What is it to treat people with respect when commenting upon or reacting expressively to their bodily appearance? What duties does widespread vulnerability to body anxiety impose on us concerning the remarks we make about people’s looks and our expressive reactions to their physical appearance? In a nebulous way these questions have informed everyday reflections on body shaming and the anxiety it causes, but they are under-explored in moral philosophy.Footnote 1 My aim is to provide partial answers to them by engaging with some proposals that are implicit in the small philosophical literature on these matters. These proposals are not exhaustive of the possibilities but subjecting them to critical scrutiny helps to identify and justify at least some of the relevant duties.Footnote 2 I allow that there may be additional moral duties that I do not discuss, and indeed that there may be norms in place in some contexts, such as the workplace, that further constrain our comments and expressive reactions to others’ bodily appearance.
I focus on three ideas. First, the account of aesthetic exploration developed by Sherri Irvin, which can be regarded as a combination of what colloquially are called ‘body neutrality’ and ‘body positivity’.Footnote 3 We can think of it as providing support for two duties: a duty not to judge bodies in terms of their attractiveness and a duty to attend instead to unusual, surprising, or interesting features of bodily appearance. Second, the principle of the unmodified body defended by Clare Chambers.Footnote 4 With a caveat, I regard this principle as expressing an ideal of what in everyday terms is called ‘body acceptance’ that attributes to us a duty not to treat anyone’s appearance as inadequate. Third, the notion of body reflexivity that Kate Manne advocates, which she distinguishes from both body positivity and body neutrality, and that also seems to differ from body acceptance.Footnote 5 This involves the idea that a person’s body is for them and for no one else, which entails that no one is under a duty to modify their appearance for the benefit of others.
I argue that none of these accounts of our moral duties can be justified straightforwardly in a non-consequentialist way as a requirement of treating people with equal respect, where treating a person with equal respect involves giving due weight to their equal moral status. But the idea that underpins the principle of the unmodified body, namely, that when we treat a person’s appearance as inadequate, we treat them as an inferior, so with a lack of equal respect, can nevertheless be defended in circumstances where ‘hierarchies of attractiveness’ translate into differences in perceived moral status. There is also a way of defending body reflexivity that provides the basis for an argument that it is disrespectful to treat people as if they were under a moral obligation to modify their body for the sake of others on the grounds that doing so involves a failure to respect their personal autonomy.
These non-consequentialist approaches can be supplemented with consequentialist arguments. The idea that we are under a moral duty not to treat a person’s appearance as inadequate, together with the idea implicit in body reflexivity, namely, that no one is under a moral duty to modify their appearance for the benefit of others, receive support from the protection they provide to those who are vulnerable to harm when body shaming is rife and liable to cause debilitating anxiety. In addition, the duties that I suggest may be regarded as part of aesthetic exploration can be justified in the context of bringing up children as a way of shielding them from the potential harms caused by body shaming.
1. Aesthetic exploration
After discussing the ways in which our judgements about, or perceptions of, the attractiveness or unattractiveness of people’s bodies often result in us treating them unjustly in various contexts, Sherri Irvin advocates displacing these judgements and perceptions with an alternative response that she characterises as ‘aesthetic exploration’. This response involves the pursuit of ‘aesthetic affordances’, that is, positive aesthetic experiences that are cultivated by focusing on interesting, surprising, or unusual aspects of bodies. When we engage in the aesthetic exploration of a body, we
seek out aspects of it that are unique, experiences it affords that we have never had before. We aim to take pleasure in these encounters. On encountering a body with interest and openness, with a willingness to see it in a way that we have never seen it before, we can have an aesthetic experience of it that need not involve assessing it or issuing a verdict about whether it is delicate or coarse, beautiful or ugly, elegant or common. We can simply immerse ourselves in the experience of it for its own sake.Footnote 6
Aesthetic exploration has a positive and a negative aspect. Negatively, it aims to replace or disrupt the conventional judgements we make about attractiveness, which have their origins in demanding appearance norms that are internalised through social practices (though some may ultimately be rooted in evolutionary processes).Footnote 7 Positively, it aims to put in place an alternative aesthetic that seeks pleasure from the interesting, unusual, or surprising aspects of bodily appearance.
In a way that resonates with Irvin’s reflections on how we should attend to bodily appearance, James Partridge (who founded the British charity Changing Faces to support and campaign on behalf of people with facial differences) puts forward a vision of face equality in which
all human faces are celebrated in all their glorious uniqueness… In place of the narrowing cultural norms that prize ‘perfect faces’, societies across the world would savour and delight in everyone’s face, making no judgement that one is better than another. Signs of uniqueness such as each individual’s facial colouring, anatomical features, wrinkles and eye bags – now so scorned – would be interesting, indeed fascinating.Footnote 8
Like Irvin’s account of aesthetic exploration, Partridge’s vision of face equality has a negative and a positive aspect. First, achieving it requires us to refrain from making judgements about whether one person’s face is more attractive than another’s and from making judgements concerning whether a person’s appearance falls short when assessed against norms that set the standard for perfect faces. Second, achieving it requires us to ‘savour and delight’ in each person’s facial appearance, even those features of it that would be regarded as undesirable by the standards set by present-day beauty norms. Partridge’s vision could be regarded as part of a broader ideal of ‘body equality’ in which bodies more generally are celebrated whatever their features, with no judgements being made about their attractiveness, and therefore no hierarchies in play in relation to bodily appearance. At least, it is hard to see what reason there could be for restricting the ideal to faces. When extended in this way, Partridge’s vision of face equality complements Irvin’s notion of the aesthetic exploration of bodies. Indeed, we might think of both as combining elements of body positivity and body neutrality, corresponding to their positive and negative aspects.
Neither Irvin nor Partridge present their vision in deontic terms, and a conception of aesthetic exploration that combined both would not need to be understood as involving the discharge of moral duties. But we could conceive of it in this way without any significant distortion. We could think of it as supporting two moral duties that are related to its aims: first, a duty not to compare bodies in terms of their attractiveness or to judge them against norms of attractiveness; second, a duty to focus on interesting, unusual, or surprising aspects of bodies, or at least a duty to do so in so far as we pay any attention at all to bodily appearance. A society in which people complied with these supposed duties would be one in which there were no appearance norms governing our bodies, if by appearance norms we mean norms that spell out how our bodies should look. There would be no particular way people should look, and therefore no minimum standards of attractiveness they should have to meet in order to be welcome in public spaces.Footnote 9 In a society where these supposed duties were fulfilled, there would be no expectation that (for example) people who suffer facial burns or scarring should undergo cosmetic surgery in order to make them presentable to others.
Irvin and Partridge in their somewhat different ways adopt what Matteo Ravasio calls ‘a revisionary approach’ to beauty norms.Footnote 10 Revisionary approaches advocate replacing existing beauty norms with new norms, in contrast to redistributive approaches that propose taking measures to make existing beauty norms more inclusive or to enable more people to meet the standards they set. Ravasio argues that revisionary approaches face an objection, namely, they direct our attention away from the appreciation of bodily beauty in order to realise or promote a different ideal, perhaps some alternative aesthetic ideal or an ideal of justice, or both. This is clear in both Irvin’s vision and Partridge’s, since an alternative aesthetic and a conception of justice are in play in each. But this makes it harder to justify the duties I am supposing they involve. Given the sacrifice of genuine aesthetic appreciation that is involved in not attending to the attractiveness of bodies and engaging in the aesthetic exploration of them instead, the cost of acting on these duties is potentially high, and hence the justification of them is correspondingly demanding. In order to justify them we would need to show that (a) the value being honoured or promoted is weighty, sufficiently weighty to justify regarding us as under these moral constraints; (b) fulfilling these duties would realise the relevant value or would be likely to promote it in a significant enough way to justify regarding us as under these moral constraints; (c) fulfilling these duties would be the least costly way of honouring or promoting the value at stake.
It is hard to see how the non-instrumental aesthetic value realised through aesthetic exploration could on its own enable these conditions to be met. Instead, or in addition, the defence of the supposed duties would have to appeal to the way in which acting on them is required by justice or promotes a weighty aspect of it. I shall begin by considering what I think would provide the most powerful justification of them, namely, the idea that these duties are grounded directly in respect for persons. Neither Irvin nor Partridge justifies aesthetic exploration in this way – indeed Irvin’s justification is instrumental in character since her case for it appeals to its potential role in combatting unjust appearance discrimination in various contexts – but if it could be defended by arguing that respect for persons requires acting in accordance with these duties, then that would provide the strongest available defence of it.
Respecting a person, I shall assume, requires giving due weight to their moral standing.Footnote 11 I shall also assume that persons have equal moral standing or status regardless of their appearance. When I refer to treating people with equal respect, I shall mean treating them in a way that gives due weight to their equal moral status.Footnote 12 Can the duties I have suggested aesthetic exploration might involve be justifiably regarded as requirements of treating people with equal respect when commenting on or responding expressively to their bodily appearance? Irvin’s account provides some of the resources to argue that acting on these duties would reduce the extent to which people behaved disrespectfully towards each other in relation to their bodily appearance. (If people paid less attention to the attractiveness of bodies, then they would be less likely to behave in ways that stigmatise others on the basis of their appearance or to reduce them to their appearance.) But it’s not clear that her account provides the resources to argue that these duties are entailed by respect for persons, or even that acting on them provides the best means of reducing the number of incidences in which people behave disrespectfully towards others in relation to their appearance. If aesthetic exploration is to be justified as a requirement of equal respect for persons, the thought would have to be that treating each person with equal respect requires us not to make judgements about the attractiveness of their bodies, and/or to see their appearance in a positive light by attending to their unusual, surprising or interesting bodily features. But that seems implausible. It would be analogous to supposing that treating each person with equal respect requires that we shouldn’t make any judgements concerning whether one person’s skill set is more valuable than another’s, and that we should simply focus on interesting, surprising or unusual aspects of their skill sets without comparing them. And that seems hard to justify. It is not generally the case that comparing skill sets in terms of their value involves treating the people whose skills sets are judged to be of lower value as morally inferior.
This is not to deny that sometimes comparing skill sets, or personal characteristics more generally, might be demeaning, and involve treating some people as if they have an inferior moral status. Imagine, for example, a society in which intelligence is regarded as the most important characteristic a person can possess. Those who are regarded as intelligent have a higher social status than those regarded as unintelligent because they are more esteemed. Describing someone as unintelligent in this context might mark them out as possessing not merely a lower social status but also a lower moral status. If it conveyed the message that they were morally inferior, then it would fail to show them equal respect. But when do differences in social status, marked by differences in esteem, convey such a message, or translate into differences in perceived moral status?
Carina Fourie provides a number of criteria for determining when inequalities of esteem are likely to generate inequalities of perceived moral status and hence violate the requirement that we should treat people with equal respect. She lists the following: the way in which lack of esteem is expressed, for example, whether it is expressed in ways that are humiliating; the reasons that ground why something is regarded as worthy of esteem, for example, whether they are connected with other characteristics, such as membership in a marginalised racial group, that bring with them their own disadvantages; whether a particular hierarchy of esteem is pervasive and one of a limited number that dominate, for example, whether only a small number of traits are esteemed and these are accessible only to a limited number of people; whether inequalities of esteem are endorsed by institutions, such as the state; whether social arrangements provide genuine opportunities for all to gain esteem; whether hierarchies of esteem are compounded, for example, whether a positive appraisal in one is likely to lead to positive appraisals in others; whether a hierarchy of esteem is bounded, or far-reaching because it spreads across a number of areas of social life.Footnote 13
There can be little doubt that judgments of attractiveness, or indeed positive or negative evaluations of particular appearance features, such as height for men or body shape for women, are such that the hierarchies of esteem formed in connection with them meet a number of Fourie’s criteria, and as a result are liable to generate some differences in perceived moral status. When people are judged to be ugly or unattractive, or short or fat, this is often done to humiliate. Appearance features that are conventionally regarded as unattractive are often disproportionately found in disadvantaged groups, such as marginalised racial groups or groups with disabilities. An attractive appearance has become regarded as more and more important, to the point that many girls and young women especially perceive it as mattering more than their health.Footnote 14 Appearance discrimination, much of which is unfair, is pervasive, so being perceived as attractive or unattractive can have a deep impact on how a person is treated in a range of contexts, including education, criminal justice, personal relationships, and employment.Footnote 15 But even though particular judgements of attractiveness or unattractiveness may contribute to creating hierarchies of esteem that play a role in generating differences in perceived moral status, it doesn’t follow that these judgements always do so or are themselves necessarily disrespectful. When they make a contribution to an unjust outcome, or are disrespectful, then they are morally problematic, but it is unclear, at least, whether that is sufficient to justify a duty to avoid all such judgements, and a duty to focus solely on rare, interesting or surprising features of bodily appearance. As I’ve noted, acting on such duties would require us to forego the aesthetic appreciation of beautiful bodies, or at least, to refrain from commenting on that dimension of our experience of bodies, which involves a considerable sacrifice. It is questionable whether such a sacrifice is morally required when these comments are not in themselves disrespectful and do not contribute to unjust outcomes or contribute to them only in a minor way.
2. The principle of the unmodified body
It is hard to see how the duties that I have suggested may be part of aesthetic exploration could be justified as a requirement of equal respect for persons. In section 5, I shall ask whether they could be justified instead in consequentialist terms, as the best way of protecting those who are vulnerable to extreme forms of body anxiety. But in this section and the next, I shall consider whether equal respect for persons might impose somewhat different moral constraints on what comments we can permissibly make about the bodily appearance of others and on our expressive reactions to it, moral constraints that do not face the same objections as revisionary approaches such as aesthetic exploration.
In her book Intact, Clare Chambers advocates ‘the principle of the unmodified body’, which she thinks places us under a moral duty to treat people’s bodies as good enough just as they are, a duty that she sees as a requirement of equal respect. Let me begin by unpacking what it means to say that each person’s body is ‘good enough’ as it is and exploring its normative implications. There are various ways of expressing essentially the same idea: each person’s body is alright as it is; no one’s body is inadequate; no one’s body is unacceptable; no one’s body is ‘beyond the pale’. But none of these ways of reformulating the principle of the unmodified body do much to clarify it or spell out its normative implications.
As a first pass, we might think that the principle implies that no one has a reason to modify their body.Footnote 16 But that is clearly not what Chambers thinks. She acknowledges that we may have reasons based on health, appearance, and identity for modifying our bodies, even though these reasons are invariably shaped by social context and social practices. Might she think instead that everyone’s body is good enough as it is because it has value as it is, so there is always in effect a reason not to modify it, even if all things considered there may be good reason to do so? It’s clear that she does think that everyone’s body has value as it is, but it’s not obvious that she thinks this provides a reason not to modify it.Footnote 17 And in any case, the idea that the unmodified body has value doesn’t seem to be what she regards as centrally important in understanding the principle of the unmodified body. Rather, the important normative claim this principle makes seems to be that no one is under an obligation to modify their body. This means that we are not under an obligation of any sort to make our bodies presentable to others, whatever social pressures are placed on us to do so. Nor are we under an obligation ‘to make the best of our appearance’ or ‘not let ourselves go’. Chambers also thinks that the principle of the unmodified body implies that we are under a specifically moral obligation to treat every person’s body as alright as it is, which seems to amount to not treating anyone as being under an obligation of any sort to modify their body. This does not require us to celebrate each person’s bodily appearance, or to seek out ‘aesthetic affordances’, in the way that I have suggested the ideal of aesthetic exploration may do, but it does place constraints on what it is morally permissible to say about the bodily appearance of others and what attitudes it is permissible to express towards it.
Intact is, in large part, a plea to end practices that put pressure on us to modify our bodies, at least in so far as we cannot opt out of these practices in a way that is reasonably easy and not too costly, and it therefore stands opposed to appearance norms when they exert this kind of pressure. I think Chambers also conceives of the principle of the unmodified body as standing opposed to norms and practices that put pressure on us not to modify our bodies.Footnote 18 It allows that in principle people may have valid reasons for wanting to modify their bodies, for example, they may want to adorn their bodies with tattoos as a form of self-expression. Characteristically at least, people elect to modify their bodily appearance because appearance norms, and the practices in which they are embedded, make them feel anxious or ashamed about their appearance, and make them think that they have no reasonable choice but to do so. This is not always the case, however. The principle of the unmodified body acknowledges this point. It regards norms governing our bodily appearance, and what we should and shouldn’t do to change it, as problematic whenever the costs of excusing ourselves from the practices in which they are embedded place a significant barrier in the way of doing so. Not only is it the case that no one is under an obligation to modify their body, but also no one is under an obligation not to do so.
The principle of the unmodified body doesn’t preclude us regarding particular appearance features as unattractive, and attending to them as such, so long as we do not see this as providing a reason for thinking that a body with such features is unacceptable or should be modified. When a person contemplates their appearance from the perspective of the principle, they may acknowledge that their looks could be improved without thinking that this provides them with even a reason to modify their appearance, for they may give no weight to the aesthetic value of their looks in their deliberations. In unpacking the principle of the unmodified body in this way, I am assuming that in saying that our bodies are good enough as they are, Chambers doesn’t mean that they are perfect as they are or could not be improved. In a society such as ours where the pressures especially on women or young people to improve their appearance are very strong, then it may be the case that no woman’s bodily appearance, or no young person’s bodily appearance, will be regarded as good enough when it could be improved. But the principle of the unmodified body is committed to a sufficiency standard according to which a person’s bodily appearance is good enough as it is even when it could be improved, and even when others don’t regard it as such. Here being ‘good enough’ simply means ‘doesn’t require modification’. We can think of the principle as a plausible basis for what’s sometimes colloquially called ‘body acceptance’, as long as we don’t suppose that such a position places obligations on people not to modify their bodies, or to regard their bodily appearance positively in anything other than the minimal sense of not thinking that they have to change it if they do not want to do so.
The principle of the unmodified body is not a revisionary approach in Ravasio’s sense, so it does not face the challenge that revisionary approaches (such as aesthetic exploration) do. Chambers regards it as specifying a requirement of treating people as equals, with equal respect, but does it provide a defensible interpretation of what that involves in the context of commenting on or responding expressively to a person’s bodily appearance? It seems to face a range of counter-examples. Suppose you say to a friend with a facial disfigurement, ‘you really should have cosmetic surgery otherwise you’ll have to put up with all the staring, whispering, and finger-pointing when you are in public spaces and that’s bound to affect your mental health’. Saying this to your friend doesn’t seem disrespectful, but it nevertheless involves treating her face as not alright as it is since it is attributing to her an obligation – either a prudential obligation, or a moral obligation to herself – to modify it.
Chambers might regard this as a misunderstanding of her position. She emphasises that the principle of the unmodified body is supposed to be a moral (and political) baseline.Footnote 19 This might seem to suggest that the principle that our bodies are alright as they are is, in a sense, an idealising principle: it requires us to bracket any negative reactions of others to our appearance, and regard our bodies independently. Giving due weight to that principle might then be thought to be compatible with saying to a person that she ought to modify her body when she lives in a society in which her life will be made difficult, perhaps even unbearable, unless she does so.Footnote 20 But I don’t think this solves the problem. The principle is supposed to apply to our non-ideal world in which some appearance features, such as facial disfigurements, sometimes elicit uncontrollable or hard to control negative reactions, or attract unwanted attention simply because they are regarded as unappealing or even grotesque. In the world we inhabit there will sometimes be powerful reasons, compatible with treating a person with equal respect, for treating their body as if it is not alright as it is, and indeed for proposing that they ought to modify its appearance.
Chambers offers a general argument for the conclusion that treating a person’s appearance as inadequate involves a failure to treat them with equal respect. She writes: ‘When we say that some bodies are deficient and must be changed to meet the standard set by others, we are saying that some bodies, and the people whose bodies they are, are inferior to others.’Footnote 21 But I am sceptical about whether the principle of the unmodified body can be justified in this way, and not merely because there is class of exceptions to it. I don’t think there’s any straightforward inference from the idea that when a person’s body is treated as inadequate that she is treated as inferior. In reply, it might be said that we are our bodies, so treating a person’s body as inadequate couldn’t fail to treat them as inferior. But even if there is a clear sense in which we are our bodies, not each and every feature of our bodies provides the basis for treating us each with equal respect. Suppose the idea of treating each person with equal respect is understood as a requirement that we should give due weight to the moral status that each person has in virtue of possessing a capacity for rational agency or for acting morally, at or above some threshold. In that case, it is hard to see how the principle of the unmodified body could be grounded in it. When we say that someone’s body is inadequate and requires modification, whether in virtue of its appearance or its capabilities, that need not involve treating her as is she lacks a capacity for rational agency or for acting morally at or above the required level.
Although Chambers’s general argument for why equal respect requires that no one’s body be treated as inadequate seems to fail, there may be another way of reaching a similar conclusion. As we have seen, in a society such as ours in which looks are attributed great importance, an attractive appearance is a marker of social status. Differences in social status between those regarded as beautiful or attractive and those regarded as ugly or unattractive (or as unattractive in some specific way, because they are short or ‘fat’) may translate into differences in perceived moral status, that is, differences concerning how much people’s lives or interests are perceived to matter. As a result, treating someone’s appearance as if it is ‘beyond the pale’ may often, or generally, be to treat them as morally inferior because it expresses the idea that they are of lesser moral worth. Possessing adequate looks may even be mistakenly regarded as part of what it is to have equal moral status. Understood in this way, the claim is not that in all possible worlds we treat a person as if they are morally inferior when we treat their bodily appearance as beyond the pale, but that we do so in societies like ours in which how we look is assigned great importance and is a key marker of social status.Footnote 22 An argument of this kind won’t establish that treating someone’s appearance as inadequate is always a violation of equal respect since there are a range of cases of the kind I have described where no disrespect is involved in doing so, but it supports the conclusion that this is normally the case.
3. Body reflexivity
Like Chambers, Kate Manne seems to endorse the idea that no one is under an obligation to modify their bodily appearance but defends it by appealing to what she calls ‘body reflexivity’. She contends that body reflexivity is not a form of body positivity or body neutrality, but she doesn’t seem to regard it as a form of body acceptance either. She thinks that it emerges from recognising that each person’s body is ‘for them and for no one else’.Footnote 23 As a result, we are not responsible for pleasing others through our appearance, nor indeed do we have to find our own bodies beautiful, or even acceptable if that would mean thinking that our appearance meets some standard of attractiveness. But does body reflexivity provide a basis for the idea that it is disrespectful to treat a person as being under a moral obligation to modify their bodily appearance, whether for their own benefit or for the sake of others? In order to answer that question, we need to explore the idea of body reflexivity in more depth.
Manne in effect regards the idea that no one is under an obligation to modify their bodily appearance as emerging from answering the question ‘Who are our bodies for?’ If I understand her correctly, when she maintains that ‘your body is for you’, she is not endorsing the self-ownership principle, namely, that each person is the rightful owner of their own bodies and their talents and powers. She need not deny that we sometimes have an obligation to share body parts or fluids, for example, to donate blood, or indeed to serve the political community.Footnote 24 That is because body reflexivity can be understood as concerned merely with bodily appearance: a person’s bodily appearance is for them not for others. But it is hard to see how this idea provides us with an independent grasp of our obligations to ourselves or to others with regard to appearance. It seems to be merely a re-description of the plausible idea that we have no obligation to change our appearance, whether ‘to please or serve or placate others’.Footnote 25 Indeed it is not clear whether Manne sees herself as offering an argument for this idea as opposed to resting her case on the intuitive plausibility of denying that we owe anything to ourselves or others in relation to our bodily appearance. But she does lay some of the groundwork for a further argument by appealing to the importance of personal autonomy. She seems to suppose that part of what it is to be the author of our own lives is to be free to decide what attitudes to take towards our bodies and how to present them to others, without being under an obligation to perceive them negatively, positively or neutrally, or to modify them.Footnote 26 If this is re-cast as an argument, the idea would presumably be that the interests served by a person taking a particular attitude to their own appearance, or by modifying it to make it more pleasing to others, are not sufficiently weighty to justify placing them under a moral obligation to do so, with the consequent restriction of personal autonomy that this would involve.
On Manne’s account, treating others as if they had an obligation to modify their bodies involves a failure to grasp the truth that our bodies exist in the world for ourselves and for no one else. But does she think that treating someone as if they ought to modify their body is necessarily a failure to treat them with equal respect? There’s no evidence that she does, even though she points out that you may rightly find it offensive when a person exhibits a negative reaction to your body, and indeed that they may display various vices when they do so. As she forthrightly puts it:
It goes without saying that you can have a reaction to my body. That reaction may be positive or negative or neutral – and good, bad, objectionable, non-objectionable…[I]t is not authoritarian to recognise some attitudes towards others’ bodies as rude, even obnoxious. You’re entitled to your opinions. But I’m entitled to think you an asshole for having it, and doubly so for expressing it when nobody asked you.Footnote 27
But surely Manne should conclude that treating someone as if they were under an obligation to modify their bodily appearance for the sake of others is necessarily to treat them with a lack of respect, on the grounds that it fails to respect their autonomy. Attempting to place you under such an obligation is to treat the interests of others in you having (what they regard as) an aesthetically pleasing appearance as more important than your freedom to decide how you should present yourself to the world. This defence of the idea that it is disrespectful to treat a person as if they are under an obligation to modify their appearance for the sake of others is forceful. It isn’t impugned by the argument that it can sometimes be respectful to treat a person’s bodily appearance as problematic because of the adverse effect it has on their own mental health.
4. Relational equality and a duty to modify one’s appearance
Both Chambers and Manne endorse the idea that no one is under an obligation to modify their bodily appearance for the sake of others. That view has considerable plausibility because the aesthetic interests that would be served by compliance with that obligation do not seem sufficiently weighty to justify it. But now I want to consider an argument which concludes that, in a range of cases, people may be under such an obligation because achieving relational equality or a society of equals (I use these terms interchangeably) may require them to change the way they look.
Joshua Brecka has argued that a society of equals would involve an ‘aesthetic equality’ in which no one experiences ‘stigmatising differences in status or reasonable feelings of inferiority because of their aesthetic standing’.Footnote 28 But when some appearance features elicit uncontrollable or hard to control negative responses, then (as Brecka seems to allow) achieving a society of equals in which no one is stigmatised as a result of their appearance may require people with those features to modify their bodies, for example, by undergoing cosmetic surgery to transform a facial disfigurement in order to make it less alarming to others who encounter it in public spaces. It might be argued that each of us should shoulder our fair share of the burdens of realising a society of aesthetic equals, for ‘aesthetic equality’ is part of living in a just society characterised by relational equality. This will morally require some people to counteract their behavioural dispositions, but it may also morally require some to change their bodily appearance (provided, at least, that any medical costs involved in doing so are shared across society.)
This argument for the conclusion that sometimes people are under a moral obligation to modify their bodily appearance, and that we may therefore show them equal respect if we treat them as being under such an obligation, is problematic, however. It might be said that even though we are morally required to treat people as equals, that is, with equal respect, no one is morally required to promote relational equality, or do what is necessary to realise it, in so far as that goes beyond treating others as equals. A person is morally permitted to decline to modify their face or body even when it elicits uncontrollable or hard to control negative responses that then have the effect of stigmatising them. But what would justify that position? In order to justify it, we need to reflect on the value of a society of equals, and more specifically, the value of aesthetic equality as a component of it. Presumably some of its value arises from the benefits that it provides to its members: when there is aesthetic equality, no one experiences humiliation or stigmatisation as a result of their appearance, and no one has to care for others to support them through such experiences.Footnote 29 But its main value is surely deontic: in a society of equals that realises aesthetic equality, each person treats every other as an equal. Yet that value obtains even when some are stigmatised as a result of the uncontrollable reactions of others to their bodily appearance, for uncontrollable reactions do not involve a failure to treat others as equals. No deliberation is involved in producing such reactions, so there is no failure to give due weight to the moral status of those who experience them. It is unclear whether the benefits that would arise from promoting aesthetic equality, or doing what is necessary to bring it about, when that would involve going beyond treating others as equals, are sufficient to justify an obligation to do so, especially when those benefits would mainly accrue to the agents acting on it.
5. Protecting the vulnerable
Irrespective of whether it is plausible to regard aesthetic exploration, the principle of the unmodified body, or body reflexivity, as requirements of showing people equal respect in relation to their bodily appearance, could the duties involved in any (or indeed all) of them be defended in consequentialist terms, as a way of reducing unjust appearance discrimination and protecting the vulnerable against harm in a society that is preoccupied with appearance, in which appearance discrimination is pervasive and body shaming widespread?
There’s evidence that what Heather Widdows calls ‘everyday lookism’, that is, the practice of commenting upon and judging the appearance of others,Footnote 30 has contributed to creating an epidemic of body anxiety.Footnote 31 She argues that this practice is fuelled by an exacting beauty ideal.Footnote 32 She shows how demanding norms relating to youthfulness, slimness, skin texture, and firmness of flesh, govern the appearance of women, and how men too are increasingly subject to such norms, particularly concerning muscularity and hair thickness, that are comparable in terms of the burdens they impose.Footnote 33 The failure to comply with these norms is often met with body shaming and appearance-related bullying, especially among teenagers and young adults, with deleterious effects on mental health. As a result, exercising self-restraint in relation to commenting on a person’s looks is not merely a matter of politeness or good manners. Passing judgement on the appearance of others can be deeply damaging in terms of its psychological impact, whatever the intentions behind it.Footnote 34
It might seem, therefore, that the best available defence of the duties of aesthetic exploration would appeal to the important role they can play in protecting people who are vulnerable to serious harm from body shaming. Not everyone is equally vulnerable to such harm. A person’s vulnerability to it will depend to some extent on their looks and to some extent on how thick skinned they are, but unless we know a person very well, it will be hard to make an overall assessment of the likely effect of commenting on their bodily appearance. As a result, a general duty to refrain from commenting on the attractiveness of a person’s looks, and to attend to interesting, surprising or unusual features of their appearance, might seem to provide the best protection against the harms of body shaming.
However, defending the duties of aesthetic exploration in this way still has to confront Ravasio’s challenge. Complying with them seems to compromise our aesthetic interest in attending to, and commenting upon, the attractiveness of faces and bodies. (Furthermore, as Widdows has emphasised, commenting upon looks can play an important role in friendships and social bonding more generally, especially between women.Footnote 35 ) In determining the scope and limits of the duties of aesthetic exploration, we need to give appropriate weight to these interests. Wouldn’t a more limited duty, to avoid making any comments that ran the risk of being understood by actual or potential recipients as involving a negative evaluation of their appearance, be sufficient to protect the vulnerable against the harmful effects of body shaming whilst giving greater scope to act on our interests in attending to and commenting on looks?
The duty implied by Chambers’s principle of the unmodified body, namely, the duty to treat each person’s appearance as good enough as it is, also seems better able to overcome Ravasio’s challenge. Complying with that duty, or a qualified version of it that permitted us sometimes to treat a person’s body as not alright as it is (when, for example, a facial disfigurement would make them vulnerable to harm as a result of the reactions of others who encounter them in public spaces) might be regarded as sufficient to fulfil our duty to protect those vulnerable to the harms caused by body shaming whilst giving more scope for us to act on our aesthetic interest in commenting on appearance. It would leave open the possibility that it is morally permissible in some contexts to make some general comments about appearance features, whether positive or negative, to make positive comments about a particular person’s appearance or appearance features, and even to make negative comments about these features provided this does not involve treating her body as if it requires modification, e.g., ‘you’ve got stretch marks, but so what!’.
In response to this critique of the supposed duties of aesthetic exploration, it might be argued that internalising a duty to avoid making any comments about appearance that ran the risk of being taken negatively by the recipient would be insufficient to protect the vulnerable from the harms created by body shaming, for it can be very hard to judge that risk. People may experience comments that are made about their looks as hurtful even when it is not reasonable for them to do so. If you tell someone that their new hairstyle looks great, they may wonder, ‘Well, didn’t my old hairstyle look great too?’. Treating the appearance of others as ‘good enough’ as it is may also be insufficient to protect the vulnerable from debilitating body anxiety. Some people might come to feel that they should modify their bodily appearance as a result of internalising beauty standards and judging their looks against them, even in a society where no one treated their body as inadequate.
Perhaps there is a role for both aesthetic exploration and the principle of the unmodified body in protecting people against the harms caused by body shaming. In relation to children and adolescents, both at school and at home, we might promote social norms compliance with which required them not to comment on each other’s appearance, except to celebrate its unusual, surprising or interesting features. Justifying these constraints, even though they may interfere with the development of children’s aesthetic responses to bodily appearance, would involve appealing to their simplicity, and hence the ease with which they can be communicated, and to children’s greater vulnerability to harm, given their lack of maturity, when they encounter comments about their appearance that they perceive to be negative. In relation to adults, a duty to treat others as if their appearance is alright as it is (at least so long as it isn’t a source of debilitating body anxiety, in which case there may be no moral objection to suggesting to a person that they ought to modify their body) can play an important role in protecting people who are vulnerable to harm from body shaming even if it sometimes fails to do so. With respect to both adults and children, we might also think that the idea central to body reflexivity can provide significant protection, namely, that each person’s bodily appearance is for them, and for that reason as well as the principle of the unmodified body, that no one is under an obligation to modify the appearance of their own body in order to make it presentable to others.
Despite its plausibility, this kind of defence of a division of labour between aesthetic exploration, the principle of the unmodified body, and body reflexivity, will encounter objections which maintain that that there are more effective ways of protecting the vulnerable against the harms of body shaming. In the next section, I consider two alternatives in order to raise the issue of what the overall place of these duties might be in protecting those vulnerable to body anxiety from harm.
6. Alternative approaches
There are at least two alternatives that seem to offer a different approach to protecting the vulnerable against the harms of body shaming. First, we might seek to make appearance norms more inclusive.Footnote 36 If appearance norms became more inclusive, then this would reduce the scope for body shaming by making more bodies aesthetically appealing. We can think of this as a different form that body positivity might take. Second, we might seek to reduce the significance or importance that people attach to appearance in their ordinary lives. If people came to care less about their own and other people’s appearance, the frequency with which body shaming occurred would presumably reduce, and when it did occur, people would be less affected by it. Both of these approaches would seem to be redistributive rather than revisionary in Ravasio’s terms. I shall suggest, however, that aesthetic exploration, the principle of the unmodified body, and body reflexivity, may play a role in these alternative approaches, and that in any case they can all be combined in a reasonably harmonious way to provide a multi-faceted response to body shaming and the anxiety it causes.
What exactly would it mean for appearance norms to be more inclusive?Footnote 37 An appearance norm is fully inclusive when compliance with it would be equally feasible for everyone, that is, when it is possible for each person to comply with the norm and it would be equally burdensome for them to do so, for example, a dress code would be fully inclusive if the clothes required to comply with it were available in the full range of shapes and sizes required to fit diverse bodies, were inexpensive to buy, and were easy to put on, even for those with a disability. An appearance norm is partially inclusive when it is feasible for a wide range of people to comply with it, for example, when the clothes required to comply with a dress code were not too expensive and were available in a wide range of shapes and sizes, even though they were not suitable for everyone. One appearance norm is more inclusive that another when it is realisable to a greater extent and/or by more people.
With dress codes, it is often easy to see what measures we might take to make them more inclusive. But it is generally less clear with appearance norms that relate to our faces and bodies. In some cases, these norms might become more inclusive as a result of changes in our aesthetic sensibilities. The process of making appearance norms more inclusive might involve cultivating new ways of attending to the appearance of others that bring into focus attractive features that are either neglected or currently regarded as unattractive, for example, taking aesthetic pleasure in a person’s curves rather than regarding them as unappealingly fat.Footnote 38 But aesthetic exploration also has a potentially important role here: appearance norms might become more inclusive by being made responsive to the aesthetic value of unusual, interesting or surprising features of bodily appearance. There will be limits, however, to how far appearance norms could be transformed in these ways: it is implausible to suppose that all appearance features have genuine aesthetic value. Yet partial inclusivity might continue to lead to many of the same problems. Those for whom compliance is still impossible or burdensome may continue to be the victims of body shaming and appearance-related bullying. Seeking to make appearance norms more inclusive may be part of the answer to how we counter the harms of body shaming, but it can’t be the whole story.
Reducing the importance that we, as a society, place on appearance in general or on particular appearance features, such as slimness, is different from making appearance norms more inclusive, for people might give appearance much less importance in their lives whilst nevertheless continuing to apply non-inclusive appearance norms. There is certainly an instrumental case to be made for seeking to reduce the importance that people attach to appearance as a way of combatting body shaming. People comment on and judge the appearance of others because they ascribe so much significance to having particular looks, or indeed to looking as attractive as possible. Even if body shaming were to persist despite a decrease in the importance attributed to various appearance features, that decrease would probably have the effect of reducing its harms, because decreasing the importance people attach to these features would be likely to lead to a reduction in the costs of non-compliance with appearance norms that prize them.
How does a strategy of reducing the importance people place on appearance relate to aesthetic exploration, the principle of the unmodified body, and body reflexivity? There is evidence that body positivity strategies have the effect of keeping the focus on appearance.Footnote 39 This might be regarded as a potentially undesirable consequence of the positive aspect of aesthetic exploration that requires us to savour the unusual, interesting, or surprising aspects of each person’s appearance.Footnote 40 But if that is understood as an obligation to celebrate a person’s appearance in so far as we pay any attention to it at all, then it would be compatible with strategies that seek to reduce the importance we place on appearance. Furthermore, the goal of reducing the importance we attach to appearance might be furthered effectively by promoting the norms involved in the principle of the unmodified body and body reflexivity. Each of these might reasonably be expected to decrease the amount of attention paid to appearance. Although reducing the significance placed on appearance is an alternative way of protecting people from the harms of body shaming, the principle of the unmodified body and body reflexivity may play an important role in promoting it.
More generally, we should not think of promoting more inclusive appearance norms and reducing the weight attached to appearance as excluding aesthetic exploration, the principle of the unmodified body, and body reflexivity. They can be employed together as an effective way of protecting people from the harms of body shaming. There are some possible tensions between them, but they can be combined in a reasonably harmonious way as part of an overall strategy for reducing body shaming and protecting those vulnerable to debilitating forms of body anxiety.
7. Concluding remarks
Aesthetic exploration cannot be justified as a moral requirement of treating people with equal respect. The principle of the unmodified body can be defended in these terms by appealing to the way that hierarchies of esteem that relate to attractiveness can translate into perceived differences in moral status, but this leaves room for exceptions. Body reflexivity, when it is grounded in respect for personal autonomy, can justify the idea that it is disrespectful to treat a person as if they were under an obligation to modify their bodily appearance for the sake of others. I’ve argued that aesthetic exploration can nevertheless be justified in a consequentialist way because it has a potentially important role to play in protecting children against the harms caused by body shaming both in schools and at home. So too, the principle of the unmodified body and body reflexivity can be justified in consequentialist terms. Among adults, the idea that we have a duty to treat each other’s bodily appearance as alright just as it is, and the idea that we are not under any obligation to modify our bodies to make them presentable or desirable to others, may be defended by reference to the idea that acting on them protects the vulnerable against harm in a society governed by demanding appearance norms where body shaming is widespread and some people experience high levels of anxiety as a result. Promoting more inclusive appearance norms and taking measures to reduce the importance that people attach to appearance may also be part of the best means of protecting those at risk of body anxiety and reducing unjust appearance discrimination. The practical measures they support interact in largely mutually supportive ways with aesthetic exploration, the principle of the unmodified body, and body reflexivity.
Acknowledgements
I’d like to thank Giorgia Brucato, Sarah Fine, Anca Gheaus, Ida Lübben, Fiona MacCallum, Heather Widdows, and the journal’s anonymous referees for their very helpful written or verbal comments. The article has also benefitted greatly from being discussed at the following venues: the Political Theory Workshop at the University of York; the Contemporary Political Theory Seminar at the University of Cambridge; the Ethics in Public Life Seminar at Loughborough University; the Political Theory Workshop at Nuffield College; and the POLEMO Symposium at CEU.
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