Lex Oppia: On Women, Cosmetics and Austerity in Ancient Rome

Julie Ege as Voluptua in Up Pompeii, 
dir. Bob Kellett, 1971

The noblewomen of Ancient Rome - being sophisticated and molto moderne - understood that everything that served to display their beauty and enhance their status, including make-up, was of crucial importance. Via a bold and striking use of white foundation, black eye-liner and red lipstick, for example, they struck a blow for their own sex in a patriarchal society and exploited the glamorous power of cosmetics.    

Originally used only for ritual purposes, expensive cosmetics and perfumes imported from far away lands, quickly became central to the life of the privileged few women - and the prostitutes - who could afford to purchase these items and had skilled slaves (known as cosmatae) to help apply them throughout the course of the day.

In 215 BC, however, at the height of the Second Punic War, a law was passed - the Lex Oppia - which aimed not only to limit women's wealth, but any conspicuous display of wealth; specifically, it forbade any woman to possess more than half an ounce of gold, to wear multi-coloured clothing (particularly garments trimmed in purple), to ride in an animal-drawn vehicle through the city streets, or use designer cosmetics. 
  

The Lex Oppia was thus more than merely an economic measure drawn up in response to serious financial crisis; it sought to establish an era of austerity by restricting the freedom and splendour of women. The basis for this sexist moral concern with luxury was the assumption that these things were signs of decadence; they encouraged greed and self-indulgence and, it was said, undermined male virtue.  

Following victory over Carthage, however, fortunes soon revived in Rome as riches from the newly conquered regions began to flow into the hands of the ruling elite, giving them - and their women - the opportunity to lead more excessive lifestyles. Thus, there was a radical change in mood and in mores; with financial woes left behind, there was no reason not to live large or to have dowdy wives and mistresses. 

Any continuing efforts to legally prohibit displays of wealth or deny feminine beauty proved unpopular and largely unsuccessful and it was eventually proposed that the Lex Oppia be repealed, despite vehement protest from Cato the Elder, who argued that the law had removed the shame of poverty and vice of envy because it ensured that all women dressed in a very similar, very simple manner and didn't disguise themselves like whores with too much make-up. 

Cato - a senator well known for his conservatism and opposition to Hellenization - further insisted that women's insatiable desire to spend money beyond their means on shoes, clothes, cosmetics, perfume, jewellery, and elaborate hairstyles, was an incurable disease that threatened the well-being and good order of Roman society. Once they had been corrupted by luxury, he said, women became like wild animals; no longer to be trusted to restrain thelmselves from rushing headlong into an orgy of lavish and immoral behaviour.

Whilst the men continued to endlessly debate the issue, the women of Rome took to the streets, demanding the right to wear the clothes and make-up of their own choosing and ignoring their husbands and the magistrates who ordered them to return home and remain silent. Amusingly - and impressively - this persistent proto-feminist revolt into style proved successful and the Lex Oppia was formally repealed in 195 BC, much to the delight of the women who paraded victorious in their now legal finery around the Forum. 

On How Not to Be a Feminist - A Guest Post by Maria Thanassa

Spot the difference: Sweden's Minister for EU Affairs and Trade 
and Iran's Vice President for Women and Family Affairs, 
modestly sign a deal in Tehran, 11 Feb 2017
 Photo: Ebrahim Noroozi / AP

It takes so much more than a grand statement of intent on a web page to pursue a feminist foreign policy ...

The Swedish government's decision to suspend its own principles in Tehran because it wasn't the right opportunity to take a stand, is sadly not the first instance of the West failing to put its money where its mouth is; nor will it be the last (especially when its economic interests are threatened).

Disappointing as it may be, the failure of Sweden's government to acknowledge the rank hypocrisy of its actions is therefore hardly surprising. Nor is it any wonder that the mayor of London - all too willing to march in protest against gender inequality in the wake of Donald Trump’s inauguration - saw no incongruity in an EU member state signing trade deals with a theocratic regime that systematically persecutes gays and violates the freedom of expression for women.

I suppose it's far easier - and far less dangerous - for western politicians to condemn the pussy-grabbing sexism of the US administration or the burkini ban in France, than the murderous, state-approved violence against women of Islamic cultures. The question arises, however, why so few feminists dare criticise Islam when criticism is patently due.

Consider, for example, The Women's March on London: the organisers stated that the march was "for the protection of fundamental rights and for the safeguarding of freedoms threatened by recent political events". They further declared that the event would "send a bold message to the world that women’s rights are human rights ... that an attack on one group is an attack on us all." Complacency, they insisted is not an option.

One might reasonably expect, therefore, that images of female Swedish politicians deferentially veiled during an official trip to Iran, would attract some attention and some anger amongst at least some of the self-appointed champions of liberal values. To paraphrase Iranian feminist Azadeh Davachi, if western women are concerned about Donald Trump's cabinet and his views toward women, surely it follows that they have to consider women's rights in Iran.

But no, hardly a word on the matter. Regrettably, one is led to conclude that western feminists are so obsessed with dismantling capitalist patriarchy and swatting WASPs, that they are blind to female oppression within Muslim communities - including those established in towns and cities across the West.

This is the kind of partisan feminism that sees the speck of sawdust in its brother's eye, but fails to spot the beam in its own ...


Athens-born Maria Thanassa is a teacher of Greek language, literature, and film. She has a Ph.D. from Kings College, London and is the founder and director of EKON Arts. She also writes a blog that combines her love of baking, photography and poetry: Moonshine and Lemon.

Maria appears here as part of the Torpedo the Ark Gastautoren Programm and I am very grateful for her contribution and her kind permission to edit and revise this post.  

How Religion Makes Monkeys of Us All

Image from the theatrical poster for Bill Maher's

Religulous, dir. Larry Charles (2008) 

Scientists working in the Republic of Guinea recently produced intriguing visual evidence suggesting that chimpanzees may have a spiritual side to their nature. Having set up remote cameras in what remains of the forest, Laura Kehoe and her team captured apes performing activity which might possibly be characterized as ritualistic. 

Sometimes, the chimps would gently place stones in the hollow of a tree - as if leaving offerings at a shrine. On other occasions, they might strike the sacred tree with a rock in order to produce a distinctive and, for the participants, clearly meaningful sound. 

Of course, this isn't definitive proof that chimps believe in or worship a deity of any kind. Further observation and experimentation is needed before we can interpret the above with any degree of certainty. However, it does indicate that their behaviour is far more complex and has a greater symbolic component than previously realised, or, indeed, is admitted by those who wish to maintain the anthropocentric conceit of human exceptionalism; they're not just thinking about bananas.

More, it also provides weight to Nietzsche's contention that virtue originates in the animal kingdom; that our highest values, our sense of awe and of reverence, our will to transcendence and subordination, do not make us distinctly human. Rather, they show just how little we've evolved.

Religion, one might conclude, is not only a form of violent tribalism and savage superstition; it effectively makes monkeys of us all ... 

Note: those interested in reading more on Nietzsche's animal philosophy should click here.

On the Difficulty of Death for Old Ladies

Tony Luciani: Internal Reflection,
 from  Mamma: In the Meantime (2016)
(A series of photos and paintings featuring his 93-year-old mother, Elia.)

The comic actor, Steve Martin, once conceded that he'd never made a great movie. But, he went on to say, he had made several films that contained genuinely great scenes. I think something similar might be said about the verse of Michel Houellebecq; no really great poems, but many that contain genuinely great lines. 

Those critics who characterise his work as callow and clichéd, or dismiss it as insipid and ineffectual, are not so much mistaken as beside the point. For these things, of necessity, belong to a body of work that is bold enough and big enough to incorporate them; a form of writing that affirms what Nietzsche terms a general economy of the whole.

In other words, the secret of really interesting poetry, like Houellebecq's, is not the fact that it contains powerful and original elements, but that it's unafraid to make mistakes and display its weaknesses. Further, it parades intertextual indebtedness with pride and invites readers to hear echoes of other authors.
        

But this post isn't intended to be a defence of Houellebecq as an artist, nor a comprehensive review of his new dual-language selection of poems entitled Unreconciled. Rather, I want simply to indicate how some of Houellebecq's reflections on old women approaching death resonate with my own observations and experience ...

Death is difficult for old ladies who are too rich, says Houellebecq, referring to the kind of women who own antique furniture and wind up in cemeteries: Surrounded by cypresses and plastic shrubs. But, actually, death is often difficult for many women - even those whom he calls the council-flat old / Who imagine till the end that they are loved and wind up at the crematorium: In a little cabinet with a white label.

For many women - particularly mothers - simply refuse to let go and die. Men, as a rule, die sooner and with less fuss, less bitterness; they know when the game is up and they'll be best off out of it, as my father would say. Women - particularly mothers - aim to stay for as long as possible in their sordid bedrooms where they keep little objects tucked in their wardrobes - the insides of which reveal just how cruel and how futile life can be.

On and on these undying women persist; watching TV without quite catching what is said (despite the increased volume) and eating their meals without appetite (despite the added salt); growing older and increasingly feeble in mind and body: You see clearly the nothingness awaiting them / Especially in the morning when they rise, pale, / And moan for their first cup of tea.

In a very moving couple of stanzas, worth quoting in the original French, Houellebecq writes:

Les vieux savant pleurer avec un bruit minime,
Ils oublient les pensées et ils oblient les gestes
Ils ne rient plus beaucoup, et tout ce qui leur reste
Au bout de de quelques mois, avant la phase ultime,

Ce sont quelques paroles, presque tourjours les mêmes:
Merci je n'ai pas faim, mon fils viendra dimanche,
Je sens mes intestins, mon fils viendra quand même.
Et le fils n'est pas là, et leurs mains presque blanches.

This is mostly true and, sadly, often the case. Though, not wanting to be defined as a son by my absence, I'm doing what I can to provide care and ensure my mother doesn't become just another unloved body dying without mystery. It's hard work though; depressing, tiring, frustrating, boring, etc.

But so are many jobs and at least caring affords me the opportunity to listen to the little birds in the garden and read poetry on my birthday ...  


See: Michel Houellebecq, Unreconciled: Poems 1991-2013, trans. Gavin Bowd, (William Heinemann, 2017). All the lines quoted, in full or part, are Bowd's translations from the French and are taken from three untitled poems, pp. 29-33. 

For those interested in the work of Tony Luciani, click here to access his website, or here for information about his exhibition, Mamma: In the Meantime, at the Loch Gallery, Toronto, Canada.

What are Poets for ...?

Hölderlin's question - which became Heidegger's question also - wozu Dichter in dürftiger Zeit? remains, for those of us who are interested in such things, a matter of some urgency. 

For in a time of fake news and a general poverty of thinking - these things characterizing our own destitution - clearly we need to acknowledge the importance of those who have the ability to attend closely and carefully to language and its limits (poets) and those who might theorize such a method of thinking in relation to the world we live in today (philosophers).     

Of course, this doesn't mean we need poets to simply set the facts straight, nor signal their moral and political idealism by speaking truth to power - a cant phrase coined by Quakers in the 1950s and adopted ever since by would-be warriors of social justice and so-called activists. If I want to hear opinionated idiots express their beliefs, then I can follow them on Twitter.

Poets must never assert anything as all-knowing subjects. And poetry must free itself of any conceited humanism, becoming Machiavellian in its objective purity; sans mélange, cru, vert, dans toute sa force, dans toute son âpreté, as Nietzsche would say. We don't speak such poetry; it speaks us. And, more, it transforms the world; not through noisy direct action, but through silent deferral that opens up the possibility of Newness.

In other words, poets are not there to serve as commentators on world events - verse is not a type of flowery journalism. Their task, rather, is to provide the preliminary conditions necessary for a demonic Event: something that unfolds in time, but which is nevertheless Unzeitgemäße and Unheimlich in the sense that it comes from Outside; something which radially changes our understanding of reality and allows us to scrape off the viscous covering of doxa protecting categories of the present.

Poets, then, still have a profoundly important role to play in this era of despots and crackpots. But, alas, I sometimes think the real question we should be asking is: Wo sind die heuter Dichter?              

Monkey Business (On Human-Chimp Sexuality)

It's commonly assumed that human males are more easily aroused, more promiscuous and more prepared to fuck just about anything, than human females. But the available research data seems to suggest otherwise. Indeed, the evidence indicates that it's women - not men - who are more polymorphously perverse and erotically plastic in their pleasures, including interspecies shenanigans.

In a famous experiment performed by Canadian sexologist Meredith Chivers, for example, women were shown pornographic videos featuring men and women engaged in heterosexual, lesbian and male homosexual activity. They were also shown films, with added sound effects, of polyamorous bonobos vigorously having sex. Chivers wanted to find out if there was a difference between what women think excites them and what actually turns them on; so it was that the women were hooked up to a vaginal photoplethysmograph, to measure any changes in lubrication, blood flow, or vascongestion.

Asked to record their reactions, the predominantly heterosexual women unsurprisingly said that they mainly enjoyed watching the straight sex scenes. But the VPG told a very different story; they were aroused by all of the sex scenes - including the monkey porn. Indeed, whatever their professed sexual orientation, the women showed significant and rapid genital arousal almost no matter what they watched on screen - girl-on-girl action, masturbating men, or apes getting jiggy with it.

Repeating the same experiment with men, however, Chivers obtained very different results. There was not only a much closer correspondence between mind and body (gay and straight men both physically responding in a category specific manner with what they said they found sexually arousing), but, interestingly, none of the men registered even the first stirrings of an erection whilst watching the bonobos bonking. Any expectation that explicit animal sex would speak to the untamed beast within was - in the case of the men at least - sadly mistaken.

Now, Chivers is quick to point out that this doesn't automatically mean that all women are subconsciously lusting after non-human primates, or dreaming of animal lovers. If we were to believe this on the basis of the physiological evidence, then we would also have to believe that they secretly desire to be raped; because the fact is some women are physically excited by extremely violent fantasy and some display signs of genital response (including orgasm) during actual sexual assault.

Chivers argues - convincingly, I feel - that vaginal lubrication evolved as an automatic protective response, to reduce discomfort and protect from injury during penetration; that it was not essentially a sign of sexual arousal or indicative of desire. Thus, what her data reveals is that even the sight of a pygmy chimp with a hard on can stimulate a reaction, so closely do they resemble humans and so anxious are women to reduce the prospect of coital pain.    

But what of the male apes? I hear you ask. If human females can subconsciously find them a sexual possibility (or threat), do they find women at all attractive?

Apparently - and contrary to what the picture above or certain pornographic fantasies, usually involving large gorillas, might suggest - our simian cousins are not exactly lining up to date, rape, or perv on women. Show a male chimp images of a female chimp's genitalia or swollen anal rump and he's interested to the point that he'll even accept a loss of fruit juice in exchange; show him a pornographic picture of a woman and it's no deal - he'll stick with his juice.

Obviously, there are exceptions; that is to say, there are cases of apes in captivity who, when given the chance, like to watch porn on TV. But, for the most part, chimps seem to prefer their own kind. What's more, they tend to have a very strong MILF fixation and consistently prefer older females over younger, inexperienced females (suggesting that the human male preference for younger women is a relatively recent evolutionary development).   


See: Meredith L. Chivers, Michael C. Seto and Ray Blanchard, 'Gender and Sexual Orientation Differences in Sexual Response to Sexual Activities Versus Gender of Actors in Sexual Films', in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 93, No. 6, 1108-1121 (American Psychological Association, 2007). Click here to read online version of this essay. 

Jump! On Defying the Spirit of Gravity (With Reference to the Work of Philippe Halsman)

If there's one thing to which Zarathustra makes himself supremely hostile above all other things, it's der Geist der Schwere - what in English is termed the Spirit of Gravity. 

He prides himself on all that is light-footed and light-hearted in his nature and says that the revaluation of all values begins only when man learns how to love himself and how to fly like a bird, rather than living like a beast of burden weighed down with morality and bad conscience.        

In order to fly, however, man must first learn how to stand upright on his own two feet; and then how to walk, naked and light, before running, dancing, skipping and jumping for joy - no longer taking life seriously and refusing to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders. 

We find some of this Nietzschean defiance of the Spirit of Gravity in the marvellous series of 178 pictures taken by American portrait photographer Philippe Halsman and published collectively in his Jump Book (1959), along with his humorous essay on the aesthetics of jumpology.

Starting in the early 1950s, Halsman asked every celebrity or VIP that he photographed to jump in the air for him. His hope was that he might momentarily glimpse and capture on film the spontaneous and carefree individual beneath the formal, self-conscious public persona.

Amazingly, Halsman not only convinced many of the great comics and movie stars of the period to jump for him, he also persuaded many well-known politicians, scientists, artists and members of the House of Windsor to briefly forget themselves and dare to defy gravity.

Arguably, these are amongst his more arresting images. But, for Zarathustra, there's nothing lovelier than nimble young women with fine ankles. And so, above are Halsman's joyous photos of B.B., Marilyn and Audrey leaping barefoot into the future and the Dionysian imagination ... 

Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, (Penguin Books, 1969).

Philippe Halsman's Jump Book, (Damiani, 2015).

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Jumping Grace (A Short Verse in the Manner of Michel Houellebecq)

En sautant Grace -

Visiblement belle

Ravie dans son nouveau soutien-gorge de sport

Indifférente à la gravité.

Jumping Grace -

Conspicuously beautiful

Happy in her new sports bra

Unconcerned with gravity.

Thanks to Gedvile Bunikyte for kind permission to use her photograph. 

Thanks to Simon Solomon, Christian Michel and Sophie Stas for help with the translation (into French); any errors or inadequacies are entirely my own. 

Rilke: Letters on Cézanne (Some Brief Remarks)

Rilke is one of those poets I should probably appreciate more than I do. But, if I'm honest, I find the lyrical intensity and the mysticism of his verse a bit much. Even his Dinggedichte are not quite concrete and thingly enough for me; push comes to shove, I prefer the work of Francis Ponge.

Similarly, Cézanne is an artist I should also admire more than I do; the only modern painter that Lawrence officially endorses - not so much because of his achievement as because of his struggle and his willingness to admit that material objects actually exist. But, if given the choice, I'd rather have a Picasso on the wall.
      

Reading Rilke's Letters on Cézanne, however, has made me want to learn how to love the work of each man more ... 

Rilke wrote the letters to his wife, Clara, during the autumn of 1907, following repeated visits to an exhibition in Paris of paintings by the great French artist, with whom he felt an increasingly powerful sense of kinship. It was such a decisive encounter in terms of impact that, after this date, Rilke often cited Cézanne as the most formative influence on his poetry.

However, as the letters also reveal, Rilke felt dismay as well as delight before the paintings; Cézanne causing him to reflect upon his own inadequacies and shortcomings as an artist. Did he really have what it takes to produce greatness and to devote himself exclusively to his craft? Could he accept the challenge that Cézanne throws down to all those who come after him, which is to know the apple in all its appleyness and smash what Lawrence terms the optical cliché?

Crucially, Rilke recognises that Cézanne's work is a fundamental turning point - and not only within the history of Western art; Cézanne's oeuvre is a wider cultural and philosophical event that challenges Plato's Idealism. This is why he, Cézanne, is not only impossible for old ladies, but offensive to all those good bourgeois corpses who secretly feared and hated him.      


See: Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters on Cézanne, ed. Clara Rilke, trans. Joel Agee, (North Point Press, 2002).

See also: D. H. Lawrence, 'Introduction to These Paintings', in Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004). 

And for an alternative - more empassioned, much better illustrated - reading of the letters, see 'Being Your Work's Bitch' - a blog post on The Musing: click here.

Tyler Shields: Provocateur or Pale Imitator?

Tyler Shields: Self-Portrait (2014)
tylershields.com

According to Andrea Blanch, keen to address criticism of her friend's work from the get-go, the provocateur often receives a bum rap. That is to say, they're often subject to false accusations or unfair judgements; dismissed as a fraud who "peddles in shock or wears the shallow guise of edginess".

But the true provocateur - such as Hollywood's favourite photographer, Tyler Shields - knows how to turn incitement into a fearless form of art that awakens lesser mortals from their mundane slumber and the "consumptive malaise of soul-grinding routine". Provocation, in its highest form, is thus not merely a means of challenging somebody to react; it's also a way of filling them with "passionate exuberance". Provocation is a vitalism; it brings people to life and not simply to the boil.

And so, whilst some of the images produced by Tyler Shields deliberately aim to shock and unsettle, what raises his oeuvre above that of his lesser-skilled contemporaries, is that they also "arrest us with the magnitude of their depth and complexity".

I have to say, with respect to Ms. Blanch, whose own work with a camera far exceeds anything produced by Tyler Shields in my view, this really is so much guff. Unfortunately, Shields - who has what might be termed a healthy ego - buys into this fearless genius nonsense and seems happy to blow his own trumpet when he can't find someone to do it for him. For this is a man who unabashedly places his work not in the world of fashion and celebrity culture, but the tradition of Baroque art - less Terry Richardson and more to do with the transcendental clarity of Caravaggio.

And this is a man who aggressively asserts his ownership of images, threatening prosecution and multi-million dollar fines to anyone who infringes his copyright, despite the fact that, as one commentator has noted, a brief glance at his portfolio "by anyone with even a cursory knowledge of the history of photography would reveal that a high number of his images look an awful lot like those of other photographers".

Now, as a rule, I'm not greatly concerned with notions of originality; all great artists steal, as Picasso said. However, this doesn't mean that all great thieves are artists and what does irritate is to see a powerful image rendered banal. An act of homage or even a playful pastiche should not result simply in an inferior copy or perpetuate a lazy form of nostalgia.

Unfortunately, as art critic Paddy Johnson writes with reference to Tyler's version of the famous Sally Mann photo of a young girl smoking (Candy Cigarette, 1989), Shields often "takes what began as an incredibly haunting photograph and turns it into an art postcard". His re-imaginings disappoint not because they rip-off, but because they devalue and diminish.       


Notes

Andrea Blanch, 'The Fearless Artist', Foreword to Tyler Shields, Provocateur, (Glitterati Inc., 2016). 

Jamie Lee Curtis Taete, 'Is Celebratory Photographer Tyler Shields Inspired, Or Copying Other Artists?', Vice, Jan 15, 2016. Click here to read. The remarks by Paddy Johnson are also found in this article. 

Thanks to Simon Solomon for bringing the work of Tyler Shields to my attention and kindly gifting me a copy of Provocateur.