Wrecking Crew | Just as the ancient Sirens lured sailors, modern Sirens can captivate men.
Okay, so maybe you don’t have a gold boat to carry you under a canopy of gold cloth while boys costumed as Cupid fan you as Cleopatra did upon entering the Roman Empire for the first time by invitation of Marc Antony. But that doesn’t mean you can’t make a first impression worthy of a Siren.
“As a Siren, your entrance should never slip by unnoticed,” writes Ellen T. White in Simply Irresistible: Unleash Your Inner Siren and Mesmerize Men, With Help From the Most Famous and Infamous Women in History (Running Press). That is, unless of course you’re Mata Hari and you’re slipping by enemy lines rolled up inside a rug. Otherwise, writes White, “employ the element of surprise, and invent new ways to say that an unforgettable Siren has just entered the room.”
I wonder if the time I literally fell through the doorway of a Montreal café when I tripped on the threshold and caused all the patrons to look up in shock as I lay there flat on my face counts? It certainly was surprising and unforgettable but I don’t think this is quite what White has in mind. For her, Sirens are women who “light up a room when they enter, who have men hanging on their every word.”
Hailing from a long line of Sirens—her mother’s high school picture bore the legend “wolverine” and her grandmother, twice widowed, wooed a younger man out of bachelorhood at age 56—White encountered her own Siren status at the age of 17, when two men spent the night in jail after brawling over the right to take her home. Thus began the New York Public Library editor’s fascination with these mythological female figures who lured sailors to their deaths along the rocky coast of Italy with their enchanting song.
Angelina Jolie may not have wings, but this modern-day Siren has crashed a few men into the rocks. “Angelina Jolie slays men as the Aggressive Competitor,” writes White. “In her, men see a mirror image of themselves, a sexy soulmate who sometimes has ice water running through her veins.”
Besides the Aggressive Competitor, White says there are four other basic Siren archetypes: the Goddess, the Mother, the Competitor, the Companion, and the Sex Kitten. And though White concedes that historic Sirens were more interesting because they were more outrageous (take Cora Pearl, a French courtesan during the Belle Époque, who served herself up to her male dinner guests on a massive dish, covered in nothing but icing florettes, powdered sugar, and a grape in her navel), modern gals can learn from their wily ways. “Every woman has it in her to be irresistible to the opposite sex, no matter what her shape, size, age, or personality. All she needs to do is follow the lead of the world’s great seductresses.”
For example, Marilyn Monroe, the ultimate Sex Kitten, inspired sexual frenzy through “frequent touch, the purl of her shoulders, and wardrobe malfunctions that were carefully planned.” The Mother Siren “has a sixth sense about what men need emotionally, sexually, and physically, and has an uncanny way of providing it” while The Companion is “the ultimate friend—the corporate wife, the not-so-little woman behind the man.”
Other ways to bring out your inner Siren? Be unforgettable like Coco Chanel, develop eccentricities like Greta Garbo (who collected trolls) or actress Sarah Bernhardt (who slept in a rosewood coffin “so she could get used to the inevitable”), have long hair (White offers the example of Keri Russell cutting her hair on the hit show Felicity, only to see ratings plummet), make him laugh, make him the centre of the universe, be brilliant in conversation, learn to cook, take charge in the bedroom.
Whew, sounds exhausting.
But lest you think all this Siren training is just about bringing men helplessly to their knees, White insists that being a seductress “isn’t so much a case of pleasing men as it is about being your most attractive self, which in turn is irresistible.”
I do like White’s portrait of the Siren as a woman who goes against the grain, goes after what she wants, call her own shots, plays the field, and develops her mind, Still, let’s not forget that the Sirens were a male creation (part of Homer’s Odyssey) rooted in a fear of female sexuality.
And why do we have to do all the work? I certainly don’t see any guys covered in icing florettes lying naked on my table. Heck, I’m lucky if he wears clean boxers.
