Krizan - Original sins: trade secrets of the femme fatale

ORIGINAL SINS

Trade Secrets

of the

Femme Fatale

KIM KRIZAN

Copyright 2011 Kim Krizan

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.

Ebook ISBN:

Typeset by Tara Montane

Contents

Part One: The Spirit

Practical Fatalism

Why Adopting a Glamorous Fiction

is The Smartest Thing a Woman Can Do

Naughty By Nature

The History of the Femme Fatale (Shamelessly Fictional, Quasi-Historical, and The Gods Honest Truth)

A Few Good Femmes

A Rumination on Five Real-Life Women Who Were and Are Universal Icons of Dangerous Feminine Power

Hell Raiser

A Handy Guide to Her Persona (And the Painful Origins and God-Awful Events That Crystallized It)

Man-Eating Made Simple

The Femme Fatales Purpose-Driven Life

Theres a Name For You Ladies

Other Women and Why the Femme Fatale Hates Them

Malice Aforethought

How to Do Really Bad Things

Part Two: The Flesh

The Raw Materials

How to Look Dangerous

Warpaint

Cosmetics as Weapons of Mass Seduction

Sartorial Sin

A Wicked Wardrobe and Why Its Essential

Everyday Fatalism

Her Scandalous Home Life

The Femme on the Loose

Get Out of Shitsville in Style

What Becomes Fatale Most?

A Meditation on the Femme Fatales Future

Films Referenced in This Book

And now, Dear Reader,

these powerful truths, these trade secrets

and long-lost recipes for dark enchantment

fall into your hands.

It is your missionif you choose to accept it

to use this information wisely,

but by all means make use of it.

If you have but one life to live,

why not take it to the hilt?

Go forth and be Fatale.

Part One

The Spirit

Practical Fatalism

Why Adopting a Glamorous Fiction

is The Smartest Thing a Woman Can Do

If all the harm that women have done

Were put in a bundle and rolled into one,

Earth would not hold it,

The sky could not enfold it,

It could not be lighted nor warmed by the sun.

James Kenneth Stephen

Stop reading this book right now. Thats right, put it down. Put it down and walk away.

Youre still reading, arent you? Is that because youre sick and tired of being told what to do? You are, arent you? Youre sick to death of people and their shit? Of course you are. But if you dont follow directions, if you dont stick to the plan, if you arent a good girl, you know what people do? They get real mad. Theyll say stuff about youall kinds of stuffand theyll try to write you off. But you know what? Youre in fantastic company.

One of the very first archetypes, one that has existed throughout history in nearly every culture, was that of the femme fatale. The term comes from a French phrase meaning, literally, deadly woman and she represents the dangerthe ensnaring, seductive, slightly supernatural dangerof female sexuality. It turns out that throughout history hot chicks scared the pants off of men, so much so that they associated these women with monsters, demons, and vampires.

Now we could get pissed. We could plead, Please, see me as a human being. We could beg, Men, take responsibility for your feelings and attractions and dont lay a trip on us. But that wouldnt be any fun now would it? The truth is that the dangerous woman is the most fascinating person in the world. Why not capitalize on her image? Why not be dangerous tooor at least give the appearance of such?

People say awfully terrible things about the femme fatale, but the more terrible the things they say, the more interesting and powerful she becomes. As a result, society has constructed whole systems of thought and behavior to control her. Fortunately, these efforts have backfired magnificently.

People long to believe in the existence of the wicked seductress. They are dying for a little excitement, someone to talk about, someone to fear. Why deny them that pleasure? It is amazingly easy for a normal woman to have a potent effect by using the femme fatales secrets to her advantage.

The myth of the femme fatale began as the ultimate propaganda tool. She was designed as a cautionary character, a scary image masterminded in a genius campaign of dirty tricks intended to prevent women from skipping out on their prescribed role. The trouble is, though, that in creating the myth of the enticingly mysterious, disastrously fatal, and epically glamorous woman, the advertising geniuses did their job a little too well for the femme fatale became a wildly engaging archetype.

We now have more than just cultural lore and neighborhood rumor to provide us with our dangerous women. We have an entire industry and its offshoots. Hollywood films, television, gossip rags, and the vast Internet delight us with story after story of modern femme fatale exploits as their activities are projected on our mass consciousness. Yes, female sin is a key nutrient of culture.

Give the People What They Want: A Fabulous Fiction

To acquire the image of a femme fatale one need not literally be fatal, that is, a villainous, evil man-eater. Just like the bombshell (who isnt literally a weapon of war), the femme fatale can enjoy a devastating power by, in essence, telling a good story. Lets face it: were all children at heart and we still love story time.

Scaring people is so damned easy. The tiniest show of will, any assertion of rights, a lust for life, and simply saying the things men say will cause a woman to become a threatening, notorious figure. If she also happens to be attractive, she embodies our subconscious desire to give in to delicious dissipation, to go off the edge, to plunge off the deep end to destruction. To wit, the following is the fantasy of a sixth grade schoolboy, S. J. Perelman, upon seeing a Theda Bara movie (as quoted in Cloudland Revisited: The Wickedest Woman in Larchmont, The New Yorker , October 18, 1952):

For a full month afterward, I gave myself up to fantasies in which I lay with my head pillowed in the seductresss lap, intoxicated by coal-black eyes smoldering with belladonna. At her bidding, I eschewed family, social position, my brilliant careera rather hazy combination of African explorer and private sleuthto follow her to the ends of the earth. I saw myself, oblivious to everything but the nectar of her lips, being cashiered for cheating at cards (I was also a major in the Horse Dragoons), descending into drugs and ultimately winding up a beach-comber in the South Seas, with a saintly ascetic face .

See? Though they fear her, everyone loves a good femme fatale fantasy. It gives them permission to let loose and have a little fun.

The Power of Symbols

A woman just has to do what a man doesthat, and wear cute leopard-print shoes and red lipstick while shes doing it. Its that easy to threaten the established order.

Womankind has been neatly divided into two types: the virgin and the whore, the girl-next-door and the girl-gone-wild, the heroine and the anti-heroine. The female character rides up in either the white hat or the black hat. Hence, we have the Mary Pickford or the Theda Bara, the Melanie Hamilton or the Scarlett OHara, the Krystle Carrington or the Alexis Carrington Colby. We have the good girl or the latest wicked minx whos splayed across the tabloids and wreaking havoc on our mutually accepted mores.

The femme fatale always exudes an image, the symbols of which are easily recognized. The simple appropriation of a few of these sensory cues and her stock climbs instantly. And she certainly doesnt need to be the most beautiful or the richest woman in the room to spice things up considerably by convincing everyone she secretly leads a life of egregious sinfulness.