Come the new age of allure and mystique … please
So interesting that the Washington Post runs this article today, titled “Graceful in all that she did” because this is what I’ve been debating with the lady for the old values, Ubermouth. The article is about the life of Grace Kelly.
Let’s not get bogged down in the moral compass of Hollywood and the rapid divorce culture which has found its apex in the broader community today but concentrate on the central point – grace and allure, even mystique.
My contention is that it has gone in this styleless, pomo world of overequality today.
First up, we’re speaking of the younger woman here or the one still influenced by trends – that’s a given. So when I mention women, in the context of style and fashion, that’s whom I mean – the trendsetters.
The onslaught of feminism and postmodernism has produced a female whose allure is like the Brave New World styling of the house in Jacques Tati’s Mon Oncle. Now you could say that that’s just today’s fashion and a woman who puts a bit of black lace over her hairline, along with those furs, would look out of place commuting to the office today.
Well, she would and she wouldn’t. In London and NY, yes but in Paris, no. Paris still recognizes allure and women make an effort. If you look at how that woman’s dressed herself and the expression, you’ll see what I mean.
“Oh and you think I’ve got time to look like that for you, do you?” says the modern woman.
“Well no,” says I, “I don’t expect the modern woman to make any effort whatsoever to be alluring. It would be nice but no … I’d not expect it.” I’d then go on and say, “Look at the role models – Posh, Britney Spears, Jolie [whom so many women model themselves on] who rely on the face shape and body parts alone to do the job. To make an effort for the man is below these new pomo icons. A man is a nothing in her eyes so why bother?”
Now, into a room full of these bores comes a real woman – a Greer or Bacall or Beart and all male eyes go to them. They’ve made themselves look wonderful, either in simplicity, like Greer or in voluptuousness, like Beart. The key is that these latter women have something which has died today – style, allure, mystique, that femme fatale quality.
Test – go into the streets of Manchester any working day and observe. I did. Where would you see a femme fatale? We went to Paris a few years back and were surrounded by them. Feminism must take its share of the blame for this phenomenon in the Anglo-Saxon west, as part of the overall nasty political thrust we see going on.
“Oh, you say. You’d take women back to the dark ages.”
No, I’d lift them into a new golden age where men opened doors and doffed hats, where the clothing, even for men, had style, where a lady was seated by the man at the restaurant table, where the woman was adored and revered, instead of ignored as a whining creature. I’d like to see women regain the power with men they’ve thrown away today in this mad grasp at overequality and the loss of moral compass in day to day decencies, especially in the young.
Age is a huge factor here. Obviously, the older generation haven’t lost this and I see some of these women most days – charm and sophistication is what I see there – the incentive for a man to make an effort, rather than expecting the bonk will come no matter what so why bother.
Yet the style which still existed say, in hair, was still there in the 50s but was then lost. You might say it’s just changing fashions. Yes, a change for the worse. Our eyes are lowered these days, trendwise.
And yet people do recognize style as desirable. This was part of the popularity of the Poirot series and Jeeves and Wooster on TV, as a counterpoint to the awful reality TV types, with their complete stylelessness. Actresses were interviewed for the publicity material and over and over said it was partly the chance to “dress up” which appealed. Why did it appeal?
Simple. It was redolent of the days when men were gentlemen in dress and manner and where women were ladies or femmes fatale. But it was not just dress. It was language – do you recall a foulmouthed harridan harpy in any of the films of those days and it wasn’t just the Hollywood code here – it was reflected in the social interaction of that generation which has only now died out.
If there wasn’t decency in their personal lives, there at least still was in their public dealings. Rather than argue for a double standard, I’d prefer to argue for decency in all dealings, public and private but certainly not for bringing the gutter talk between close friends into the public sphere.
And it is in the manner, even in the facial expressions, the concerns, the grace. Certain women will always have mystique but the very institution of marriage in those days created a mystique, i.e. you didn’t get the goods until you’d tied the knot. Women kept a price on themselves and it became a more effective tool than when they let it all go later, at the behest of the new world culture.
When they just let it all hang out, under the delusion that the way to entice a man is to expose bodyparts, that’s a denial of feminine mystique, something the French still have some vestige of. This mystique says that I’ll accentuate my shape and move with style but you can’t actually get a glimpse of more than a hint.
Jane Greer, in one of the more memorable lines, rebuffed Robert Mitchum who’d been trying to come on to her by mentioning a cafe he could go to which would be better for him to resolve his issues and as she walked out of the door, added, “I go there sometimes.” Clemence Poesy reprised this in In Bruges.
Just shoving a woman into beautifully cut clothes does not a lady make though. It’s the way she moves and acts, the way she speaks, the breeding, the culture she’s immersed in, the high value she places on these things rather than the travesty of modern, gun-toting, kick butt so called “honesty” which is a pain in the butt, excuse my French – that’s what achieves the mystique, the allure.
[Before she lost it in that modern Anglo-Saxon way]
There have to be some women asking themselves what exactly they’ve achieved in this pomo world. They certainly haven’t increased men’s respect for them, quite the opposite. They certainly haven’t made the world a safer place for themselves in this date-rape age, quite the opposite. They’ve just poured money into the pockets of the lawyers without significantly achieving any equality of note and the trend is now to the backlash.
The film noir woman had a power the modern woman doesn’t any more. When the tide turns and women become women again, they’ll regain that plus the respect and dare I say it, even reverence of men … that’s if the feelings of men for them has any relevance any longer and they aren’t seriously advocating separate existences.
Filed under: Society & human issues
Godesses of the once abounding Temple Awesome.
Yet no mention of my personal favourite Ingrid Bergman
Are yes, MTG and that can be remedied, PC.
It wasn’t feminism that killed allure or invited in raunch culture James. It was lad culture pure and straight. It is lad culture which presents women a certain way and so women follow that trend in an effort to be desirable. And some stupid ass modern feminists think “cant beat em join em” and make endless excuses for it.
“There have to be some women asking themselves what exactly they’ve achieved in this pomo world. ”
There are loads of us. But I keep posting the straight answers for you and you keep ignoring it and blaming feminism.
It was feminists in the 70s who were the FIRST to stand up to this relentless pornification of women. One of the most famous of them wound up linking arms with the conservative christain movement which opposed it all. But in the end the lefties, libertarians and libertines all ruled the day, championed by Super-Libertine in Chief Mr Hugh Hefner no less who also bankroilled the US abortion movement.
But STILL this is somehow all the fault of the original feminists. Bullshit! To out it bluntly. Maybe then you will dig deeper!
These women here get it too:
object.com
Feminists – who see this cheap cultural sexual rubbish for what it is.
So James – what are you asking men about what they have achieved with this jolly sexification of culture they so badly needed since the 70s???
Yes but how did the lad culture get so vehement and so widespread in the first place, Alison? This is the thing I can’t get you to see – that women have to accept their part in the history of it.
Or do you subscribe to the view that there is no criticism of women allowed, no taking to task over what they’ve also done?
Things don’t happen like that in life. It just doesn’t happen that things are all one way. Everything has a reason and a researcher looks at that. OK, you’ve gone as far as identifying the new universality of the lad culture.
No argument there and it’s bad.
Now, how was that allowed to happen? For the answer to that, you have to look at the course of feminism and what it did to the male. Even someone like me who is pro-women [my working life has been with and for women] makes a statement in the last sentence of my post:
“When the tide turns and women become women again, they’ll regain that respect and dare I say it, even reverence from men … that’s if the feelings of men for them has any relevance any longer and they aren’t seriously advocating separate existences.”
Now that for me is a pretty strong statement and it is a result of observing what is happening. There are many men not commenting because they know better than to openly criticize a woman, even here but I do it because there should be no special protection for anyone in this criticism business and we’re all human beings, irrespective of gender.
You’d agree with that, wouldn’t you?
Right, so I come back again to causes. What caused the lad culture which is causing all the trouble for women and the disrespect?
Education or lack of it in schools, the new “yes” generation of girls out on the town, the falling away of the old marriage rules which did actually protect girls, the proliferation of immediate access to porn which degrades women and is big business and so on – many factors contributed to it.
Part of it is the incessant demand for rights and the loss of dignity for women today. So women do have to look to themselves as a whole, particularly young women. It is an illusion that the state is going to guarantee women anything in a dark alley or at a club with dozens of drunken young men.
The justice system is also a joke today – people getting two years for a brutal rape and then given parole, 6% of women making the rape story up, which then gets beaten up in the press to being many more and so on.
This is young men’s way of hitting back. Wrong to do but that’s why they do. Talk to any of them about it and the same answer comes every time.
It’s time for some sort of mystique to come back into women so that a young man thinks twice before treating her with disrespect. Surely we’re both agreed that there should be more respect for women? Right – well it has to be earned, doesn’t it? Stands to reason.
As the post said, as was just said now and as I say again – women have to regain their mystique, to put a premium on themselves again. They’re never going to achieve that by hating men and separating themselves from the male world because then the male will become the enemy.
A wise woman would listen to a sympathetic man, just as a wise man would listen to a woman who cares for him.
James –
Lad culture is responsible for this not feminism.
OK so how did feminism get so vehement?
If you look back through history you will see feminisms roots are just post WW1 when the Daily Mail wrote of 2 million “superfluous women” who were unable to fulfil their usual destiny and get married thanks to the horrors of war. Wars started and society wrecked as a result, by men not women James.
These women were despised so much they found it hard to operate on their own and forge a life for themselves without marriage. So guess what? They formed associations for protection and gave root to the feminist movement. You have to look at the UGLY social appraisals of these poor single women back then who found themselves single through no fault of their own. Timely given we only recently commemorated Armistice Day.
So we could go around in circles here but since you like to make this a gender responsibility the start of all this is firmly in the male court and history simply proves that.
Besides, you tirelessly appraise everything cultural re women through this feminist prism and there is far more to it than that. Lad culture may have been a result of the “feminisation” of men (which in the end they are free to reject no?!) but that little issue is down to the modern Culture of Being Gay not Feminism James. The 90s when lad culture took root were a reaction to the gay styled androgyny brought about through fashion.
“When the tide turns and women become women again, they’ll regain that respect”
Ugh. Turns back to where? What is it you want? to dictate to women to do wear say and think James? and how does that make you different to the post war generation that hated them or feminists who eventually shovelled them up? Credit women with something for once other than your projection of them?
“the new “yes” generation of girls ”
Yes God forbid that women were for the first time in history given control over their ability to have sex without the consequences of a child as a result. I mean women enjoying sexual freedom? How outrageous! Should we lecture men AND women on respect and this new reponsibiluty as a result? No! Course not. In your view we should JUST lecture women.
As with everything it comes down to balance. The balance has swung the way of lad culture which has a firm grip on our pop culture and is locked in a tug of war with the Gay Mafia. Of course some women try to justify these behaviours as A-OK and fall into the category of Female Chauvinist Pigs. But they are not the leaders – they are the followers. You need to attack the people who CURRENTLY hold the reigns.
You need to enthuse men with a penchant for women like the ones you see in the pictures instead of the pornified creatures they are so wont to enthuse about. The rest will come naturally James. Women want to be wanted after all. That’s NATURE.
“It is an illusion that the state is going to guarantee women anything in a dark alley or at a club with dozens of drunken young men.”
So all men are potential rapists then? Wow. Imagine if a feminist said that.
“so that a young man thinks twice before treating her with disrespect”
How about he just TRIES. How about you put a premium on the thousands of women who bother to try – its not as if they ALL walking around dressed like Beyonce sluts is it?
You never find fault with your own gender you fellas much less want to instill any education around this issue. But any opportunity to throw the issue back at women? All over it. It never ceases to amaze me.
One thing you totally ignored is that it is feminists who are countering this revolting modern masculine creation: raunch culture.
By the way if I ran a list of men I consider lovely and gentlemanly it would hardly include a single modern British male.
How could you omit the girl from Casablanca?
One thing you have reminded me to do is pay tribute to these amazing post WW1 women. I’ll re run that post when I get home tonight.
Yes, I have one coming up on the landgirls. Ah yes, that was an omission, Dearieme.
It’s time for some sort of mystique to come back into women so that a young man thinks twice before treating her with disrespect.
So if a woman doesn’t flaunt herself or expose half her body what does that say about a man who behaves inappropriately especially when they have never met the woman in question before?
Divide and rule. Blacks against whites, left against right, young people against old, women against men. The same principle: Make the mass fight amongst themselves.
Alison, you defend feminism in the way a socialist defends socialism, in other words with reference to its original, generally legitimate goals, rather than what has been done in its name, and what it has led to.
Rather than championing the importance of what women contributed to society, in other words getting their fair share, feminism – at least a certain militant brand of it – set off to destroy the so-called patriarchal society and the traditional roles of women and, by extension men. Therefore feminism must take a share of the blame for the loss of good manners in society, because it mocked to death the notion that certain behaviour was to be frowned upon. If a guy could do it, then so could a woman, never mind whether it was bad behaviour in the first place.
Feminism encouraged women to abandon their posts, by telling them that the traditional role of a woman was worthless, when in fact it was the most important. Taken for granted, overlooked perhaps, but nevertheless central to society. In this way, feminism told women to discard all their trump cards.
Trooper – thanks.
Cherie – “So if a woman doesn’t flaunt herself or expose half her body what does that say about a man who behaves inappropriately especially when they have never met the woman in question before?”
It says that he is a yahoo and has sexual issues. And there are many of them. But you’ve hit it, Cherie – there are so many ways of being alluring other than looking like a streetgirl. Poise, voice, concerns, sincerity and so on. All of those can get a man in.