SEXBOMBS Vol 2 Sirens

SEXBOMBS Vol 2 Sirens: Marilyn Monroe, Brigitte Bardot, Raquel Welch, Gina Lollobrigida, Sophia Loren, Jane Russell, Jayne Mansfield, Ursula Andress, Mata Hari, Rita Hayworth, Ava Gardner, Ann-Margaret, Bettie Page, Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo, Mae West, Betty Grable, Grace Kelly, Elizabeth Taylor, Jane Fonda, Madonna, Lauren Bacall. To be a star you need to rouse the senses, but to be a siren you must touch the heart. The intensity of human beauty concentrated in the most famous female sex symbols of the twentieth century is matched by their vulnerability, their daring and their sheer courage. To say they had real social power would be an injustice. Mata Hari, wrongly accused of espionage, wound up decapitated after her execution, with her head embalmed and kept in the museum of anatomy in Paris. It's hardly a state funeral or a fitting homage to a woman who wriggled public consciousness out of the Victorian era dressed as Hindu priestess. Many wanted to be 'real' actresses but had to be content with nude modeling or diminished roles. Some had lives that were larger than the screen (Ava Gardener lived like a hero from a Hemingway novel) and others chose Christianity or even a royal wedding over stardom. Whatever their fate the fact remains that we know a siren by one distinguishing factor: we cannot stop looking at them. The most incandescent example is Marilyn Monroe. Her strange combination of ghostly pale skin, childlike face and innate erotic cunning render her hard to date. Unlike modern actresses we can't sense the stylist in her clothes, the heavy hand of a makeup artist or a photographer's over bearing concept. Clearly and hauntingly, her image belongs to her and it is equal parts spectral nymph, mid century beach bunny, haughty heiress and child star. With an hourglass body and a face like Shirley Temple the oddity of Monroe is her wholesomeness. She could sell diamonds or milk. She looked naked in a white cotton dress or perfectly dignified in the nude. She didn't wear a bra (or underwear) and preferred to be stitched into her clothes. Some say she sawed off one stiletto shoe heel a fraction lower to deepen the sway of her hips. Clearly she wasn't happy, and this just serves to deepen the myth and her lure. Her own words "e;Being a sex symbol is heavy load"e; could speak for all of the women who traded infamy for scandal and some scrap of security.