As a culture, we seem to equate a great seductress with a great beauty. The two, however, are not interchangeable. There are great beauties whose love lives are more pitiful than mine, and great seductresses who would never stop traffic.
Betsy Prioleau devotes an entire chapter to dispelling the myth that to be a seductress, one must be beautiful. Women today should take note of this. All too often we’re bombarded with images of scantily-clad bombshells and told that that is what men want. But, like most other things in this world, taste varies widely and belles laides (a French phrase meaning ”homely women whose charisma, fire, and charms of character transform them into beautiful sirens”) might just be what some men want.
Take, for instance, Wallis Windsor (1895-1986). Wallis is described as having “an Aztec nose, hatchet jaw, bushy eyebrows, and a ‘masculine figure’.” Yet, she managed to snag David Windsor, international heartthrob who abdicated the throne to marry her.
Or go back even further and learn from Therese Lachmann (1819-1884), a “thick-waisted”, “hawk-like”, vulgar woman who became one of the most sought-after courtesans in Europe. Her many admirers included famed pianist Henri Herz, a Portuguese marquis, and Count Guido Henckel von Donnersmarck.
And then there’s “squat, pint-size Edith Piaf” (1915-1963). In her own words, she was “ugly,” with “sagging breasts, a low-slung ass, and little drooping buttocks.” Far from the image of the tall, lithe Hollywood sex goddess, yet she never lacked admirers.
Other belles laides include Pauline Viardot, Catherine Sedley, and Isabella Stewart Gardner. These were women who were lacking in the looks department but didn’t let that stop them from embodying the power of the archetypic sex goddess. And all of us “ordinary” women can learn a lot from them.
We may bemoan our bulging bellies, thunder thighs, and freckled faces but can still be skilled seductresses. We can still snag the heartthrobs, still enjoy fulfilling love lives. All it takes is some confidence, some character, and few more skills that we’ll learn about later in Prioleau’s book.
