February 21, 2023
"Not only were women inside-out men, but in the medieval theory of bodily 'humors,' men were sanguine, rational, hot and dry..."
"... while women were phlegmatic, lascivious, cold and moist. Eager to be warmed up by sexual contact, they were forever trying to lure the poor rational male into fornication (the current idea that women have a lower sex drive than men would have been news to Aquinas).
Viewing the female body through a medieval lens instantly exposes how transitory, not to say absurd, all such androcentric ideas are. While modern western culture is fixated on large breasts and tiny waists, in the Middle Ages... the ideal woman had small breasts and a pot belly.... For a long time, bushy eyebrows were in... but then went out of fashion thanks to the French scholar Matthew of Vendôme... [who] raved about... red cheeks and the 'white and clear' space between her eyebrows where 'the separated arches do not allow the hairs to run rampant.' Soon, everyone had ditched the monobrow in favor of rouging and plucking."
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53 comments:
How could anybody who's ever been a teenage boy doubt that men don't need any encouragement to want sex?
"And makeup was false advertising"
It still is. Doubly so now. Especially in dark loud bars when the chick you're talking to suddenly drops an octave. You start looking for ways to take a selfie of the two of you using the flash, for review immediately afterwards when you excuse yourself to use the bathroom. Or escape.
Frida Kahlo. Just a few centuries earlier, and she could've been a sex symbol.
the female body was a mystery—and makeup was false advertising
"Hey, that's false advertising, man!"
"the female body was a mystery"
And the male body wasn't?
Make-up is typically an (1) attempt to optimize appearance when naturally less-than-perfect, (2) a way stand out and gain attention in a sea of sameness, and/or (2) an attempt to look younger for longer. Females have their greatest social-sexual power just following puberty, even if they don't understand it. How many songs speak of age 17 and jailbait? How many men have left their aging wives for a young trophy bride?
The value of makeup follows its quality and obviousness:
Art
Artifice
Artificial
Carlin on plastic surgery redux.
I confess that I fall for the warpaint when she bothers, but can perform without it.
Women have always had an incentive to use sex for power, wealth, comfort, or even mere survival. The sex drive is a pretty easily manipulatable trigger for males. So it wouldn't surprise me the further back you go in history, where there was less uniform "civilized" protection for women (I'm not talking about equality), then you'd see women using whatever means they had to exert influence, survive, etc.
Thus the evolution of transgender conversion therapy: men who like men with a feminine twist, perhaps a gender simulation to reach a consensus, etc.
That said, modern [secular] theologians are still mystified by the female sex, male sex, and babies, too.
Can one be "cold" and "moist" at the same time? Doesn't seem right. Maybe things were different back then.
Makeup, perfumes, and other luxuries were enjoyed by the elite, the queer, the liberal, on the casting couch, and in moderation by women in courtship and marriage.
Y'know... One thing I'd like to point out about all this "scholarship" about people's attitudes towards women back in 'ye olde dayes' would be this: It's scholarship. It's not actual, y'know... Research, which would require in situ work via time travel.
Scholarship will tell you what people said and wrote, rather than actually reveal what they thought. You can also discover the very outlines of what they did through research in old records, but there again, you're relying on what they bothered to record.
This is a limitation that you never, ever see even mentioned by the researchers. And, given the highly selective nature of what got written in the first place, and then recorded...? What can we rely on from such sources?
I think there's far too much credence put in these things as being 100% absolutely the truth. We should be saying "Hey, here's what things look like from the recorded bits and pieces of history that we have...", not "This is the truth..."
You run into a similar problem with archaeology; what the heck was this weird artifact we find in association with this sort of site? Without the actual cultural context, there's no telling what the hell you're looking at. Trying to determine meanings from what we've got to look at from the historical record is an exercise in folly; you are only looking at a narrow slice of what actually got preserved, versus the entire contextual reality.
Cracks me up, sometimes; you see such marvelous constructs about the subservient status of women in Medieval times, going on and on and on about how they were abused and mere chattel. Then, you run across stuff like this:
https://www.aemma.org/onlineResources/trial_by_combat/combat_man_and_woman.htm
I've seen more detailed versions of that sort of thing, and it was prevalent enough that you have quite a few examples of such things in the various German Fechtbuch sources, and they don't treat it as a joke, at all.
I don't think you can really winkle out the reality of things through mere scholarship; you'd have to go back and actually look at how things went, how daily life really worked. The preserved records are but a narrow straw giving us a glimpse into the lives and minds of our forebears.
I mean, good grief... You can see this in recent times, with regards to the stuff we are so sure of going back just a few generations, which those of us who lived through those days can easily refute from experience.
"makeup was false advertising" yes it is, as are silicone breast.
I once was ask by my younger brother to help remodel a strip club. My job was to install new lockers in the dressing room. The performers would come to work and look like shit. They would walk around naked like gym class while I was working. Most of these gals had great bodies with dog faces and bad skin. The transition as they put on makeup was amazing.
Sounds about right to me.
Lord knows that in mah life all mah bitches been phlegmatic & lascivious. Especially phlegmatic.
"Where do chicks get all that phleg?" I ask myself.
Women used mercury-based face paint to cover up their smallpox scars.
“ Can one be "cold" and "moist" at the same time?”
It’s called “clammy.”
Weren't middle age theologians celibate??.....and the writer wants to tells us how women were perceived 500 years ago??
Give me a break.
Beauty standards are always in flux. Lizzo would not have been consider svelte beauty thirty years ago but today look at her. Take her in. Feast your eyes … you’re in for a banquet.
Tanned and fit men have warm and dry skin. Fatty guys have clammy skin.
Source: heh
Enigma said...
Females have their greatest social-sexual power just following puberty, even if they don't understand it. How many songs speak of age 17 and jailbait? How many men have left their aging wives for a young trophy bride?
Fertility.
Woman - taken as a group average - have their peak fertility from about 18-28 or so where they have about a 25-30% chance of getting pregnant in a month. From there it falls dramatically to about age 38 with just a 5% chance. YMMV, obviously.
Interestingly, women who have already given birth a lot previously seem more likely to be able to have a child in the later age ranges.
takirks said...
Scholarship will tell you what people said and wrote, rather than actually reveal what they thought. You can also discover the very outlines of what they did through research in old records, but there again, you're relying on what they bothered to record... I think there's far too much credence put in these things as being 100% absolutely the truth. We should be saying "Hey, here's what things look like from the recorded bits and pieces of history that we have...", not "This is the truth..."
Quoted for truth.
Some future archaeologist will watch rap videos from this era and then write a scholarly paper on how Cardi B and Meghan Thee Stallion represented this generation's ideal woman.
“To male theologians of the Middle Ages, the female body was a mystery—".
Well, duh,—being celibate, they had little experience of one.
“While modern western culture is fixated on large breasts and tiny waists...”
Many studies have shown that that the optimal waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) for female attractiveness is around 0.7. This holds for a large majority of cultures around the world, and is consistent with historical observations. The Venus de Milo has a WHR of 0.76.
What did those benighted Medieval scholars say about transwomen?
Historically, the idea of beauty changes. So does the idea of what is fashionable. Every few years someone writes an article to share this revelation.
The female sex, the feminine gender, wears their pussy[hat] on their head?
You've come alone way, mommy, daddy, baby... our Posterity, too.
Some thought on this leads me to a near-inevitable conclusion: Most women fail to understand the nature of their 'power' in society, or within their relationships with men.
Likewise, neither do most men.
It's a strange thing, when you consider it. Men always joke about 'the sisterhood', as if there's some vast feminine conspiracy out there, and the real fact is, most women would cheerfully slit each other's throats for a momentary advantage in their competitions within their sex. The imagined unity and care for other women just isn't really there, outside a few outlying cases. Yet, men still believe in it. Despite copious evidence that a lot of women are strictly in it for themselves.
Men have entirely unrealistic and idealized visions of women, and how they think. Likewise, women are equally in error about men in their lives. Crap that they think is important to the other party...? Simply... Isn't. Likewise, the really important crap that their counterparts value? That's stuff they are completely and utterly oblivious to.
I think a lot of this male-female back-and-forth BS would be reduced if people actually spoke honestly, and asked some damn questions. Like, "What is it that you value about me, as a woman...?" While I'm sure there are a certain number of men whose answers would boil down to "Your tits...", there are a lot more whose answers would leave the questioner floored and unable to process.
All y'all wonder why your partners don't notice when you change your hairstyle? That's not because they don't notice you and don't care, that's because they've been looking past your appearance for a long time, when they see you. They're probably not even seeing you, but are really looking at their idealized image of you, the one where you're never old or the opposite of pretty.
Take her in. Feast your eyes … you’re in for a banquet
"Mine eyes have seen the glory [&tc...]"
madAsHell said...
Weren't middle age theologians celibate??.....
>>>>>>>>>>>many were not. Christian popes, cardinals, bishops often mistresses, and children as well. St. Augustine was not. Then there's this:
https://theconversation.com/a-thousand-years-ago-the-catholic-church-paid-little-attention-to-homosexuality-112830
"and the writer wants to tells us how women were perceived 500 years ago??
Give me a break."
>>>>>>>>>>>> you are truly a yahoo. (STEM, maybe?) There are many sources for that info:
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=how+were+women+regarded+in+the+middle+ages%3F&atb=v346-1&ia=web
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristotle%27s_views_on_women
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_the_Middle_Ages
To male theologians of the Middle Ages, the female body was a mystery
Hell, until surprisingly recently the medical establishment — except for ob/gyns and endocrinologists — treated women as small men. Especially true for internists and cardiologists.
and makeup was false advertising
Still is.
Slimey.
i'd say there is some refreshing truth in that earlier depiction. "Lascivious" is a fine word to describe at least 35% of american women, possibly range as high as 65% in some districts. And men CAN be extraordinarily rational. Consider Meade.
And Dante? The Courts of Love? Provencal poetry? The Troubadors?
Troubador
To the sweet song of the nightingale,
At night when I am half-asleep,
I wake possessed by joy complete,
Contemplating love and thinking;
For this is my greatest need, to be
Forever filled with joy and sweetly,
And in joy begin my singing.
Who seeks to know the joy I feel,
If such joy were heard and seen,
All other joy but slight would seem
Compared with mine: vast in its being.
Others preen and chatter wildly,
Claim to be blessed, rich and nobly,
With ‘true love’: I’ve twice the thing!
When I admire her body hale
Well-formed, in all respects I mean,
Her courtesy and her sweet speech,
For all my praise I yet gain nothing;
Though I took a year completely
I could not paint her truthfully
So courtly is she, of sweet forming.
“Everyone” is a tiny number of women in the royal court, in numbers so small that they were statistically indistinguishable from zero.
it's been Said,
That Men process things visually..
while Women process things verbally..
This is WHY
Men tell Lies...
and Women wear makeup
Read once that a study was done where it was determined that a women are most attactive to men at at 37 or 38. I agree, but there are exceptions.
Men peak at 71 obviously. If you are interested I happen to be 71. ;-)
Now we don't even know what a woman is. Man, that's progress!
Men had it made. Then the 19th Amendment followed by the Birth Control Pill ended our best life. Now we have to love them.
Innies/outies, fitties/fatties
Parts designed to connect...
“Feast your eyes … you’re in for a banquet.“
More like the whole fuckin Golden Corral.
Big Mike said...
To male theologians of the Middle Ages, the female body was a mystery
Hell, until surprisingly recently the medical establishment — except for ob/gyns and endocrinologists — treated women as small men. Especially true for internists and cardiologists.
*********************************
What bullshit.
https://web.stanford.edu/class/history13/earlysciencelab/body1/femalebodypages/genitalia.html
https://www.newadvent.org/summa/3169.htm#article2
Elizabeth Lowery is trying to stir up a tempest in a teapot, but the pot is mostly empty of tea.
Bushy eyebrows, there aren't many and the few examples that exist are highly debatable. The Middle ages aren't exactly the zenith of portraiture, but there is a smattering. There are four known images of Eleanor Duchess of Aquitaine, the most noteworthy woman of her time, one of them being her tomb effigy. And there's this, and this, and finally this small portion of a window in the cathedral of Poitiers. I daresay none of the artists responsible ever laid eyes on Henry II's famous queen. Granted her eyebrows shown in stained glass are extremely broad and bushy, but then every face in the glass has hefty eye hair, including Henry seen on the right. In fact, except for the details of the clothing and hair, it's quite difficult of say who is male and who is female, which is typical of 12th and 13th-century art. For example, this, this, and this.
As for Ms. Lowery's narrow-shoulder and potbellied look, I could only find one clear example. On the left, we see a French Adam and Eve from around 1480. Eve looks more pregnant than potbellied to me, and since most 15-century young women who weren't in holy orders were pregnant most of the time, generally experiencing eight or more pregnancies by the time they were thirty, quite understandable in the realistic mode of Renaissance art. (Adam looks pretty scrawny, as well, yes?) On the right is an Italian Eden scene featuring a much more healthy-looking couple from barely a generation later. That Italian Eve strikes me as particularly hot.
Lastly, here are five early 16th-century life portraits of real women: this, this, this, this, and lastly this.
Contrasting my wealth of historical evidence against Ms. Lowery's paltry cherry-pickings, I'd say her argument falls flat on its silly face.
Sometime during the beginning of COVID, makeup started looking strange to me. I think this was a result of not seeing people, including myself, in makeup regularly for a while. This has not gone away. I barely wear makeup now because anything more than a swipe of mascara looks ridiculous to me.
Plasticity of perception.
Male and female bodies were both misunderstood.
Males and females used mercury to cover scars. In court life, males and females both wore make-up, wigs, and extreme fashion. Even going to war, men wore the most astonishing, and often constraining and illogical uniforms, until WWI.
Differential death rates, until modern antibiotics, were entirely the product of childbirth.
War, dentristy, and VD were the wild cards. Plagues and famine were generally egalitarian forms of death. Fashion was a subject that applied only to a miniscule elite.
Agree with Takirks. The five blind men and the elephant.
"the ideal woman had small breasts and a pot belly" - I do not think this is true, but rather is something the author would like to be true. For example, there are references in Chaucer to attractive women that make reference to their shapely breasts and such. The small breasts shown in art are probably there for the similar reasons that the Greeks had statues with men with small penises. It would have been considered vulgar to depict larger ones. Especially in the case of women where the most common medieval artistic depiction of breasts are images of the Virgin Mary nursing the infant Jesus.
"the ideal woman had small breasts and a pot belly" - I do not think this is true, but rather is something the author would like to be true. For example, there are references in Chaucer to attractive women that make reference to their shapely breasts and such. The small breasts shown in art are probably there for the similar reasons that the Greeks had statues with men with small penises. It would have been considered vulgar to depict larger ones. Especially in the case of women where the most common medieval artistic depiction of breasts are images of the Virgin Mary nursing the infant Jesus.
>>>>>>>>>>>> you are truly a yahoo. (STEM, maybe?) There are many sources for that info:
I guess that was my point. There are many sources, and you can find whatever answer you want.
Based upon the review, it appears the book's author has created an idealized, fictional, homogenous "Medieval time" that has no basis in any particular population-over-time or period-across-geography. (The only references to specific time periods are to the 11th century (twice) and the twelfth century (once) - a bit of a tell.) The assertions are no more essentially true of Medieval thinking than the supposed Medieval thinking was essentially true of women.
Rocco said:
"Some future archaeologist will watch rap videos from this era and then write a scholarly paper on how Cardi B and Meghan Thee Stallion represented this generation's ideal woman."
My very favoritist future historical gedankenspiel is imagining what they'll make of Tolkien's entire obsessive-compulsive oeuvre. Imagine you're a future historian, and you've no idea at all that the collected works of J.R.R. Tolkien and the rest of all the other works in that world are fictional. How hard would it be for you to wrap your head around the idea that someone went to all that trouble to document something entirely imaginary?
Give it a few thousand years, and let someone find an intact copy of all the Middle Earth stuff, without surrounding context. Then, watch them try to make sense of the whole thing with an eye to just how little credit we give our own ancestors for complexities and entertainments...
I could easily see someone spending a lifetime trying to match up everything in Tolkien's works as being real history, and trying to verify it all through excavation and archaeology. Then, imagine them finding the sets and so forth from Peter Jackson's movies in New Zealand, and trying to make sense of that while reconciling it all with the rest of the existing local archaeology.
I mean, for the love of God, look at the depth and complexity of what Tolkien did. Even knowing it's entirely fictional, you find yourself easily persuaded it all had to be real, or he could have never come up with it all.
I have just been rereading The Screwtape Letters, and remembered this passage on the differing forms of female beauty pressed on men as "the ideal" in different ages:
At one time we have directed [male taste] to the statuesque and aristocratic type of beauty, mixing men's vanity with their desires and encouraging the race to breed chiefly from the most arrogant and prodigal women. At another, we have selected an exaggeratedly feminine type, faint and languishing, so that folly and cowardice, and all the general falseness and littleness of mind which go with them, shall be at a premium. At present [Lewis was writing in 1941] we are on the opposite tack. The age of jazz has succeeded the age of the waltz, and we now teach men to like women whose bodies are scarcely distinguishable from those of boys. Since this is a kind of beauty even more transitory than most, we thus aggravate the female's chronic horror of growing old (with many excellent results) and render her less willing and less able to have children.
I was struck especially by the last few sentences. There is, indeed, a kind of similarity between the 20s "flapper" and our own current standards of beauty, at least as reflected in fashion catalogs and the like. And, of course, in the fantastic explosion of the numbers of "transmen" in the last decade. The super-skinny and the flat-chested are "in." If the 20s girls had thought of "chest binders" and double mastectomies, they would likely have used them too. As it is, in some catalogs I have seen, every model already looks like a trans male.
This churchy stuff is weird. But the Church saved the world.
The one thing of significance you can tell from all these projections onto the past: The mentality and opinions of the people doing the projections.
The people of the Renaissance looked back at the post-Roman world, and said that those were "Dark Ages", despite all the various things that refute that opinion.
Today's oh-so-superior assholes looking back on history and making mock of the things they think they see in the history books are telling us rather more about themselves than they are about the past. The things they project, the things they mock, the things they don't respect... Those things all hold a mirror up to their own inadequate minds.
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