It might seem obvious but it's worth saying: there's a big difference between sexism, which is an ugly thing, and sexual attraction, which is a beautiful thing. Sexual attraction can, of course, be demonstrated in all kinds of disagreeable ways, and likewise sexism often comes cloaked in subtle and seductive garb. Nevertheless, we are talking about two essentially different territories, and falling on both sides of the vague border between them is the constant rain of our sexual iconography. From Porn to Picasso, from MTV to Michelangelo, we are surrounded by the images that define our private desires and reflect our public attitudes—our erotic stereotypes.

Born of nature and endlessly reborn in our shifting culture, sexual stereotypes prohibit and command, confine and affirm, acting both as psycho-social labels and as the standards under which we swear our sexual allegiances. Nowhere else do nature, art, and morality meet with such revealing poignance.

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Despite our claims of intelligence and liberty, in many ways we are still dominated by mythic symbols such as the Goddess, the Anima, and the Hero—divine or semi-divine characters upon whom we project our desires and in whom we invest such breathtaking powers. And for as long as humans have contemplated such beings, and their perfect qualities, real-world individuals have been lauded as manifestations (or at least partial manifestations) of these ideals. These days we tend to call such people celebrities—those who gain notoriety not so much for what they do as for what we want them to signify—often an erotic ideal. But quite why it is that certain constellations of form and concept become so iconic and provocative, while others remain ignored, is still unclear. We need to ask: why, and how, do some bundles of qualities so seize our collective consciousness, before fading into obscurity or becoming a piece of historic naïveté?

In deconstructing the concept of the stereotype it may be helpful to start by examining the origins of the word itself.

The Greek word stereos means solid or three dimensional, and type comes from the Greek word tupos, meaning an impression (a mark on a surface produced by pressure). The French printer Firmin Didot was the first to use the word Stereotype in 1798, to describe his “new” method of printing—that had in fact been patented seventy years earlier by the Scotsman William Ged (who seems to have re-invented an earlier device from the 15th century - see here).

Didot's device was a cast metal printing plate, made by taking a mould from the surface of a traditionally set page of print blocks. Using a single stereotype to print from, rather than the hundreds or thousands of individual print blocks normally used, meant that although some quality was lost, large print runs of the same edition could be produced more quickly, more consistently, and more cheaply than by existing methods. Books suddenly became affordable.

The original stereotype didn't last though. Printing technologies in the 19th century developed apace, and Didot's stereotype began to fall into obscurity. The word itself, however, began to be used in a different, and to us, more recognizable context. The stereotype may have led to cheaper books and the birth of modern newsprint, but it was not a popular technology among the educated classes, many of whom viewed the invention with disdain. Accordingly, describing something as “stereotypical” in the late 19th century was to call it commonplace and mediocre; a stereotype had become a pejorative term. (See also the origin of the word cliché - which also originated in the world of print.)

Today, the word stereotype is still a somewhat pejorative term. In keeping with the disparaging Victorian meaning, a stereotype is often meant as a hackneyed, unimaginative, just-what-you-would-expect sort of thing; a member of a class or category of things that bear the same low-quality impression. Much popular music, for instance, could be said to fall into this category.

In a more technical sense, a stereotype can be defined as a set of properties or criteria that identify a theoretical exemplar of a class or category. Something described as “stereotypical” is thus something that meets a particular set of criteria with sufficient accuracy, and examples that undoubtedly identify the group to which they belong are often held up as a stereotypes. Similarly, to be a member of a category (and thus to conform to a stereotype to some degree), it is necessary to possess a sufficient number of the required qualities or attributes, whatever they may be.

A central necessity of a stereotype, however, is that its criteria must be well known in advance if it is to have any meaning. If, for example, the stereotype of the “macho Hollywood action hero” is invoked, then certain qualities and attributes come to mind without any specific information being required—so long as you have seen enough Hollywood action films. But a stereotype also needs to be sufficiently circumscribed. There is no stereotypical African, but there is, perhaps, a stereotypical Afrikaner; no stereotype of a man, but maybe one of a policeman.

It would appear, then, that one function of the stereotype is to allow a classification to be made in advance of any specific data. In other words, we use the concept of the stereotype to classify and make judgments about a person, idea or thing, based on the flimsiest knowledge of them. Stereotyping is an unavoidable way of classifying things, and especially people, and thus it follows that stereotyping is also a way to discriminate between what we perceive as different “types” of people—a politically acceptable way to continue the prejudices of sexism, racism and all the other "isms" that are no longer allowed in polite company, but to which we are so evidently predisposed. The new stereotype, like Didot's eponymous original, might be high on economy, but it is just as low on fidelity.

If we turn to erotic stereotypes, we find the term assumes an emotional charge, and for many a moral valence too. The thing we are describing as stereotypical is an example of a class of things (usually people) that that we experience as sexually desirable (or undesirable). There is no neutrality here. There are attributes, patterns or qualities that are either desired or rejected; good or bad. We may wish to belong to this category; we may wish to possess an example of this category; or we may wish to distance ourselves from this category, but whatever the case we can’t remain untouched by it. Erotic stereotypes are a powerful force in our daily lives, and we are influenced by them whether we like it or not. Even if we decide to reject or rebel against a certain stereotype, we still recognize it and act in response to it. We may, for instance, form an unfavourable opinion of someone based on what we assume their chosen style of appearance implies about their character, and for that same reason take care to “make a good impression” when we meet someone for a first date or job interview. We too want to conform as much as possible to our (or perhaps their) favoured model of attractiveness.

To complicate matters further, unlike Plato's perfect ideals and Jung's eternal archetypes, stereotypes are patterns that change with time. They are not a collection of complete, flawless and everlasting notions that only exist in the realm of imagination. Rather, a stereotype is a changing and evolving concept in our culture space of what is theoretically achievable and real. With respect to erotic stereotypes, we are talking about a continually mutating set of ideas, shapes, and forms that really can be manifested “out there”, to some extent at least, in the real world, especially photographically. Accordingly, what is regarded as the height of eroticism in one place or time may well be seen as decidedly unattractive elsewhere. Local traditions, religions, economics and all sorts of other factors constrain and channel the biological constants of health, youth, symmetry, status etc that we all respond to.

When we see examples that strongly embody a given stereotype, we are looking at the exemplars, the actual instances that set the standard to which we aspire, desire, or despair of. The fashion industry, for example, relies on this evolution. It could not exist in the way it does without these shifting forms. Without change, fashion would fossilize. As a stereotype mutates, new real-world examples become more proximate to the fuzzy ideal and the public manifestation is altered. Marilyn Monroe for example, was for a while the most desired and emulated example of the “Hollywood Sex-Goddess” stereotype. But she wasn't the stereotype. She merely came closest to matching the locally relevant criteria for a time. Forty years after her death, the late Monroe arguably exemplifies a different, nostalgic stereotype (that stars such as Marlene Dietrich or Lillian Gish would similarly have occupied in the early 1960s), and the position of exemplar that Monroe once held (the criteria of which are now a little different), is now (2002) filled by new, contemporary “sex goddesses” such as Jennifer Lopez or Angelina Jolie.

There is another aspect to consider when it comes to erotic stereotypes—a powerful force we should never ignore—nature.

Sexual desire has been around for hundreds of millions of years. Certainly, without it we would not be here, and our species does not seem to be in any danger of dying out due to a lack of interest in sex.

The instinct of sexual attraction is, in a sense, a process of unconscious objectification: we do not (indeed we cannot) choose what or whom we find sexually attractive. The “object” of our desire, whatever it may be, is simply experienced as more or less desirable or erotic, and the only value that counts is the strength of attraction (or repulsion). All we are aware of is the presence or absence of the exciting feeling of being attracted. This is the essence of Darwin’s “other” theory—sexual selection—born of the fact that mating opportunities often depend on meeting a certain set of criteria (which involve singing the right song, dancing the right dance, possessing the right feathers, emitting the right pheromones, or some combination of countless traits that sexual species employ). In humans, sexual selection is a massively complex process that relies on many attributes—both physical and psychological. Nevertheless, there are minimal criteria that must be met (especially by males) if one is to be granted a mating opportunity. After all, we don’t have sex with just anyone—we must feel some desire, which we cannot choose. But while we can’t choose our desires, as a species we can and do go to many and great lengths to specify the ways in which we satisfy our desires. Sexual desire is, as Freud never tired of reminding us, a natural force that springs from the Darwinian well, and is merely channelled, decorated and ornamented by human culture.

Sexual dimorphism in humans is relatively modest compared with many other species; the only argument being about the significance of it. The blunder our pre-historic ancestors instinctively made—and which we still have to correct—was to assign value to these differences. As human culture emerged out of whatever pre-human way of life preceded it, our forebears categorized and prioritized these sexual dissimilarities, establishing the basis for modern stereotypes, not least by normalizing a bias in favour of males. For thousands of years this arrangement wasn’t merely the tolerated injustice we’ve been conscious of in recent decades. Rather, it was an obvious, self evident truth about the world, a no-brainer, an unchallengeable belief, deeply embedded by tradition and legitimized by religion. The lesser status of females that began as a biological contingency (relative physical weakness), thus evolved into the embarrassing political reality that we have yet to extricate ourselves from.

The natural, unconscious objectification of sexual attraction seems to have been co-opted and distorted by human culture over the millennia into the formalized objectification of sexism—by which I mean a set of ideas and value judgments built on real and imaginary sexual dimorphisms that are almost as unconscious as the original sexual attraction they originated from. Sexism, in this general sense, is the culture-wide belief that one sex is less worthy, less able, less valuable than the other.

Racism has been described in similar terms: that we all, to some extent, harbour unconscious beliefs about the superiority or desirability of one “kind” of human over another. And in the same way that racism can’t simply be characterized as something “white people do to black people”, so sexism isn’t simply what “men do to women.” These are merely the most noticeable symptoms of the disease, not the disease itself, which is what Richard Dawkins calls a “virus of the mind”*—an affliction born of our propensity to swallow falsity as willingly as truth. Stereotypes—even erotic stereotypes—could also be described as viruses of the mind, as they also privilege what are often arbitrary judgments, imperatives and prohibitions.

At some point though, perhaps for proto-religious reasons, our ancient ancestors took an extraordinary turn—one which would at first glance appear to be extremely damaging to our species’ prospects: they began to limit and codify their sexual behaviour. Many species’ sexual behaviour is rigidly codified in the sense that mating behaviours only occur at certain times, or are only allowed according to specific criteria and so on, but in our line something even more unusual happened: our ancestors introduced morality into the mix. What Freud called sexual repression was born. After this momentous change, sex was only permissible, officially, within prescribed and sanctioned contexts—usually some sort of marriage—and sexual activity outside this heavily policed totem has been consistently viewed as at best an amoral behaviour ever since. Meanwhile chastity, abstinence and sexual modesty have been (and continue to be) lauded. Freud claimed that the institution of sexual repression was instrumental in the growth of civilization—a view still popular in many quarters. But according to his “hydraulic model”, sexual instinct is a force that can seldom be denied; sooner or later it finds expression. Among our ancestors, said Freud, this pent-up mental energy overflowed into activities such as religion, science, technology, sport, the arts, and politics.

Most species have at least a minimal ability to discriminate. Animals need to be able to tell food from poison, predator from prey, a good mate from a bad one, and so on. In many cases this amounts to an inbuilt sensitivity to quality—a sense of better or worse. Humans take this ability to extraordinary lengths. We seem to be obsessed with categories, kinds, types, sorts and breeds—in many cases distinguishing between the subtlest differences. And from these judgements we frequently assign some sort of moral valence too. But while we busily discriminate between things—and different kinds of things—our ability to distinguish truth from falsity remains highly fallible, and our stereotypical classifications therefore often have unfortunate consequences. This is not entirely surprising. The disinterested search for “truth” and “the good”, of which we are so rightly proud, is still a relatively recent enterprise, and these are skills that we must learn; we do not come into the world able to perform calculus or write sonnets. Our success in distinguishing truth from falsity depends to a large extent on how well we overcome our evident tendency to believe the absurd, the contradictory, and the untrue—a congenital weakness we continue to indulge even though we know it leads to the acceptance of injustice, the blessing of cruelty, and the normalization of madness. In the name of one kind of correctness or another, we commit G.E. Moore’s “naturalistic fallacy” every day.

But with change, there is hope, and stereotypes are never still. Female sexual stereotypes have to some extent become more diluted in recent decades, along with a corresponding concentration in male stereotyping. In other words, there are now more ways for women to be “sexy”, and fewer for men. This shift may be due to a wider awareness of historical (and contemporary) misogyny, and is certainly connected with the relaxation of sexual taboos that has taken place in recent decades—a relaxation that has left us negotiating an increasingly eroticized landscape in which we face issues such as the validity of sexual categories, the need to re-address children's sexuality, and the normalization of “alternative” sexual relationships.

In conclusion then, if eroticism and sexism are the consequences of Darwinian selection and Freudian repression, then by reflecting on the origins of sexual attraction and the way cultures regulate its expression—in particular by introducing sexual taboos and imperatives—we can begin to understand why eroticism and sexism in contemporary Western culture are so often confused.

Notes

[1] “Virus of the Mind”—the term Richard Dawkins’s coined in 1993 for his much-quoted essay of the same name—is an extension of his famous “Meme” first introduced in his book The Selfish Gene. See Dawkins, R., 2003, A Devil’s Chaplain, Widenfeld & Nicholson, p 128. Paper online at: http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/Dawkins/viruses-of-the-mind.html The physicist Richard Feynman was another who lamented our tendency to believe the absurd. He called it a “human disease.” See his 1963 Danz Lectures on Religion and Science, variously reprinted, see, e.g., The Meaning of it All, or The Pleasure of Finding Things Out, both in Penguin.