Position yourself, whenever possible, at the top of a flight of stairs. This will inspire, either in you or your beholder, a visceral recognition of mortality. Remember: mortality is beauty.
Alternatively, just be always on the verge of death. Achieve a frailty so extreme that rainwater collects in the hollows between your bones.
If you can swing it, be a horse or a boat or a whale.
In the young this “verge of death” may manifest itself as a reckless drug problem. Note that this tip is particularly successful if you hang out with wide-eyed boy narrators slightly younger than yourself and are written by an adult man who didn’t get any in high school.
Be unhappily married. Or a sex worker.
Have a seventeen-inch waist, the smallest in three counties.
Ladies, men want what they can’t have. Embody all those attributes your target is lacking (be they physical, financial, or spiritual), and he will fall at your feet in hopes that your love will help him transcend his shortcomings.
As such, an air of general reproof or self-righteousness will go a long way in securing the affections of a bad man.
Never use your hands—manual labor is for peasants. Keep your hands white and soft with the regular application of lotions and potions. When the muscles start to atrophy, you’ll know you’re a raving beauty.
Really deep serious sex.
Keep your clothes on for said sex, as your target man may be mostly aroused by your fashions.
Avoid artifice, or else prepare to have your wedding night ruined when your husband finally notices you wear a wig.
I cannot recommend highly enough some time by the seaside or taking the waters for recovering one’s bloom.
Be in every way superior to the men in your life, but crippled emotionally, so as to create in them the delusion that you are at once their only female equal and also more in need of them than their other, sensible, female acquaintances.
Have an improbable hair/eye/skin color combination.
Either be obscenely patient or a spontaneous maniac; there is no in between.
If you know you’re already working with some excellent assets, set them off with deliberately simple clothing. Eschew all finery. Caution, though: this has a proven success rate with religious curmudgeons.
If, on the other hand, your assets are limited, get yourself some puffed sleeves.
When measuring your height, wear socks.
Cultivate a voice full of money. At the very least, swallowing the spare change in the bottom of your purse is sure to land you a spot on TLC’s “My Strange Addiction,” gilding you in the soft glow of infamy for fifteen minutes.
Secure a pair of fine eyes. Eyes are everything. Brighten them with exercise. Let them shine brightly with happy tears if you’re an ingénue or smolder darkly with scorn if you’re ever-so-slightly past your prime.
For surefire babe status, drink whiskey.
This is crucial: Do all of the above while maintaining an irrefutable femininity at all times.
Three words: consumption, consumption, consumption.
Uh-Oh… this has actually worked in my #RealLife –> “As such, an air of general reproof or self-righteousness will go a long way in securing the affections of a bad man.”
And… this might be my actual relationship style: “Be in every way superior to the men in your life, but crippled emotionally, so as to create in them the delusion that you are at once their only female equal and also more in need of them than their other, sensible, female acquaintances.”
Also, the seaside. All you need for all your feminine troubles is the healing waters of the seaside.
Wear only dainty white nightgowns whose sleeves are incapable of staying on your shoulder.
I may-or-may-not be attempting to learn how to sew such a thing as I’ve given up finding one.
So, once I’ve got my pair of fine eyes, do I just keep them in a jar, or?
Spear them on your fingers and wiggle them at people.
Ah yes, that must be how you get them to exercise.
You can also have them set in a necklace (I recommend gold for green or blue eyes, copper for brown) and wear them on your bosom.
Cat toys.
I was going to ask what consumption even is. I have instead googled it myself, wikipedia says tuberculosis. the more you know.
They’re actually not the same thing at all. Consumption is beautiful and tragic and allows one to wither away quite romantically. Tuberculosis is vulgar and modern and curable with high-dose long term antibiotics.
Yes, somehow when you have consumption coughing up blood is ethereally sexy, while with TB it’s just gross.
And you always cough up blood in a dainty line that drips from one corner of your seductive lips~
Or is caught, and immediately, not-quite-subtly-enough, tucked away in a lace-edged, perfectly starched and white handkerchief.
Also, consumption is something which afflicts noble, beautiful, classically European women, whereas tuberculosis is a disease of the poor, the Irish, and the reprobate.
I read somewhere that sometimes consumption was tuberculosis, but sometimes it was anorexia. I have no idea if that holds water, but it always made Ruby Gillis’ character much sadder to me.
I think it was originally sort of a catch-all for respiratory diseases including/similar to TB, and then the “look” got really popular, so people may well have developed disordered eating habits to emulate it (the Sawbones podcast covered this, I think in their Tuberculosis episode)
Acquire a chaise and a silk dressing gown. Apply both as necessary to complete the aura you have chosen to cultivate (consumptive, wealthy widow, or attempting to regain the image of a foolish teenager playing dress-up may all apply).
The literary “cool girl”
I’m just getting around to reading Emily of New Moon, so this is particularly appropriate today.
You do not need bangs to look beautiful. After all, it’s only the cows here that have bangs.
I believe it is called “a bang.” You do not need a bang to look beautiful. That’s the best part for me. (I literally just read that bit at lunch today and giggled to myself. Side note: I am worried about this Rhoda person, I do not feel she is an appropriate friend for Emily)
In LMM’s later books when bobs come into fashion, she likes to write that “so-and-so shingled her hair” and it threw me off at first. I thought she was saying a bunch of girls had shingles on their scalp.
Rhoda is a jerk-child, but my conclusion from past threads about Emily is that Perry is the only friend of hers who is not way problematic.
I haven’t even met Perry yet! But I had high hopes for Ilse!
The Toast has to be the place for Emily/Ilse femmeslash, right?
But how are your ankles? If you have dainty ones when all your relatives have thick ones, it’s a good sign.
Also good: if all your relatives are modest and demure, but you have come-hither eyes.
Aunt Nancy Priest/Old Jock Kelly: the “Allure” of 1900s PEI!
Flashing back now to 10-year-old me trying to figure out what the heck “come-hither eyes” were… it didn’t help that my edition of the book had a typo that rendered it as “comet-hither” – I figured it meant her eyes sparkled like comets (comets sparkle, right?) and wondered why even the sternest of spinster aunts would frown at the idea of her young niece having sparkling eyes.
Did you have the…Bantam? Seal? paperback with the cover that showed Emily in the garret writing, accompanied by Saucy Sal? That edition had SO many typos (including “I am going to write a dairy that it may be published when I die.”)
Emily has to deal with a whole bunch of different varieties of older creeper. (Another reason I identified so heavily with her. Sigh. Another ten years or so and I will be Aunt Elizabeth and I will discomfit them all with my gimlet eyes and killingly pronounced italics.)
I don’t remember what cover my copy had (my memory is just “Emily in a field or maybe by the sea” but literally all of LMM’s book covers are the heroines in a field or by the sea*) but I definitely remember that “dairy” typo. I thought it was deliberate for aaaages because Emily’s initial letters to her dad had so many spelling mistakes, it seemed normal that she would mess up one last time.
*also I looooooove that cover of Emily’s Quest where Emily looks like a total babe in her lacy blouse and she’s walking on the shore by herself because she is a strong independent writer who don’t need no man. When I saw the alternate cover where she looks a lot frumpier and she’s locked in Teddy’s embrace I wanted to stomp my feet in rage.
“Cultivate a voice full of money. At the very least, swallowing the spare change in the bottom of your purse…”
This is magical. Thank you for writing this
So after I do all these tips – how long do I have to wait for a man to tell me I’m beautiful, which I’d never realized before but the saying of which causes my girlish ways to bloom into womanly desires? Because I’m taking the Grand Tour in like six months and I need to know if I should take the time for a rest cure at an alpine spa or just head straight on to Italy.
The answer is *always* just head straight on to Italy. You can’t go wrong with an Italian scoundrel (I was going to say man, but lets face it: he’s probably a scoundrel). See: Daisy Miller.
Italy first, THEN rest cure. Because Italian scoundrels cause deathly diseases, which require rest cure.
The plus side is often this results in consumption, and nothing suits a ethereal consumptive with a darkened past as much as an Alpine setting!
“What? Me? Beautiful? Crazy-talk!” When a heroine does that, I throw books across the room. Just yesterday I read “She was ordinary and plain, with only her thick, golden hair and large, dark eyes to recommend her.” Unless her nose and mouth are actually missing, she’s pretty.
“If you know you’re already working with some excellent assets, set them off with deliberately simple clothing. Eschew all finery. Caution, though: this has a proven success rate with religious curmudgeons.”
DOROTHEA NOOOO
I’m halfway through Middlemarch now, and I really feel all of Dorothea’s issues could have been resolved over happy hour (1. Honey, loosen up. 2. Casaubon? Honey no.).
Put them on a toothpick and use them to stir your martini.
Any day now, my reckless drug problem is gonna pay off!!
I’ve been cultivating an air of mysterious sadness for YEARS, but I don’t think it’s worth it. Or, I’m just TOO INTIMIDATINGLY BEAUTIFUL. I choose to believe the second one.
NGL, pretty sure an over-indulgence in novels at an impressionable age has left me with really mixed-up ideas about how interested men are in an air of mysterious sadness.
Someone once described me as ‘intimidatingly beautiful’. He was as high as a kite at the time and it was rather dark but I have never forgotten it, not have I ever let my partner forget it. One day I will comission a headstone bearing that legend.
I feel like the counterpart to this would be:
“Seduction Tips for Literary Men”
Be a dick.
For extra allure, try being an drunk dick.
But it’s recommended that beginners stick to the basics, which again, is a general air of cockitude.
Either be an intriguing wealthy dick or a stalwart middle class man with an open countenance. Choice is yours.
http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=202
The efficacy of those tips is illustrated in the inimitable Kate Beaton’s “Dude Watching With the Brontës.”
The amount you can be a dick is directly related to how wealthy you are. If you are ragamuffin-poor, you BETTER have a heart of 22-carat gold, MINIMUM.
It depends on your background and accent. If you are upper class, display an air of innate superiority. If lower class, be loudly confident and push your luck in way that will be described as “cheeky”.
Beautiful. I love this. Also, if you’re in a Victorian novel, a white dress and air of desperation is your friend.
Spontaneous maniac sock wearer, with soft useless hands! KILLING IT.
God, improbable hair/eye/skin combos. The next time I read a shitty fantasy novel and somebody has violet eyes it’s getting thrown across the room.
As a child I *pined* for hair so black it shines with blue highlights. And “sea-green eyes” whatever that means.
See also: Harry Potter Mary-Sue-fic.
It’s a Mary Sue signifier for any fandom.
Have a skin colour which is a synonym for “white”, and also possibly dead/inorganic.
Alabaster for daaaaze
I was all “Nope, nope, not me, never gonna happen, nope….” UNTIL:
“For surefire babe status, drink whiskey.”
Awwww yiss, I got this! But:
“This is crucial: Do all of the above while maintaining an irrefutable femininity at all times.”
Well fuck.
“Laura, when we were married your pa could span my waste with his two hands.”
“But Ma, where the hell did you keep your internal organs?”
“In a chest under the bed. Your pa carved it himself, as a courtship present. It was the very first thing I brought into our new home, which your pa also made with his own hands.”
“Using nothing more than a single hatchet, and the bladder of a pig.”
(waist! Ma meant waist, up above!)
“Remember: mortality is beauty.”
It’s amazing how much of the Western canon can be summed up by that statement.
(Also, this is brilliant and hilarious!)
I imagine you sitting at a laptop in period costume, like a Kate Beaton character from Hark! A Vagrant.
But such bluntness just wouldn't be decent!
It depends on your background and accent. If you are upper class, display an air of innate superiority. If lower class, be loudly confident and push your luck in way that will be described as "cheeky".
Alabaster for daaaaze