Sabrina

Most readers will never have heard of Norma Ann Sykes, who was known as ‘Sabrina’.  She was the embodiment of the 1960’s blonde ‘bombshell, but had no discernable talents except for those which the Daily Mail calls ‘ample assets’ – in her case 41 inches of them, over which Grumpy would ogle as a frustrated youth.

Rather like the modern day Kardashians and their ilk, her stock in trade was sexual titillation, and it highlights a disconnect from reality by the legion of Weinstein haters. Although Grumpy would not ever defend  Harvey Weinstein, there is an unspoken question about the relationship between the aspiring actresses who were allegedly assaulted by him.

Knowing that Mr W could make or break their career, did they ever seek to exploit their ‘assets’ by using their (shall we say) allure to influence Mr W’s attitude to them ?

Feminists reading this. will of course, be outraged at the suggestion that this has anything to do with Weinstein’s behaviour. However, although  the very nature of allure or the sort of titillation employed by Sabrina relies on notion that although the goal of same  is arousal of a subject to achieve some benefit for the arouser , it is assumed that the response  to this ‘temptation’ can be of a cerebral nature only. Therein lies the contradiction inherent in such personal interactions between sexes – the tempter can set out food in front of a starving man, but then punish him for picking up an olive.

Studies at Universities on both sides of the Atlantic have show that women can gain advantage in job progression, negotiation and other aspects of business (and presumably personal) life by exploiting what UC Berkely / London School of Economics calls ‘feminine charm’ aka sexual allure.  Women have exploited this weakness of men (brains in their pants) in this respect since Helen burnt the towers of Ilium. (It is telling that Marlowe’s towers were in fact ‘topless’)

However, the unspoken balance of ‘look but don’t touch’ has become disturbed by the retribution heaped on manhood generally when the occasional idiot breaches the pact, and this may well at some point generate push back by the disadvantaged sex i.e. men.