QUICK, nurse, the cold compresses! I am about to drool unpleasantly at the mouth again. Well, it’s that time of year, isn’t it? The season when I just can’t seem to stop thinking about the eternal glories of the female body.
I have excuses ready, of course. The sap is rising. The clock is ticking. The Tube is starting to swelter. Hemlines are fluttering around what can only be called the Alpine meadows of the thigh region. Cleavages are plunging to what, in many cases, are the grandest of grand canyons.
And ours is the first generation of lascivious old codgers with a wonderful new “postmodern” erogenous zone to ogle: the exposed belly-button, plus its mandatory side-platter of belly, hip, rib and buttock crevice — or “builder’s bum” as it was known before it became the thong-line of choice on all the trendiest catwalks.
Indeed, so much female leg, tit, tum and butt confronts the wandering male eye on the Northern Line some mornings (with much of this saucily flaunted flesh being sun-kissed, or at least bottle-kissed, to a delectable honey-gold hue) that it’s damn difficult for a chap to keep his mind on his su doku. As a spiritual discipline, then, I have taken to wearing my reading glasses on the Tube, so that everything more than 18in away is an indecipherable blur. Or is that the effect of the lenses steaming up?
Anyway, there is some point to this pathetic dribble of midlife lechery. The magazine Harpers & Queen has just issued a list of what it has decided are the 100 Most Beautiful Women of the 20th century. If you are in Selfridges in London this summer, you can peruse an exhibition of these “iconic beauties” in classic snaps from the Getty Archive.
I must say that the list has its peculiar aspects. For instance, I am second to none in my gratitude for Virginia Woolf’s novels; I find them much more effective than Mogadon. But to hail that beaky Bloomsbury visage as one of the surpassing beauties of the pre-First World War era (along with four grim Russian grand-duchesses) is a dreadful slur on Edwardian women —who were a vivacious, bedhopping bunch by all accounts. As for the decisions to anoint Barbra Streisand and Vanessa Redgrave as two of the 25 most luscious birds of the 1960s and 1970s, or that histrionic Greek diva Maria Callas as one of the top totties of the 1950s — these are surely acts of eccentricity bordering on the certifiably loony.
But then, what do I know? I’m just a bloke. And it’s clear that the Harpers list has been compiled mostly by females for females. The trouble is, women bring a very different set of criteria to the assessment of women’s beauty than men do. Criteria which, on this evidence, seem to include such qualities as a lively mind, showbiz pizzazz, touching vulnerability, indomitable personality or imperturbable poise (hence, presumably, the inclusion of such permafrost goddesses as Grace Kelly and Ingrid Bergman).
Now, I don’t deny that these are sterling attributes to find in a gal. Nor that there are men around who also judge a woman’s beauty by such pure, Platonic measurements. I’m thinking interior decorators, hairdressers and Judy Garland devotees here. But for the majority of blokes, female beauty is inextricably and overwhelmingly bound up in something far simpler and earthier. Sex appeal.
In fact, I don’t think men are capable of assessing female beauty in any other way. Oh yes, we often concoct smokescreens of aesthetic codswallop to conceal the one-track nature of what passes for the male mind. Sometimes we manage to kid even ourselves with our pseudo-sophistries. And, in negotiation with humanity’s other half, we will often bring out the B-word as a crude tactical ploy. As in: “You have really beautiful eyes, you know . . . any chance of a shag?”
But when lad talketh unto lad over a pint or seven, I don’t think the B-word ever crops up. Not with regard to women, anyway. So, girls, if you do happen to overhear the phrase “Cor, what a beauty”, you can be pretty sure that the subject under discussion is: a) a 25-yard free kick that curls into the top corner of the net; or b) a motor car capable of accelerating from zero to 80 in four seconds; or c) the pub’s latest guest beer.
Of course, there are dozens of women on the Harpers list who do quicken the male pulse for the most basic reasons. Michelle Pfeiffer, Jean Shrimpton, Brigitte Bardot, Julie Christie, Catherine Deneuve, Emmanuelle Béart, Charlotte Rampling . . . enough! Merely typing their names is making my lenses steam up again. So I suppose, purely in the interests of journalistic research, that I had better go and see the Harpers exhibition. But I definitely won’t spend more than four or five days perusing it. I bet those “iconic beauties” don’t muster a single flash of builder’s bum between the lot of them.
Older boyz ’n the hood
SUPERMARKETS and stores around the country are apparently rushing to emulate the Bluewater Shopping Centre’s ban on “hoodies”. Which is rather exciting, because I myself possess a smock-like garment with one of these allegedly menacing hoods. I find that it keeps my ears warm at night. But would it lead, I wondered, to me being summarily evicted from my local Tesco?
All did indeed seem promisingly confrontational when an assistant manager approached me at the checkout the other day with a determined glint in her eye and much flexing of biceps. But what a disappointment! She proceeded to do nothing more authoritarian than help me put my groceries in bags.
“Thanks,” I growled, hoping even at this late stage that my terrifying hood and surly demeanour would provoke a thrilling display of force.
“You’re welcome,” she replied. “We find that our older customers particularly appreciate the help.”
Older customers? Good grief. Could she not recognise an aggressive young thug when she saw one? That’s it! I’m off to Bluewater next weekend. On the list of “50 essential things to do before you qualify for a free bus pass”, getting thrown out of a shopping centre for wearing a hood must be up there with bungee-jumping and tantric sex. Whatever that is.
Flying Plod
GLAD to see that a judge let off Police Constable Mark Milton, who was clocked driving at 159mph on the M54, because the officer was said to be “practising” for an emergency call. PC Plod — not! I just hope that he now gets posted to our part of London, where a shopkeeper who was robbed and beaten by a gang waited 40 minutes for coppers to arrive from a police station two miles away. Speedy PC Milton would have got there in exactly 45 seconds.
Apparatchik job ops
IF THE rumours I keep hearing are true, the Government is seriously thinking of abolishing the Arts Council. A decade ago such a move would have triggered howls of luvvie indignation, and accusations that ministers wanted hands-on control of what goes on in theatres and galleries. But Blair’s ministers meddle so much already that the Arts Council strikes many arty types as an unnecessary, and very costly, extra blubber of bureaucrats.
I don’t agree. The prospect of Tessa Jowell or her DCMS minions personally assessing the quality of, say, the RSC’s work is too Stalinist for words. Nevertheless, if I were an Arts Council apparatchik, I would be urgently scanning the Sits. Vac. column of Beancounters Weekly.
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