Some of you have attacked the notion of beauty as being too shallow and too feminine in a stupid way. It doesn't allow for girls to be who they truly are; it pushes them to look like every other "plastic" celebrity. - Given that "Mean Girls" is one of my favorite movies (yes, I like Lindsay Lohan. Shut up), this argument has some pretty strong weight. -
Furthermore, we don't want guys to be turned off by the concept of "beauty," do we? I mean, our
advertisement for officers seems really girly in a bad way: what guy wants to learn about how to dress and makeup tips? Even a guy into that sort of thing figures out how to do those things on his own. If we're going to help make boys gentlemen, men who can stand strong for themselves and others, a "beauty" guild is a bit of a problem.
So many of you have suggested we focus on "wellness" and drop the beauty thing. I was going to leave this debate open, but a few things I've seen recently have made me more partial to bringing back beauty as a concept while encouraging everyone to be independent and strong in their own way.
1.
This section is complicated. If you don't follow it entirely, skip to 2, and ask me about it later.The first thing you'll note is that if we surrender the concept of beauty to the plastics, throwing it aside as inherently corrupt, then how do we explain any tastes we have?
We can say we're free, we make our own choices, but you know how this line of argumentation works: the best arguments for free will (cf. Kant, "Critique of Practical Reason") depend on skepticism. To not fly over your heads: arguments for free will start with something that can't be explained, and then say "because we don't understand something, there's freedom/choice here."
In other words - the inability to say anything is going on, that anything actually exists in a situation, is what grounds freedom. If an object actually existed that was of import, it would necessitate certain actions and remove us from calling ourselves free.
Matters of taste are matters of beauty. We approach the truth because we hope it is beautiful; we hope what is beautiful is true. That truth is ugly at times is a very dark irony and not one we willingly accept. If we have the luxury of saying "truth is ugly," we're probably not hurting badly enough.
2. OK, looking that over, I realize I've probably lost some of you. No matter, here's a simpler argument.
What used to make men gentlemen was a concept of the "noble." The noble was taken so seriously we had aristocrats - you know, knights in shining armor, chivalry, a whole code of conduct different for a different class of people.
In Ancient Greek - Greece being where philosophic and political thought developed so well that we're still working from their ideas - the word for "noble" is the same as the word for "beautiful" (to kalos). The ability to switch between the terms is key for understanding Aristotle, whose "Ethics" argues that there are intellectual and moral virtues that can be had in this life just by being human. In other words: just as an acorn strives to become an oak tree, man (in Aristotle: the "rational animal") strives to become more rational than animal. He strives to become virtuous, to live an excellent, happy life.
Part of that confidence is being able to stand up for oneself independent of physical competition and fighting. I don't think anyone is going to say Shakespeare is less of a man because he wrote poetry. He's an example of self-confidence directed towards a noble/beauty conflation: in creating beauty, he demonstrated nobility.
Feel free to argue about this below, I'll make this a sticky in due time.