Since I spent two years in Germany as a student, I was familiar with Nazis - a handful survived into the 1960s - and their efforts to breed pure Aryans. So I was a bit shocked by the sale of supermodels' eggs in the US. It also seemed to be inconsistent with feminism, one of America's dominant ideologies. This column in Business Standard of 11 December 1999 was the result.
THE EGG AUCTIONEER
I have no doubt that eggs are
auctioned in many places. But this auction is different. Ron Harris has
advertised an auction of the eggs of supermodels. He has posted the photographs
of some of them; not bad at all. Harris has been called a “soft-porn
entrepreneur”. He regards himself differently. He says he is a fashion
photographer – that he has published over 10,000 photographs of models in
fashion magazines, and over 5,000 advertisements, and won over 450 awards. He has
run a syndicated exercise show for television, shown in 57 countries over 15
years. He bred Arabian horses; more recently he was producer and director in
Playboy Television. The eggs are pretty pricy; $100,000 is not a high price for
one. So the trade is not likely to be booming at this stage. But words are much
cheaper; Harris’s auction has unleashed a voluble debate in the United States.
There
are those who scoff at the whole idea: what is the guarantee that the child of
a supermodel will be beautiful? There is the famous exchange between George
Bernard Shaw and Lady Astor, in which Lady Astor admired the beauty and
intelligence of their potential offspring. “And what if it had your
intelligence and my beauty?” Shaw is reputed to have asked. People’s children
do not necessarily look like them; they often look like grandparents or
ancestors even further removed. Some look like nothing at all. Some combine
their parents’ features in innovative ways; the combinations of the nose, lips
and ears can by themselves be myriad.
But the
biggest worries in the US hinge on how much of a model’s body is her own. She
may have had silicone implants, she may have her hips remodelled, her nose
reshaped. It is unlikely that these cosmetic changes will be passed on to the
egg, however much one may pay for it. The remedy suggested is that the buyer
should ask for the model’s parents’ photographs. The history cannot be taken
too far back since the photograph was invented only 150 years ago. Besides,
whereas a model cannot fake her own looks, she can her parents’.
It is
not a matter of looks alone; the mind enters the picture too. The model’s
intelligence quotient can, of course, be measured, and there is some evidence
that intelligence is inherited. But what about psychological abnormalities? Is
the willingness to sell her eggs itself evidence of some kink? And how does one
make sure that the egg came from the purported model? Verification of that face
would require some elaborate rituals.
Some commentators, on the other hand, oozed sympathy and
commiseration. USA Today thought the models were struggling actresses,
who thought selling eggs was better than
prostitution. And potential buyers were infertile couples trying to conceive.
Others worried about the child. If it turns out to be much prettier than the
parents, it may be estranged from them. If she turns out to be a stunner, her
parents may force her to become a beauty
queen against her will. She may attract the wrong kind of people, and have
unhappy experiences. Just look at what happened to Marilyn Monroe.
Still others fear the success of the enterprise. Suppose
the rich all acquire models’ eggs and produce stunning offspring. A time may
come when all the rich are handsome and all the poor ugly. In multiracial
societies, race alone can bless or condemn a human being. In South Africa till
recently, it was lucky to be white, and unlucky to be black. Things are not so
extreme in other societies, but all those where Africans were taken as slaves,
whites tend to be richer and more privileged. This sort of difference would be
greatly magnified if the rich were bred to be beautiful.
What is striking is how far the debate on models’ eggs has
veered from the one on Nazis’ plans to breed Aryans. It was pilloried, and
because of it, eugenics became somewhat of a forbidden subject in the western
society. There is a fair amount of evidence that intelligence is inherited; but
to work on this issue is to enter a dead end, and actually to assert it is
academic suicide. Yet the same society is quite unshaken by eugenics of beauty.
The assumption is hardly challenged that beauty is inherited. I guess it is
everyone’s personal experience that children look like parents. When a child is
born, the game begins of speculating whether it looks like its father or its
mother; a third party is never considered. It may well be that we find
resemblances between parents and children because they are the only ones we are
considering and there is only a limited range of variations in human features.
Nor is there national concern about the breeding of beauty.
The outrage against the breeding of blonde, blue-eyed Aryans by the Nazis was
based on the implicit assumption that good looks could be bred. And yet, when
the breed of supermodels is to be extended to the community of the rich, it
does not evoke the same indignation.
This shows how beauty has been downgraded in the United
States. Forty years of feminism has made it unfashionable to be beautiful. So
few get upset if beauty is going to be auctioned and propagated: so what? Who
cares for beauty but the rich and the spoilt?
Fashions may change on beauty and breeding, but I place my
faith in a more durable rule of human societies: from rags to rags in three
generations. A bold young man – pardon, person – makes his – pardon, her
fortune. The next generation lives well on his or her inheritance; the third
generation blows it all up and sinks back into the dregs. So beauty will return
where it comes from. The great-great-great-grandchildren of supermodels will
turn out to be supermodels, for they will no longer have the riches.
