Sex, Culture, and Justice: The Limits of Choice (13 page)

1. Butler, ‘‘Restaging the Universal,’’ 39.
   

2. Seyla Benhabib, ‘‘Feminism and Postmodernism,’’ 21.
   

   its weak form: the subject is radically situated in various contexts and discourses from which autonomy is possible but difficult. As Benhabib argues, individuals may be strongly constrained by their social circum- stances, but the fact of that constraint makes liberation more, not less, necessary from a normative point of view. However, the goal behind a project of emancipation is not to free individuals from all social influ- ence (for that would be impossible and undesirable), but rather to free individuals from
   unjust
   social influence, or at least the most pernicious forms of it.
   

   Hirschmann on Social Construction
   

   Nancy Hirschmann’s account is useful at this stage because it com- bines a systematic analysis of the general phenomenon of social con- struction with an explicit feminist normative focus. Hirschmann ex- plains social construction by dividing it into three ‘‘levels.’’ She names the first level ‘‘the ideological misrepresentation of reality.’’
   16
   According to this level, social construction is the artificial creation of social norms and the false representation of the way things are, of their nature. This level of social construction has clear Marxist features, echoing Marx’s critique of capitalist ideology. It is also found in feminist analysis of the way in which patriarchy ‘‘fools’’ women into aspiring to standards of beauty that can only be reached by airbrushed supermodels.
   

   Hirschmann highlights two problems with the ideological misrepre- sentation of reality thesis. First, such an approach appears to require ‘‘second-guessing’’ of people’s interests and preferences.
   17
   If a woman says she enjoys making herself look beautiful, like the models she sees in magazines, the first level of social construction implies that we can say that she is misguided, and that we can—and perhaps should— liberate her by forcibly preventing her from performing her beauty ritu- als. Hirschmann maintains that such an approach is problematic since it fails to notice that participating in such practices can sometimes contribute to freedom. She argues that although beauty pageants, for example, are generally considered to embody sexist beauty norms, nev- ertheless ‘‘a woman who has entered beauty pageants, endured the rigors of competition, and as a result won scholarships, a degree of
   

3. Hirschmann,
   Subject of Liberty
   , 77.
   

17. Ibid., 78.

fame and wealth, and/or a springboard start to a career in the perform- ing arts would have to be considered autonomous,’’ where autonomy is understood as ‘‘critical competence in rational reflection.’’
18
As such, we cannot straightforwardly condemn the ideals of beauty endorsed in beauty pageants as ideological misrepresentations of reality that con- strain women’s freedom.

Hirschmann is correct to point out that participating in beauty pag- eants can increase women’s autonomy, in the sense of bringing partici- pants opportunities and success that they would not otherwise enjoy. It may also be true to say that, if a woman assessed the various options available to her, she might rationally decide that beauty pageants offer the best chances of success. In other words, an individual can be af- fected by social construction without suffering from ‘‘false conscious- ness’’ or a failure to realize where her rational self-interest lies. How- ever, this observation does not undermine the thesis of the ideological misrepresentation of reality: that the beauty standards imposed on women and perfected in the beauty pageant are patriarchal, oppressive, and imposed on all women despite being unrealizable by the vast ma- jority.
19
The fact that success in emulating such beauty standards can bring a woman great success in obtaining other social goods in no way entails that the beauty standards are accurate reflections of woman- hood. Moreover, feminists might want to question why it is that a good path to success for the woman in Hirschmann’s example should be a beauty pageant. Why should it be the case that a good way for the woman to achieve scholarships, wealth, and a career in the performing arts is by smiling inanely in a swimming costume and high heels? Indeed, why should smiling inanely in a swimming costume and high heels be the path to any social goods at all?
20

1. Ibid., 79. The concept of autonomy is critically assessed in Part Two.
   

2. Beauty pageants are different from other competitions that most people could not hope to win, such as the Olympic games or Mastermind. While these competitions do pro- mote attributes that are seen as generally desirable (fitness and knowledge), they do not set standards for all people to the extent that beauty pageants set standards for all women. The difference is a matter of both scope and extent.
   All
   women, regardless of their other achieve- ments, are expected to go to fairly lengthy measures to (try to) make themselves beautiful. All women are expected to make up, dress up, slim down, moisturize, exercise, accessorize, tan, wax, bleach, clip, color, and style just to go to work; almost no one has to throw a javelin or know the number of goals made by Manchester United in 1990 just to get through the day.
   

3. Kimberley Yuracko puts this point as follows: ‘‘Women’s choices to sexually objectify themselves probably look problematic and pressured to some feminists because they feel women should not be presented with the choice of whether to turn themselves into decora-
   

   In fact, although it may be the case that individual women do auton- omously choose to enter beauty pageants, and that winning a beauty pageant may indeed increase a woman’s autonomy, there remain con- siderable grounds for criticizing beauty pageants and beauty norms as ideological misrepresentations of reality. This is not to say that any woman who chooses to participate in them is fundamentally nonauton- omous, but it is to say that women’s equality would be better realized if the power of sexist beauty norms were lessened.
   21
   

   The second criticism that Hirschmann makes of the first level of social construction is that it implies that there could be a true represen- tation of reality. In other words, the misrepresentation thesis makes ‘‘an implicit assumption that if patriarchy would just leave women alone, women would be okay. Beneath that is a further assumption that women could
   not
   be socially constructed at all, that there is some true identity and set of interests that women have as women—an es- sentialist or naturalist thesis which, ironically, most feminists would consciously claim to reject.’’
   22
   Instead, Hirschmann maintains, social construction goes all the way down. If social construction did not en- shrine one set of beauty standards, it would enshrine another. This point is closely connected to the accounts of Foucault and Bourdieu that we have considered so far. However, if we are seeking an account of social construction that can sustain normative feminist argument, we need to elaborate it somewhat.
   

   First, it is possible to reject the idea of an essentialist female nature while at the same time arguing that some beauty norms are more real- istic, more ‘‘true’’ than others. Womanhood may not have a conceptual, all-encompassing ‘‘truth,’’ but women are concretely embodied, and the nature of women’s bodies can be more or less truthfully repre- sented. At the most basic, an idea of female beauty that admits women who range from skinny to plump is clearly more realistic, more in line with the realities of women’s bodies, than one that admits only women who are extremely thin. Similarly, a society that finds only youthful
   

   

   tive gift objects for men’s gratification in order to achieve their highest possible social status’’ (
   Perfectionism and Contemporary Feminist Values,
   70).
   

4. For further feminist critiques of feminist beauty norms, see works such as Wolf,
   

   Beauty Myth;
   Sheila Jeffreys,
   Beauty and Misogyny;
   and Bordo,
   Unbearable Weight.
   

5. Hirschmann,
   Subject of Liberty
   , 79; emphasis in the original. One example of an ex- plicit feminist rejection of a ‘‘true’’ female identity is MacKinnon, ‘‘‘The Case’ Responds,’’ 710.
   

   faces beautiful requires women to engage in ideological misrepresenta- tion of themselves if they wish to continue to appear beautiful through- out their lives, whereas a society that sees beauty in all ages allows women’s self-representations to be more truthful. The fact that social construction does itself work on bodies does not undermine the fact that bodies do have a concrete form which can be more or less con- torted and falsified. Cosmetic surgery represents the falsification of the body, and the misrepresentation of the individual whose body it is,
   par excellence—
   for its results cannot be achieved by the natural processes of the transformed body (as occurs with diet or exercise) but are con- sciously constructed by the surgeon in line with particular norms of beauty. Moreover, cosmetic surgery often entails reconstructing the body from alien substances, such as silicone or saline implants or colla- gen injections.
   

   Second, even if there is no ‘‘truth’’ to women’s nature, there are still grounds to discriminate between alternative norms, such as standards of beauty, on the grounds that some are more compatible with wom- en’s equality and well-being than others. In other words, we can make a normative distinction between alternative norms, even if we cannot make a distinction in terms of truth and falsity. Hirschmann actually argues strongly in favor of this point. As she puts it, ‘‘Some contexts are better than others at providing women with genuine alternatives from which they can choose.’’
   23
   So, even if we are wary of identifying ideological misrepresentations of
   reality,
   we should not be wary of iden- tifying ideological misrepresentations of equality or autonomy. A soci- ety in which women’s autonomy is increased by entering beauty pageants is one in which women’s autonomy is ideologically misrepre- sented.
   24
   

   This criticism connects with Hirschmann’s second level of social construction: what she calls ‘‘materialization.’’ Materialization occurs when social norms construct people’s
   identities,
   not just their behavior. As Hirschmann puts it, ‘‘The construction of social behaviors and rules takes on a life of its own, and becomes constitutive not only of what women are allowed to
   do,
   but of what they are allowed to
   be.
   ’’
   25
   The materialization thesis demonstrates one problem with separating so-
   

6. Hirschmann,
   Subject of Liberty
   , ix.
   

7. Diana Meyers similarly argues, in
   Gender in the Mirror,
   that we should replace patriar- chal ‘‘figurations of womanhood’’ with feminist ones.
   

8. Hirschmann,
   Subject of Liberty
   , 79; emphasis in the original.
   

cial construction into levels, for perhaps the clearest example of materi- alization is the way that female beauty norms concretely create the female body, an aspect of social construction that Hirschmann uses to illustrate the first level. Women who wish to follow beauty norms will alter the physical shape and form of their bodies, perhaps becoming thin through dieting, gaining larger breasts or smaller noses through cosmetic surgery, or losing wrinkles through botox injections and anti- aging creams.

It is clear, then, that the second level of social construction, the ma- terialization thesis, has a complex relationship with the ideological mis- representation of reality thesis. On the one hand, materialization is the direct result of ideological misrepresentation: women’s bodies take on a different material form in response to the norms enshrined by ideo- logical misrepresentation. On the other hand, once a norm has materi- alized, it is no longer true to say that it is a misrepresentation of reality. Instead, the norm has become reality. After dieting, breast implants, and botox injections, women’s bodies really are thin, large-breasted, and wrinkle-free, and this standard is potentially realizable by all women. It is no longer true to say that such standards of beauty are unrealistic or impossible. In Hirschmann’s words, ‘‘On this level, so- cial construction is not at odds with material reality; it actually pro- duces it.’’
26

It is difficult, then, to see how the first two levels of social construc- tion can be both distinct and part of the same concept. Hirschmann does not want to abandon the first level altogether: she states that while it is ‘‘flawed and limited,’’ it remains ‘‘important to feminism,’’
27
and frequently uses it to explain the issues of battered women, welfare, and veiling that inform her book.
28
But if materialization means that a so- cial norm becomes reality, and if there is no ‘‘truth’’ or reality beyond a social norm, how can a social norm be an ideological misrepresenta- tion of reality? Something will have to give: either social norms are always incompletely realized, or there must be some alternative, in some sense universal or objective, reality that stands outside the social norm. It is my contention that the alternative universal ‘‘reality’’ should