Zabrena: Historically Accurate: Ancient Egypt / Cleopatra Makeup Tutorial
YouTube (8 Oct 2014): click here.
One of the questions I find endlessly fascinating is that of nature and artifice and the nature of artifice in relation to femininity.
It's a question that invariably takes us back to Baudelaire who suggests that without makeup Woman - as a figment of the pornographic imagination and not merely as a lump of flesh with distinct reproductive organs from the male - not only fails to excite or interest, but is less than human. It is only as a cultural-cosmetic effect that she elevates herself above her animal biology and captures the hearts and minds of men who would otherwise happily make do with other pleasures.
It's a question that invariably takes us back to Baudelaire who suggests that without makeup Woman - as a figment of the pornographic imagination and not merely as a lump of flesh with distinct reproductive organs from the male - not only fails to excite or interest, but is less than human. It is only as a cultural-cosmetic effect that she elevates herself above her animal biology and captures the hearts and minds of men who would otherwise happily make do with other pleasures.
For as Baudelaire admits, woman is not an animal whose component parts - even when pleasingly assembled and proportioned - provide a perfect example of harmony; "she is not even that type of pure beauty which the sculptor can mentally evoke in the course of his sternest meditations". In order to cast her complex spell of enchantment, she needs to adorn and thus enhance her physical attributes.
Take the mouth, for example: who in their right mind would ever have dreamt of kissing the lips of a mucous-lined orifice with two rows of sharp teeth - and, indeed, exploring such with their own tongue or virile member - were those lips not first painted in an irresistible shade?
For whilst a smile, betraying as it does a certain vulnerability, may attract the attention of a man, I doubt that alone would be enough to persuade to perversion. And, let's be clear about this, oral sex - which includes French kissing - is an obvious abberation, involving as it does a form of what Freud terms anatomical transgression.
Cleopatra, Queen of the Nile, Isis Reborn, and a skilled fellatrix, knew exactly what she was doing when she applied crushed beetle juice in a beeswax base to her lips in order to stain them deep carmine red.
As Adam Ant once put it: She was a wide-mouthed girl ...
For whilst a smile, betraying as it does a certain vulnerability, may attract the attention of a man, I doubt that alone would be enough to persuade to perversion. And, let's be clear about this, oral sex - which includes French kissing - is an obvious abberation, involving as it does a form of what Freud terms anatomical transgression.
Cleopatra, Queen of the Nile, Isis Reborn, and a skilled fellatrix, knew exactly what she was doing when she applied crushed beetle juice in a beeswax base to her lips in order to stain them deep carmine red.
As Adam Ant once put it: She was a wide-mouthed girl ...
See:
Charles Baudelaire, 'The Painter of Modern Life' in The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays, trans. and ed. by Jonathan Mayne, (Phaidon Press, 1995): click here to read online.
Sigmund Freud, 'The Sexual Aberrations', in Three Contributions to the Sexual Theory, trans. A. A. Brill (NY, 1910): click here to read online.
Charles Baudelaire, 'The Painter of Modern Life' in The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays, trans. and ed. by Jonathan Mayne, (Phaidon Press, 1995): click here to read online.
Sigmund Freud, 'The Sexual Aberrations', in Three Contributions to the Sexual Theory, trans. A. A. Brill (NY, 1910): click here to read online.
Play:
Adam and the Ants, 'Cleopatra', Dirk Wears White Sox, (Do It Records, 1979): click here to listen on YouTube.
Adam and the Ants, 'Cleopatra', Dirk Wears White Sox, (Do It Records, 1979): click here to listen on YouTube.
