Women and Aesthetics in Igbo Culture

Abstract

The present paper aims at examining the Igbo sense of aesthetic as it relates to the womenfolk in order to determine to what extent it impacts on the culture or the Igbo society in general. The approach is analytic. It is discovered that unlike western aesthetic judgments that can be somewhat ‘disinterested’ or aesthetics for its own sake, the Igbo aesthetics has utilitarian and communal sense of beauty. This is to say that beauty consists not only in attractive or appealing physical appearance but also in the qualities of the human person. In the Igbo cultural context, the template for aesthetic judgments is an admixture of physical, communal, axiological cum moral imperatives. The above concept of beauty promises to be a panacea to the present ugly phenomena of radical individualism, indecency and I-don’t-care attitude in dressing, beauty without morals. The paper submits.