Womanly virtues Friday
This is the first in a series.
So let's do some decoding on this little annoyance that came up when I was browsing some site yesterday.
It's a funny question because if she is looking at you like that you don't really need to ask.
Except that she's a model and she's posing. We think, maybe what she really wants is for this photo session to end so she can get back to organizing her teacup collection.
When we look at a picture like this, the sincerity and authenticity questions seem like real questions.
Think of what happens when we teach a baby to smile. It's one of the very first things we teach a baby to do. As soon as the little wonder can see far enough to make out our facial expression, we smile at her. That's all it takes. She looks back at us, then we see a look of intense concentration on her face as she works it out, and then, like the sun rising on a perfect morning, she figures out how to smile back at us. And then she laughs.
That's an amazing thing. The smile we teach a baby is perhaps the most human thing there is. And the baby can't see her own face when she does it. As Wittgenstein says, we don't take account of the fact that we can imitate someone else's facial expression and know we have it right without looking in a mirror.
Another thing we fail to take account of is that smiling that first smile makes the baby happy. We think we smile because we are happy but that first smile makes the baby happy because she smiled. It isn't the expression of some "inner" happiness. No, she feels good "inside" because she has made this thing happen "outside". And we can do this all our lives. Need to cheer up? Try smiling.
Something similar goes on when a woman makes the facial expression the model is making above. We sometimes talk as if the "inside" and "outside" of her experience were independent of one another. As if she could be thinking of her favourite puppy that died while she was a little girl inside and giving us this expression outside. But she can't do that. She may have had sad news the morning of the shoot, but she has to put it out of her head to conjure up that expression.
And just as a baby learns to be happy by learning to smile, every girl learns to be aroused by learning how to put that expression on her face. And girls and young women spend billions of dollars every year on magazines, books and movies featuring erotic shots of women so they can learn from models and actresses how to put on the relevant expressions. Fashion magazines don't just show a girl what clothes she could wear, they show her the ways she should stand and the facial expressions she should have while wearing them. It's one of the huge differences between boys and girls that boys don't do that. Boys don't need to learn how to be aroused any more than babies need to learn how to cry.
Yes, it can be faked but we put too much weight on that. That's why the sincerity and authenticity questions come up. But faking it is difficult. Which is why most people don't or can't do it. Most models don't fake it but get themselves into the mood for a photo shoot.
There are external tricks of course. Make-up is one. The photographer helped a bit in the shot above by centering the focus on her panties so the wrinkles in the silk show clear and crisp and her face is slightly blurred, making her look a little more aroused. But tricks only get a woman so far.
A woman can lie to us or to herself but the facial expression is not the lie. The lie is not a specific thing but the whole context. She lies by making the effort to get aroused early in a relationship and then not trying anymore after she has you hooked. Or by giving the impression that she only makes this efforts for you while loving someone else too. But the moment when a woman poses, she is telling the truth.
This is the first in a series.
So let's do some decoding on this little annoyance that came up when I was browsing some site yesterday.
It's a funny question because if she is looking at you like that you don't really need to ask.
Except that she's a model and she's posing. We think, maybe what she really wants is for this photo session to end so she can get back to organizing her teacup collection.
When we look at a picture like this, the sincerity and authenticity questions seem like real questions.
- The sincerity question goes like this: She looks interested but does she really mean it?
- The authenticity question, which is not quite the same is, What is she really feeling?
Think of what happens when we teach a baby to smile. It's one of the very first things we teach a baby to do. As soon as the little wonder can see far enough to make out our facial expression, we smile at her. That's all it takes. She looks back at us, then we see a look of intense concentration on her face as she works it out, and then, like the sun rising on a perfect morning, she figures out how to smile back at us. And then she laughs.
That's an amazing thing. The smile we teach a baby is perhaps the most human thing there is. And the baby can't see her own face when she does it. As Wittgenstein says, we don't take account of the fact that we can imitate someone else's facial expression and know we have it right without looking in a mirror.
Another thing we fail to take account of is that smiling that first smile makes the baby happy. We think we smile because we are happy but that first smile makes the baby happy because she smiled. It isn't the expression of some "inner" happiness. No, she feels good "inside" because she has made this thing happen "outside". And we can do this all our lives. Need to cheer up? Try smiling.
Something similar goes on when a woman makes the facial expression the model is making above. We sometimes talk as if the "inside" and "outside" of her experience were independent of one another. As if she could be thinking of her favourite puppy that died while she was a little girl inside and giving us this expression outside. But she can't do that. She may have had sad news the morning of the shoot, but she has to put it out of her head to conjure up that expression.
And just as a baby learns to be happy by learning to smile, every girl learns to be aroused by learning how to put that expression on her face. And girls and young women spend billions of dollars every year on magazines, books and movies featuring erotic shots of women so they can learn from models and actresses how to put on the relevant expressions. Fashion magazines don't just show a girl what clothes she could wear, they show her the ways she should stand and the facial expressions she should have while wearing them. It's one of the huge differences between boys and girls that boys don't do that. Boys don't need to learn how to be aroused any more than babies need to learn how to cry.
Yes, it can be faked but we put too much weight on that. That's why the sincerity and authenticity questions come up. But faking it is difficult. Which is why most people don't or can't do it. Most models don't fake it but get themselves into the mood for a photo shoot.
There are external tricks of course. Make-up is one. The photographer helped a bit in the shot above by centering the focus on her panties so the wrinkles in the silk show clear and crisp and her face is slightly blurred, making her look a little more aroused. But tricks only get a woman so far.
A woman can lie to us or to herself but the facial expression is not the lie. The lie is not a specific thing but the whole context. She lies by making the effort to get aroused early in a relationship and then not trying anymore after she has you hooked. Or by giving the impression that she only makes this efforts for you while loving someone else too. But the moment when a woman poses, she is telling the truth.
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