THE EROTIC EYE AND ITS NUDE
by
Stefan Beyst
The Association thanks Stefan for his permission to reproduce this article.
Contact details at bottom of page.
0. introduction
1.the erotic eye and the erotic senses
2.the erotic appearance of man
3.the eye's seizure of power: the visualisation of the erotic appearance
4.revealing and concealing
5.the nude clad
6.clothes and the metamorphosis of the erotic appearance
7.the taboo on exhibitionism and the orgy
8.the nude captured in the image
9.the transfiguration of the nude in the image
10.in the beast with two backs' den
11.the sacrifice of the nude
12.the taboo on erotic imagery
THE IDEA
Judging from the massive production of erotic imagery in photo magazines, films, television, video and internet - not to mention the universal practice of 'girl-watching' - voyeurism and exhibitionism must occupy man's mind, if possible, far more than sexual commerce in the strict sense of the word.
That does not prevent people from invariably feeling embarrassed when the subject is mentioned. Even researchers, who otherwise do not refrain from exploring even the most remote corners of the human psyche, all too eagerly evade the study of the most practiced erotic pastime. I increasingly had the impression of entering an unexplored territory. It was extremely difficult to make a somewhat substantial bibliography. Most contributions are part of books on more encompassing subjects. The few books exclusively devoted to the subject are either purely (art)historical (Clark, Linda Williams) or moralising (feministic literature). As a rule, they restrict themselves either to the erotic eye (scopic drive), or to the (representation of) the nude that exhibits itself (phanic drive). Especially psychoanalytic literature excels in its silence on the subject. In the index of Freuds collected works, there are a mere five references to 'voyeurism'. Also the image is utterly neglected: in the ‘Interpretation of Dreams’ dream, images - that are anyway merely accessible through verbal rendering - are reduced to 'dream- thoughts'. Apparently, as a true heir of Moses, Freud was far more interested in the ear that listens than in the eye that indulges in relishing the (nude in) the image.
Reasons enough to write a book on the phanic and the scopic drive.
THE ILLUSTRATIONSWhoever wants to write a book on the erotic eye and its nude cannot restrict himself to the written word: there is an abundance of often very beautiful images. But the existence of something like copyright is responsible for the fact that we cannot show the best examples from sculpture, painting, prints and photos. In this Internet version, we had to content ourselves with the photos of living photographers who gave us the permission to use their work. But this restriction is not the main responsible for the sometimes poor quality of the images in my selection: if we could have chosen freely, the number of high quality pictures would certainly have increased, but that would only have emphasized the surprisingly poor quality of the overall production of erotic imagery. Precisely the argument of this book will explain why.
Within these limits, the choice of the photos has been made according to two criteria. Our first concern has been to find a fitting illustration for each topic in the text. Only when we had the choice, we could select according to aesthetic criteria. For some topics, we could not find any fitting illustration at all, because it either simply does not exist, or because we could not find an image with the required aesthetic standards. That explains why high quality pictures often go side by side with minor works. It is our intention to gradually raise the artistic level, so that 'the erotic eye and its nude' will eventually become a kind of touchstone for erotic photography.
Suggestions are always welcome.
THE THEORYIn this book, an entirely new theory is presented on what is traditionally referred to as 'voyeurism' and 'exhibitionism'. In our opinion, these isolated 'partial drives' are merely two particular forms of the more encompassing scopic and phanic drives that form in principle an undivided unity: both drives elicit each other. We will describe the manifold manifestations of the scopic and the phanic drive and explain how and why they develop. This theory on the scopic and the phanic drive is situated within the broader frame of a general theory on love, as it is unfolded in 'The ecstasies of Eros'.
In 'The erotic eye and its nude' I only present my own view on the subject. Discussion with other authors have deliberately been omitted. What is thus gained in clarity and accessibility, will be lost in academic charms. More than often, an unusual thesis will be advanced without further comment, while, conversely, seemingly obvious points of view are in fact rather controversial. But all these disadvantages do not measure up to the advantages: a concise and clear text. Other theories will be dealt with elsewhere on this site (section 'reviews').The text of the book is written in a rather neutral tone. It was my intention to have the images play an important role in conveying the more 'emotional' freight of what is meant. No doubt, the eloquence of the images will seduce the reader to a cursory reading of the book. Needless to say that a close reading of the text is necessary to follow the development of the argument.
Chapter I of 'The erotic eye and its nude'
object de désir 2
THE EROTIC EYE AND THE EROTIC SENSES see also: 'the ecstasies of eros'
In this first chapter we want to dwell on the erotic eye itself. Fascinated as it is, it cannot refrain from looking at the ever changing – and often surprising – shapes in which the erotic nude appears. Why can lovers not stop looking at each other's body, hearing each other's voice, smelling each other's odours, feeling each other's skin, let alone enjoying each other's orgasm? Why are there so many erotic senses and how do they relate to each other?
(1) LOVE AND ENDURING PERCEPTION
‘Wo du hingehst, da will auch ich sein’.
B. Brecht, Dreigroschenoper.The evolution of erotic senses is a side effect of the evolution of love.
The oldest form of love is love between parents and children. In order to secure the well-being of their offspring, it is important that parents and children are staying nearby each other, even when there are no immediate needs to be met. That is why they want to permanently perceive each other. This need is the primeval form and the kernel of love: loving partners are always looking for each other and trying to stay in each other's vicinity.
Parental love is extended to sexual love when male and female begin to cooperate in view of the bringing up of their offspring. To be able to help each other always and everywhere, also parents develop a need to always remain within each other's reach.
To satisfy this need, the ‘erotic appearance’ is developed which will interest us in the following chapters. The erotic appearance of humans consists of specific patterns for the diverse senses: form and colour, sound, odours, softness and warmth, orgasm. In contrast with the perception of needs and obstacles, which we want to get rid of as soon as possible, the perception of the erotic appearance is pleasurable. Rather than avoiding it, we are looking for it. And when we have found it, we want to enjoy it forever.
(2) THE EROTIC SENSESErotically sensitive senses develop through the transformation of existing senses or organs. Touch is predisposed for such adaptation: to be present is in the first place literally being nearby somebody. With humans, the naked skin as a whole is erotically sensitive, and parts of it are even more sensitive: the hands that touch, the lips that kiss and the sexual organs that penetrate and contain.
But lovers cannot always remain in physical contact with each other. To gratify their needs and to avoid dangers, they have to give up bodily contact. When all their needs are met and all the dangers have disappeared, they seek each other's presence again. In the meantime, they try to stay in contact at a distance. That is why also and foremost the distance senses – eye, ear and nose – are sensitive to the perception of an erotic appearance that can be perceived from a distance.
Since erotic congress wants to endure, two problems arise: how to warrant normal interaction with the outer world, and how to enable sleep? The most appropriate way to solve the first problem, is to suspend the need for erotic commerce until interaction with the outer world is no longer necessary. And falling asleep is made possible through the building in of a climax – the orgasm – which temporarily suspends the need for erotic commerce. After sleep, the need to perceive one’s partner and to interact with the world resurges. The whole cycle starts all over again.
(3) THE TENSION BETWEEN THE EYE AND THE GENITALSAs soon as interaction with the outer world is no longer necessary, the visual and auditory contact with the loved one is taken over by touching and embracing. When touch takes over and the lovers proceed to kissing and fondling, the eyes tend to close. When the genitals take over, touch gives up its contact with the skin: hands and arms are now merely holding and sustaining the loved body. One after another, the erotic senses give way to pure genital sensation. While in the beginning all the erotic pleasure was concentrated in the eye, the whole visual world now implodes in the orgasmic flight.
It is worth while to describe this implosion in some more detail. The everyday, non-erotic world is structured around the perceiving being, from which space radiates in its three dimensions. From within that centre, the eye scans space perspectivally.
The structure of erotic space is totally different. As soon as we are dealing with visual beauty, we are still moving in a visual space, but, provided our erotic interaction is reciprocal, that space is no longer centrifugal but symmetrical: it consists of two mirroring halves.
Sounds further corrodes the already symmetrically restructured space. Certainly, the voice still seems to emanate from a given point in space, but the space in which it resounds is no longer empty. It seems permeated with sound. In such ethereal space, the body no longer is a volume with a surface, rather a vibrating aura that emanates from a kernel. When the lovers echo each other, also this space becomes symmetrical. And when the voices are vibrating in consonance with each other or are merging in unison, the two symmetrical halves seem to permeate each other.
Space dissolves still further when we switch over to odour. Just like sound, odour emanates from the loved body, but the olfactory erotic appearance is no longer situated on a fixed point in space: rather is it an enchanting cloud that comes to envelope us and penetrates our body.
When switching over to touching, space is further reduced to a one-dimensional ‘against’. No longer are we moving between discrete objects, we are leaning against each other, embracing each other. To the eye, the ear and the nose, perceiving and perceived being are discrete. In the world of touch they begin to merge: feeling skin feels feeling skin. The last remnant of space - a dark awareness of something unattainable behind the skin - totally disappears when the radiation of warmth invades our body. Symmetry begins to dissolve into identity.
The involution is completed when the world finally implodes in the orgasmic experience. Seen from without and interpreted in terms of the three-dimensional space of the eye, the penis is filling the vagina that envelopes it, and their mutual embrace elicits the synchronised contractions of orgasm. To the inner sensation of the genitals themselves, this comes down to an implosion of the whole world into one single feeling sensation. Since there is no longer any feeling of confinement within the skin, the orgasmic feeling seems to permeate an infinite ethereal space. In that sense the idea of melting and dissolution – summoned up again and again to describe orgasm – is not a metaphor at all. It is founded in the process of the gradual sensitory reduction that we come to describe.
There are no illustrations of this sensation: it is simply not visible and situated in a dimensionless world at that. Which did not prevent artists from trying to visualise it nevertheless. They have a breeze gently blow around the lovers or have some radiance permeate their bodies. Wind nor radiance have a surface, and radiance knows no obstacles. Another method is letting a kind of streaming movement pervade the bodies or their draperies. Such are the methods to translate the dimensionless orgasmic feeling in a world where the bodies find themselves separated in visual space.
Only in music is it possible to render the orgasmic feeling in a more appropriate way. In contrast with visual bodies, audible bodies easily merge in consonance (Isoldes Liebestod, Wagner). Music is the medium par excellence for the representation of orgasmic merger - and of orgiastic communality as well.
Ordinary needs soon drag us back in the real world. There, we are soon confined again within the limits of our bodies from which we look at the objects surrounding us from all sides. Only in such world applies what Lacan (1981:72) after Merleau-Ponty asserts: that the things are gazing at us. Such experience is a transfer in non-erotic space of the way in which we experience erotic space, a space where not things are gazing at us, but lovers at each other.
Not seldom do we seek solace for the depressing experience that we have now become bodies again, orienting themselves in a perspectival space. We find it in the transparency of fire, in the abyss of the oceans or the fathomless depths of the skies.
Such ethereal worlds, in which we all too eagerly free ourselves from our bodies and the real world, derive their charms from a transfer of the orgasmic feeling in the three-dimensional space of the visible world.
(4) THE PERVERSE MOVEDuring the centripetal move from hearing, over seeing and smelling, to touching and orgasm, the intensity of the erotic feeling is gradually increasing. The erotic sensitivity, spread over the entire body as long as it is dealing with the world, is eventually concentrated in the genitals. The erotic senses behave as runners in a relay-race, handing over the torch to each other, until at last the orgasmic fire can be lit. After having handed over the torch, they sit down at the border of the road, totally exhausted. The ear becomes deaf when the eyes begin to look. The eyes are closed when the hand begins to touch, and the hands stop touching when the genitals are getting ready for orgasm.
So heavily do the erotic senses cling to their appropriate erotic appearance, that they try to postpone the handing over of the torch. Loving eyes give up their reciprocal gaze only in exchange for the sight of the visual beauty of the face and the body. When they eventually switch over to touching, it is the hand that cannot stop from touching and stroking. When the lovers are finally about to merge in orgasm, they try to postpone the climax through slowing down the movements that will bring about the explosion, until, quasi motionless, they are pervaded with the ever increasing intensity of erotic sensation.
The irrevocable advent of the orgasm brings an end to the feelings of pleasure. Whence the endeavour to postpone it. Above all the distance senses – first and foremost the eye – are predestined for such postponement: they have been developed in view of the restoration of erotic contact when the bodies have to deal with the outer world. And since such commerce happens to take up practically the whole duration of our waking existence, seeing is the most common way of being erotically sensitive. The eye only gains when it refuses to hand over the torch: the increasing emotion of an ever more aroused body is an enchanting spectacle indeed. But such refusal initiates the ‘fall’ of the eye: the eye breaks the ban on looking, imposed by the sense of touch. In the end, the greedy eye threatens to prevent the unrolling of the whole process. But, since it is the more aroused the more the admired body becomes exalted, it eventually has to yield to the pull of orgasm.
The erotic senses’ aspiration to autonomy is traditionally – and rightly – called ‘perversion’: ‘pervertere’ means to deviate from an original goal. Inevitably, the term ‘perversion’ is charged with moral connotations. But is does not help to try to prevent this through coining a new term such as Money’s ‘paraphilia’: the problem will repeat itself. Rather than avoiding moral connotations and adopting a purely technical stance, we should acknowledge the moral implications of the phenomenon - the positive ones included: the perverse move reverts the natural unfolding of love only in view of tapping new sources of pleasure. From a positive point of view, then, the perverse move can be described as an endeavour to aestheticisation in the sense of 'becoming a goal in its own right'. The senses are freed from their subordination under the ‘primacy of genitality’. Aestheticisation is also an appropriate term, since it is derived from ‘perceiving’.
The perverse postponement and eventual cancellation of orgasm comes down to a visualisation of love - a subordination under the primacy of the scopic drive. The unfolding of love is transformed into a spectacle for the eye. For the time being, the pull of the orgasm is strong enough to counteract every endeavour to prevent the unfolding of love. In the following chapters we will describe the take-over of the eye and its eventual triumph over genitality.
Chapter II of 'The erotic eye and its nude'
sans tête(s)
THE EROTIC APPEARANCE OF MAN see also: 'the ecstasies of eros'
After having introduced the erotic eye in the first chapter, we should now concentrate on what that eye is so eager to see: the beautiful body. The beautiful body as such, though, will duly be dealt with in the following chapters. In this second chapter we first want to situate the erotic appearance in a broader – evolutionary, historic and social – context
(1) BEAUTY AS THE FOUNTAINHEAD OF LOVE‘...toutes les hideurs de fécondité’
Charles Baudelaire (Les Fleurs du Mal).The erotic appearance of man has everything to do with reproduction, but hardly anything with the strict act of copulation. Rather is it parental care that lies at the base of the erotic appearance of man: the eyes to look in, the warm and soft skin to touch, the soft rounding of the breast to hold, and not least the lips to kiss, are obviously derived from maternal care.
No doubt, also the reproductive organs play an important role as a kind of ‘sixth sense’: the act of copulation is not so much meant to fertilise, as rather to provide the pleasure of orgasm. But the genitals relate rather ambivalently to the erotic eye. With humans, the female reproductive organs no longer signal the fertile period. That is why the often impressive vaginal swellings of apes and primates shrink to the rather modest labia in the human female, that go hidden behind the pubic hair, and disappear between the legs as a consequence of bipedalism (walking upright) and neoteny (the persistence of foetal characteristics in the adult organism). The presence of a fertile cycle is only betrayed through menstrual blood. Also the smells that signal fertility are nearly perceptible with humans.
As a consequence, the erotic eye of man is sensitive to a wholly different kind of visual beauty: the optical qualities of the naked body replace the attraction of the vaginal swellings. The beauty of that naked body consists above all of qualities that allow to visually anticipate the pleasures of touching: the undulations of the body, the softness and flawlessness of the skin, the form and the colour of the eyes. And these qualities are totally different from the rather repellent wrinkles and folds on the genitals, or the heavy pink, red or purple of the vaginal swellings and the erect penis, which are slimy at that. Only the colour of the lips, nipples and fingernails, and of the blush, remind of the preliminary archaic phase. The human erotic eye, hence, is not out at seeing the reproductive organs, but at admiring the beauty of the naked body and its face. Only when the loving partners, attracted by each other’s visual beauty, begin to touch and kiss each other, does the arousal of the sense of touch elicit the readiness of the genital organs.
The whole shift from reproductive organs to naked skin is enhanced in that the sight of the reproductive organs reminds of rather negatively charged phenomena. With most mammals, the genital organs protrude from an opening or fissure in the fleece. That is why they remind of openings in the human skin, such as the inner side of the eyelids or the lips, if not of the threatening mouth of predators and the corollary wounds or raw meat. Not for nothing do children lower their eyelids or protrude their tongue when they want to show an abhorrent face. Not only the form, also the colour of the genitals reminds of a wound: red is the colour of blood. Menstrual blood only enhances that effect. That is why non-informed onlookers often interpret the vaginal swellings of primates as wounds, if not as cancers. The slimy surface also conjures up associations with the archaic skin of reptiles, molluscs or fish.
The whole shift in the array of forms and colours explains why we often recoil when unexpectedly exposed to the sight of genitals, and why a certain reluctance – the primeval form of shame? - compels us to hide them from view in one way or another. The opposition between the unabashed exposure of the vaginal swellings by a bonobo and the modest gesture with which the Venus of Urbino covers her genitals speaks volumes. There is some truth in da Vinci’s saying that the act of copulation and the reproductive organs are so repulsive, that mankind would have died out long ago, were it not for the beauty of the human face – think of his Mona Lisa. And not for nothing does Baudelaire refer to ‘the sheer ugliness of fertility’.
The deep-seated reluctance to lay eyes upon the genitals and the corollary propensity to hide them from view, only enhance the already mentioned efforts of nature to hide the signals of fertility. They equally explain the propensity to overlook the vagina and to read it as the sheer absence of a penis. The association with a wound provokes a further misreading of such absence as the result of castration, above all in children.
We take a similar stance when unexpectedly exposed to sexual smells. The reluctance can extend to bodily odours as such, which lies at the base of the use of perfumes. And the reluctance also comes to encompass the odours of secretion, as is apparent from the old dictum ‘inter urinas et faeces nascimur’ (‘We are born between piss and shit’).
That the visual appearance of our genitals is an avatar from our evolutionary prehistory, does not mean that they have become obsolete as means of seduction. Quite the contrary: the sight of the genitals exerts an often irresistible attraction on the devotees of the erect penis or the aroused vagina. But it is only when the beauty of the body has sufficiently aroused the eye, that it is prepared to value the beauty of the genitals. And the genitals only unfold in all their glory when they are sufficiently aroused by the activity of the eye. That is worlds apart from phrasing - with Bataille – that the essence of the erotic drive consists in desacralising the beauty of the face through the exposure of the repulsive genital organs.
(2) THE RECIPROCITY OF HUMAN SEXUAL SEDUCTION‘Eiusdem libidinis est videri et videre’
‘The desire to see and to be seen is one and the same’
TertullianusIn the animal world, beauty is the privilege of the sex that has to compete for access to the other sex. Which sex has to compete, depends on the division of parental care. The sex that invests most in the offspring is the most selective: it does not waste its energy to the bearers of inferior genetic material. Apart from exceptions – such as the meanwhile legendary sticklebacks or sea horses – it is mostly females who invest most in their offspring. That is why they are far more selective than males. Males, conversely, only enhance their reproductive success by fertilising as much females as possible. That is why they are far less selective and far more competitive (Schopenhauer, Trivers). The increased competitiveness between males and the corollary selectivity of females makes that, in the animal world, it is predominantly males who are the beautiful sex.
Human males play a considerable role in parental care. The role of the father is no longer limited to fertilisation. It comes to encompass the feeding and the education of the children. Father and mother proceed to a division of tasks within the frame of the ‘sexual division of labour’. This only enhances the importance of the father: only from his father can a son learn his role as a male. Thus, the reproductive investment of the father shifts from unrestrained copulatory efforts to economic care and education. Henceforth, the female has to compete, not only for the best possible fertile partner, but also for an economic partner and a father that will be willing to educate his children. This leads to an increased competition between women and an increased selectivity of males. Whence the rather exceptional phenomenon of two equally beautiful sexes in humans, which already puzzled Darwin. The evolution of the beautiful woman is the counterpart of the evolution of a protecting, feeding and educating father.
As a consequence, human seduction is no longer one-sided: it has to be reciprocal. Seduction elicits seduction and admiration The enamoured eye only gets to see the beauty of the beloved body when it is looking from a body that emanates beauty itself. Or to put it more technically: the scopic drive in the lover is elicited by the phanic drive in his beloved, and it elicits the phanic drive in the lover that elicits the scopic drive drive in the beloved in a wholesome self-inducing circular dynamic.
And there is more. Also reciprocal help - ‘economic’ care - becomes an expression of love, to the extent that we can rightly speak of an ‘economical coitus’. Sexual and economical coitus elicit each other and become each other’s expression: humans have the irresistible propensity to sexually gratify their economic partner and, conversely, to also economically gratify a gratifying sexual partner. That is worlds apart from the so-called ‘sex for meat’, that governs the one-sided behaviour of many a primate (Symons)*
(3) THE EXCHANGE OF BEAUTY FOR BENEFITS‘Donner son corps, garder son âme’
How is it, then, that human females pass for the beautiful sex tout court, while male beauty all too often seems to escape female attention?
As opposed to many other species, with humans, there are as much fertile males as females. But, until recently, fertile females used to be mothers that were either pregnant or lactating. This drastically reduces the number of available women. Only in principle is the number of available males equally reduced in that they become fathers: a father is not visibly affected by fatherhood. Since a woman that is pregnant or lactating is not precisely attractive to a man, except for the father of her children, the number of sexually attractive males is considerably larger than the number of available females. Moreover, female beauty is far more transient, and it decreases with the number of pregnancies. Such relative scarcity of female beauty explains why, from primeval times onward, female beauty is in the focus of attention. Since time immemorial, the beautiful woman is surrounded by a host of males that are busy competing for her favours.
Equally since time immemorial, males are out at breaking the power of the beautiful woman that tries to subjugate them through her sheer beauty. They did so by increasing their economic and political power. The rather egalitarian economy of the tribe has gradually been supplemented and finally been replaced with barter between partners who are no longer affiliate through marriage or descent. Through subordination of other men, the economic and political power of a minority increases, to the detriment of an ever growing majority. It suffices to compare a pharaoh and a peasant, a feudal lord and his serfs, or a capitalist and a proletarian.
This dramatically affects the nature of male beauty. In primeval times, sexual and economic prowess found their natural expression in pure physical beauty – muscle, length, agility and skill. But since the advent of the ‘social division of labour’, the importance of purely external signs of economic and political power goes increasing. Bodily beauty is pushed to the background.
This is the more so, since physical beauty only decreases with age, whereas economic or political power only increase with it. Hence, a fundamental asymmetry comes to govern sexual relations: the exchange of beauty for wealth - or benefits of all kinds. Reciprocal sexual attraction and economic cooperation are no longer the foundations of love. Only after such reduction is the complex and reciprocal relationship between lovers reduced to the sheer exchange of ‘sex for meat’, which in many parts of the world still determines the relation between the sexes. Only this development explains why so many a woman leaves the beautiful male in the cold - at least as far as marriage is concerned: male beauty and male sexual prowess are still appreciated, as long as no enduring relation is at stake.
(4) THE ADVENT OF VOYEURISM AND EXHIBITIONISM"Here I am, bent over the keyhole; suddenly I hear a footstep.
I shudder as a wave of shame sweeps over me.
Somebody has seen me".
Jean-Paul Sarte in 'Being and Nothingness'Let us introduce the terms ‘voyeurism’ and ‘exhibitionism’. Although these terms, introduced by Krafft-Ebing and popularised by Freud, suggest otherwise, we are merely dealing with the one-sided descendants of the originally mutually dependent scopic and phanic drives. As opposed to the lover who admires ànd seduces her lover, an exhibitionist is only out at being admired. She is not at all inclined to admire the beauty of her admirer – let alone to yield to his advances. Conversely, a voyeur is only out at admiring. He does not even consider the possibility that the admired might admire his beauty in her turn - let alone admit him within the confines of the temple.
The first lever that dislodges one-sided voyeurism and exhibitionism from their original reciprocity as mutally dependent scopic and phanic drives, is the exchange of beauty for benefits of all kinds. Under such regime, man only admires female beauty, while woman has only eyes for his economic power, not for his beauty. The display of female beauty is turned into a pure exhibition that only masks the reluctance to really surrender. Conversely, male admiration is reduced to pure voyeurism. Since not his physical, but only his economic and political power elicits female exhibitionism, he cannot make love with a sexually excited partner. It can be justifiably said that man reduces woman to her body, as long as the corollary reduction of man to his economic and political power is not overlooked. For centuries, women have been turned on by the sight of crowns, uniforms and titles or other attributes of male power, such as castles and villas, carriages and sport cars, parks and swimming pools. The reduction of man to purely external attributes is if possible worse than the reduction of woman to her body.
Not only the asymmetry of the exchange of beauty or benefits dislodges voyeurism and exhibitionism. Differences in beauty have a more devastating effect. Women are not equally beautiful. The more contacts between people are increasing, the more such differences catch the eye. Only the most prestigious man can get the most beautiful woman. The less mighty and less wealthy must be satisfied with lesser beauties. They can only dream of the most desirable women. In the real world, they have to content themselves with the purely visual enjoyment of their beauty. Which certainly lights the fire, but provides no firewood. The desired body does not desire, and the desiring body is not desired. In such soil is rooted a structural voyeurism: under the regime of the exchange of beauty for benefits and of differential beauty, a majority of men is doomed to only voyeuristically enjoy the beauty of a handful of scarce women, monopolised by a minority. They may find solace in the idea that this minority cannot consume the firewood either. Until recently, the keepers of a harem had to protect their treasure by an army of eunuchs, and in our era many a rich man is cuckolded by his gardener or porter. In the following chapters we will describe how the beautiful woman becomes still more unattainable when she appears in the image.
(5) MALE ORGAN VERSUS FEMALE BODY‘But to the girdle do the gods inherit
Beneath is all the fiends;
There’s hell, there’s darkness,
there is the sulphurous pit -
Burning, scalding, stench, consumption,
Fie, fie fie! Pap, pah!
Shakespeare, King Lear.With humans, the nude body comes to replace the seductive role of the genitals. Still, male genital organs remain visible, whereas female organs are by nature concealed. Thus, the shift from genital organs to body is far more completed in woman.
The beauty of the female body is further enhanced in that male beauty is in many respects the opposite of female beauty. The beard and the bald skull of the old man are the sheer negation of the beautiful mane and the naked chin and cheeks of the young girl. Where the female body shows its utmost treasures – the eyes, cheeks and lips in the face; the breast, womb and the buttock on the body – the male body only shows up a beard and hair, muscle and bone. Especially with white men, the haired male body strongly contrasts with the alluring beauty of a completely hairless - nude - female body. One can measure the effect of the hairless smoothness of the nude by imagining a woman with hair on her breasts, womb and buttocks….
From a purely optical point of view, hair, muscle and bones are mere equivalents of soft, nude undulations. But the eye also sees the delights of touching. And that makes the difference. A soft cheek is worlds apart from a unshaven male jaw, and not only children prefer nestling between warm breasts or in a soft womb, above hurting on hard muscle and bone. Since male beauty is in this sense not so much the opposite, as rather the negation of female beauty, many a female beauty prefers an ugly man: it only enhances her beauty by contrast. That is the truth in the story of the beauty and the beast. The rumour goes that Spanish queens delighted in being accompanied by apes in order to highlight the beauty of their faces. It comes as no surprise that male beauty is often modelled after the female model: the chin is shaved, the mane abundant, the skin hairless and the flesh soft, while the erect frontality is replaced with the charming slight deviations of the vertical and horizontal axe.
But this cannot prevent the penis from remaining exposed, especially when aroused. Even when the power of an erection cannot fail to elicit desire, the contrast of an organ that is not precisely the paragon of beauty, with the in essence female beauty of the body catches the eye all the more.
From the point of view of visual beauty, the opposition between male and female crystallises around two oppositions: the female genitals as negation of the penis, and the male body as negation of the female nude. These two oppositions are often condensed in the one fundamental opposition between the hard, veined penis of the male and the soft, nude body of the female.
The archaic nature of the penis makes it unsuitable for purely optical enjoyment. Even when the erect penis is not entirely devoid of aesthetic charms, many a woman prefers the muscled body, but above all the external signs of wealth and power – the sceptre in the first place: it never fails to stand upright and has a far but archaic appearance. The shift from penis to body to attributes is the more welcome, since many a woman prefers prestige to orgasm, let alone fertilisation, of which the penis is after all still the instrument…
(6) THE FACE AND THE TRUNK‘Du bist eine Frau wie die andere.
Die Häupter sind verschieden. Die Knie sind alle schwach.
So gehft es bei den Tieren.
B. Brecht, Baal.Ideally, sexual and economical coitus reinforce each other. Sexual attraction is an expression of the overall reciprocal dedication of the partners to each other. Where beauty is exchanged for wealth or prestige, and the lesser beauties are secretly longing for a better partner, an opposition between ‘homo economicus’ and ‘homo sexualis’ is installed. Soul and body are no longer two subsequent manifestations of one and the same being, they come to be opposed to each other as two irreconcilable antipodes. This becomes manifest in the opposition of the portrait in which the eyes as the mirrors of the soul are seated, and the nude.
Where body and soul are continuously transformed into each other as two manifestations of one and the same being, the eyes and the face are eventually submerging in the overall erotic appearance of the body. In Titian’s ‘Venus of Urbino’ above, the curves of cheeks, eyes and lips come to echo the curves of the exposed body. Only when the erotic incarnation is forced or faked do the eyes refuse to submerge in the erotic appearance. They continue to gaze at us: they question, accuse or defy the onlooker, or are turning away or hiding behind lowering eyelids (see chapter IX).
That is why, under the regime of the exchange of beauty for wealth and benefits, many an erotic eye prefers its nude to be faceless - a mere trunk. The incarnation has become an ‘embodiment’ in the literal sense of the word.
Compare four nudes. Titian’s ‘Venus of Urbino’ is willingly displaying herself before our gaze. The desiring expression of the face only confirms the willingness with which the body is displayed. With Giorgione, the body is unabashedly exposed, but the gaze goes hidden behind lowered eyelids – which enables the curves of the face to echo those of the body. Manet’s Olympia is looking at us with a gaze that forbids any undisturbed enjoyment of her body. And in Courbet’s ‘Origine du Monde’ we lay eyes only upon the trunk with its legs spread wide. The face, containing the gaze that does not want to become appearance, is bluntly zoomed out.
The inner counterpart of the appearance as a body without a face, is the experience of sexual surrender as a loss or a destruction of the soul or the person - genuine lovers only experience a thrill when, after having cared for each other economically, they can now finally sexually enjoy each other's body.
The echo of such opposition between face and trunk is the complaint of many a woman that she is only loved because of her body, not because of her personality; that she is reduced to a pure object, delivered to the leering look of a sovereign male subject. That complaint is justified as long as the complementary rape of the male being is not overlooked. The very woman that is reduced to a body conversely refuses to let the male body appear. Male embodiment is restricted to a pure descent into the eye: the ‘en-oculation’ of man as the counterpart of the ‘incarnation’ of woman. The entwining of the loving couple is transformed in the unhappy encounter of an eye without a body, that is doomed to gaze at a body without a face and that is directly connected to an erect penis desperately seeking a womb wherein it could come to rest.
Of such unhappy encounter, Hokusai’s octopus with its greedy eyes and voluptuous tentacles is an unsurpassed representation: it even has two eyes on the tentacle that kisses the mouth. And the woman, turning her face backwards, is supposed to enjoy the proceedings.
The decapitation of woman and the en-oculation of man are merely the prelude to the epiphany of the all-seeing eye of God. From heavenly heights it looks down to the en-oculated being that peeps through the Sartrean keyhole at a body without face lifting the eyes up to heaven. Of such God, Moses – with whom we will have to deal extensively in chapter XI - is merely the representative on earth.
Thus we have come full circle.
Chapter III of 'The erotic eye and its nude'
objet de désir 7
see also: 'the ecstasies of eros'
THE EYE’S SEIZURE OF POWER: THE VISUALISATION OF THE EROTIC APPEARANCE
INTRODUCTION
The erotic appearance of man is far from unequivocal. Rather can it be compared with a text in which the words have more than one meaning. Thus, the lips often remind of the vagina, or a muscled and veined arm of the penis. The erotic charge of one element is often displaced to another. Purely visual similarities play a crucial role in this process, and it is often consolidated through language (think of the ‘labia’). But, in this chapter, we will show that the whole movement of displacement is above all the result of the coordinated effort of three forces: the attempt to aestheticise the archaic sight of the genitals, the attempt to soothe the anxiety provoked by the idea of the lurid wound, but foremost the eye’s attempt to take the place of touch and genital feeling. Especially the last move comes down to a veritable seizure of power: it leads to the utter visualisation of the tactile and genital appearance, which culminates in the emergence of the phallic woman and the vaginal man.
(1) THE AESTHETICISING OF ARCHAIC BEAUTYIn the previous chapter we have seen that the genitals appeal to a rather archaic sensitivity. That elicits the attempt to replace them with more aesthetic substitutes. There are many parts of the body that are apt to meet the aesthetic demands of the eye.
To begin with, there are the fingers and toes. The bones make these elongated members stiff, as does the blood in the erect penis, and they are crowned with nails, which have the colour in common with the glans, but not the slimy sight.
Sexual arousal makes the veins swell under the skin, the effect of which is visible foremost on the back of the hand or the foot. That is why the single finger is often replaced with the whole hand or foot. Also arms and legs are not only hard and veined, just like fingers and toes, but muscled as well, which can only endorse the evocation of the force of the erect penis. Also the nose reminds of the penis: it secretes slime, its back reminds of the shaft and the nostrils of the scrotum, while a moustache is an obvious substitute for the pubic hair. And, finally, there is the neck: the larynx moves back and forth under the skin just like the glans under the foreskin, especially when the head is thrown backwards and the neck is ‘erected’:
Not only the penis, also the vagina is substituted with more aesthetic parts of the body in the periphery. The most obvious substitutes are the lips. These have colour, shape and structure in common with the labia, without being slimy. With the eye, the eyelids remind of the labia, the eyelashes or the eyebrows remind of the pubic hair, the tear gland of the clitoris and the pupil of the vaginal opening. The auricle is a hollow surrounded by folds reminding of the labia. The armpits are a fold surrounded by hair, and they have the odour in common with the vagina. Also the parting of the hair on the head is often read as a vagina.
(2) THE HEALING OF THE WOUNDNot only the archaic sight of the vagina unleashes the centrifugal displacement to the peripheral parts of the body. Also the anxiety provoked through the interpretation of the vagina as a cut plays an important role. A healed wound on a more neutral part of the body soothes the anxiety and serves the aesthetic move as well. Foremost the navel is apt for such displacement. Even more appropriate to deny the idea of a wound are the hollows and folds that are formed when parts of the body are pressed against each other: the undamaged skin neutralises the slimy and gory sight of the labia. This holds especially true for the fold formed when the thighs are pressed together. But many other parts can serve the purpose. How much these folds, especially those of the pressed thighs, continue to remind of wounds, may appear from the fact that they are often wrapped with cloth. The healing move is completed when the seam grows together, as with a mermaid (see chapter VIII).
Especially the displacement of the vagina to the back is very appropriate to remove any reminder of a wound. The slimy and gory wound is replaced with the undamaged fold of the buttocks. Further backwards, the fold of the buttocks is dissolving into the even, undamaged surface of the back. Only its symmetry reminds of the wound. The spinal column is an extension of the anal cleft. On both sides are two bundles of muscles that function as substitutes for the labia, while the whole is covered with undamaged skin: hollow, but not cut. The effect is continued in the two bundles of muscles in the neck, where the little hairs cannot fail to remind of the pubic hair. The healing move comes to its apogee when the cut, opening up into the hole, is altogether replaced with the undamaged, convex womb that surrounds it, as in Brancusi’s ‘Torse de jeune fille’.
(3) THE VISUALISATION OF TACTILE AND GENITAL PROCEEDINGSUnder displaced form, the genitals are no longer bound to a sexually determined body. Also a woman has fingers, toes, arms, legs and a nose, and also a man has a mouth, folds and hollows, and a back. Worse still: the body of the other sex is often far more appropriate to attract the displacement. Think of the female nipples, which are larger than male ones, become erect like the penis and have the same colour, without being slimy.
But the displacement of the penis to the female body is not obvious. It goes counter the ineradicable propensity to conform all the characteristics of a body to its sex. A voice sounds differently when is it supposed to belong to a female or to a male person. There are lots of examples that evidence this rule.
When this compelling rule is so often broken, strong forces must be at work to counteract sexual stereotyping. Driving force is the ‘perverse move’, introduced in the first chapter. When lovers are kissing each other, they close their eyes. But the eyes want to continue enjoying visual beauty: the lovers want see the exalted face instead of feeling it with the lips. And when the hand begins to touch, the eye only grants it its pleasure because it elicits new signs of exaltation on the body. The greedy eye then scans the body, until it finally comes to rest at the sight of the erect penis or the aroused vagina, the ultimate signs of exaltation. Stubbornly clinging to its desire for visual pleasure, the eye would like to witness even the merger of the genitals. But when these are allowed to do as they please, the penis inevitably will disappear in the vagina. When the eye is not prepared to give up its pleasure, it will have to prevent such merger and the impending advent of orgasm (see chapter I)
Such seizure of power trough the eye comes down to a veritable ‘castration’: seeing forbids genital feeling. The blindness for the ‘castrating’ effect of the eye is so general, that it is not superfluous to remind of the difference between visual and genital perception of the orgasm. With the eye, we only see signs of the orgasm: the blush, the erection of diverse parts of the body, the grimacing of the face, the heavy breathing of the chest, the twisting of the body, male and female ejaculations. With the ear, we hear the heavy breathing, the voluptuous moaning and ecstatic crying, and with the nose we smell the often dizzying odours. How eloquent these expression may be, they are mere outer signs of orgasm, not orgasm itself. It is a mistake to assert – with Linda Williams – that one can see the male orgasm, especially when she holds that the female orgasm is invisible, because one cannot see the contractions of the vagina. As a sign, the female orgasm is all too visible – how else could women fake it so readily for the male gaze? Precisely because the eye depends on signs, it is so easily betrayed….
The perverse desire to continue looking runs up against a threshold that can never be crossed. Orgasm, the kernel of the erotic proceedings, will forever remain invisible, how deeply it might move us. Only the genitals can feel it. That holds not only of the orgasm, but also of the sense of touch. When the hands are exalting the body, the eye equally sees only the signs of that exaltation. We easily overlook this fact, because the hands continue feeling while the eye is looking: while the eye relishes the sight of the erect nipples, the hand feels the warm swelling of the breast. Only in the preliminary visual phase of seduction are seeing and feeling one and the same thing, because here ‘feeling’ is ‘seeing’. Visual exaltation is apparent in the pure fact of displaying one’s beauty. Only in its own domain can the eye witness exaltation. There is, hence, a real gap between being enchanted through the intrinsic visual beauty of a face, or becoming exalted by gazing at the signs of exaltation or of the invisible orgasm on that very same face.
We understand at the same time that the aestheticising and anxiety-soothing centrifugal move away from the genitals described above, is prepared by a far more fundamental move: the ‘perverse’ move from tactile and genital feeling to the visual signs of it. The eye is not only out at enjoying purely visual beauty, as it is displayed in the reciprocity of showing and looking. More often is it eager to lay eyes upon the visual signs of tactile and genital exaltation. Such visualising leads to a grandiose unfolding of the array of visual appearances of the body beautiful.
(4) THE HERMAPHRODITE BODY (1): THE PHALLIC WOMANThe take over of the eye has an unexpected consequence: in that the greedy eye neutralises the penis, precisely the acme that it so dearly wants to see cannot take place.
In a first attempt at solving this problem, the greedy eye wants the desired body to bring itself to orgasm, or a third party to take over the role that it forbids its own body. Then, the erotic appearance is no longer a part of the more encompassing whole, in which the lovers reciprocally admire each other’s display. It is transformed into the spectacle of a loving couple or of a body exalting itself before the eye of a third onlooker. The vicissitudes of the eye and its nude along this path will occupy us in chapter X. Here, we are interested in a third possibility: how the eye that forbids the advent of the penis, has the desired body transformed into a hermaphrodite in the real sense of the word: a being that possesses both sexual organs.
It is not difficult to understand how a body that is no longer involved in a reciprocal process of displaying and admiring, is transformed into such a hermaphrodite body. The seizure of power of the eye, which comes down to an elimination of the genitals and the hands, transforms the eye into a pure voyeuristic eye: it merely looks and does no longer arouse the desired body through touching, let alone penetration. Inadvertently, the exalted beauty is turned into a frigid beauty. Which only fuels the desire to lay eyes upon the signs of arousal on the desired body. The signs of arousal par excellence are the erect genitals. Thus, the eye must have the erect penis, in which it refuses to metamorphose, resurrect in the desired body, to testify to its arousal. Such projection pays: the eye can see at the same glance desired and desiring body. Through such transformation of the desired body into a hermaphrodite, the castration of the desiring body is made undone.
There are many ways to work that miracle. Starting point of the projection is the very void that is created in that the eye forbids the penis to penetrate the vagina. What the eye gets to see then is the vagina as a mere void – sheer nothingness. It is obvious, then, to let the excluded penis protrude from within the void. The idea of a resurrection of the penis from the void is rooted in the presence of the cervix in the invisible hole. The reversal of the direction of the penis betrays that we are dealing here with the desiring penis. Such reversal makes the hermaphrodite body differ from the body that arouses itself, where the substitutes of the penis are turned inwards.
In second variant, the female genitals are so represented as to resemble the male ones. The labia maiora are the counterpart of the male scrotum, the labia minora of the shaft, and the clitoris of the glans. Protruding labia minora are an obvious substitute for the protruding penis. Also the pubic hair can serve the purpose when it has an appropriate shape.
In a second phase, the projected penis is displaced to the more aesthetic fingers and toes, arms and legs. Triumphantly, they radiate from the (implicit or emphasized) void. Rather than denying it, they enhance its effect through contrast. The emphasis may be on fingers or toes, fingers ànd toes, on arms or legs, on both arms and legs, or on fingers and toes, arms and legs. The desiring penis may also be displaced to erect breasts and nipples. The élan of the nipples may be joined by that of arms and legs, fingers and toes or by the overall erect stature of the body. Also braids and locks can embody the desiring penis when radiating centrifugally from the trunk enclosing the desired void. And the head, finally, can be read as the glans on the shaft of the neck.
As a result of this process, the female body is eventually turned into its very opposite: erect protrusions have taken the place of hole, hollows and undulations. In fact, the female body is from the beginning constructed around the contrast between hole/rounding and protrusion: the long legs and arms lend the female body an additional charm. But the opposition only becomes manifest when it is additionally charged with the phallic desire of the castrated voyeur.
And the phallic charge of the body is anything but completed. For, in a third phase, the hermaphrodite only appears after the displacement of both penis and vagina. When the vagina is displaced to the lips of the mouth, the elusive penis resurfaces in the protrusion of the tongue. The vagina can also be displaced to the hand(s), where fingers and thumb come to be opposed to the void contained within the palms of the hand. A good example is Rodin’s ‘La cathédrale’. When this artist retired himself with his models, he used to hang a leaflet on the door with the words ‘L’artiste visite la cathédrale’. In the representation of the Medusa the vagina is displaced to the mouth and the multiplied penis to the locks turned into wriggling snakes.
Both motives – the replacement of the archaic mucous membranes with undamaged skin and the soothing of anxieties about the cut – often work together. The vagina is then replaced with the undamaged skin of the womb that contains it. The phallic charge is further opposed to the confining womb to the protrusion of arms, legs and head. A fascinating version is Ingres’ ‘Grande odalisque’. The armpit reminds of the fold between the legs, but the cut is denied through the emphasis on the convex breast. From this centre the elongated arms and legs radiate and end up in a profusion of fingers and toes.
We cannot but expect the phallic body to yield to the temptation of penetrating itself. We are then witnessing all the forms of masturbation, which will be dealt with in chapter X, together with the arousal of the body through a third party.
(5) THE HERMAPHRODITE BODY (2): THE VAGINAL MAN
In principle, the desiring eye of the female (or of a feminine man) can equally project the excluded vagina on a man. Also the male body provides many an appropriate substitute for the vagina: anus, mouth, eye, folds. This holds especially for the mouth, which reminds of a hungry child that must be satisfied by introducing the nipple of the breast. Excessive eating leads to a fat belly, which provides, besides a multitude of folds, also a new opening: the navel, as in the statue of the dwarf Morgante in the gardens of Boboli, where the emphasis on the open mouth and the navel is accentuated by the eyes and the mouth of the tortoise, whose shield only echoes the rounding of the belly.
But the male body offers far less possibilities to oppose the hollow to the penis. Add to this that the expression of an aroused vagina is far less speaking than that of an erect penis. And, finally, we should not forget that, under the regime of the exchange of beauty for benefits, only the male is the desiring party. All this makes the projection of the desiring vagina on the male body far more scarce than the converse projection of the penis on the female body. But the feminine investment of the male body is not altogether absent.
The male organ provides practically no clues for the projection of labia or vaginal opening. Only the mouth of the penis and the opening of the foreskin are candidates. In the immediate vicinity of the penis is the anus. But the point of view from which the anus is seen hides the shaft of the penis from view. There are more possibilities when not only the vagina, but also the penis is displaced to more peripheral parts. The anus may be opposed to a tail, as with the devil. Far more appropriate is the displacement of the vagina to the mouth, especially when there is a beard and a moustache. The role of the penis can be played by the tongue, the nose, the points of the moustache, the beard, locks or horns that centrifugally radiate from the opening of the mouth.
Thus, the eye conjures up the excluded genitals on male and female body alike. Next to the ‘phallic women’, there is also a ‘vaginal man’ or – to account for the displacements – the ‘vagoral’ or ‘vaganal’ or ‘wounded’ man. But it is probably better to speak of the (male or female) hermaphrodite: this term has the advantage that it emphasizes the process of projection and displacement, which is essentially the same in both sexes, and that it can be applied to the displaced forms.
A remarkable encounter of male and female hermaphrodite has been painted by Ingres in his ‘Jupiter and Thetis’. With Thetis, the emphasis is on the protrusions, while the vagina is concealed. With Jupiter, the mighty limbs and the staff frame the mouth surrounded with a moustache, the fold of the navel and the hollow between the toes. The reversal comes to its apogee when the male ‘vagina’ is fingered through female ‘penises’:
(6) THE HERMAPHRODITE BODY(3)Not only the perverse move is responsible for the transformation of the erotic appearance into a hermaphrodite. Also the scarcity of female beauty plays an important role. As we have seen, it leads to an indifference towards male beauty, which is only increased through the exchange of beauty for benefits. In the end, the isolated scopic drive in the male comes to be opposed to the isolated phanic drive in the female, or - to put it somewhat more graphically: the greedy eye and the erect penis of the male are confronting the beautiful body of the (frigid) women, as in Hokusai's print.
That cannot but stir the desire to restore reciprocity. The desiring male wants to be desired, and since he cannot but conceive of desirability as of a female beauty, he fills the empty space between desiring eye and desiring penis with the corresponding parts of a desirable female body. Conversely, the desired female wants to desire, and since she cannot but conceive of desire as of male desire, she completes her desirable body with a desiring penis. In both cases, the restorative move results in the construction of the desired female body with the desiring penis.
A good example is Donatelo's David. The beautiful young boy enjoys the beauty of his own body that makes him independent from the unattainable woman. The entwining of the bodies is replaced with the closed circle of the eye admiring the beauty of its own body. This image - as if it were the sequel to Hokusai's octopus - embodies the complete visualisation of genitality: the penis that was out a penetrating the vagina is replaced with the eye admiring its own body.
The counterpart of such 'feminine' self-sufficient retirement in itself is the aggressive triumph of the 'phallic woman': desirability and desire in one and the same body. Here, the emphasis is on the desiring penis.
In both cases, the eye enjoys its own body, or to be more precise the part of its body that belongs to the other sex. The eye can look directly to its body (David), but more often it prefers to resort to a mirror or an image. Or the enjoyment is mediated through the eye of a third party, as is the case with the transvestite (see chapter V). In all cases the voyeur tries to restore the broken reciprocity of showing and looking, the entwining of scopic and phanic drive, through projecting its own showing and looking: from within his own body, he looks at the aroused appearance in the mirror, from where his own gaze is summoning up the transport of his own body.
Also the merger of desiring penis and desired body can be described as a hermaphrodite body. Unjustifiably though, since a real hermaphrodite has the sexual organs of both sexes, whereas our 'hermaphrodite' has only that desirable body of one sex, and the desiring organ of the other. Real hermaphrodites are the representations described above.
The visualisation is completed when the identification of desiring body and desired body eventually leads to the replacement of the desiring organ itself. That is the case when the male wants to be transformed in the desired female, and the desired female in the desired male. An illustration is the self-portrait of Schiele: a gory seam runs over the scrotum, no member is to be seen, the abdomen is transformed into a womb, the upper part of the body is adorned with female breast, the arms hold their own head and the legs are cut off, not otherwise than the penis. Only the angularity of the skinny body are the last testimonies to the dissolved masculinity.
The preliminary stages to such transformation can be seen in the painting where Schiele is looking into a mirror over the shoulder of his model, not by accident a pubertal girl that nearly shows the signs of feminists.
(7) THE EYE AND ITS FETISHESSo strong is the ‘perverse’ desire to witness the tactile and genital exaltation, that the erotic eye all too easily overlooks that it is merely enjoying signs: to maintain its position, the eye should above all not remember that those signs only refer to what is doomed to remain invisible forever. Therein, the eye resembles the devotees of the golden calf: they take the representation for the invisible original. They are worshipping an idol - a fetish.
Through forbidding precisely what it wants to see, the erotic eye creates the very void that is doomed to remain empty forever. What is supposed to disappear in it, resurfaces from within. Out of this move is born the primeval fetish. The propensity to aestheticise the genitals and the attempts to soothe the anxiety about the wound, make the original representation move centrifugally to the periphery. Thus, the primeval fetish becomes unrecognisable. It goes hidden behind ever new fetishes of the second generation: fetishes of the fetish. Again like with the golden calf, also these fetishes of the second generation use to be worshipped with a devotion that is meant for the original that goes hidden behind an aesthetic veil.
Thus, voyeurism is the mother of fetishism. The further vicissitudes of fetishism will be dealt with in chapter VI.
Chapter IV of 'The erotic eye and its nude'
objet de désir 5see also: 'the ecstasies of eros'
THE DISPLAY OF BEAUTY: REVEALING AND CONCEALING
INTRODUCTIONThe body is not always flaunting its attractiveness. Even when it openly seduces, it shows only its one side to hide the other from view, and many an attractive part covers another one: as when the arms are crossed over the chest, when one leg is crossed over the other, when the hair covers the neck. That is why a whole range of erotic gestures and poses haven been developed to display erotic charms that are normally hidden or perhaps even non-existent. Natural display can be involuntary, as is the case with the widening of the pupil, blushing, erections of various parts of the body, or the secretion of various smells and fluids. But it can also be voluntary. Such is the case with smiling, presenting the breasts, stretching the body, not to mention adopting a supine or prostrate position and widening the thighs. Let us have a closer look at these manifold manifestations of the phanic drive.
(1) SEDUCTIONSeduction begins with the gaze. It no longer idly flutters around, but tries to catch the gaze of the beloved. It can look straightforward from a frontal face, but more often, the face is gently inclined, forward and/or sideward. In all cases, the mouth is relaxed and the lips are somewhat parted. When the face is gently thrown backward, that expression often unfolds to a nearly concealed kiss.
Hypnotising with the gaze is merely an advance to mesmerising with body. The move is inaugurated by a subtle shift from the face to the breasts until finally the whole body is put on display.
(2) THE ALLURE OF THE GESTURE OF DISPLAYINGPutting one's attractiveness to display becomes an erotic gesture in its own right, the relish of which only adds to the charms of the beauty displayed. Pulling the hair up is even more enchanting than the sight of the uncovered neck. The act of presenting the breasts or the buttocks is even more seducing than the sight of what is put on display. Splaying the thighs wide only enhances the appeal of the body exposed. Things come to their apogee when the nude fully reclines, with its arms lifted up and its legs spread wide.
(3) THE CHARMS OF CONCEALINGAdd to this that the effect of displaying can be heightened by teasingly concealing erotic charms before eventually unravelling them. That is why erotic display has come to include an endless array of tantalising manoeuvres. These range from inclining the head and lowering the eyes, over folding the hands across the chest, lifting the legs or turning the back, to withdrawing, running away and pushing back - not to mention slowing down and restraining when eventually the two bodies are entwined. In lingering over the display of erotic charms, the nude comes to endorse the erotic eye's complementary desire to linger over the relish of visual beauty.
To begin with, a gaze from a gently turned away face looks even more inviting, especially when one eye goes hidden behind the hair. Or the expression of the lips is all the more promising when their intentions are concealed by hands that cannot refrain from grasping themselves. Even more tantalising is the lowering of the eyelids in a turned away face, especially when the half-parted lips cannot but betray the readiness to kiss. But even when the face does not at all conceal its intentions, the tension may be heightened by crossing the arms over the breast, especially when also the knees are lifted up or when the nude turns its back on us at that.
The effect of concealing is even further enhanced when it is combined with putting other alluring parts on display. That holds especially true for a dorsal display. The sight of the back cannot but all the more stir the desire to see the hidden beauty of the front.
Displaying one's beauty, then, is not a matter of simply exposing oneself before the gaze of the seduced. It is of necessity always a process unfolding in time.
Needless to say that the game of concealing and revealing only folly unfolds when clothes are allowed to enter the picture. Time has come, then, to examine their influence on the development of voyeurism and exhibitionism.
Chapter V of 'The erotic eye and its nude'
objet de désir 4see also: 'the ecstasies of eros'
(1) CLOTHESErotic display is far but restricted to natural ways of concealing and revealing the body's appeal. Humans have always been trying to artificially increase their erotic attractiveness through a whole array of artificial means: clothes, make-up, tattoos, jewellery, prostheses, not to mention chirurgical, hormonal or genetic interventions.
Dress is the most conspicuous of these techniques, and at the same time the most intriguing, because it seems to be counterproductive through hiding the beauty of the nude from view. That does not prevent dressing from being a very effective and sophisticated device for widening the range of erotic display and intensifying the pleasure of natural erotic charms.
To begin with, clothes tend to stir a yearning to uncover what lies beneath. In real life, the impulse to bluntly denudate a dressed body is repressed through the presence of a gaze: the gaze not only spiritualises or forbids any erotic relation, it can also teasingly postpone it.
Clothes not only stir the desire to uncover, they also make all the more desirable what they conceal - as in the very paradigm of clothing: the half-clad, half-naked bosom. That is why dressing enriches the natural range of erotic display with that most alluring of all seductive procedures: stripping. There are countless variants. Very fascinating is the uncovering of the breasts. But also the taking off of shoes, the undoing of stockings or the lifting up of a smock exert an often irresistible spell. Especially the uncovering of the back is most exciting, since what we get to see is only an advance to the splendours on the front.
It is apparent, then, that clothes are not originally meant to conceal nakedness; they are intended to cover nudity - which is quite a different matter. There is no point in stripping if what is revealed is merely an indifferent, sheer naked body. On the other hand, people do not depend on clothing to hide their nudity - it suffices to be naked. Nudity only appears in an exalted body. Neither does the body lose its appeal when it is always naked. On the contrary, sheer nakedness - in much the same way as the body clad - only ignites the desire for nudity to appear.
(2) CLAD AND NUDESince no garment can possibly cover the entire body, covering of necessity equals leaving uncovered. The lustful eye can't help regarding the parts left uncovered as all the more valuable delights. Clothing, therefore, not only stirs the desire to uncover, it enhances above all the nudity of the parts left uncovered. In this sense, the state of dress is always a state of undress. That is most poignantly exemplified in the low neckline, that leaves the breasts half-covered, half-exposed.
Due to habituation, the body has to yield ever more nudity, as when the skirts are becoming shorter or the neckline is lowering. The formerly covered parts now seem all the more desirable. In the downward sense, first the eyes and the face are exposed, then the hair and the neck, then the shoulders and the bosom. In the sideward sense, first the hands are exposed, then the forearm, the upper arm and eventually the shoulders. In the upward sense, first the feet are left uncovered, than the ankles and the lower legs, then the thighs. The movement can also proceed from the waist until only the breasts and the genitals are covered. The neckline on the back may be lowered until the whole back is exposed.
The same process affects also single parts of the body: the veil covers only the hair instead of the whole face, the fingers show up through a glove that merely covers the palm of the hand, the shoe leaves ever more parts of the foot uncovered, or the cups of the bra are reduced to a mere strip over the nipples. The covering of the waist may be reduced to a mere ribbon, or the pants to a mere string that all the more accentuates the nudity of the buttocks.
So does the erotic eye regain the paradise lost to garment. But at the same time, the charms of concealing are lost. What is allowed to be naked, loses its additional charms, and a whole array of seductive gestures irrevocably evaporates: the removal of the veil, the taking off of gloves, the denudation of a leg. That cannot but elicit up a countermove: the tendency to cover what has previously been allowed to remain nude. Eventually, an ever extending array of possibilities is developed, ranging from the utter concealment of the body leaving only the eyes and the hands uncovered, and sheer nudity, leaving only the genitals covered (Kroeber).
In accordance with the natural propensity to conceal the genitalia, mostly the peripheral parts are left uncovered. A tantalising effect is derived from a complete reversal of this scheme, when the body is nude where it would normally be covered, and covered where it is normally nude. It is obvious that the splendour of the habitually covered areas of the body is heightened by contrast with the clothes on the habitually exposed parts. The latter regain their appeal precisely because they are now concealed. Which only increases the desire to eventually restore the body in its full glory.
There are several variations on the theme of reversal. Everything is left uncovered, except for the head and the feet; everything is left uncovered, except for the hands and feet, or arms and legs; everything is left uncovered, except for the waist; everything is left uncovered, except for a necklace or a bracelet; everything is covered, except for the vagina; only the upper or lower part of the body are covered; only the left of right side of the body is covered; the front is covered and the back left nude, or vice versa. The reversal is also most cherished in the parts. The bra may be reduced to a mere frame around the breasts left nude; or the sleeves and/or legs are reduced to a cover around the elbows and knees. Very exciting is also the contrast between a body naked and a body clad, as when the completely dressed lover holds his utterly nude beloved, as has been customary in the many pietas and Manet's well-known 'Déjeuner sur l'herbe'.
When the reversal is too drastic, it resorts a reverse effect, especially when the onlooker is suddenly confronted with uncovered genitals in an otherwise completely clad body. Only when the onlooker has been previously turned on by the sight of more peripheral parts is the eye prepared to enjoy the sight of the genitals. That is why blunt exposure cannot fail to provoke revulsion - in which resides the secret charm of the performance of the exhibitionist (in the strict sense of the word). Also when nude breasts are isolated, they often exert a threatening effect - as with Ingres, where the effect is obtained through letting the body submerge in shadowy areas.
(3) LINGERIEA new impetus for playing the game of concealing and revealing is given when the body is covered with more than one layer. Salomé had herself wrapped in seven veils in order to prolong her unveiling.
Even more effective than adding up identical layers is the heightening of the contrast between the layers. The introduction of a layer of underwear ensues a kind of reciprocal specialisation: the more transparent and intimating the underwear, the more concealing the outerwear. Such specialisation also affects texture - the softer the undergarment, the rougher the outerwear. Fabric itself comes to be reallocated. Whereas hand-made lace used to be an outer adornment, machine-made lace has become a favourite for underwear (Hollander). The same is true for lace and satin. Furthermore, where the task of revealing the body's contours is relegated to underwear, every other layer has to hint at the presence and reveal the nature of the next. Preferably, underwear peeks out from beneath an outer layer, such as the cuffs of sleeves, or the ribbons or the edges of the bra. In the same vein, the outline of the underwear may appear through semi-transparent fabric, or its relief may show through a tight-fitting dress.
The more specialised the layers, the greater their propensity to become an autonomous component with increasing internal specialisation and organisation. The chemise, for centuries the sole basic undergarment for all European women (Hollander) has been gradually replaced with lingerie consisting of many parts: underpants, garter belts, corsets and bras. The more specialised a layer, the greater its specific appeal and the greater its autonomy. Undressing develops into a continuous metamorphosis. In every stage of its unfolding, a new erotic appearance with its own merits is revealed. Far from merely referring to the next stage of undressing, every intermediate appearance tries to substitute its own splendour to the detriment of the next stage. That is most apparent in the appeal of that new kind of intermediary stage between clad and nude: the body clad in a swimsuit or lingerie.
The habitual presence of underwear also allows for more sophistication in the techniques of unveiling. To begin with, new forms of undressing emerge: the revealing of the underwear under the outerwear, and the revealing of the body under the lingerie. But also other refined ways of heightening the erotic tension emerge. A kind of shortcut can be achieved when a naked body shows up where an intermediate of underclothing was expected. This type of shortcut not only pleases the erotic eye, but foremost its nude. There is a special thrill in wearing a garment over naked breasts or walking around in a skirt without a slip underneath, or - in sharpening the contrast even further - appearing completely naked underneath a thick fur coat, formal attire, or heavy working apparel.
(4) DRAPED, CUT, STRETCHED 0R TRANSPARENTBut there is more. Although clothes hide nudity from view, they cannot but court the shapes of the body. Here is another way in which concealing can be transformed into a refined way of revealing. Already draped dress produces a contrast between the fall of the folds and the undulations that show through. To accentuate such contrast, the wearer my have the wind blow against his body or water make the fabric cling to it. More efficient is cutting up the fabric so that it comes to court more intimately the shape of the body.
The desire to lay eyes upon what is concealed can become so urgent that even cutting up does not suffice. Additional elasticity makes the dress perfectly court the undulations of the body that was supposed to conceal, as with tight-knitted dresses, nylon stockings and latex. The covering is shortcut altogether when the fabric itself is transparent, or when the surface shrinks into a mere ribbon or strings. A most alluring effect is achieved when the body is naked but nevertheless covered with paint.
Finally, a pure reminder of clothes has to suffice: think of the white imprints of articles of clothing on a body that has been exposed to the sun.
(5) LINGERING OVER SEDUCTION‘Puis, elle faisait d’un seul geste tomber l’ensemble de ses vêtements’
Flaubert, Emma Bovary.Exciting though garments can be, dressing cannot be an end in itself. There is no purpose in heightening the appeal of the body when it is no longer revealed. Getting dressed is only a prelude to, if not a means of postponing the forthcoming denudation. The ultimate destiny of clothes is to be laid off.
That becomes all too obvious when we compare clothes with the whole array of other artificial means to enhance the erotic appeal, such as make-up, epilating and shaving, cosmetic surgery, the use of all kind of prostheses, wigs, false eyelashes, and what have you. Although these devices are often put on the same footing as clothing, we are dealing with totally different phenomena. To be sure, some of these artifices can be laid off like clothes: think of make-up, a set of dentures or a wig. But their removal only lays bare hidden shortcomings instead of hidden charms. The difference is between objectively adding to the beauty or concealing shortcomings on the one hand, and subjectively increasing the erotic appeal on the other hand. That is already apparent from the structure of clothes itself, which is determined by the ease with which they are laid off. The charm of well-fitting trousers resides in opening the zipper, the charm of a blouse in its unbuttoning, the secret of the corset in its unlacing, the appeal of the bra in its undoing. One could write a whole erotica on zippers, buttons, hooks, ribbons and laces. And there is a whole array of refined, nearly concealed tricks of seduction, from unawares letting glide a ribbon over the shoulder, over leaving one or more buttons undone or a zipper open, to leaving the collar unbuttoned to show some chest, and what have you. Such seeming dishevelment betrays an overall readiness or helps to conjure it up.
However much al these refinements may stir the erotic eye, nothing compares to the beauty of its nude when finally uncovered.
(6) CLOTHES AND THE ECLIPSE OF THE NUDE‘L’homme nu est un mollusque’
Lacan.Although clothing is a sophisticated method of seduction, it often serves the opposite goal of creating deceit, by suggesting that there is something more or better than what actually exists. Worse still, clothing can even compensate for, or mask an inability - if not an unconscious unwillingness - of the body to display itself in the nude. In fact, garments can be disposed of at will, whereas a genuine willingness arises only where there is a reciprocal attraction and a readiness to engage in a more encompassing relationship. Erotic attire may only advertise an apparent readiness, as opposed to a complete willingness. This attitude is quite common under the regime of differential beauty, where many a beauty flaunts her appeal, without being prepared to disappear in the marital bed, let alone the childbed. Such purely exhibitionistic attitude is epitomised in the model with whom an increasing number of women identify themselves. The model specialises in displaying her body before a host of admirers, whose very number structurally prevents them from ever gaining access to her body. Inevitably, the staging of seduction is transformed into a mere performance of exhibitionism on the catwalk.
Even accomplished stripping may be diverted from its true destiny. This occurs when it becomes a mere substitute for complete seduction by the eventually denudated body. In granting the nude, stripping withholds intercourse. Unveiling - and solely unveiling - has become the crux of its pleasure, and the spell is broken when the last veil has fallen. This attitude is quite common in every day life - on beaches and at parties - but it comes to its apogee in staged performances such as the belly dance and the strip tease, not to mention photographic images of a nude. Just as in the performance of the model on the catwalk, the performance of the stripper is doomed to be reduced to mere exhibitionism. This is evident in the highly ritualised, theatrical quality of the performance in which touching - and in classic striptease: showing the genitalia - is excluded.
Thus, voyeurism and exhibitionism are further isolated from the tactile and genital sequel of visual seduction. Their increasing autonomy finds its counterpart in the gradual shift form body to clothes. Not for nothing does many a man prefer a half-clad body or a body in full erotic attire - it might utterly fail when it finally surrenders. Genuine display as the expression of an unlimited willingness to surrender, may be just as rare as a perfect body.
No wonder that it is often proclaimed that erotic appeal derives not from the body, but from the body clad or from its unveiling. The contention is only justified when the nude is not able or prepared to hold its promise. We cannot escape the impression that the emphasis on the envelope is merely a new manifestation of the age-old contempt for the body: from Tertullianus' 'templum aedificatum super cloacam’, over Baudelaire's make-up, Merleau-Ponty's 'chair', Clark's 'sack of potatoes' to Lacan's body as a mollusc.
That does not prevent that matters can be looked at more positively. Clothes maintain the illusion that it is they that make the man or the woman. In expectance of a generalised genetic manipulation of bodily beauty - they may thus serve the egalitarian purpose (Alain). They help to flatten the differences in beauty and help to tip the balance in favour of the lesser beauties, as in the story of Cinderella - even when this fairy-tale learns that real beauty will always win at last.....
Chapter VI of 'The erotic eye and its nude'
objet de désir 1see also: 'the ecstasies of eros'
CLOTHES AND THE METAMORPHOSIS OF THE EROTIC APPEARANCE
(1) DIVERSIFICATION OF THE EROTIC APPEARANCE'J'aime le souvenir de ces époques nues''
Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du mal,Correspondances,V.Dress not only widens the repertoire of concealing and revealing, it also changes the overall appearance of the erotic appearance itself. Draped clothes synthesise the body into one whole, from which only the head and the arms protrude. Tailored clothing shows all the separate parts, although a skirt might synthesise the thighs and the legs into one single whole. The cut may change the shape of the parts: trousers and sleeves, shirts and jackets may be wide or tight-cut. The cut has also its impact on the mutual relation of the parts: the girdle may be under the breast, over the middle or over the thighs. Just like a close-up, clothes draw the attention on different parts of the body. So does men exchange his natural appearance with an increasing diversity of often totally opposed profiles. It suffices to have the typical silhouettes from diverse places and different periods pass the review, to become aware of that phenomenon.
That goes not only for the shape of the body, but equally for its movements. The movements of the body are totally different when it is clothed in draped or tailored clothing, a tight-fitting dress or trousers, wearing high heels (or having bound feet) or slippers. An attribute like a plume or a cigarette mouthpiece drastically changes the overall attitude and dictates new movements (P. Schilder).
Precisely because clothes tend to confine the natural agility of the body, their removal often leads to an outburst of energy: the liberated body frolics around or stretches its limbs triumphantly.
(2) THE HERMAPHRODITE BODY (4): TRANSVESTISMThere is a natural ‘transsexuality’ in the sense that characteristics which, in a given culture, are supposed to be male or female, tend to be rather randomly distributed over genetically male of female beings. Far from harming the appeal of the body, such natural ambivalence often only heightens its charms. A rigid opposition between male and female dress (and other means of adorning the body, such as make-up and jewellery) helps to remove the ambivalence. An impressive example is the strong opposition of male nudity and the richly draped female body in ancient Greece. Nowadays, we are still familiar with the opposition of trousers and skirts. Up to the nineteenth century, the opposition extended to underwear: women used to wear long smocks, and it is only from the middle of the nineteenth century onward that specialised underwear was introduced. Today, make-up is still a female privilege, in strong contrast to the eighteenth century. There are countless other examples …
Garments can also enhance the natural ambivalence. As women have always known, male garment only comes to enhance female attractiveness. This is all the more so when what seemed to be a man turns out to be a woman. This leads to a continuous reciprocal annexation of the privileges of the opposite sex. Eventually, the surplus gained from the annexation dwindles: women wearing trousers have become so common, that we no longer notice the anomaly.
Especially when there is a sufficient initial natural ambivalence, the wearing of clothes of the opposite sex can become a means of acquiring a new body. Male transvestism is foremost fuelled by exhibitionistic motives. Under the regime of the exchange of beauty for benefits, man is doomed to forever admire female beauty, while his own body is left in the cold, how beautiful it might be.
Female transvestism is not restricted to clothes and attributes and is not exclusively fuelled by erotic motives. The body is increasingly masculinised. As a consequence of diets and the avoidance of pregnancy and breastfeeding, the slender, muscled body of the girl is gradually replacing the mature female or maternal body. In opposition to the maternal body, the girlish look can also be read as ‘male’ (‘boyish’). Conversely, the body of the young boy shows up many female characteristics. In the limit, both genders meet each other in the quasi hermaphrodite body of the adolescent. Increasingly, the desired effects are obtained through surgical, hormonal and genetic manipulation. Up to now, they are quite impressive with the male, who can acquire often magnificent breasts. But there is no doubt: in the future we surely will witness still more amazing miracles.
Finally, clothes and other artificial interventions remove every sexual difference: we get to see a sexless being, like the angels of olden times (Claude Cahun).
(3) THE BODY AND ITS DOUBLE: THE EYE AND THE PERVERSE MOVEClothes deprive the erotic eye of the sight of its nude. No wonder that it wants to regain that paradise lost. We already mentioned how changes in the scheme of denudation tend to surrender the zones previously covered with garment, and how the covering of the nude is short-circuited through transparency.
But there is more. The whole scheme of concealing and revealing is centred around the genitals. In that centre originates the centrifugal quest for more aesthetic and less anxiety-arousing substitutes. In progressively covering the body, clothes come to endorse that move: in hiding the centre from view, they all the more feed the desire to find the becoming substitutes. And since clothes come to cover not only the genitals, but other, more attractive parts of the body as well, also these begin to displace themselves.
In the first place the parts left nude are obvious magnets for the hidden treasures. In chapter III we already provided ample illustration of centrifugal displacement of the genitals. Here, we only have to add that the characteristics of the host parts are often read as indicators of the characteristics of the originals: as when the length of the nose is supposed to indicate the length of the penis, or the shape of the foot that of vagina (China).
But also the clothes themselves are eager to welcome the banned genitals. They show up many formal or functional similarities or analogies, and where these are missing, they are often introduced in view of that function. The most important substitute is underwear. Due to the reciprocal specialisation between the layers, underwear preferably takes the function of intimating nudity. That is why it often imitates the evenness of the skin and why it preferably courts the shapes of the body. Not seldom does it also take the colour of the skin or enhance it through contrast. That goes especially for the more archaic parts, which can easily be aestheticised by clothing. Thus, the shape of the (slip, panties) echoes the triangle of the mound of Venus, while at the same does replacing the pubic hair and the mucous skin through shining cloth.
Also and especially the outer layers imitate the body. The more they refer their intimating function to the inner layers, the more the eyes feel deprived, and the stronger the outer layers are invited to resemble what they are supposed to conceal. It is not difficult to understand why the disappearance of the vulva celebrates its resurrection in the folds of drapery, in collars or cuts in sleeves, stockings, jackets and coats; why the pubic hair resurges as fur, preferably at the fringe of collars, cuts and openings; why the breasts reappear as cups and the nipples as buttons, why the thighs or the hips are accentuated in crinolines; why the hidden skin resurfaces as silk, leather or latex.
Also with the male do hats enlarge the head, puff sleeves intimate the volume of muscle, and epaulettes augment the width of the chest. The hidden beauty resurfaces even in the armour destined to protect it in battle, as in the muscled cuirass, cherished from the Greeks onward. Especially shoes are destined to embody the penis. In that capacity they have not failed to play their secret game under many a table (Think of the ‘poulaines’, introduced by Fulk Rechin of Anjou in the eleventh century).
The effect of displacement is often so drastic, that the central parts are more easily denudated than the displaced ones: think of the Chinese, who have rather denudate the breasts or the vagina than the feet, or of the stripper and her high-heeled shoes.
(4) THE HERMAPHRODITE BODY (5): FETISHISMIn the previous chapter, we already described how the body is wrapped in ever more layers. The intermediate layers can take the place of the ultimate goal: the nude. The erotic eye’s quest is then diverted to a new goal: laying eyes upon the underwear. The corresponding change in display of beauty is the exhibition of underwear. A stylised form of this new kind of display appears as soon as the French can-can. Thus is born one of the most elementary forms of a new kind of fetishism.
This new form of fetishism is further developed in that clothes postpone the transition to tactile and genital contact and thus tend to reinforce a voyeuristic stand. Since clothes also happen to offer
