Art of Being Attractive(for Women)

Scarlett OHara was not beautiful,
but men seldom realized it
when caught by her charm
- Opening line of Gone With the Wind

Scarlett is not a legend because she said things a certain way or because of her unique determination. There was no one like Scarlett, and it was that originality, more than any other quality, that made her irresistible. Scarlett is a legend because of the sum total of who she was. Scarlett caused her own attractiveness to come forward, by being a creative, original flirt.

Be attractive and original; don't worry about having beauty. And don't wony about age. You can be a fabulous flirt all your life. Shrewd creative flirts know that attractiveness goes way beyond youth, beyond trends, beyond the chance micro-arrangement of features on the face that might at one certain time or another be considered good- looking in a given culture.

With maturity we see that one observer's "snore" may look wildly gorgeous to someone else. The man whose fantasies include Julia Roberts in leather jeans might not even swivel his head were Dolly Parton to bounce by in a pink teddy! A woman who melts just thinking about Gerard Depardieu might well take a pass on both Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise, even if they waited shirtless outside her office every aftemoon at 5:45, in side by side stretch limousines, begging to take her home.

Wallis Simpson, for whom the Duke of Windsor gave up the throne of England, was hardly pretty. She was an original, however, and the Duke found her mighty attractive!


The most important things to know about being attractive in an original way.

There is enough know-how on the magazine stands to teach you how to emulate conventional attractiveness. Originality is something else. Present yourself physically in such a way that it impresses what you want people to know about you. If you do this, you will always command your own unique attractiveness.

You want to be attractive for the same reason you want to be fit and healthy. By being attractive, you widen your circle of possible prospects -- for everything, not just creative flirting partners. By now,we've given up our childish insistence that others shouldn't judge us by appearance. We know they do, at least on first impression.

We make a mistake if we rely on only our opinions to detemine what our clothes are saying. We're biased. We need an outside opinion. Ask people whose judgment you respect to comment on what your personal presentation, hair, clothes, makeup, posture, voice -- says about you. If you want to play full out, have your friends ask new acquaintances to describe their first impressions of you. View any "negative" responses as the gift they are.