1. Introduction
Although it seems evident to us that we have our own individual identities, this identity is less evident to other people as it is unobservable. Instead, what can be observed of us are the biological attributes of our bodies, which determine our sex. Our sexed bodies are the medium through which we express our gender identity on a spectrum between ‘femininity’ and ‘masculinity’ in our behaviour and appearance.
Many factors play a role in the formation of a woman’s self-identity. One of these factors is the feminine identity, which is a set of attributes, roles and behaviors generally associated with women. Feminist thought has sought to ask if the feminine identity is essentialist or socially constructed in order to better understand how a woman knows herself to be a woman. Whether aesthetic judgments of the female body are objective or subjective has also been a matter of longstanding debate.
I will …show more content…
The essentialist approach primarily relies on idealism and naturalism to propose that there is something inherent in such judgments that makes them judgments of beauty. The idealist conception of beauty, as proposed by both David Hume and Emmanuel Kant , argues that an aesthetic judgment is formed when the human viewer (regardless of gender) perceives an object (for instance, the female body). They also agree that these feelings only exist in the minds of those perceiving the female body, but not in a mind-independent, objective external reality. Despite the fact that people argue over judgments of beauty as if they were objective, Hume and Kant would agree that aesthetic judgments are based on feelings of pleasure or displeasure, which are subjective. This understanding implies that there can be no objective property of the female body that results in an aesthetic
Although it seems evident to us that we have our own individual identities, this identity is less evident to other people as it is unobservable. Instead, what can be observed of us are the biological attributes of our bodies, which determine our sex. Our sexed bodies are the medium through which we express our gender identity on a spectrum between ‘femininity’ and ‘masculinity’ in our behaviour and appearance.
Many factors play a role in the formation of a woman’s self-identity. One of these factors is the feminine identity, which is a set of attributes, roles and behaviors generally associated with women. Feminist thought has sought to ask if the feminine identity is essentialist or socially constructed in order to better understand how a woman knows herself to be a woman. Whether aesthetic judgments of the female body are objective or subjective has also been a matter of longstanding debate.
I will …show more content…
The essentialist approach primarily relies on idealism and naturalism to propose that there is something inherent in such judgments that makes them judgments of beauty. The idealist conception of beauty, as proposed by both David Hume and Emmanuel Kant , argues that an aesthetic judgment is formed when the human viewer (regardless of gender) perceives an object (for instance, the female body). They also agree that these feelings only exist in the minds of those perceiving the female body, but not in a mind-independent, objective external reality. Despite the fact that people argue over judgments of beauty as if they were objective, Hume and Kant would agree that aesthetic judgments are based on feelings of pleasure or displeasure, which are subjective. This understanding implies that there can be no objective property of the female body that results in an aesthetic