Notes from Seductress, Part One

Seductress: Women Who Ravished the World and Their Lost Art of Love by Betsy Prioleau has sat on my bookshelf for at least the past five years. I kept meaning to read it, but I have literary ADD–I start reading a gazillion books and seem to finish only a few. But recently, as more friends get engaged and others sign up for various online dating services, I picked it up once again.

Prioleau, the author, takes on the daunting task of finding out just what makes a woman a “seductress”. She leaves out some names that you would expect to be in there (such as Marilyn Monroe) because they don’t fit her definition of a seductress. For Prioleau, a seductress is “a powerful fascinator able to get and keep the men of her choice, men who are good for her. Rarely discarded or two-timed, she successfully combines erotic supremacy with personal and vocational achievement.” By this definition, a lot of today’s Hollywood beauties wouldn’t fit the bill.

But that’s not all that shocking, really. As Prioleau points out, “seduction is 99 percent mental sorcery.” Physical beauty really doesn’t play that much of a role. Rather, there are far more complex traits at work–traits that Prioleau theorizes go far into the history of the human race, right back into the ages of Goddess worship.

Once upon a time, cultures the world over worshipped goddesses in various forms. These goddess religions lasted nearly 25,000 years–far longer than any male-centered religion. That gave the goddess archetype plenty of time to get nestled deep in the psyche of the human race. It’s an archetype that has many layers and facets–creative, destructive, maternal, loving, angry, and sexual, to name just a few. Prioleau theorizes that the great seductresses of history embodied one or more of these goddess traits.

She starts off the journey into the history of the seductresses by delving back into prehistoric times and bringing forth the goddesses of old: the Snake Goddess of Minoan Crete, Venus, Ariadne, Inanna, Ishtar, and Aphrodite. She then goes on to break the great seductresses of history into groups: seductresses that defied the beauty myth, those who continued to be seductresses well into old age, scholarly seductresses, seductresses in the arts, political seductresses, and adventurer seductresses.

Over the next couple of blog posts, I’m going to highlight a couple of eye-opening (and confidence-boosting) facts about these groups seductresses in hopes of reclaiming some of that seductive feminine power for myself and others.

A Trick of the Mind?

Hey everyone! Sorry I’ve been MIA for the past week. Work has actually been pretty busy (yes, librarians do more than shelve books and shush peopole!).

However, I just started reading Decoding Love: Why It Takes Twelve Frogs to Find a Prince, and Other Revelations from the Science of Attraction by Andrew Trees–a book that really makes you wonder if “true love” really exists.

For example:

Did you know that fear makes someone find you more attractive? So if you want to get lucky, why not head to Spain for the running of the bulls?

Thinking about going to a fancy restaurant for a first date? You’ll leave with the illusion that the date went better than it actually did. Certain environments like fancy restaurants “prime” you for a good time.

Is love really just “in our heads”?

The Weight Issue

So, I just finished Think Like A Guy: How to Get a Guy by Thinking Like One by Giuliana DePandi. And I’ll be honest–I didn’t “read” the whole book. I skimmed a lot of the later chapters. Why? Because a lot of it was common sense: don’t get a tattoo of his name, don’t make him go shopping with you, have goals in life besides getting married and having a family, don’t try to change all of his bad habits at once, etc.

But DePandi does make a couple of good points. Like “don’t talk about your weight.” It seems like common sense, but I know from experience that some of us “plus-sized” girls have the tendency to point out our weight to others. We make jokes and comments about our weight everytime the topic comes up.

Why? I guess we tend to see it as an elephant in the room–we know it’s obvious but never mentioned, so we feel the need to bring it up, to make it clear to all around us that we know we’re overweight.

Unfortunately, pointing it out just makes it worse. Because, once it’s been put in the spotlight, not only are we overweight… we are obviously insecure… and that’s a big turnoff. And big turnoffs are bad, bad news if you plan on scoring a second date.

So, in a nutshell, when hunting for Mr. Right, keep all weight and dieting talk to yourself, ladies.

DePandi had some other good points… which I’ll tell you about later.

Duh!

So I just finished reading the famous He’s Just Not That Into You, a dating self-help book that can be summarized in one sentence: If a guy is really, truly into you, he will let nothing and no one stand in his way.

So basically, all those times we women have sat by the phone waiting for him to call, we should have realized the obvious: he just wasn’t that interested. The same goes for when he cheated. Or when he wasn’t being affectionate. Or when he didn’t want to marry you. Or when he just completely disappeared altogether.

It’s so simple. And yet, we apparently like to make it more complicated by coming up with a gazillion excuses and reasons for male behavior.

Like my coworker Pam, for example. Not long ago, she was dating a guy that lived nearly an hour away, so they only got to see each other a couple of times a week. Well, at one point, he was actually in her city visiting a friend and he made no attempt to visit her. He was not but one mile away from her but was too preoccupied with his friends to see his girlfriend.

It’s an understatement to say that I think Pam needed to read this book.

Actually, every woman should have to read this book before they start dating. It would save us a lot of heartaches and headaches. It’s the smack in the head that all of us still in the dating pool really need.