Philosophical meetings of Monaco 4/6.- Exclusively for Madame Figaroand in collaboration with PhiloMonaco Week, which takes place from June 11 to 16, six philosophers subtly shed light on the essence of being. Today, Chantal Thomas deciphers the aesthetic standards that still limit women’s bodies.
No one is a stranger to philosophy, and no place, no land is forbidden to it. It is from this belief that the Monaco Philosophical Assemblies were born, with a fierce ambition to “listen to what others have to say”. Every spring, under the responsibility of its founders Charlotte Casiraghi, Robert Maggiori, Raphael Zaguri-Orly and Laura Hugo, the Monaco Philosophical Meetings gather a diverse crowd of enthusiasts, day and night, to listen and think about the world, from care to end. ecology, from science to fun, to war
to beauty… Conferences are free, open to all, and a whole collection of philosophers circulate here and there, available. Madame Figaro is the partner of the event. Exclusively, six philosophers who will speak in Monaco answer six questions that deepen our most intimate connections. Today, philosopher and avid swimmer Chantal Thomas deciphers the aesthetic standards that still limit women’s bodies.
For a long time it was customary, more or less ironically, to call women the “fair sex”. Depending on the times, the standards corresponding to the ideal image of the “fair sex” change and can be reversed. Thus, until the 19th centurye century, a white face is one of the primary attributes of beauty. Even more appreciable when it reaches a pallor bordering on transparency. The woman becomes more attractive as she approaches the ghostly state, while also exuding the subtlety of some mysterious being, and who remains so because silence and discretion are part of her characteristics. The drawing completes the aerial sketch.
If every woman does not feel free to feel beautiful and present herself as such outside of any external standards, then openness to other aesthetic registers is only illusory.
Chantal Thomas
It is important that she is set apart from the vulgarity of working-class women, exposed to the sun and bad weather, and that dark skin and foreign bodies are kept in a non-human, almost monstrous category. The demand for whiteness made smooth-faced graceful women the perfect surface on which to project masculine desires and imaginations.
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on the 20the century, with the entrance of women into professional life, sports, the world, the dream creature lost its prestige, different women got the right to exist, with a variety of colors, shapes, expressions. Beauty today is open to the unknown, the unexpected, the unprecedented. Apparently, he is looking for them. In fact, the ideal of the mask, on which no trace is written, and especially not of time, which, while not harming male beauty, allegedly destroys female beauty, continues to dominate.
Beauty today is open to the unknown, the unexpected, the unprecedented. Apparently, he is looking for them. In fact, the ideal of a mask without a trace continues to dominate
Chantal Thomas
These words of Colette The end of the beloved are exemplary. “Chéri featured a broad back, a grainy roll of nape beneath a large, vigorous gray hair cut like her mother’s. […] But he urged himself to be patient, in the dim hope that this first image would give way to a luminous calm.
No, there will be no remission. And I tell myself that if every woman does not feel free to feel beautiful and present herself as such outside of any external standards, then openness to other aesthetic registers is only an illusion. All we have to do is impose an image whose brightness level is adjusted internally.
Chantal Thomas is the author How to carry your freedom (Ed. Rivages Poches), and recently Arizona Journal
(Ed. Seuil).
PhiloMonaco Week is organized from Tuesday June 11 to Sunday June 16 by Rencontres Philosophiques de Monaco, chaired by co-founder Charlotte Casiraghi. Free and open to all. In the program: ecology, education, care, woman, art of living and the pleasure of philosophizing.
The matches are broadcast live and replayed on philomonaco.com
Source: Le Figaro
