2nd Research Posts 2009                      LITR 5731 Colonial-Postcolonial Literature

Abby Estillore

Exoticism and Construction of Beauty In Post-Colonial Studies

From what I have found, the term “exotic” almost seems to be equated with sensuality and eroticism as well as ethnic looking or non-Caucasian.  I believe the reason for this association is due to media’s emphasis on the representation of women’s bodies in the U.S.  Since the concept of exoticism is a broad and conceptual subject to tackle in a brief research post, I want to focus my reporting on the visual representation of the postcolonial female in films such as in Wide Sargasso Sea and White Teeth.  Also, in a brief section, I wish to glance over the relevance of the exotic with the artistic and literary arts by referring to at least one of Gauguin paintings and some examples from Mukherjee’s Jasmine.

Of utmost importance, I think, is the framing of this question:  What truly defines a woman’s beauty?  To try to answer such question requires looking at how several factors such as physical aesthetics, feminine voice, and cultural norms dictate society’s perception about a woman’s beauty. 

The contemporary feminist, Susan Bordo, observes, “the discipline and normalization of the female body…has to be acknowledged as a…flexible strategy of social control” (2363).  Women’s bodies are subjected to gender oppression so as to perpetuate patriarchal power over women.  Although Bordo’s body theory focuses on anorexia and other female pathologies (madness), women are pulled in multiple directions with respect to the commodification of and ownership of their bodies.  For example, American women’s obsession with thinness generates unhealthy ideals of beauty that many may consider as a form of power because she controls and resists what she eats.  In reality, this type of control achieves patriarchal depiction of women as vulnerable and powerless.  

In America, beauty is emphasized through the sexualization of women’s bodies.  Hollywood films depict such images that inculcate certain expectations on the construction of women’s beauty, that which is expected as normative especially in the United States.  Some characterizations of ideal beauty start with Cleopatra, Helen of Troy, Rita Hayworth, Marilyn Monroe, Barbie, and many others. Their curly, shoulder-length blonde hair, slim and long legs, fair and light-skinned, milky white arms, buxomness, and more often, hourglass shaped bodies denote the ideal beauty for the Western woman.  In a sense, these women epitomize sensuality, femininity, and vulnerability.  They are often pictured with sexually suggestive poses and gestures along with dim lighting to create a peep show atmosphere.  Of course, these images scream patriarchy because women’s bodies are viewed as objects for pleasure.  The adage, “sex sells,” still rings true in the United States.   

In stark contrast with the Western definition of ideal beauty, terms such as exotic, fetish, and oriental connote the construction of beauty for the postcolonial woman.  She signifies difference, other, rarity, and often wildness.  Prominent examples abound in print ads such as in women’s magazines in countries like Singapore, Thailand, China, India, and Japan.  In a study done by Katherine Frith, Ping Shaw, and Hong Cheng, they conclude that “attractive female bodies and sexual stimuli have historically been used in the U.S. to grab the viewer’s attention and to attempt to lend interest to a product or service” (57).  This view supports the adage, “sex sells,” at the expense of women’s bodies being objectified and commodified.  Frith, Shaw, and Cheng also report that “sex appeal [is] used more often in France than in U.S. advertisements” due to the fact that France is “sexually more liberated than the United States” (58).  They also agree on the use of “’sexual pursuit’ as a theme in advertisements (men pursuing women in an overtly sexual way)” to be prevalent in the U.S. (58).  On the other hand, portrayal of Chinese women in ads are less, sexually suggestive and are shown to be demure (58). 

Beauty ideals are also related to globalization in that products marketed towards a particular consumer tend to portray women either as sexual objects or sensual beings.  For instance, “Asian ads contain a large proportion of cosmetics and facial beauty products” as opposed to the U.S. in which clothing dominate many print ads (56).  In addition to their study, Frith, Shaw, and Cheng analyze how Caucasian women are portrayed in Japanese advertising.  Caucasian models are asked to pose in certain ways that Japanese women will not do.  Images of the “sensual and willing” are attributed to Caucasian women simply because Japanese advertisements “mirror the Western’s portrayal of women” (Frith, et. Al 58).  In a sense, exotic is associated with sensuality and the erotic.  Either perspective, West or East, interprets the portrayal of women as exotic/erotic.  (The more I find this hard to clearly separate!)  Thus, these findings appear to delineate the West’s emphasis on the body while the East’s focus on a pretty face when it comes to defining beauty.  It seems that the underlying theme of how beauty is constructed depends on a particular set of characteristics perceived as beautiful and desirable within a given culture.               

In cinematic representations of women, race plays a significant role in communicating the exotic/erotic through their bodies.  The 1993 film adaptation of Wide Sargasso Sea depicts the postcolonial female beauty through the racial backgrounds of Annette (Antoinette’s mother), Antoinette, and Amelie.  After Mr. Cosway died, an ex-slave owner, the widowed Annette marries Mr. Mason, a British gentleman, and settles in Spanish Town along with Antoinette, Annette’s Creole daughter.  Growing up, Antoinette does not have many friends and, because the Jamaican elite ostracizes her mother, she spends most of her time in isolation.  When Annette goes insane after the fire, Mr. Mason leaves her in Jamaica under the care of two servants and entrusts Antoinette under the care of Aunt Cora.  A young lady, at this point, Antoinette is married off to Rochester, an Englishman compensated by her stepbrother, Richard Mason.  The mood is entirely sexualized and eroticized with plenty of frontal nudity to depict the excessive amount of physical intimacy that their marriage is based. 

Antoinette’s young maid, Amelie, is also exoticized and eroticized.  She becomes Rochester’s object of desire halfway through the narration.  The female bodies are objectified, commodified, sexualized, and eroticized several times in the film adaptation.  Physical beauty is attributed to their sexuality rather than on their faces, intelligence, or talents.  Ella Shohat attributes Hollywood’s portrayal of ethnic looking, non-Caucasian women to sexual differences in the “construction of the East as Other and the West as (Ideal) Ego” (40).  Gender, race, and sexuality are all projected onto Antoinette’s and Amelie’s nude bodies, which “exposes the female Other, of denuding her literally, [and] comes to allegorize the power of Western man to possess her, [Rochester, in this case]” (Shohat 40).  It is interesting to note that Rochester also desires the darker-skinned Amelie after sleeping with his wife, Antoinette.  Shohat says this about darker women:  “Darker women, marginalized within the narrative, appear largely as sexually hungry subalterns” (41).  Under close scrutiny of Christophine, Antoinette’s black nurse, Amelie is starved sexually until Rochester wakes up, sick and ill, from the love potion and calls for Amelie to give him a glass of water.  The sexual tension is evident from the glowing sweat on the characters’ bodies as both eventually succumb to their desires.  This sexual act can be interpreted as the “colonial imaginary to play out its own fantasies of sexual domination,” (Shohat 41) that which is something that has somewhat diminished in Rochester’s lovemaking with Antoinette.             

Comparatively to the Wide Sargasso Sea, Zadie Smith’s White Teeth shows the exoticization of Clara who was born in Jamaica and raised in England under her mother’s strict Jehovah’s Witness standards.  Her first encounter with the idea of the exotic comes from her language.  Clara worries over her proper English whenever she preaches God’s message about Armageddon as she knocks on people’s doors.  When her front teeth got knocked over in a Moped accident, her accent is not quite British sounding but is tinged with her Jamaican roots.  She meets Archie, an English man, during a New Year’s Eve party, and Archie admires her from the start:  “You are beautiful.”  Clara flashes her beautiful smile, two front teeth missing.  Her light-brown complexion compliments her now “new accent” that results in a romantic relationship with Archie.  Overjoyed, Archie proposes to Clara.  However, before the wedding, Clara visits a dentist to have her front teeth fixed.  Again, Clara flashes her beautiful smile, beautiful white teeth.  The connection with having complete white teeth and beauty places the postcolonial female in an in-between place of her cultural identity and the dominant society’s definition of woman’s beauty.  Clara aspires to emulate a universal beauty ideal according to Western standards such as having a complete set of straight, white teeth.  This also helps her to speak proper English as opposed to speaking in her native accent with incomplete set of front teeth.  However, other characters such as Archie’s employer and Clara’s mother condemn the interracial marriage despite Clara’s efforts to fit Western society’s mold of ideal beauty.       

In art, there are significant representations of the exotic and depictions of ideal beauty.  A prominent impressionist painter, Paul Gauguin, visited the Tropics (Tahiti, Pacific Islands) in the late 1800s.  He was fascinated with the charm of the local beauties and it was for this reason that Gauguin moved away from Western painting and into primitive style.  For instance, a Paul Gauguin’s painting, ‘Young Girl With Fan,’ which serves as a book jacket in the 1990 Plume version of Jamaica Kincaid’s Lucy, reflects his interest in travel and exoticism.  Gauguin felt disappointed with Impressionism due to its lacking in symbolic depth.  He found the art of Africa and Asia to be reflecting “mystic symbolism and vigor” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Gauguin).  At least in terms of artistic expression, it seems that the attraction for the exotic stems from the attitude that European civilization equals conventions and artificiality.  Quite simply, “the newness, wildness and the stark power embodied in the art of those faraway places” fascinated Gauguin and influenced many of his paintings (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Gauguin).

In Bharati Mukherjee,’s Jasmine, what happens to the identity of the postcolonial woman when one’s view of her beauty is clouded by Western construction of a woman’s beauty?  Determined to carry on her first husband’s American Dream, Jasmine is willing to establish a life for herself in the United States.  When Jasmine immigrates to America for the first time, she is faced with harsh realities of sexual assault.  Half-Face, the man who brought Jasmine illegally to the U.S. and who eventually assaults her, says to her, “I thought you’d be different from the others.  A spark, you know” (Mukherjee 99).  Jasmine is depicted as “a spark,” rarity, an exotic other.  Coming to America as a grieving widow, Jasmine is not adjusted to American life and her husband’s dreams still burden her.  In a way, Jasmine’s naïveté and demure demeanor are qualities that Half-Face finds attractive even though he has encountered many other women of different nationalities.  Overtime, Jasmine settles in America when she becomes a nanny to Taylor and Wylie’s daughter.  Wylie’s husband, Taylor, was enamored with Jasmine from the beginning of their meeting.  “’I’ve been in love with you since the first morning I saw you,’” Taylor tells Jasmine after his divorce with Wylie.  Taylor even christens Jasmine as his “Jase”.  Again, I want to agree with my observation that Jasmine’s naïveté and demureness are exotic qualities that drive Half-Face and Taylor sexually attractive to her.  However, she does not stay with Taylor when her husband’s murderer spots her in New York. 

Jasmine moves to Iowa and ends up living with Bud, who is confined to a wheelchair after Harlan shoots him.  She becomes Bud’s “Jane,” caregiver, lover, and unofficial wife (perhaps?).  Bud recalls how his mother called him to say that she was sending an Indian woman to help him.  When he sees Jasmine, he says, “I felt my life was just opening to me.  Like a door had just been opened…You were glamour, something unattainable…you brought me back from the dead” (Mukherjee 177).  Jasmine/Jane stands for “glamour, something unattainable,” an exoticized other, different from Bud’s first wife, Karin, someone conventional, traditionally American. 

Throughout the novel, the “regular Americans” seem to view the Eastern exotic the same way that Eastern nations seem to view the “regular Americans.”  “Regular Americans” and non-Americans are fascinated by the uniqueness of the Eastern and Western cultures.  In other words, the qualities of what it means to be “exotic” differ from one culture, gender, and social class to another.  During and after reading Jasmine, I have the opportunity of perceiving Jasmine’s immersion into the American Dream from an Eastern cultural perspective and also from what I have experienced in my personal, social, and educational life as an Asian American living in the United States.  What appear exotic in Jasmine, for me, are her Indian upbringing, unique physical beauty, and ability and willingness to adapt to her environment.              

These examples share the view that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.  Eastern and Western perspectives about a woman’s beauty differ and definitely cannot be pinned down to a universal definition of beauty.  While the adage, “sex sells,” is still a popular belief in the United States, what promotes a universal beauty ideal differs in the West and East.  Women’s bodies as the objects of the male gaze continue to be a compelling research topic for further inquiry.  I find it interesting to study the West and East’s perception of ideal beauty.  Going back to my initial question, what truly defines a woman’s beauty cannot be answered in universal terms.  But, the ugly truth is that society has ingrained us with sexual images associated with sensuality, erotic, and exoticism.  Some women participate in this depiction; others continue to revise the definition of beauty to include women’s personal achievement, intelligence, and self-esteem.  Therefore, the significance of this posting is to bring into question some of the basic assumptions on the construction of beauty and the representation of women in the media from a postcolonial perspective. 

Work Cited

Bordo, Susan.  “Unbearable Weight:  Feminism, Western Culture, and The Body.”  The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism.  Eds. Vincent Leitch, William Cain, Laurie Finke, Barbara Johnson, John McGowan, and Jeffrey Williams.  New York:  W.W. Norton & Company, 2001.  2360-2376.

Frith, Katherine, Ping Shaw, and Hong Cheng.  “The Construction of Beauty: A Cross-Cultural Analysis of Women’s Magazine Advertising.”  Journal of Communication 55.1 (2005):  56-70. 

Mukherjee, Bharati.  Jasmine.  New York:  Fawcett Crest, 1989.

Shohat, Ella.  “Gender in Hollywood’s Orient.”  Middle East Report (Lebanon’s War) 162 (1990):  40-42.

Information on Paul Gauguin -- http://www.paul-gauguin.net/biography.html; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Gauguin