Original Sins Read online

  ORIGINAL SINS

  Trade Secrets

  of the

  Femme Fatale

  KIM KRIZAN

  Copyright © 2011 Kim Krizan

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.

  Ebook ISBN:

  Typeset by Tara Montane

  Contents

  Part One: The Spirit

  Practical Fatalism

  Why Adopting a Glamorous Fiction

  is The Smartest Thing a Woman Can Do

  Naughty By Nature

  The History of the Femme Fatale (Shamelessly Fictional, Quasi-Historical, and The God’s Honest Truth)

  A Few Good Femmes

  A Rumination on Five Real-Life Women Who Were and Are Universal Icons of Dangerous Feminine Power

  Hell Raiser

  A Handy Guide to Her Persona (And the Painful Origins and God-Awful Events That Crystallized It)

  Man-Eating Made Simple

  The Femme Fatale’s Purpose-Driven Life

  “There’s a Name For You Ladies …”

  Other Women and Why the Femme Fatale Hates Them

  Malice Aforethought

  How to Do Really Bad Things

  Part Two: The Flesh

  The Raw Materials

  How to Look Dangerous

  Warpaint

  Cosmetics as Weapons of Mass Seduction

  Sartorial Sin

  A Wicked Wardrobe and Why It’s Essential

  Everyday Fatalism

  Her Scandalous Home Life

  The Femme on the Loose

  Get Out of Shitsville in Style

  What Becomes Fatale Most ?

  A Meditation on the Femme Fatale’s Future

  Films Referenced in This Book

  And now, Dear Reader,

  these powerful truths, these trade secrets

  and long-lost recipes for dark enchantment

  fall into your hands.

  It is your mission—if you choose to accept it

  —to use this information wisely,

  but by all means make use of it.

  If you have but one life to live,

  why not take it to the hilt?

  Go forth and be Fatale.

  Part One

  The Spirit

  Practical Fatalism

  Why Adopting a Glamorous Fiction

  is The Smartest Thing a Woman Can Do

  “If all the harm that women have done

  Were put in a bundle and rolled into one,

  Earth would not hold it,

  The sky could not enfold it,

  It could not be lighted nor warmed by the sun.”

  —James Kenneth Stephen

  Stop reading this book right now. That’s right, put it down. Put it down and walk away.

  You’re still reading , aren’t you ? Is that because you’re sick and tired of being told what to do? You are, aren’t you? You’re sick to death of people and their shit? Of course you are. But if you don’t follow directions, if you don’t stick to the plan, if you aren’t a “good girl,” you know what people do? They get real mad. They’ll say stuff about you—all kinds of stuff—and they’ll try to write you off. But you know what? You’re in fantastic company.

  One of the very first archetypes, one that has existed throughout history in nearly every culture, was that of the “femme fatale.” The term comes from a French phrase meaning, literally, “deadly woman” and she represents the danger—the ensnaring, seductive, slightly supernatural danger—of female sexuality. It turns out that throughout history hot chicks scared the pants off of men, so much so that they associated these women with monsters, demons, and vampires.

  Now we could get pissed. We could plead, “Please, see me as a human being.” We could beg, “Men, take responsibility for your feelings and attractions and don’t lay a trip on us.” But that wouldn’t be any fun now would it? The truth is that the dangerous woman is the most fascinating person in the world. Why not capitalize on her image? Why not be dangerous too—or at least give the appearance of such?

  People say awfully terrible things about the femme fatale, but the more terrible the things they say, the more interesting and powerful she becomes. As a result, society has constructed whole systems of thought and behavior to control her. Fortunately, these efforts have backfired magnificently.

  People long to believe in the existence of the wicked seductress. They are dying for a little excitement, someone to talk about, someone to fear. Why deny them that pleasure? It is amazingly easy for a normal woman to have a potent effect by using the femme fatale’s secrets to her advantage.

  The myth of the femme fatale began as the ultimate propaganda tool. She was designed as a cautionary character, a scary image masterminded in a genius campaign of dirty tricks intended to prevent women from skipping out on their prescribed role. The trouble is, though, that in creating the myth of the enticingly mysterious, disastrously fatal, and epically glamorous woman, the advertising geniuses did their job a little too well for the femme fatale became a wildly engaging archetype.

  We now have more than just cultural lore and neighborhood rumor to provide us with our dangerous women. We have an entire industry and its offshoots. Hollywood films, television, gossip rags, and the vast Internet delight us with story after story of modern femme fatale exploits as their activities are projected on our mass consciousness. Yes, female sin is a key nutrient of culture.

  Give the People What They Want : A Fabulous Fiction

  To acquire the image of a femme fatale one need not literally be fatal, that is, a villainous, evil man-eater. Just like the “bombshell” (who isn’t literally a weapon of war), the femme fatale can enjoy a devastating power by, in essence, telling a good story. Let’s face it: we’re all children at heart and we still love story time.

  Scaring people is so damned easy. The tiniest show of will, any assertion of rights, a lust for life, and simply saying the things men say will cause a woman to become a threatening, notorious figure. If she also happens to be attractive, she embodies our subconscious desire to give in to delicious dissipation, to go off the edge, to plunge off the deep end to destruction. To wit, the following is the fantasy of a sixth grade schoolboy, S. J. Perelman, upon seeing a Theda Bara movie (as quoted in “Cloudland Revisited: The Wickedest Woman in Larchmont,” The New Yorker, October 18, 1952):

  For a full month afterward, I gave myself up to fantasies in which I lay with my head pillowed in the seductress’s lap, intoxicated by coal-black eyes smoldering with belladonna. At her bidding, I eschewed family, social position, my brilliant career—a rather hazy combination of African explorer and private sleuth—to follow her to the ends of the earth. I saw myself, oblivious to everything but the nectar of her lips, being cashiered for cheating at cards (I was also a major in the Horse Dragoons), descending into drugs and ultimately winding up a beach-comber in the South Seas, with a saintly ascetic face … .

  See? Though they fear her, everyone loves a good femme fatale fantasy. It gives them permission to let loose and have a little fun.

  The Power of Symbols

  A woman just has to do what a man does—that, and wear cute leopard-print shoes and red lipstick while she’s doing it. It’s that easy to threaten the established order.

  Womankind has been neatly divided into two types: the virgin and the whore, the girl-next-door and the girl-gone-wild, the heroine and the anti-heroine. The female character rides up in either the white hat or the black hat. Hence, we have the Mary Pickford or the Theda Bara, the Mel
anie Hamilton or the Scarlett O’Hara, the Krystle Carrington or the Alexis Carrington Colby. We have the good girl … or the latest wicked minx who’s splayed across the tabloids and wreaking havoc on our mutually accepted mores.

  The femme fatale always exudes an image, the symbols of which are easily recognized. The simple appropriation of a few of these sensory cues and her stock climbs instantly. And she certainly doesn’t need to be the most beautiful or the richest woman in the room to spice things up considerably by convincing everyone she secretly leads a life of egregious sinfulness.

  The Art of Fatale

  We all feign roles so as to survive and achieve our desired ends. The Fatale takes control of her life by telling her own story and co-opting powerful symbols. She creates her own publicity, circumvents the lousy, constricting roles she doesn’t wish to play, commands the attention she desires, and gets what she wants—or has fun trying. A femme fatale is a creature not born, but made.

  Key to the Fatale’s power is that she makes no apologies for being female. She knows men do not own the world, neither do the rich or the privileged. And she knows she makes her own justice. The femme fatale understands she is solely responsible for her own fulfillment.

  But to become a femme fatale—that is, to step into her fantastically stylish shoes—a woman must educate herself as to our common Fatale history. The following is that history, as well as an analysis and revelation of the finer points of Fatale living. Use it with extreme caution.

  Naughty By Nature

  The History of the Femme Fatale (Shamelessly Fictional,

  Quasi-Historical, and The God’s Honest Truth)

  “And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her, and he did eat.”

  —Genesis 3:6

  There it is. The source of all mankind’s troubles.

  We live in a world of pain, injustice, sickness, hard labor, and death … and all because some dame—actually the world’s first woman, the mother of all humankind—dicked over her husband. Therefore, women must be watched very very carefully.

  Actually, that’s wrong. There was another first woman, at least according to Mesopotamian myth and Jewish lore.

  Lilith

  Adam’s first wife (the one we never hear about) was named Lilith. She was God’s first try, Woman 1.0, but she didn’t quite work out and God (the ultimate book-cooker) saw to it that this marriage was quietly annulled and erased from the public record.

  Lilith’s crime? Having her own opinion. She apparently didn’t buy having a husband who insisted he was the boss.

  “On what basis?” she asked.

  “Because that’s just the way it is!” Adam sputtered, red-faced and exasperated.

  “Nice try,” said Lilith. “And by the way, I’m not picking up your mess!”

  As there were no divorce lawyers, Adam went running to God who didn’t even bother to listen to Lilith’s side of things and sent her packing. Lilith contemplated her options. There weren’t many so she hooked up with—whom else?—Satan. She then moved to a schlubby section of the universe called Hell, where all divorced women go.

  But there is another rumor about Lilith, this one rather racy. It has been whispered that Lilith always wanted to be on top of Adam during the sex act. In any case, Lilith was booted right out of the paradise Garden of Eden where men were intended to have led women into an eternity of naked domestic bliss. Thus, Lilith was a harbinger of all the wicked, destructive women to come.

  Eve

  On to Eve, the official, state-sanctioned First Woman who was to be subservient to her husband Adam, become mother of all humankind, and live forever in paradise. Satan, party-pooper that he was, thought it would be amusing to screw up God’s master plan and so he conceived a scheme to lure Eve into breaking God’s one big rule to never eat of the fruit of a certain tree.

  Satan wracked his brain for a suitable temptation for the little lady. First, Satan tried diamonds, big ones in flashy settings, but Eve merely crossed her arms and rolled her eyes. Then Satan tried a baby blue convertible sports car, but Eve realized that driving a convertible sports car would be difficult as paved roads had not yet been invented. Satan even tried a fancy designer purse, a limited edition, but even that didn’t fly.

  Eve, it turned out, was no shallow materialist and needed something much more substantial to lure her into sin. She waited, tapping her naked foot. Then Satan came up with a biggie.

  “How about knowledge?” he hissed. “You could be like God, knowing good and bad!”

  The concept swam through Eve’s brain. Knowledge! Now that was something into which she could sink her perfect teeth. Why had God so jealously guarded knowledge? What was it about knowledge that was so, well, dangerous? What could possibly be wrong about knowing good and bad? Gee, that would be swell! And why was God keeping this knowledge all to Himself? Did God think she was an idiot? And so Eve ate Satan’s proffered fruit.

  We all know what happened then. Not only did Eve eat the forbidden fruit, but she used her feminine wiles to persuade hubby Adam to eat it too. And then a dark cloud descended on Eden. God was pissed. All that work—right into the recycling. God pronounced that Eve had doomed humankind to rotten lives followed by sad little deaths and barred it from paradise.

  Strike two for God. Open on history’s picturesque tableaux: a long succession of really terrible females who brought and continue to bring misery to men. Knowing that he was oh-so-close to living a kick-ass life in paradise, man will never forgive himself for being such a patsy with Eve. To make up for that slip he now has an all-consuming need to put the lid on women and their destructive shenanigans. But in spite of his vast and well-funded campaign, the femme fatale lives on in invincible glory.

  Appropriate Ensembles for Every Occasion

  Luring All of Mankind Away from Paradise

  and Into an Eternity of Sin and Death

  Bikini made of flowers and foliage.

  Long platinum blonde hair strategically arranged.

  A face full of make-up, including false eyelashes, red lipstick, and dark eyebrows.

  (As worn by Eve, played by Mamie Van Doren in

  “The Private Lives of Adam and Eve.”)

  Bad Girls of the Ancient World

  Ancient history, literature, and mythology are rife with rumors of sirens, vixens, and vamps. It seems every culture had bad women who screwed things up but good for the nice men who were just trying to do the right thing. One wonders why God didn’t just scrap the whole project entirely after He saw the monster He had wrought.

  Ancient Greece had a particular corner on the bad girl market. Circe was described in Greek mythology as the nymph goddess who invited Odysseus’s men to her island for a little R&R, though upon their arrival she turned them into pigs. Meanwhile, the Sirens had fun leading another group of Odysseus’s men astray by luring them completely off-course and almost screwing up Homer’s plan to make Odysseus one of the great heroes of ancient literature.

  Medusa, a woman beheaded by Perseus, became a gorgon complete with snakes growing out of her scalp. When men stared at her (which they obviously would) she is reported to have unsportingly turned them to stone.

  The enchantress Medea, daughter of the sun god and the niece of Circe, fell in love with Jason and had children by him, but when he ran off with another woman Medea killed the kiddies in a fit of rage.

  Lamia, daughter of Poseidon and queen of Libya, had a rip-roaring affair with Zeus. His wife Hera discovered this relationship and stole Lamia’s children, but Lamia turned into a serpent-woman and killed the kids herself. She then went on to a career in which she seduced innocent travelers and sucked their blood.

  Helen of Troy, wife of the king of Sparta, was kidnapped by a guy named Paris and this set off a war the likes of which the world had never seen. Forget about the kidnapping �
�� it was all Helen’s fault, for she was said to have had a face that “launched a thousand ships” and caused many hundreds of men to die.

  Not to be outdone in the great femme fatale stakes, Japanese folklore tells of a beautiful and almost transparent spirit named Yuki-onna who strikes terror in mere mortals because of her reputation for ruthlessness. She appears as a mountain snow woman wearing a pure white kimono who glides over the frosty ground on winter nights searching for unsuspecting victims. When she finds them she uses her breath to freeze or slowly suck the life force out of them. But what makes Yuki-onna especially dangerous is her reputation for moodiness. It seems sometimes she’s in a kind frame of mind and allows her would-be victims to live and sometimes she just doesn’t give a damn.

  Appropriate Ensembles for Every Occasion

  Extracting Revenge on Her Husband

  by Killing Their Children

  Elaborate black gown and black headdress with veil.

  Layers of heavy exotic jewelry, including dangling earrings, necklaces, and crown.

  (As worn by Medea, played by Maria Callas in “Medea.”)

  The Bible  : A Veritable Bitches’ Brew

  Yes, those were certainly glamorous gals who wreaked first-class destruction and ancient entertainment for the masses, but if one wants tabloid-style femme fatale lore of the juiciest variety, one need look no further than the Holy Bible for some of civilization’s most vicious hum-dingers. Here’s the lowdown: