After climbing to the top of the corporate ladder many women find themselves unfulfilled, silently asking themselves “Is this all there is? A seven-figure salary as a top international financial advisor helping billionaires shelter their wealth from greedy governments in Caribbean tax havens?”
Beauty’s only skin deep, but who wants to go without skin?
Many turn to second–and even third or fourth–careers in aesthetics, the profession that makes people feel good about their outsides. Could a similar switch help you find greater fulfillment? There’s only one way to find out–ask the Aesthetician!
Aristotle: The first aesthetician, and could use a little moisturizer around the eyes.
Dear Aesthetician:
In last week’s column you told “Oily T-Zone in Des Moines” that “Spectacle is the least important element of tragedy.” You said it was from Aristotle but when I Googled him I did not find any books on esthetics by him. Could you give me a correct citation for that quote? I am writing a paper for half-credit in Introduction to Blushers at the Elayne Smyrna Institute for Esthetics and do not want to have to repeat the course, it has been hard.
Marva Lee Waynans, Valdosta, Georgia
“Umm . . . Aristotle.”
Marva Lee–
Aristotle was a fourth-century B.C. Greek philosopher who wrote a book titled “Aesthetics” from which much of the curriculum in the study of the beautiful was derived. However, modern practitioners of the art prefer to call themselves “estheticians,” thereby saving an “a” for Scrabble, Hangman and other fun time-wasters. You should be able to find a copy of Aristotle’s classic at your local library–ask a policeman where it’s located!
Kant: “I think you should do more to highlight your wonderful cheekbones.”
Dear Mr. Aesthetician:
I switched to esthetics because your column said that demand for skin-care specialists is expected to explode 25% by the year 2020. When I tried to matriculate in esthetics at Brown University they said before I could read Kant’s Third Critique, which is where he goes into his theories of beauty, I had to read his First and Second Critiques first–and second!
Mr. Aesthetician, those critiques are really long books and I’m wondering if there will be any jobs in aesthetics left by the time I finish them all, which could be sometime in, like, 2021.
Amy Grealy, Swansea, Rhode Island
Kant-Keats Super Group Jam Session
Dear Amy:
Would the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics lie to you? I mean, unless there was a presidential election coming up? Job growth in the field of aesthetics will outpace all other occupations over the coming decade, meaning it’s time for you to turn off the TV, get a bowl of popcorn and hit the books, missy! If you find yourself bogged down by Kant’s heavy Germanic syntax, switch to the Classic Comics versions of Critiques I and II.
Dear Mr. Aesthetician:
I have been dating this guy “Brett,” not his real name but I thought I’d use it because it always sounded “cool” to me. He is cute and has a good job as a replacement window salesman, so money is no object, or even the subject, when we go out. My problem is we always do what “he” wants to do, and if I complain he says “So what?” All we see is movies about super-heroes or cops ‘n robbers, when I would like to go to something that would make him have tender feelings about me.
Croce: “Feelings . . . whoa, whoa, whoa–feelings.”
I read what you wrote to that girl Cheryl S. from Ottumwa, Iowa that Benedetto Croce is the aesthetic philosopher of feelings par excellence, so I sprang (sprung?) that on “Brett” Satuday night when he started to order tickets to Lethal Bloodlust II at the Framingham Multiplex 14. “Who the hell is cro-shay?” he said, and I did not have a good snappy comeback for him.
Can you verify that he said “Art is the expression of the emotions”? I am trying to make this relationship work, dammit, but I would rather stick my curling iron in my eyes than go to another Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson movie.
Lisa Ann Fiandacca, Natick, Mass.
“Brett–I gave myself Farrah Fawcett bangs. Now can we go to a movie I want to see?”
Lisa Ann–
Croce (pronounced CROW-chay) was indeed the aesthetician who first drew the connection between the head of philosophy and the heart of chick flicks. For a brief primer on his philosophy that you could finish in the time it would take to blow dry your hair, try his entry in Philosophy, Poetry, History: An Anthology of Essays, translated and introduced by Cecil Sprigge, London: Oxford University Press (1966). Copies can be found in most beauty shoppes underneath the Photoplay magazines from 1963.
Available in Kindle format on amazon.com as part of the collection “Let’s Get Philosophical.”