Beauty

Oliver Coleman, Dan Stevens and Alex Wyndham in the BBC adaptation of The Line of Beauty

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A whole new look, or more soft-soap? What drives Dove's new beauty?

Anita McNaught played host to Open Minds resident philosopher Jon Pike and special guest Alexandra Shulman, Editor of British Vogue. They considered the idea of beauty – what does it mean to the English, to the individual, and to the global community?

Meet the participants

Jon Pike

Jon Pike read Politics, Philosophy and Economics at Trinity College, Oxford then studied for his doctorate at the University of Glasgow, where he went on to teach. He also taught at Stirling University before taking up his current post in the Open University's Philosophy Department. He is a Staff Tutor in Arts for the OU's South East Region and his speciality is political philosophy.

Alexandra Shulman

Alexandra Shulman has been Editor of British ‘Vogue’ for six years. She was educated at St Paul's Girls School and read social anthropology at Sussex University.

Her career in journalism started on ‘Over-21’ magazine. In 1982 she joined ‘Tatler’ where she stayed for five years and became Features Editor. In 1987 she joined the ‘Sunday Telegraph’ as editor of the Woman’s page and then moved to deputy edit their current affairs tabloid ‘7 Days’. She joined ‘Vogue’ as Features Editor in 1988 and then moved to ‘GQ’ as Editor in February 1990. She was appointed Editor of ‘Vogue’ in January 1992.

Jon Pike’s views on beauty

To what degree does the beholder determine what is and what is not beautiful? Can we get access to any essential core of beauty - whether its a platonic ideal to which actual instances come a poor second. What sort of property does beautiful thing have - is it just the ability to provoke the response "That's beautiful", or something else? The key thought is this: it doesn't seem right to say that beauty is reducible to the physical properties of a statue - it’s something beyond that. However, if we change the physical properties of a statue by lopping a bit off, we can make it no longer beautiful. So what is the relation between aesthetic properties and physical properties?

Alexandra Shulman’s views on beauty

There is a much broader definition of beauty these days – there is almost a quest to find people who are unique and unusual rather than main-stream conventional. This is true of modelling, advertising, and many other fields.

However, there is a ‘filtered down effect’ – people can clearly be influenced in what they feel is beautiful. For example, when Kate Moss was first photographed it was said that she was peculiar looking – skinny, gawky, toothy. Now she is accepted as beautiful. Similarly, cutting edge fashion is often shocking and not immediately appealing to the general public, but over time this becomes accepted and seen as ‘beautiful’.

Some points from the discussion

Jon Pike:

We can start from the cliché that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but it can’t be right. It’s not like ice cream where you either like it or don’t - we can argue and persuade over aesthetic taste. The idea exists that our response to beauty can be a shared response with shared criteria.

Alexandra Shulman:

Our ideas of beauty have changed over the years. In the eighties most models possessed a more ‘conventional’ beauty, whereas now there is a more diverse range of looks and ‘quirkier’ models. The fashion industry always needs to change, to reinvent.
However, there is some evidence that beauty is innate. There have been studies that showed that babies like to see beautiful faces, beautiful criminals get lighter sentences, good looking people earn more.

Jon Pike:

This is still at a level of sensual response - if there’s no thinking going on then it’s not a response to the beautiful. Beauty is not just a sensual response - ‘prettiness’ may be regarded as purely sensual, but beauty involves the mind as well.

There is a difference between a beautiful model and a beautiful frock – the frock involves thought, planning and design. With people we can try and make them look more beautiful, but we are still dealing with the ‘brute human body’ and there are more limitations.

We find it easy to accept that there is no universal idea of beauty. Philosophers worry much less about the cultural relativity of beauty and aesthetic values than the varying standards of moral values.