The Aesthetic Prop

Even the most committed racial equalitarian can hardly deny that the physical traits of the idealized Nordic stereotype are deemed desirable by most whites and many nonwhites.^[1] The current sociological line, partly derived from Marxism, is that these traits are not favored because of an inborn or universal aesthetic preference, but because they are typical of the dominant population group and ipso facto bestow higher social status upon their possessors.

It is not difficult to find holes in the materialistic theory of aesthetics. The first documented evidence of blondism is an Egyptian wall painting of a daughter of Cheops, Queen Hetep-Heres II.^[2] If one of the earliest and greatest Egyptian pharaohs had a blond daughter, both he and his wife must have had some blond genes.^[3] Blondness, consequently, must have been attractive or prestigious as far back as 3075 B.C. in a highly civilized land of brunet Mediterraneans and never ruled, as far as anyone knows, by a blond race.

In classical times there were constant references to the blondism of Roman gods and demigods.^[4] The conventions of the Greek theater called for a black-wigged and black-haired tyrant, red hair for the dishonest slave, and fair curls for the youthful hero.^[5] Ovid and Martial declared that light hair was preferred by Roman matrons for wigs, a preference which spread to America 1,900 years later.^[6] Pope Gregory the Great called some Anglo-Saxon captives he happened to see in Rome not Angles but "angels" because they were "bright-beautied" and of "gracious outward sheen."^[7]

The Rigsthula, a cultural poem of the Vikings, describes early Scandinavian society as tripartite: a black-haired, wrinkled-skinned lower class, a yeoman class with sturdy bodies and ruddy faces, and a nobility with blond hair and skin whiter than driven snow.^[8] Of the medieval Caliphate of Cordova it has been written, "Most of the Caliphs were fair or ginger-haired with blue eyes,"^[9] a coloration perhaps due to intermarriage with the earlier Visigothic nobility. The most noble families in Christian Spain, who claimed direct descent from the Visigoths, had skin so white that the blue network of their veins was highly visible. For this reason sangre azul (blue blood) became a synonym for members of the aristocracy. The veins of more lowly born Spaniards were obscured by their darker Mediterranean skin.^[10]

More tenuous evidence of the aesthetic appeal of light coloration is offered by the legend of Quetzalcoatl, the Aztec god of the air, who allegedly instructed the copper-skinned Mexicans in the use of metals and in the arts of government. He was said to have white skin and a beard, the latter being practically unknown to the almost beardless natives. When he had incurred the wrath of another divinity, he left Mexico and sailed east across the Great Ocean, saying he would return. In Peru a somewhat similar myth has white, bearded men conquering the pre-Incan inhabitants and imparting to them the secrets of civilization.^[11] Today the Aesthetic Prop still persists in Latin America, especially in those areas where Negroes and Indians predominate. As remote a town as Ita on the upper Amazon has a simple rule of thumb for status: the lighter the skin, the higher the class. A light complexion is acknowledged by all and sundry as the hallmark of beauty.^[12] Even in Japan pale complexions are favored. The Japanese expression for well-born is "deep window," which refers to the lighter pigmentation of people shielded from the sun by thick-walled houses.^[13]

The purely aesthetic appeal of Nordicism is undeniable throughout the contemporary United States. Light-haired, narrow-faced, long-headed males still dominate men's fashion ads, while in the so-called counterculture, supposedly a complete rejection of contemporary tastes and styles, the girl with blond hair, whether long, straight or curled, frizzled or cornrowed, still remains the symbol of desirable femininity. Each year millions of American women spend tens of millions of dollars on hair bleaches. "Blondes have more fun" has practically become a proverb, as has "Gentlemen prefer blondes."^[14]

The avalanche of artificial blondes unloosed by such publicity, accompanied by the incongruous and ugly contrast of platinum hair with dark eyes, dark eyebrows, and olive skin, should have been enough to destroy the blond ideal forever. That it did not verified an enduring, deeply ingrained aesthetic preference on the part of most Americans.^[15] Many other ways of tampering with nature: nose straightening and nose bobbing, electrolysis to raise the hair line and heighten the brow and forehead, elevator shoes to increase stature have been adopted by minority members striving to give themselves a "Majority look."^[16]

The power of the Aesthetic Prop is also apparent in current American mating and dating habits. Although the Majority is in the descendant, the most up-and-coming minority males seem driven to marry or seek out the company of Msyority females. For proof one has only to look at the couples who throng the most expensive nightclubs, restaurants, and resort hotels. Moreover the Nordic physical ideal has not only been the marriage ideal of the minority "New Rich" in America, but of European social climbers for at least a thousand years.

The relatively small number of Nordics in the world—an estimated 300 million in 1980 and fast declining—has doubtlessly enhanced their aesthetic appeal. Rarity per se exercises a special attraction, and what is beautiful generally contains an element of the uncommon. Just as the pure Nordic is quite a rarity among the part-Nordics who comprise most of the American Msyority, so the American Msyority represents a rare and esoteric type of the world population as a whole. To whites and nonwhites alike, Nordics are the personification of the white race because they are the "whitest" whites. Perhaps the best description of the physical attractiveness of the Majority has been given by Wyndham Lewis:

It is a common experience in talking to Americans to hear some magnificent human specimen (who is obviously the issue of say a first-class Swede and a magnificent Swissess, with a little Irish and a touch of Basque) refer to himself as a "mongrel." It is inconceivable yet indeed that is how a "mixed" product is apt to look upon this superb marriage of Scandinavian, Goth, and Celt—all stocks as closely related in blood ... as the Brahmanic caste in India. ...

All you have to do is look at this sterling type of "mixed" American to admire the purity of line and fine adjustment achieved by the conjunction of these sister stocks. Far from being a "mongrel," of course, he is a sort of super-European; the best of several closely allied stocks have met in him, in exactly the same way as was constantly happening in the noble European families—where the issue of marriage between nobles, whether from England and Italy, or Spain and Russia, did not constitute a "half-breed," but rather a more exalted feudal product ... ^[17]

The possibility that the Aesthetic Prop goes beneath the skin, that there is a relationship between what Herbert Spencer called "beauty of character and beauty of aspect," raises problems which are beyond the scope of this study.^[18] However, without becoming too entangled in psychobiological complexities, one must agree with Spencer's suggestion that beauty is "idealization away from the ape." Three principal sources of ugliness, according to Spencer, are recession of the forehead, the protuberance of the jaw, and large cheekbones. Consequently only those human beings are handsome whose jaws and cheekbones have been pulled back and nasal depressions filled in. Other qualifications are the absence of any forward opening of the nostrils and a small mouth.^[19] Since the idealized Nordic meets these requirements more closely than other racial stereotypes, it follows that Nordics are the least "apelike" of mortals and hence most deserving of first prize in the ethnic beauty contest.^[20]

The Aesthetic Prop, moreover, has often been carried over into the realm of ethics and even politics. Plato was neither the first nor the last to equate beauty with the good. All else being equal, the handsome (i.e., Nordic-looking) politician or statesman has usually been able to evoke more deference than his less handsome (i.e., less Nordic-looking) rival, whose unprepossessing appearance may be a severe handicap in winning and keeping a following. Realizing the force these aesthetic standards still exert in the West, a perceptive intellectual like Marxist philosopher George Lukács, who stands well outside the Northern European genetic and cultural locus, has reacted by having a "liberal fear of beauty, with [an] obsessive suspicion that beauty and, by inference, a good deal of art is a mask preventing a clear view of human evil and suffering."^[21]

It was the Aesthetic Prop which prolonged the survival of the decadent Teutonic aristocracy in Central and Southern Europe centuries after it had been stripped of its preeminence. It is the same Aesthetic Prop which helps the American Majority to hold on to the trappings, but not the substance, of its former power.^[22] Only in the sector of aesthetics, through the pervasiveness of the idealized Nordic biological type and its continued acceptance as the national template of physical charm and attractiveness, has the Majority been able to mount a small but successful holding action in the present-day racial melee.

References

[1] The stereotype has been described on p. 26.

[2] Coon, The Races of Europe, p. 98.

[3] Blondism is a recessive trait which must be present in both parents. It may be indicated by light brown as well as by blond hair, which even in the purest Nordic is likely to darken with advancing age.

[4] Flavens, the Latin word for yellow, golden or auburn, was "the color universally ascribed to the hair of heroic persons by the ancients." J. B. Greenough, Virgil and the Other Latin Poets, Ginn & Co., Boston, 1930, p. 133, note 590.

[5] A. E. Haigh, Attic Theatre, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1907, pp. 221, 239.

[6] "We're paying $10 a pound for Oriental hair and as much as $350 a pound for the best blond European hair," said Adolph Jacoby, an executive of a New York wig firm. Wall Street Journal, Oct 17, 1962, p. 1.

[7] Will Durant, The Age of Faith, p. 522.

[8] Coon, The Races of Europe, p. 321.

[9] Enrique Sordo, Moorish Spain, Crown, New York, 1962, p. 24. Also see Cities of Destiny, ed. Arnold Toynbee, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1967. Although it is not widely known, Arabs have always drawn a very distinct color line. In present-day Iraq a citizen can obtain a legal judgment against a person falsely accusing him of Negro ancestry. Carleton Coon, Caravan, Henry Holt, New York, 1951, p. 161.

[10] Don Quixote says of the fictitious, not the real, Dulcinea, "sus cabellos son oro ... su blancura, nieve." Cervantes, Don Quijote, E. Castilla, Madrid, 1966, p. 98.

[11] William H. Prescott, The History of the Conquest of Mexico and the History of the Conquest of Peru, Modern Library, New York, pp. 39, 736. Other investigators of Mexico's prehistory deny that Quetzalcóatl had white physical traits. César A. Sáenz, Quetzalcóatl Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Mexico, 1962. For a series of lively asides on the Mexican god, see D. H. Lawrence, The Plumed Serpent. Those inclined to wring history from myth can hardly escape feeling that Quetzalcóatl was a shipwrecked, homesick Viking.

[12] Charles Wagley, Amazon Town, Macmillan, New York, 1953, pp. 12-40.

[13] Life, Sept. 5, 1969, p. 42.

[14] Gentlemen Prefer Blondes was the title of a novel by a brunette Hollywood film writer, Anita Loos, whose father was of French descent. Miss Loos later explained why she had written the book: "The satisfaction of getting even with Mae Davis for seducing the man I loved [H. L Mencken] more than paid for the pains [of writing it]." She continued her vendetta against blondes in another novel, But Gentlemen Marry Brunettes. In spite of the author's best intentions, however, the "dumb," gold-digging Lorelei has entered American folklore as the knowing young blonde who gets her way. Anita Loos, A Girl Like I, Viking Press, New York, 1966, p. 274.

[15] Blondism is most appealing when accompanied by other Nordic physical characteristics. If it were not for the color sensitivity of most Americans, Nordic pigmentation and skin shade might be less important than other Nordic traits as criteria of male handsomeness and female beauty. Certainly "tall, dark and handsome" Nordic Mediterraneans are more attractive physical specimens than shorter, squatter, though blonder, types.

[16] Suntan mania does not contradict the logic of the Aesthetic Prop. The ultraviolet rays of the sun may darken the skin, but they also lighten the hair and provide a pleasing contrast to light eyes and other manifestations of light coloration. Basically, a suntan is a sign of health and wealth - both a temporary camouflage and an exotic masquerade.

[17] Wyndham Lewis, Pale Face, Chatto and Windus, London, 1929, p. 278.

[18] Herbert Spencer, Essays, Appleton, New York, 1910, Vol. II, p. 387. Schopenhauer was another philosopher who believed in a connection between outward appearance and inner being. The mouth, he said, expresses the thought of man, while the face expresses the thought of nature and the species. "Vielmehr ist jedes Menschengesicht eine Hieroglyphe," is how Schopenhauer summed up his opinion of the matter. Parerga und Paralipomena, F. A Brockhaus, Leipzig, 1877, pp.670-71.

[19] Ibid., pp. 390-92.

[20] In a work that falls distressingly short of Moby Dick and Billy Budd, Melville carried this physical argument into the spiritual plane when he attempted to equate blondism with goodness. In Pierre, Melville has Isabel complain: "Oh, God! that I had been born with blue eyes, and fair hair! These make the livery of heaven! Heard ye ever yet of a good angel with dark eyes, Pierre? - no, no, no - all blue, blue, blue - heaven's own blue .... " Pierre, Hendrick's House, New York, 1957, p. 370. In contrast, Melville's novella, Benito Cereno, matched only by Conrad's Heart of Darkness in plumbing the dark side of Negro mentality, seemed to propose a correlation between blackness and evil. Montesquieu and Mozart were also charter members of the "Black is not Beautiful" club. In the latter's opera, Die Zauberflöte, his black villain, Monostatos, sings, "Weiss ist schon, weil ein Schwarzer hasslich ist."

[21] Times Literary Supplement, June 18, 1970, p. 660.

[22] After trying to persuade Negro girls to go back to natural, woolly hairdos and give up bleaching creams and Western dress styles, black militants search out white girls, preferring, when they vacation abroad, Scandinavia to Africa. Fletcher Knebel, "The Black Woman's Burden," Look, Sept. 23, 1969, pp. 77-79.