The Secret of Attraction: Your Personality, Not Your Beauty

Just as fashions change every few years with the change of tastes, so does men's taste change, from one period of time to another, in the woman they love. The American man is captivated by the tall blonde this year, or by the full-figured, red-haired woman the next; and at times we see him following the trail of the yielding brunette, finding in her a warmth he does not find in her blonde sisters... Such is his state: he settles on no single opinion in his taste, but changes with the turning of time and circumstances. And in this he resembles the woman perplexed over choosing her new hat!

The woman who attracts the young American at the present time is the one who calls to him in a low, husky voice from the corners of her lips and glances at him with drowsy eyes fringed with long lashes — in a word, the woman desired in America today is the woman who stirs the sexual emotion, like Lizabeth Scott, Ava Gardner, Lauren Bacall, and their likes.

This revolution in the taste of the young is not without causes. The young American grows up and passes the dawn of his youth at a girl's side, keeping her company in schooling and in athletic and social life. And when the late war sentenced him to leave America by choice — and to leave with it, by compulsion, its girls whose company he was accustomed to — he found himself suddenly in isolation from the other sex; the matter weighed hard on him, and this deprivation bred in him a strange longing and a constant agitation. And when he watched the motion pictures produced during the war and feasted his eyes on the beauty of Lizabeth Scott and her seductive movements saturated with the call of sex, he was certain he had found what he had been seeking, and he promised himself, upon his first return to America, to look for a girl friend resembling the said actress. It was deprivation, then, that made these actresses dazzle and attract the young American, so that he is led to them in meek submission.

Do not grieve, dear girl, if you are not of the type of Lizabeth Scott and her likes; your loss in that is not so grievous as you may at first imagine. And beware of trying to imitate this type, for by doing so you lose your original beauty. The American man is other than the Arab man; the land of America is other than the Arab lands; and the tastes of their men are other than the tastes of ours. We have discussed the subject with you only to broaden your information. And know that man's taste, as we have already said, is in constant change; perhaps a near day will come when we see the American man wearied of this type of girl, seeking himself a wife and choosing her from among those of gentle nature, sound intent, and sober character.

American men declare that what most sets a woman off and doubles her attraction, before her bodily beauty, is her personality and her way of conducting herself with a man: does she know how to please him? Does she trust him, or does she deal with him in cunning and craft, as the weak deals with the strong?

As for the men of society who keep a precise account of the type of woman desired in every phase and season, they incline to the belief that man's taste, after a few years, will turn toward the delicate, gentle girl.

And while we see him pursuing and befriending a girl of the Lizabeth Scott type, behold him, when he looks for a wife to share his hopes and his pains, settling his choice on a girl like Diana Lynn or Dorothy McGuire, in whom there is such femininity, delicacy, and sweetness as makes a man feel, when he is near her, that he is big and strong, and that she needs to take refuge in him and shelter with him. This feeling between man and woman is the foundation of their drawing together and the cause of harmony between them. And so the delicate, gentle type of woman will keep her value and her worth so long as man is man, glorying in his strength and his sway, and so long as woman is woman, armed with her femininity and her weakness!

So if, dear girl, you are one of those who wish to become charmers, desired ones, you must first study yourself and your temperament and decide what type of woman you are. And when this truth becomes clear to you, dress your personality in the garment that suits it, and adopt the movements that accord with your type, so that your conduct comes naturally, far from affectation. For every imitated, unnatural beauty is cast off, empty of all charm, and its owner fails utterly.