R E C E N T L Y
Swinging with the sodomites
Why American athletes don't kiss and hug like soccer stars
Linda Tripp, the White House's ghoulish bad conscience
I'll take religion over gay culture
The affirmative action of Gwyneth Paltrow
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A L S O
About Camille Paglia
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C O L U M N I S T S
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Bestseller Hell
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Right On!
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Under the Covers
Second Thoughts
American Squirm
Unzipped
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A S K_C A M I L L E +|+ C A M I L L E+P A G L I A | PAGE 2 OF 2
Dear Camille:
As a Swedish blond I have since long before puberty been subjected to men's -- and women's -- rather over-sexualized expectations about my behavior. I realize that the traditional Swedish views on sex and such are rather liberal, in comparison with the rest of the world. This may have something to do with the almost mythical idea of the blond Swedish sex goddess. But, there is more to it. There is a global image of the blond woman as extremely desirable and yet threatening, which differs very much from the ancient blondness of virgin gods and goddesses. What are your views on how this new icon was born. (I assume it was sometime post-Doris Day, since her image was a perfect example of the virgin goddess gone Hollywood. ) What does it say about our global culture when the traditional symbolic connection between blondness and purity has so clearly changed?
-- Gentlemen prefer blonds
Dear Blond:
Venus knows I have pondered the paradox of blondness since my brunet
Italian-American childhood in WASPy upstate New York. I have written
repeatedly about the theme of charismatic blondness in Western art from
Botticelli's Venus and Edmund Spenser's "The Faerie Queene" to Doris Day
(dominatrix of the 1950s who made my life hell) and the sizzling Hollywood
blonds from Jean Harlow to Tippi Hedren (heroine of my new book on "The
Birds").
St. Gregory the Great, seeing blond British boy slaves in Rome, said, "They
are not Angles but angels [Non Angli sed angeli]." The uncanniness of Northern European blondness has lingered for a
thousand years. It was during the Florentine Renaissance, as Jacob Burckhardt
noted, that blond first became a fashionable color for socially ambitious
women.
Blondness would eventually take on elements of the seraphically spiritual,
glacially intellectual or eugenically racist, illustrated in the opposition
of blond and brunet heroines in 19th century novels (beginning with
Sir Walter Scott); the death-by-ice of D.H. Lawrence's blond industrial-capitalist, Gerald Crich, in "Women in Love"; the homoerotic glamorization of
the boy-angel Tadzio in Thomas Mann's "Death in Venice" (see Luchino
Visconti's dreamy 1971 film); or the cult of Aryan perfection endorsed by the
dark, shrimpy Hitler.
A current example is the drop-dead gorgeous cover photo on the new CD by the
Swedish group Ace of Bass, "Cruel Summer" (containing a superb version of
Bananarama's enduring 1984 hit), where the white-blond Jonas Berggren,
dramatically dressed in black and satiny sea-green, stares out at us with
piercing, Apollo-blue eyes.
Thanks to the metamorphic magic of Hollywood, 20th century blondness has
become freighted with its present associations of luxury and desirability.
Blondness as a trophy seems to awaken passions of the hunt even in random
passersby, as I have discovered to my amazement over the years when walking on
the street with blond women. The whole world seems to honk or pursue or
solicit -- or, at the opposite extreme, to bristle with hostility. (A
statuesque former student had black ink thrown on her long blond tresses in a
shopping mall.)
As we see in the career transition to blond of so many powerful women, from
Hillary Clinton to Madonna (who just went brunet again), there can be no
doubt that the blond occupies the apex of the modern hierarchy of sexual
value -- which, needless to say, creates all kinds of racial and ethnic
dilemmas.
However, as I have pointed out in my elegiac encomia to the blond sorority
queens who ruled my adolescence, blond beauty doesn't last -- unless strong
facial structure goes with it. It's precisely the glowing, translucent-skinned nymphets, delicate as morning frost, who need those emergency surgical
tucks at midlife. Black and Asian women, on the other hand, who often have
different skin texture, continue to look fabulous as they age, well into their
70s and even longer. Nature is cruel: Northern Europe has produced icons who
enjoy worldwide adulation but then become, like Wilde's Dorian Gray,
degenerate martyrs to time.
Postscript: The Aug. 17 Newsweek cover story, "Gay for Life?" is a watershed in major media coverage
of gay issues, which has been shamelessly partisan throughout this decade.
For the first time, however briefly, gay activist propaganda has been firmly
squelched. Newsweek bravely admits: "In the early '90s, three highly
publicized studies seemed to suggest that homosexuality's roots were genetic,
traceable to nature rather than nurture. Though the studies were small and
the conclusions cautious, many gay groups embraced the news. We're born this
way, they announced; don't judge us. More than five years later, the data
have never been replicated."
The truth at last! This Salon column, in repeatedly attacking the quantity
and quality of the research supporting the "born gay" hypothesis, has stood
virtually alone against the PC onslaught. But one can't get complacent, as
shown by the schmaltzy article "Growing Up Gay" in the Aug. 17 People
magazine. Here yet again is the usual uncritical promulgation of garbage
statistics: "5-10 percent of high school students" are gay, we are told, and "36.5 percent"
of gay and lesbian high school students try to kill themselves. Are People's
editors in a coma? These are patently ridiculous claims, no matter what their
supposedly authoritative source.
The Aug. 13 New York Times had an appalling op-ed piece by John Shelby Spong
proclaiming "the waning of Christianity" because the once-a-decade Lambeth
Conference of bishops of the Anglican Church has just passed a resolution (by a
526-70 vote) declaring homosexual activity to be "incompatible with
Scripture." But it was African bishops who led the conservative charge on
this issue. Most news reports emphasized how the energy and leadership of the
Anglican Church have shifted away from England to Africa and how this change
portends the global multiculturalism of a vibrant 21st century Christianity.
Hence the Times op-ed piece, in declaring Christianity moribund, is implying,
in effect: What people of color think doesn't count. This is an excellent
example of the blinkered provincialism and moral solipsism of gay-activist
reasoning.
Let me remind the gay ideologues out there, hunkering in their dank, poison-mushroom clusters, that as a professor of humanities with 27 years of teaching
experience, I am well-equipped to address the full spectrum of cultural and
intellectual issues. My 718-page scholarly book, "Sexual Personae," published
by Yale University Press, studies the history of sexuality in Western culture
and explores the interrelations of paganism and Christianity. I have written
and spoken widely on contemporary and comparative religion and have been
interviewed extensively on those subjects by serious periodicals and general
media from all over the world. For example, surely I am the only pro-pornography, pro-prostitution lesbian who was ever the cover story of America,
the national Jesuit magazine!
Next on the griddle: I am rejoicing with glad cries at the terrible reviews
of the remake of "The Avengers" that have been piling up since the film's
premiere last week. From the moment the production was announced, I shuddered
at the sacrilege of it all, since Diana Rigg (who played Emma Peel in the
original 1960s British TV series) is one of my all-time idols. Indeed, my
knife-packing guerrilla posture on the cover of "Vamps & Tramps" was an homage
to the karate-dancing Rigg (with an oblique reference to Andy Warhol's image
of the holstered Elvis Presley).
While we haven't seen the film and will wait for the video (at which we can
jeer in private), my partner and I agree that Uma Thurman, whom we normally
like, was wrong for Emma Peel. "They cast for body type rather than mental
attitude," Alison sternly says. We both think the savvy, sexy, tart-tongued,
athletic Bridget Fonda would have been an ideal choice.
Ralph Fiennes was also miscast as the male lead. Rumors of Fiennes' acting
ability are wildly exaggerated: He is as asexual as an adenoid. To follow
the dapper Patrick Macnee as Steed, Alison instead suggests Colin Firth (whom
we adored as Darcy in the wonderful A&E/BBC series, "Pride and Prejudice"),
while I see Alec Baldwin or Anthony LaPaglia in the role. (No, the latter is
not Australian kin, as far as I know, though he does resemble a cousin.)
Finally, the "Life's a Bitch" column of the just-released September issue of
Tatler contains my first-person account of walking off the Jonathan Dimbleby
Show in June, which generated much London press. Tatler's headline, calling
me "the world's most famous feminist," gave me a momentary pause, or should I
say a Steinem-trampling rush (see Kim Novak as Hollywood diva Lola Brewster on
the rampage against Elizabeth Taylor in "The Mirror Crack'd"). But then I
sagely concluded, like the very butch and luridly carrot-topped Annie Lennox
rapping whip on palm in the Eurythmics' globe-hopping, cow-filled 1983 classic
video: "Who am I to disagree?"
Don't make her subpoena you -- tell Camille everything.
Bookmark http://www.salonmagazine.com/col/pagl/
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