I remember Harlow very well as a heroine to my family so I am surprised to hear her spoken of in a new biography, as being so obscure.
Nowadays I hope we can understand better that these bewitching women - and men - are typically not themselves interested in sex. Not real sex.
To these fey creatures, sex is a way to power, very often the only way to get affection they know. To get a glimpse of gentleness, they will suffer a great deal of violence. Their lovers therefore know they can be uncontrolled and get away with it.
They crave affection, faeries do, to be wanted for more than their beauty, but then they are hurt by being used, so often settle for the power their pseudo-eroticism gives them. Not that this false eroticism isn't beautiful. It's the true meaning of glamour - Glamourye - the ancient eldritch art of faerie. To turn dross into gold by candlelight.
For when dawn comes, that fey creature is revealed as grubby, hung over, smelly and grey of skin. Frequently ill, anxious, craving and demanding. At worst dominating at best needy.
Yet still the fascination of that Look bespells us so the truth is hard to see.
The truth, of a starving abused child, desperate for love they never got. Instead they got sex, too early, so they absorbed its raw power without its sweetness.
Unequal sex, too young sex, damages for life.
Of these are made our stars, our prostitutes, our rent boys, and our battered wives. Seduced or bullied young they learn so thoroughly that they have little or no value except as a sexual body. The rest has a horrible logic that destroys them with drink, drugs and violence as they seek more and more desperately to numb the void.
Not a pretty sight after all, as what seemed so lovely is stripped of its illusion. Poor Jean.
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