Diderot, Hogarth, and the Aesthetics of Depilation

Bibliographic Data

ID9385124
AuthorsJohannes Endres (corresponding author), Joel Golb, Joel David Golb
Year2004
Volume38
Issue1
Pages17-38
Publication date2004-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueEighteenth-Century Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0013-2586 • E-ISSN: 1086-315X
PublisherJohns Hopkins University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1353/ecs.2004.0056
OpenAlexW2047594678
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited1

The corporeal ideal of a female form free of body hair has a long tradition in Western thought, originating in antiquity and culminating in the eighteenth century. Early-modern discourses on art, aesthetics, cultural theory, and anthropology explicitly defend the ideal of the naked, depilated woman with reference to antique depictions of Venus. Denis Diderot's speculations on the origins of the hairless female body are exemplary for the eighteenth century. His fondness for the "depilated lap" provides for a far-reaching theory of civilization based on female "shame." Pubic hair, in Enlightenment thought, came to be associated with female sinfulness and the fall of civilization. This essay aims to trace the stages of the depilation argument in the eighteenth century. Particular emphasis is set upon its interrelation with contemporary concepts of antiquity and of the female body. Finally the essay analyzes the tendency to establish a self-reflexive metatheory--hair as a "metaphor of a metaphor"--drawing on examples from art and literature

Aesthetics · Art · Civilization · Enlightenment · Epistemology · Historicism · Ideal (ethics · Literature · Metaphor · Phallic stage · Psychoanalysis · Theology · Western culture · Historical and Literary Studies · Historical Gender and Feminism Studies · History · Philosophy · Psychology · Rousseau and Enlightenment Thought

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