Overview

Beauty has captured human interest since before Plato, but how, why, and to whom does beauty matter in today's world? whose standard of beauty motivates African Americans to straighten their hair? what inspire beauty queens to measure up as flawless objects for the male gaze? why does a French performance artist use cosmetic surgery to remake her face into a composite of the master painters' version of beauty? how does beauty culture perceive the disabled body? is the constant effort to remain young and thin, often at considerable economic and emotional expense, ethically justifiable? Provocative essays by an international group of scholars discuss aesthetics in the arts, the tools of fashion, the materials of decoration, and the big business of beautification - beauty matters - to reveal the way gender, race, and sexual orientation have informed the concept of beauty and driven us to become more beautiful. Here, Kant rubs shoulders with Calvin Klein. This volume draws from visual art, dance, cultural history, and literary and feminist theory to explore the values and politics of beauty. Various philosophical perspectives about ethics and aesthetics emerge from this penetrating book to determine that beauty is never disinterested.

Full Product Details

Author:   Peg Zeglin Brand
Publisher:   Indiana University Press
Imprint:   Indiana University Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.60cm , Height: 2.30cm , Length: 23.50cm
Weight:   0.594kg
ISBN:  

9780253213754

ISBN 10:   0253213754
Pages:   352
Publication Date:   22 May 2000
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  Undergraduate ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Table of Contents

"Foreword: Cutting Two Ways with Beauty Eleanor Heartney Acknowledgments Introduction: How Beauty Matters Peg Zeglin Brand Part 1. Beyond Kant 1. Kantian and Contextual Beauty Marcia M. Eaton 2. Ethnicity, Race, and Monstrosity: The Rhetorics of Horror and Humor Nokl Carroll 3. Malcolm's Conk and Danto's Colors, or: Four Logical Petitions Concerning Race, Beauty, and Aesthetics Paul C. Taylor 4. Beauty and Beautification Arthur C. Danto Part 2. Body Beautiful 5. Beauty and Its Kitsch Competitors Kathleen M. Higgins 6. Beauty (Re)Discovers the Male Body Susan Bordo 7. Miss America: Whose Ideal? Dawn Perlmutter 8. Female Bodily Aesthetics, Politics, and Feminine Ideals of Beauty in China Eva Kit Wah Man 9. From the Crooked Timber of Humanity, Beautiful Things Can Be Made Anita Silvers Part 3. Body as Art 10. Whose Beauty? Women, Art, and Inter-subjectivity in Luce Irigaray's Writings Hilary Robinson 11. A Man Pretending to Be a Woman: On Yasumasa Morimura's Actresses Kaori Chino 12. ""A New Kind of Beauty"": Karole Armitage's Early Ballets Sally Banes 13. Bound to Beauty: An Interview with Orlan Peg Zeglin Brand Contributors Index"

Reviews

... lively and well-written ... --British Journal of Aesthetics, April 2002

"""... lively and well-written ...""--British Journal of Aesthetics, April 2002"

""... lively and well-written ...""--British Journal of Aesthetics, April 2002

Author Information

Peg Brand Weiser is Adjunct Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Arizona and Emerita Associate Professor of Philosophy and Women's Studies at Indiana University - Purdue University Indianapolis. She is editor of  Beauty Unlimited and of (with Carolyn Korsmeyer) Feminism and Tradition in Aesthetics, and author of numerous essays in feminist aesthetics dealing with women's art, creativity, beauty standards and sports. She served as the first Chair of the Feminist Caucus Committee of the American Society for Aesthetics and is the former First Lady of Indiana University (1994-2002).

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