Reflections on Cosmetology: Beauty and the Human Body

Saints and thinkers of the early Church had generally frowned upon physical beautification. Later, medieval authorities demanded that woman or man spend his spare time in pure thought and celibate prayer, not in priming the body. But at the breaking of the Renaissance, about 500 years ago, the old Oriental practice of beautification became a moving force in Western society. Hairdressing and cosmetics advanced with a flourish.

The West became concerned about the body and beauty at the time of such earthly discoveries as the circulation of the blood (nobody would massage the scalp to get healthy hair until he was aware of the circulation of the blood). Emancipated courtly ladies and lovers went wild with new-found techniques. Plaited pony-tails, long curls, waves, bobbed hair, egg shampoos, scalp washes in milk or—if you happen to be Queen Elizabeth—in wine, make an old story. Famous sculptors turned beauticians and thus added precision and status to the profession. Hair-cutting became widely acknowledged as an art rather than an ignoble business. Gradually the modern creations of cosmetology snowballed into the infamous Pompadour of the eighteenth century where the hair was kneaded with pomade and flour, drawn up over a cushion of wool, twisted into curls and knots, decorated with artificial flowers, and left that way for weeks.

Ecclesiastical bodies were forced to condone what they could no longer control. The English parliament in 1770 gamely enacted a statute to invoke “the penalty of the law in force against witchcraft and like misdemeanors” upon all those women who “impose upon, seduce, and betray into matrimony any of his Majesty’s subjects, by scents, paints, cosmetic washes, false hair,” and the like. But nothing has ever stemmed the tide. Today cosmetics and the art of physical beautification are about the biggest business in the United States.

After delineating more fully this history of cosmetological theory and operation for the National Convention of Cosmetology in Chicago some months ago, I presented the state board examiners with the following thesis: there are at least three basic perspectives in which cosmetology can be and, as a matter of fact, is being practiced in America; only one of these possible perspectives is Christian; whichever way cosmetology goes, history seems to suggest, so also goes the nation.

The Cult of Beauty

One perspective which rules the training and operation of beauticians and their patrons is the Cult of Beauty perspective. Beauty determines, motivates, and shapes all that is done. Beauty is never quite clearly defined (philosophers themselves have been looking for Beauty with a capital B for 2000 years, one of those black cats in the dark room that is not there), but adherents to the Cult of Beauty believe it is a certain pleasing if not perfect proportion. This Beauty is believed to be the key to a full life, happiness, even fame; it is virtually worshiped. That is what “cult” means. Beautification then becomes a magical operation and its steps become a ritual exercised religiously by its devotees. Devotees of Beauty honor beauticians as priestesses; their worship of Beauty is not comic opera but tragically serious.

Such worship of Beauty, however, is pagan. “Pagan” does not mean “primitive”; by definition “pagan” means simply “not Christian.” Christians do not worship Beauty, either physical or the capital B variety. To say that the Cult of Beauty perspective is pagan is not saying that the Cult of Beauty is not a reasonable way of thinking or a hard-working way of living; in fact, the Cult of Beauty probably always lends a successful cast to the profession of cosmetology. That the Cult of Beauty perspective is pagan means only this, that wherever this intensive, limited horizon sets the tone and pace of hairdressing and cosmetics, whether its patron saints come from Ancient Greece, Renaissance Italy, Pompadour France, or Hollywood America, there you have the pagan alternative dominating cosmetology.

Automatic Beautification

A second perspective is the Automatic Beauty Shop perspective. Here beauty is a commodity anybody can buy, provided she has the money. Beauty is not worshiped, for it is something done by machines handled by trained experts who efficiently, painlessly (as reasonably as their technological know-how permits) supply the demand for beauty. Beauty is considered a necessity of life, like bread and water; you get it by visiting your beautician three times a year.

This peculiarly twentieth-century perspective is secular. “Secular” does not mean “immoral”; “secular” means simply that “the heart of the matter is gone.” Human beauticians are reduced to flawless technicians getting pay, and customers become patients needing the treatment. The whole impersonal business has drab, disheartening, unhuman possibilities.

Devaluing the Body

Both these perspectives, as well as the traditional medieval disparagement of physical beautification, work out of the age-old dichotomy of man the assumption that man is split up into a mind or soul and a body, a view developed in ancient times, intensified in the medieval period, and as powerfully latent in the modern era as ever. Standard philosophers have almost unfailingly contended that the body is so impermanent and its adornment worth so much less than cultivation of the mind or soul that preoccupations such as hair dressing and cosmetics should be neglected, if not rejected, as they interfere with the truly important and essential activities of men and women. Beauticians, on the other hand, throughout history, have concerned themselves with man or woman as an object worthy of beautification, a body, something physical in which a person can find enjoyment and happiness; they have thereby implicitly denied or at least omitted as “none of our business” any mental or spiritual factors there might be in man.

But this divisive, split-up analysis of man, no matter which side you take, does not do justice to the biblical view of man as a unified whole, a personal creature in God’s Garden. In order to get physical beautification into a radically Christian perspective, traditional dichotomistic anthropologies will have to undergo a critical re-formation. Man is not cut up into mind and body but is an integral whole.

Seeking a Christian Perspective

A guiding perspective which can rule the training and operation of beauticians and their patrons, a perspective implied and supported by a Reformed anthropology, could be called the Style For a Woman perspective. In this perspective Beauty is neither idolized nor considered a commodity but is viewed wholly as a matter of style. Not every person can be “beautiful”—whatever that means; but everyone has the capacity, even duty, to be groomed, and that includes aesthetic enhancement as well as hygienic care. Within the Style For a Woman perspective, competent men or women groom others as a service, a rather intimate service—hair-washing and styling is not far away from the biblical foot-washing—and this service is performed in a sphere of leisure. To become stylized is a luxury, not a bare necessary; therefore the performance deserves the restfulness, color, and celebration that goes with moments of luxury. Beauticians of the Style For a Woman perspective are not clinical physiologists who address themselves to bodies and heads of hair but are persons who are aware that here comes a whole woman at leisure, and their competence as beauticians is measured by their ability to give the woman style, to coax out hidden glories a la Frank Lloyd Wright, with a level of conversation and modest personal interest that relaxes and invigorates the whole woman. Beauticians of this mind are dedicated to the end of making every hair-washing an enjoyable and fruitful experience. No unspoken promises of Beauty are made. There is just the assurance of hair washed and dressed, sculptured about one’s most comely features, during a pause that refreshes physically, emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually.

The Style For a Woman perspective has a Christian warmth and sanity about it. “Christian” does not mean “moralistic” nor “humanistic”; “Christian” means something “done in Christ’s name,” whether it be the proverbial cup of cold water or the caress of a comb. When the “style for a woman” perspective puts dedication and depth into the work because the worker realizes the importance before God of working with a human being, a whole person created by the Lord God with glories waiting to be developed and blemishes needing to be dressed, then you have action that is “Christian.” If there is anything our tottering social and political affairs need today, it is action permeated by the dedicated warmth and open joy of Christian sanity. Such action can be shown and taught even at the hairdressers.

CALVIN SEERVELD

Department of Philosophy

Trinity Christian College

Worth, Illinois

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