearance norms altogether and value other measures of esteem over appearance, such as being a good mum or a good philosopher, making me relatively resistant to pressures to conform. However, as I argued, this becomes harder as appearance becomes more prominent, as culture becomes increasingly visual and virtual, and as technological fixes become accessible and affordable and as the beauty ideal functions as an ethical ideal. Thus while some might continue to resist the ideal, in the current context, resistance is harder, becomes political and is increasingly regarded as abnormal.”

[Ada]

If you tally up the university press books on my shelves, Princeton is far and away the most represented, since I usually find theirs to be the best balance of engaging and rigorous. This one felt lacking in both those departments.

Classic case of excellent idea, unfortunate execution. It was way too redundant to be compelling, with Widdows' repeating her basic premises many times but then failing to elaborate on them beyond what I could have gotten from binge-scrolling HuffPo or Bust articles on the same topic. At least those have a sense of humor.

I think it works best as an introduction to philosophical concepts loosely using beauty as a framework to discuss them. Or as an introduction to beauty work for someone who hasn't been exposed to the aforementioned type of articles from the better days of Jezebel (RIP). If you were anywhere in the feminist blogosphere in the decade before it was published, this book is probably not going to tell you anything Jia Tolentino and her cohort haven't already.

There is also a lot of unsubstantiated handwaving at "other cultures" and "societies" without concrete evidence or information or even anecdotes to back up her sweeping claims. Also, even a first-year philosophy student would have been able to see the glaring logical gaps and leaping conclusion Widdows' relies on for so much of this. My heart hurt. I haven't seen writing this utterly unconcerned with supporting its thesis outside of those gen-ed requirement philosophy papers written by people who could not give tuppence about the class. Could have been an academic paper, would probably have been better as an academic paper. Ended up skimming the last 200 or so pages because it was just so repetitive and vague.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an accessible, not too long, popular philosophy book that helped me sort through some of my uncomfortable feelings about how I view parties as they relate to personal virtue and social capital. The non-academic writing can get somewhat repetitive as the author foreshadows and reviews what she has just said, but if this is a topic, that’s interesting to you. I think you’ll get something out of it.

The urgency of this now more than five-year-old discussion is that our more transient, more lonely, more virtual world means that we will be judged more by our appearance than prior generations. And I don’t think she says this explicitly, but the loss of religion in public life probably also means people are still seeking moral character, but now turning it inward on maintenance of one’s appearance. This is definitely a good book for fans of the movie “The Substance”

The only thing I have trouble with is the empirical part. There are plenty of us who are fat, ugly, getting older who get through life and maybe because they have no chance of reaching the ideal just don’t worry about it anymore. Is the author too focused on young people because she’s an academic? I hope more people than she thinks are blissfully unconcerned about these issues.

[Jason · Rating 5 out of 5]

Heather Widdows is a beauty philosopher and has spent a lot of time thinking deeply about what it means to have beauty as an ideal. Her main thesis is the dangers of this ideal when we as a society also make it an ethical ideal. She considers the benefits and downfalls of being beautiful. She looks at myths and assumptions people have about being beautiful. She write about what happens when we make beauty our only and greatest ideal. I believe a lot of the negative reviews are from women who are entitled, coddled, naive, or delusional. It was really a refreshing use of time to read her book, to pause and reflect more carefully about the changing norms of our society.

[Hannah Gerrard · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think this book is redundant at times but the point being is that beauty is feeling claustrophobic with its ideals. It’s become a homogenized way of looking at people with outer looks being the facet in which we are seen and judged.

Historically, beauty was meant to be less global and more cultural based on different cultures and areas but with the growth of social media it has unfortunately become a singular idea of what it should be.

I think it’s important to look into these topics as someone who consumes social media and has to perpetuate ideals within my job and I would argue it’s important to challenge how you see yourself and others around you from this focal length.

[Ezekiel Blessing · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting premise, but I don't think there was enough meat on the bones of the argument she was making about beauty exploitation being separate from other types. I get where she was going with it, but I wish she had gone deeper into it, considering that's a view that diverges from modern discussions of beauty

[Madeline · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ideas! Nuance! Reasoning and logic applied to beauty, which usually just gets vibes, marketing, or ignored! It was clunky and repetitive in a way that I think is typical of works of philosophy. And I have no clue how her commas made it through an editor. But the world needed her to make this argument. I’ll remember and references it for ages to come.

[Mills College Library]

301 W638 2018

[Madeline]

This is a deeply frustrating book.

[Vlad Veen · Rating 3 out of 5]

In Perfect Me: Beauty as an Ethical Ideal, British philosopher Heather Widdows makes the case that the pursuit of beauty (which we are all apart of to varying degrees) has developed into a moral imperative in today's visual and virtual world, thus renovating our understandings of ourselves and others. With respect to daily beauty routines, these commitments are trending toward becoming global, narrow, and more difficult to maintain.

I really wanted to rate this book higher because Widdows, generally, makes an interesting point about the rising demands of modern beauty standards. However, there are some methodological, structural, and grammatical quibbles that I have to spotlight.

Most notably, much of the text consists of summarizing the specific claims that Widdows is substantiating. This was most clear at the beginning and end of each chapter. This isn't normally a problem; in fact, it's appreciated when writers do this, especially those in a difficult field like philosophy. Yet, so many words were spent covering the argumentative basics that it detracted from my experience reading the book. It was simply too fluffy. A similar concern is the alarming amount of syntax errors littered throughout the text. This never impeded my understanding of Widdows reasoning, but it's something that should be corrected before publication.

Regarding Widdows' argument, this same issue of fluff makes the thesis rather repetitive. Yes, beauty standards are rising, requiring more commitments, and constricting toward a singular vision of resplendency; so much so that men are experiencing this pull. While she does some of the work of citing evidence in her favor while also drawing on the work of previous feminist philosophers, Widdows' proposal was rather generalized to justify much beyond an academic article. For instance, it's lacking a non-binary and queer perspective. She recognizes this issue and states this omission is due to the significant amount of material in her broader claims. I appreciate the acknowledgment, but I contend there was certainly room for this avenue when some more text is trimmed. At least citing some LGBTQIA+ philosophers that are working in this domain would've been sufficient.