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| English: Alcman, Poem in hexameters (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
I had never really listened to the lyrics before, and I was amazed, on being forced to listen this time (while gagging a little to be honest) when I realised the parallels between the "virtuous young woman" performance of gender described in "What Makes You Beautiful" and that enacted in Alcman's "Hagesichora" hymn. In both, what makes a young woman beautiful is is that "you're beautiful because you don't know you're beautiful" - the line is from One Direction, but Alcman would be completely on board.
The entire text of the Alcman hymn, in an old-fashioned translation, can be found here: http://www.theoi.com/Text/LyraGraeca1B.html . I have cut and pasted a sample stanza here:
See you not first that the courser is of Enetic blood, and secondly that the tresses that bloom upon my cousin Hagesichora10 are like the purest gold? and as for her silvern face, how shall I put it you in express words? Such is Hagesichora; and yet she whose beauty shall run second not unto hers but unto Agido’s, shall run as courser Colaxaean to pure Ibenian-bred; for as we bear along her robe to Orthia, these our Doves11 rise to fight for us12 amid the ambrosial night not as those heavenly Doves but brighter, aye even as Sirius himself.
Eva Stehle, in Performance and Gender in Ancient Greece: Nondramatic Poetry in Its Setting (Princeton, 1997), argues that Alcman's hymn will have been sung by a chorus of young women, possibly at a wedding, and that it will have been used as an occasion for a public demonstration of the appropriate performance of their gender. The chorus of young women praises the beauty of first young one woman and then another, apparently also members of the chorus. However, the chorus never praises its own beauty. The chorus never says "I am beautiful", or "We are beautiful". Instead, it directs the gaze of the viewer to other young women.
By directing the gaze of the young men in the audience to the beauty of the young women in the chorus, the singers direct the audience's thoughts appropriately towards beauty - their own included - sexuality, and marriage. However, the chorus never owns or acknowledges its own beauty. Each young woman in the chorus acknowledges the beauty of the other members of the chorus, while remaining modestly and charmingly unaware of her own. The chorus makes a gift of its beauty to the community, but never tries to wield the power of its beauty and fertility for itself. This is the appropriate performance of gender for unmarried young women in Sparta, argues Stehle: they are supposed to be beautiful, and they are supposed to be modestly unaware of it. The chorus is directing the audience's attention to both aspects of this performance.
"What Makes You Beautiful" is thus an exact parallel. The young woman addressed in the song is apparently beautiful, but she is beautiful precisely because she doesn't know it; she doesn't own it, she doesn't use it for herself, she does not wield the power of her own beauty. If she did know she was beautiful, she would no longer be attractive. It is precisely her modesty, her insecurity, the way she looks at the ground instead of looking any male in the eye – these are the things that make her beautiful. A sample stanza:
Baby you light up my world like nobody else,(Full lyrics here: http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/onedirection/whatmakesyoubeautiful.html )
The way that you flip your hair gets me overwhelmed,
But when you smile at the ground it ain't hard to tell,
You don't know,
Oh oh,
You don't know you're beautiful,
If only you saw what I can see,
You'll understand why I want you so desperately,
Right now I'm looking at you and I can't believe,
You don't know,
Oh oh,
You don't know you're beautiful,
Oh oh,
That's what makes you beautiful
So c-come on,
You got it wrong,
To prove I'm right,
I put it in a song,
I don't know why,
You're being shy,
And turn away when I look into your eye eye eyes,
The ideal performance of gender in a young woman of Sparta in the eighth century BC, or in the object of adoration for the singers of "What Makes You Beautiful" 2800 years later, is the same: to be beautiful but unaware of it; to have the power to make men desire, but never to consciously wield that power.
It's a tricky line to walk, the razor edge of having beauty, even knowing what beauty is, but never seeing it in yourself; because as soon as you know you have it, you are no longer a desirable girl, because you are no longer "innocent". You might be a desirable woman, but that is a very different thing, more dangerous, more culpable, more likely to attract anger and blame.
The only truly safe, utterly non-blameworthy way to wield the power of being an attractive female in public in ancient Sparta or in 21st-century North America, to reap the rewards of your beauty without being blamed for inappropriate sexuality, is to perform the difficult maneuver of being beautiful while apparently being unaware of that beauty.
At the same time, the ideal performance of gender in a young woman in either culture will attract male attention towards the beauty - and modesty - of which she is apparently unaware. The performance is wasted if the male audience misses it, and just carries on obliviously thinking of other things, football perhaps, or homework, or some book they just read.
So the ideal performance of gender in a young woman directs male attention to her beauty and her modesty alike. Point out that your friends are beautiful, just to get the male audience's mind on the subject. Walk into a room and flip your hair, and smile, but at the ground – because if you actually looked a man in the eye, it would be clear that you knew the effect you were having. It would be clear that you were actually trying to have that effect. And then you'd be a bitch, and not beautiful at all.
The cognitive dissonance this mandatory performance of gender imposes on the billions of young women trained to think that beauty is essential, but that believing you don't have it yourself is also essential, is - I remark as an aside - naturally frequently catastrophic. But it wasn't until I actually had to listen to the lyrics of "What Makes You Beautiful" that I realized not only that we had heard all this before, but how long we had been hearing it for.
