Category: Beauty

Total Gorgeousity

Beauty, Drive Time

Last weekend, fiend Reader Mr. Lion jogged my memory about a certain car that I’ve always loved simply because it is so beautiful.  (Forget actually driving one:  they cost well over a million dollars, if  you could find someone willing to part with theirs.  Good luck.)

Anyway, here it is, the Ferrari 250 California Spyder, from 1958. 

Ferrari made several variations of the 250 over the years.  One of my favorites is the rather more conservative GTL Lusso:

Then there’s the (much) racier GTO:

I could go on, but there’s only so much one can stand, really.  Your favorite 250 models in Comments, if you like.

Wanton Poses

Beauty

From Reader David S comes this observation in email:  “I can’t get that pic you recently posted of Sophia Loren out of my mind.  Why is that?”

It’s a simple answer, and while Sophia is undoubtedly gorgeous, it’s her unladylike pose which does it.  Those carelessly-sprawled legs… the pose is an age-old aphrodisiac to men, and so powerful is its effect that it was only in the modern era that artists could even begin to portray it, e.g. Henri Matisse’s Odalisque Couchée:

…and Egon Schiele’s Reclining Woman:

Now understand me well:  I’m not talking about the typical pornographic splayed-leg shots, which remind me of nothing less than a gynecological view of the female anatomy (and Schiele is perilously close to it in the above).  But there is something sexy — maybe frighteningly-sexy — when the pose is done properly.  And of course, what I’m saying is useless without pictorial evidence, so here we go:

Téa Leoni:

Anthea Turner:

Amanda Righetti:

Amy Adams:

…and of course, there’s Marilyn:

But when it comes to truly erotic, you need a recumbent pose to get the full effect:

Jean Carmen:

Catherine Deneuve:

Kirsten Dunst:

Claire Goose:

Anita Ekberg:
…and finally, in a pose which mimics Matisse’s Odalisque, Charlotte Rampling:

Some people find these poses too overtly sexual — “slutty”, as my Mom might have put it — but there’s no denying their attraction.  I report, you decide.

Too Much

Beauty

Was it Gloria Vanderbilt who opined that one can never be too rich, or too thin?  My answer is that it depends.  If one is going to use one’s wealth to evil ends (e.g. George Soros), I believe we can certainly make a case that some people, at any event, can be too rich.  As for the “too thin”… well, we all know about anorexia, which is the low-hanging fruit in a counter-argument to the wealthy (and skinny) Vanderbilt’s wrong-headed aphorism.

But there’s another aspect to the latter, which happens, say, when a woman with a perfectly-acceptable figure gets teased about being “fat” — by, one presumes, skinny people — and goes about getting skinny just to, I suppose, restore her self-confidence.  Here’s a case in point:

A size 16 woman who was fat-shamed by her boyfriend has got revenge by losing four stone – and becoming a British bikini bodybuilding finalist.
Emily de Luzy, 24, from Horsham, West Sussex, revealed how her boyfriend told her that he made sure she was properly fed because ‘the fatter [she] got the less people would look at [her]’.
Emily, who previously weighed 12st 8lb [176lbs], described how she used to hide her body away, after years of comfort eating.
She decided she wanted to transform her relationship with her body by overhauling her fitness regime, and now weighs 9st 2lbs [128lbs] and is a UK size 8.

Now that seems all dramatic and such, but here are the B&A photos:

 

She’s obviously quite a big girl — large frame and so on — and I would suggest that while 176lbs might have been a little too much, her weight loss was likewise too much:  her bust has disappeared and her face is now quite unattractive, almost skeletal.

  

I think 25-30lbs would have been fine to lose; 50lbs was excessive.  Of course, if she feels better about herself (and has managed to shed her asshole boyfriend in the process), then there’s no harm done, I suppose.  I still think she looked better before: more attractive, more womanly and certainly less manly than she does now. (The bodybuilding pics in the linked article, by the way, are quite repulsive.)

But no doubt I’m in the minority, as usual.