Lebanon is once again involved in the escalating turmoil in their neighboring country, Syria. Exchanges of heavy gun and grenade fire between pro- and anti-Damascus regime supporters in Lebanon broke out on Monday and went on until Tuesday night in the city of Tripoli, Lebanon's second largest city.

In 2012 Moschino launched its collection of military chic womenswear in Milan. In mostly black and white with touches of “girly pink,” the brand’s final statement on war seemed to be delivered with a biker’s jacket bearing a large peace sign on the back. This hasn’t been the only expression of military chic so far in 2012. A few months after Moschino, and pop singer Katy Perry was causing controversy with the video for her song Part of Me. In the four minute long video Perry dumps her cheating boyfriend, cuts here hair and joins the Marines. For much of the video she’s dressed in military fatigues, and going through an assault course. Surely a feminist message, if ever there was one.

“propaganda for the Marines,” and — deciding that the military uniform was one look that could be used against a woman — called for a boycott of the singer.Well, not everyone thought so. Naomi Wolf was enraged. The author of The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women called the video “propaganda for the Marines,” and — deciding that the military uniform was one look that could be used against a woman — called for a boycott of the singer.

But, this isn’t the first instance of a woman being regarded as a heretic for putting on what are deemed to be men’s or military clothing. In 1425, the young Joan of Arc was beginning to receive visitations, so she believed, from the Archangel Michael and other accompanying angels. Only a few years later, as France was being besieged by English troops, did they the angelic beings her to take up arms to save her country. Joan appealed to King Charles VII, through his commander Robert Baudricourt. Rebuffed, and regarded as a lunatic, the young warrior persisted.

And, finally — partly for wearing men’s clothes – she would be condemned as a heretic.Finally, Joan was allowed to visit the king. With only a three man escort, she put on male clothing, apparently to avoid unwanted sexual attention. She would wear men’s attire into battle, and even slept fully clothed.

But, Joan of Arc eventually rose to become France’s national hero, giving the world a symbol that combined femininity and martial spirit, and — as portrayed in the movies and on TV — beauty and bravery.

Symbolism and beauty pervade fashion.

German fashion designer, Torsten Amft, says that he has created “Elitist Futurism.” This look fuses flamboyant Eighties power dressing with militant glamor. Think shoulder pads, leggy models, and the bal masque all roled into one.

In 2009, Amft launched his Knights Templar-inspired womenswear collection. Tops included hoods cut to resemble the chain mail garments of medieval knights. And virtually every outfit included an embroidered Maltese cross — the Templars’ emblem — some of which were designed to look like modern military patches.

Amft’s woman in military attire stands in sharp contrast to what is one of the most controversial of such images: Lucia — played by Charlotte Rampling — in the 1970s move, The Night Porter.Amft’s look combines the elitism of Prussian militarism with the fashion industry’s worship of the female body. It pays homage to the archetypal female — lover and warrior — and celebrates decidedly female sexual aggression.

The plot is somewhat weak, admittedly. Lucia, who is Jewish, was abused by a concentration camp guard, who forced her to perform cabaret while dressed in little more than an SS officer’s cap and long gloves. In a chance encounter, more than a decade after the war, they reignite their sado-masochistic relationship. The aesthetics are what concerns us, and largely what the movie is remembered for.

Lucia’s look was absorbed into early Punk, with singer Siouxsie Sioux creating her dark, sexual, sadistic, and militaristic style at least partly from it. But Siouxsie transformed it from the image of the abused, to the look of the aggressor: the woman with power. It inspired Louis Vuitton in 2011, with Yasmin Le Bon starring in a soft-Night Porter themed photo shoot, and shows up subtly — and probably unconsciously — in Lady Gaga’s Love Game video.

As Katy Perry, Leelee Sobieski in her role as Joan of Arc, Amft’s models, Siouxsie Sioux, and Charlotte Rampling have shown, women in military gear are not necessarily more like men. The woman in military attire, it seems, can flaunt the rules, precisely because she is drawing on an aspect of archetypal femininity that remains shocking to the bourgeois.Ronald Reagan once described Britain’s very forthright Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher as “the best man in England.” Thatcher liked men, and was, if only by virtue of her profession, surrounded by them. But she would not have found it complimentary to be regarded as even the best of men. “In politics, if you want anything said, ask a man,” she commented 1982. “If you want anything done, ask a woman.”

Until about a century ago women, depicted in painting and other visual media, had cheeks, but, you’ll  notice, not cheek bones. There’s rouge and skin, but the cheekbones aren’t a feature. A look at virtually any magazine shoot today shows that a woman’s cheekbones are a prominent part of her elegance. Why the change?

During the Meiji era, Japan was attempting to catch up with the West in terms of entertainment and popular culture, and it, like the West, began thinking of female beauty differently. One of the Japanese buzz words was Shan, from the German schon, says Toby Slade in Japanese Fashion: A Cultural History, which referred to a masculine type of female beauty.

But it wasn’t just women’s behavior that was changing. The image of woman also, I suggest, became more masculine in one sense in particular: the cheekbones began to be emphasized — or reemphasized. In preceding centuries, the ideal female figure was what, today, we would regard as overweight. Until relatively recent, the larger, rounded, “rubinesque” female figure signified that this was a member of the elite. It was the poor, emaciated through poor diet, that had protruding cheekbones.Because of economic developments women were able to make their own decisions about clothing and cosmetics. Smoking became fashionable, and female movie stars both began to be shown with cigarettes and, sometimes, wearing male cloths. Because of this, women came to be regarded as aggressive, and, in a sense, masculine. Boyish beauty was born.

From the beginning of this more “masculine” — for want of a better word — female figure in the modern era, she is imbued with the idea of culture and antiquity. She is in some way against or above modernity. To this, is added a sexual component, or a fetishizing of this type of woman as sexually mysterious; alluring but aloof. She is part goddess and part woman. As a “masculine” woman, she appears to have united male and female in an expression of the androgyne, the primordial, of what stands outside of time.With the Vienna Secssionist painters of the late 19th century, we begin to see the return of the cheekbones, and, in some cases — e.g., with the painter Gustav Klimt — we also find the female figures surrounded by architecture and patterns that refer back to ancient Greek tradition. In a certain sense, this type of female face is the ancient Greek archetype — or has become so through the Western visual tradition.

In the 1983 movie, The Hunger, the main female character — played by Catherine Deneuve — is a vampire who has lived for thousands of years. She has seduced men across time, and now leaves them decaying in the attic of her New York apartment. David Bowie also stars. His cheekbones were part of his mysterious image, and, in effect, his appearance enhances Deneuve’s equally striking facial features, by reminding the viewer that this type of face represents the otherworldly. The opening scene, in which Peter Murphy, singer of the Goth band Bauhaus — also famous for his cheekbones — sings in a cage, contorting his body into vampiric poses, does, of course, the same.

Not long before this, Patrick Nagel had won recognition “for his portraits of a striking woman with high cheekbones and long dark hair.” Nagel, too, depicts this type of face as that of the mysterious, aloof, sexual, woman. This more masculine type of female face not only became the ideal in the Goth subculture which also emerged during the early 80s, but later came to represent the ideal model face, especially in the form of Kate Moss.

Today, it might seem self evident that many top models will have this kind of look. But it would have seemed impossible even a couple of centuries ago. In conclusion, the reemergence of this kind of female face indicates that, as a society, we have returned to the ancient Greeks, the source of our history of aesthetics.