Betsy Prioleau, Seductress
Literary scholar Betsy Prioleau has written a book called Seductress: Women Who Ravished the World and Their Lost Art of Love. It's both a learned historical study (mercifully free of academicese) and a dating self-help book.
Reading Prioleau's fascinating new book, which features profiles of 50 of the world's most famous seductresses -- from Cleopatra to Catherine the Great to Mae West -- it becomes clear that physical beauty was not -- and is not -- a required attribute in the arts of seduction. Many, if not most, of the women she writes about were not beauties. Far more important are the gifts of wit, brains, empathy and self-sufficiency -- the opposite of neediness.
"Women in this country need to be deprogrammed and detoxed!" Prioleau laughs dryly. "They are going about this love thing all wrong. If the first thing you said to a guy was, 'Let's not have a real relationship, let's just have fun' -- and maybe even tell him that you're allergic to marriage -- I promise you that in Week 2, that man will be on his knees wanting to know where this relationship is going."
David Bowman interviewed Betsy Prioleau at Salon, accompanied by a slideshow gallery of legendary seductresses. More and more.
