Personal Beauty and Racial Betterment/Improvement in Sexual Selection
In passing to the consideration of improvement by positive selection of the best stocks we are harking back nearly twenty-three hundred years, from preventive medicine to eugenics. Plato, in the Republic, outlines the first recorded plan for breeding a nation through careful selection of the most beautiful youths for parents, and punishment of unauthorized parents. Plato’s scheme probably would not work, on account of its extreme paternalism, and its depersonalization as regards the indispensable feature of sexual union, namely, the offspring. It tends to reduce the individual’s interest in cohabitation to the purely sexual level. The universal failure of institutional care of babies is a sound warning against allowing the sexual instinct to gain the ascendancy over the parental.
Plato was not fundamentally wrong in his theory of eugenics, any more than he was in other matters. The needs, after elimination of the clearly unfit, are two. First, to insure that marriages shall be made on the basis of mutual attraction of beauty alone, excluding all interference of national, family, social, religious, or economic motives. Second, to take care that the unions of the most fit shall be fruitful, and relatively more fruitful than those of the less fit.
The world at the present time is overpopulated. Man has obeyed the injunction to “multiply and replenish the earth,” and having succeeded in replenishing the globe in full and over full measure, has gone right on multiplying. Even wars and pestilences have not prevented the earth’s population from becoming too numerous. And although pestilences may be mostly short-circuited by medical skill, war is inevitable when national domains are so overcrowded that further increase is possible only through depredation on, or conquest of, other peoples. If it had not been for the unnecessary multiplication of the German people, Germany would have had no occasion to attempt to conquer her neighbors, and would have had no occasion therefore to develop the philosophy of schrecklichkeit to make her barbarities possible.
The margin of living at the present time is very small. Land everywhere is becoming impoverished, and available new lands are becoming less. Even now, grazing lands are rapidly disappearing, with consequent shortage of beef and leather. Soon there will not be an extent of wheat lands sufficient to feed the world, and the inferior substitutes lately endured as a duty will be accepted as a necessity. When the whole world resorts to intensive farming, with no accessory regions of extensive cultivation, and no great wild areas for game and adventure, life for the majority of the people in our country and all others will take on the dull tinge it has in European peasant communities.
To make life profitable, we need vast forest areas, and vast areas which can lie fallow to recuperate. We need space for myriads of cattle and sheep, and for wild game. And we need to reduce our consumption of coal and oil and wood, rather than increase it.
The obvious relief measure is the decrease in births among the classes now unduly multiplying. And all that is needed to bring this about is a dissemination of knowledge concerning hygienic means of preventing conception. The classes from which our best parents are drawn already possess some of this information and are already limiting—too much limiting, probably,—their offspring. The immediate and urgent need is to instruct the other classes, so that the disparity in propagation shall immediately be lessened, if not reversed.[1]
The converse reforms; the increasing of the reproduction of the best specimens of the race; depends more largely than might be supposed upon the restriction of the propagation of the unfit. With a lessened pressure of population, eonomic and social situations change radically, and the very individuals who now deem families undesirable will find the possession and care of children to be the maximally desirable thing in life. Others, who cannot afford a family under the economic situation now prevailing, will be able to maintain one without unduly relaxing the standard of living, when the pressure on means of sustenance becomes less.
The first step in the betterment of selection; the spreading of knowledge of preventive measures throughout the whole population; is the difficult one. In addition to the combination of ignorance and class-interest which this reform, like all others, has to combat, the opposition is so susceptible of political manipulation that it is almost impregnably intrenched. It is probable that not even the lessons of the German war will have much influence, and until the social and industrial crises now bearing down upon us have become actualities instead of threats the public will not wake up.
In addition to the general economic check to the reproduction of the so-called “better classes,” there are positive psychosociological checks which operate selectively against the more beautiful women—precisely the women who ought to be selected for reproduction, not against it.
The more beautiful a woman, other considerations being equal, the greater her chance of making a relatively wealthy match—and her beauty may even overcome serious considerations of negative weight. The wealthier the match, under present conditions, the less the probability of her bearing children. Without wealth, social pretensions may have an even greater deterrent effect, for with wealth, social pretensions and children are not positively incompatible whereas without wealth they are.
It is not worth while to gloss over facts, nor is it decent. Numbers of women of the most beautiful types are bought for a price, and that price is the assurance of being kept for life in a style and indolence which preclude (barring accidents) the satisfaction of the parental instinct. And even when tired of these mistresses, their consorts cannot discard them and take more normal women, for they (or their parents for them) have had the foresight to exact life contracts, legally enforcible, and not to be broken even legally, without the curse of the churches.
In many cases, the woman who surrenders her person in consideration of a life contract for her keep, performs no labor, not even caring for her own person; bears no children (unless inadvertently); and makes absolutely no return to society for the labor of many individuals expended upon her—except the personal return to her husband. Needless to say, “wives” of this sort are distinguished from mistress, by the law merely.[2] They are more properly and accurately designated as hetairæ.
It would not be possible to do away with legalized hetairæ altogether, without radical revision of our entire economic system—for the whole marriage problem, while not entirely a problem in economics, is so hedged about with economic conditions that its solution must be largely economic. The conjugal relation should not in any case have an economic consideration. Any form of compensation for sexual relations is as much prostitution as if a fixed price in coin were exacted; and the legal form of prostitution is especially dangerous to the future of the race. It must not be supposed that by “sexual relations” the mere physiological act of copulation is meant. Many parasite wives are loved, and many extra-legal mistresses kept, and cherished because of their charming personalities and reciprocated affection; all this properly comes within the meaning of “sexual relations.”
Not always does the husband of a parasite wife pay a price for her. Frequently she purchases him, and keeps him. But the outcome is the same in those cases, in which the “wife,” already independent, uses her position to exempt herself from any social return.
The cure for the evil of nonreproduction of the fit and mated is not to be easily found. Perhaps it can be effected only by a fundamental revolution in the social attitude towards marriage. At present the marriage of the “upper classes” is too much a matter of bargain and sale; among the “lower classes” too much a matter of slavery. The ideal marriage, in which there is a practical copartnership, involving the rearing of several children, and in which the husband and wife together contribute to industry, or art, or science, whether the contribution is directly credited to both or to the husband alone, is unfortunately found principally among the “middle classes.” Those strata of society which practice real marriage will grow and strengthen, while those which practice the more oriental form will whither and decay.
Less numerous than the hetairæ of the class we have bene discussing, but relatively more important because selected from these women who possess beauty in the highest degree, are public entertainters; actresses, singers, chorus girls, and dancers. A certain small percentage of the female entertainers are presented because of qualifications other than beauty; for histrionic or terpsichorean ability or for mere voice quality, but the majority are selected on the basis of sexual attractiveness exclusively or in large part. Even on the “legitimate” stage, the demands made on the actress are not similar to those made on male players; the most successful actresses are with few exceptions those who most copiously display their personal charms—not merely of physique, but of all the qualities, including the subtler mental and emotional qualities, which affect and attract the better type of male. It is true that we have our great exceptions: Bernhardt and others; but it must also be admitted that while they, like Shakespeare, are revered, the larger group who merely exploit their pulchritude, are more popular. In musical comedy, which is in many ways the most important division of the sage, the actress without exceptional sexual attractiveness is soon eliminated. These professional entertainers are practically lost to posterity. While they are actively before the public they do not reproduce, and if they leave the stage or the cabaret for marriage, it is usually marriage of the nonfertile kind. Apparently, thousands of these selected females enter the profession every year; the very ones who, on Plato’s plan would be picked out above all others for the perpetuation of the race being thus eliminated almost completely.[3]
The proportion of the female population which possesses distinctive beauty is never large in any community. If one will stand on a street which, like Fifth Avenue in New York, or Charles Street, in Baltimore, is a route of feminine parade, and count the number of women whom he or she would class as “really beautiful” the truth of this generalization will be borne in on him. He will realize, in particular, that a majority vote of women would never favor a style of dress which should reveal the form any more than at present, and would probably favor a return of a considerable distance on the road from crinoline. The percentage of women who would be even moderately presentable as barelegged dancers, regardless of dancing ability, is so low as to be shocking. From such considerations as these it is apparent that the removal from the racial streams of even the relatively small number of physically fit women absorbed by the entertaining profession, is a serious matter. One can readily imagine what would have happened in the development of trotting stock if there had been continual selection of the best specimens to be removed from breeding.
Fortunately, selection for the stage and the cabaret is not so efficiently done as it might be; the standards of beauty are to a certain extent determined by persons who are not good judges of feminine beauty; and hence the maximal harm is not accomplished. This is true at least of the selection of the majority of the entertainers typified by the chorus. Some of the choruses which are the most painstakingly selected are, on this account, less effective than others more casually chosen. Mere bodily proportion and skin texture has been emphasized at the expense of expression; the less important details of beauty have obscured the more essential. This, however, is because of the relatively novelty of the complete exposure of the female body to the public gaze, and will pass off as such exhibition becomes more commonplace.
At first glance, the damage done to the race by the selection of public entertainers from the female sex, seems incurable. The public will have its entertainment, and there will be more extensive selection and more efficient selection, rather than less. It is not however certain that the present results are necessary, and possibly with better economic conditions, and higher social ideals, we may have our beautiful entertainers and their progeny too. If for example, a girl goes on the stage at eighteen and at twenty-five retires, marries, and bears a number of children, no harm is done. If this were the normal life-history of dancers and chorus girls, their selection would tend to improve the racial stock, instead of causing deterioration. Unfortunately, the usual story at present is far from the realization of this ideal.
The profound changes now occurring in our industrial and domestic conditions are rapidly increasing a sort of matrimonial antiselection which is relatively new in the world. With the entry of women in significant numbers into the arts, industries, and professions, a new nonparental class is established. Many self-supporting women eventually marry, but many do not, and the permanently celibate class will probably increase in relative numbers in the future. To a certaint extent, the independent class is recruited from those who are low in the scale of beauty, and hence are “rejects” from the matrimonial market. If this were the case with all, the tendency of industrial feminism would be to improve the remaining stock; but conditions are not so simple. Many self-supporting women—how many it is impossible to estimate—have opportunities to marry, but set their own standards of selection high, and are not content to accept the partners of the grade offered. As a result not only are they lost to posterity, but the declined males mate with females lower in the scale of fitness, and thus a double damage is done to the stock.
No permanent good could conceivably result from checking the growth of industrial freedom of women. In the course of time—and not probably a long time either—the disorganization of the entire family system resulting from this freedom will render imperative sweeping industrial and social changes which, if we maintain our ideals, can be such as will reestablish family life on a higher plane, and remove many of the injustices which civilization has long tolerated.
That the economic freedom of women has effects even more fundamental than the production of a nonparental class, is evident to any one who dips beneath the surface of society. The “double standard” of morals, resulting partly from ancient necessities of guaranteeing paternity, and partly from the universal consideration of women as property, is dissolving at a rate faster than casual observation reveals. So long as woman had but one means of providing for herself, namely: the sale of her person; the double standard was easily maintained. The woman who once “sinned” (and was found out) could no longer command a price as a wife, and was obliged to sell herself as a harlot. The woman who now is employed, at a living wage, may do as she likes, provided she does not make her private life public; and is yet able to continue to support herself without falling into prostitution, since her employers pay her for her work, not for her “morality.” One who understands the psychological principles which control the sexual instinct might predict from these circumstances the changes which are actually occurring. From these principles also, we can surely foretell that the revolution, having gained a little more headway, will spread far beyond the class in which it originated.
The abolition of the “double standard” may be set down, as a revolution which, though not accomplished, is so far along that there is no possibility of checking it, whether we would like to do so or not. The proximate effects will doubtless be appalling, and yet there is little reason to fear that ultimately it will not lead to a sexual morality far higher than the present standard.
If the growing freedom of women does not lead to the recognition of childbearing as a contribution to the state—the state, in its permanency representing the interests of posterity—the future offers little chance of racial betterment. If this recognition is gained, and with it is established the principle that the woman who relinquishes gainful occupation to bear children is entitled to adequate recompense therefor, racial betterment may be greatly furthered. But such furtherance depends also upon the maintenance of the family life with all that it now implies and more, except the dependency of the wife on the husband; and if this family life be lost, the situation will undoubtedly be worse than at present. The detailed problems must be met as they arise, but they will be met successfully only if we keep our ideals alive, and determine our legal, economic, and social measures in conformity with them. Neither by ignoring conditions and directions of change, nor by applying ancient formulae to new facts, can we maintain social equilibrium and secure progress. New wine must be put in new bottles, and the bottles must be ready when the wine needs bottling.
- ↑ Instruction of the negroes alone, with perhaps some institutional assistance of a material kind, would help greatly in the solution of one of the most important of American social problems. There is no doubt that the negroes would welcome the ameliorative measure; certainly the negro women would. Among the poorer white people, the lessening of the present prevalence of abortion would in itself be a valuable result.
- ↑ The conventional standards of female morality, it must be understood, are matters of necessity and law, not of personal ethics. The implacable resentment of reputable women against the “weak sister” is not a result of abstract moral sentiment, but is precisely the feeling of the union laborer against the “scab” who cuts prices. And this solidarity of the women’s “union” against lowering of the market, from life contrast to less, has been an important protection to the sex as a whole.
- ↑ Some of the readers of my manuscript have expressed astonishment at my description of chorus girls and dancers as the type of high development. This astonishment is due to failure to understand my real point. Individually, many of these women may be of undeveloped mentality and coarse fiber: these are largely accidents of education and environment. Nevertheless, these same women may be racially of very high grade, that is, they may represent stock capable of high moral and mental education, as well as of excellent physique. The racial qualities, transmissible to progeny, it must be remembered, are independent of training. It must also be borne in mind, that I am speaking of the type of entertainer which is really well selected, that is, which has the high as well as the lower qualitifications. Many chorus girls, as I specifically point out, are not thoroughly beautiful, but are selected on an anatomical basis alone. These, of course, would not be picked “above all others.”