01-06-2005, 03:41 PM
Not exactly goes with thread title but .....<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Sex and sensibility </b>
The Pioneer Edit Desk
The report that, according to a recent survey, one in every five women defines herself as beautiful and is confident enough to describe herself as sexy, deserves more than passing attention. For one thing, why only one and not all five? Is it low self-esteem or modesty or a certain squeamishness about being known as 'sexy' that held them back from claiming the label? It is clearly the last question that needs the most careful examination. While self-esteem and modesty are personal attributes, one's attitude towards being considered sexy reflects the prevailing values.
In Victorian England, a woman who flaunted her sexual attraction, caused fits to keepers of collective morality who branded her as close to being scarlet if not actually so. Modesty was what Mrs Grundy and her male equivalents approved. In the same country after the sexual revolution of the 1960s, it was hep and with it to be sexy. And not only in the land of the Brits. Throughout the Western world, people began shedding inhibitions, taboos and apparel, celebrating the freedom of the flesh, and toasting eros. Sexy became an epithet for everything that was exciting and desirable-a car, a motorbike, a jacket, a suit.
One wonders, therefore, whether the survey yielded the results it did because the sample chosen was not representative enough. Perhaps it was wrong to have entrusted the London School of Economics and Harvard Business School with the task of conducting it. Dons, though often permissive in their private lives-as Oxonians who know of the Parson's Pleasure by the Isis would concur- invariably tend to ascribe in public greater value to cerebral rather than physical attributes. This in turn may have influenced their respondents, particularly since the feminist revolution's ambivalent attitude towards heterosexual relationships and male domination, tends to make the second sex defensive about anything that involves the yardstick of male approval.
The responses appear all the more puzzling because there is no fixed criteria for determining what constitute sex appeal, which is what anything sexy must have. Twiggy and Marilyn Monroe looked very different from each other. Yet they sent male pulse rates soaring, just as Marlene Dietrich, Ava Gardner, Sophia Loren, Gina Lollobrigida, Brigitte Bardot, Madhubala and Nargis, all of whom looked very different, from one another, did in their heyday, and as Salma Hayek, Keira Knightley, Aishwarya Rai, and Sushmita Sen do now.
The fact is that no one can put a finger on what is it exactly that makes a woman-or a man,for that matter-sexy. There are many kinds of sex appeal that many kinds of look trigger for diverse people. Physical attributes matter only up to a point and no more: Otherwise every bimbo or a hulk would have been toasted as a sex symbol. It is a matter of style, of the sense of mystery that one carries. Nor is one sexy all the time. Sometimes, it is a glance, a smile, the light that falls on one, or just an enchanting smell. Asked TS Eliot, "Is it perfume on your dress/ That makes me so digress?"<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The Pioneer Edit Desk
The report that, according to a recent survey, one in every five women defines herself as beautiful and is confident enough to describe herself as sexy, deserves more than passing attention. For one thing, why only one and not all five? Is it low self-esteem or modesty or a certain squeamishness about being known as 'sexy' that held them back from claiming the label? It is clearly the last question that needs the most careful examination. While self-esteem and modesty are personal attributes, one's attitude towards being considered sexy reflects the prevailing values.
In Victorian England, a woman who flaunted her sexual attraction, caused fits to keepers of collective morality who branded her as close to being scarlet if not actually so. Modesty was what Mrs Grundy and her male equivalents approved. In the same country after the sexual revolution of the 1960s, it was hep and with it to be sexy. And not only in the land of the Brits. Throughout the Western world, people began shedding inhibitions, taboos and apparel, celebrating the freedom of the flesh, and toasting eros. Sexy became an epithet for everything that was exciting and desirable-a car, a motorbike, a jacket, a suit.
One wonders, therefore, whether the survey yielded the results it did because the sample chosen was not representative enough. Perhaps it was wrong to have entrusted the London School of Economics and Harvard Business School with the task of conducting it. Dons, though often permissive in their private lives-as Oxonians who know of the Parson's Pleasure by the Isis would concur- invariably tend to ascribe in public greater value to cerebral rather than physical attributes. This in turn may have influenced their respondents, particularly since the feminist revolution's ambivalent attitude towards heterosexual relationships and male domination, tends to make the second sex defensive about anything that involves the yardstick of male approval.
The responses appear all the more puzzling because there is no fixed criteria for determining what constitute sex appeal, which is what anything sexy must have. Twiggy and Marilyn Monroe looked very different from each other. Yet they sent male pulse rates soaring, just as Marlene Dietrich, Ava Gardner, Sophia Loren, Gina Lollobrigida, Brigitte Bardot, Madhubala and Nargis, all of whom looked very different, from one another, did in their heyday, and as Salma Hayek, Keira Knightley, Aishwarya Rai, and Sushmita Sen do now.
The fact is that no one can put a finger on what is it exactly that makes a woman-or a man,for that matter-sexy. There are many kinds of sex appeal that many kinds of look trigger for diverse people. Physical attributes matter only up to a point and no more: Otherwise every bimbo or a hulk would have been toasted as a sex symbol. It is a matter of style, of the sense of mystery that one carries. Nor is one sexy all the time. Sometimes, it is a glance, a smile, the light that falls on one, or just an enchanting smell. Asked TS Eliot, "Is it perfume on your dress/ That makes me so digress?"<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->