Their own bodies give them no delight; it is their constant effort to
disguise and conceal them; they never expose them aesthetically, but
only as an act of the grossest sexual provocation. If it were
advertised that a troupe of men of easy virtue were to appear
half-clothed upon a public stage, exposing their chests, thighs, arms
and calves, the only women who would go to the entertainment
would be a few delayed adolescents, a psychopathic old maid or
two, and a guard of indignant members of the parish Ladies Aid
Society.




9.


Men as Aesthetes


Men show no such sagacious apprehension of the relatively feeble
loveliness of the human frame. The most effective lure that a
woman can hold out to a man is the lure of what he fatuously
conceives to be her beauty. This so-called beauty, of course, is
almost always a pure illusion. The female body, even at its best is
very defective in form; it has harsh curves and very clumsily
distributed masses; compared to it the average milk-jug, or even
cuspidor, is a thing of intelligent and gratifying design--in brief, an
objet d'art. The fact was curiously (and humorously) display during
the late war, when great numbers of women in all the belligerent
countries began putting on uniforms. Instantly they appeared in