Simply Irresistible. Unleash Your Inner Siren and Mesmerize Any Man, with Help from the Most Famous...

272 Pages·2007·13.75 MB·English

by  Ellen T. White

Table of Contents

Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
preface

PART ONE - finding your inner siren
SIREN QUEST
A PRIMER: THE BIRTH OF THE SIREN
THE SIREN TODAY
HAVE ABSOLUTE CONFIDENCE IN YOUR ALLURE
CELEBRATE MEN
EMBRACE LIFE
the allure of archetypes
the goddess
CASE STUDY: - Evita Perõn (née Maria Eva Duarte)
the companion
CASE STUDY: - Lady Randolph Churchill (née Jennie Jerome)
the sex kitten
CASE STUDY: - Marilyn Monroe (née Norma Jean Baker)
the competitor
CASE STUDY: - Beryl Markham (née Clutterbuck)
the mother
CASE STUDY: - Wallis, Duchess of Windsor (née Bessie Wallis Warfield)
a word on archetypes

PART TWO - Personalizing Your Appeal
Be Unforgettable
find your signature scent - CASE STUDY: Coco Chanel (née Gabrielle
Bonheur Chanel)
develop eccentricities - CASE STUDY: Greta Garbo (née Greta Lovisa
Gustafson)
make an indelible first impression - CASE STUDY: Cleopatra VII
create a scandal - CASE STUDY: Lola Montez (née Eliza Gilbert)
accentuate the exotic - CASE STUDY: Josephine Baker (née Josephine
Freda McDonald)
Put Your Best Foot Forward
let down your hair - CASE STUDY: Nicole Kidman
strive to be chic - CASE STUDY: Jacqueline Lee Bouvier Kennedy
Onassis
find your wooing voice - CASE STUDY: Sarah Bernhardt
change your name - CASE STUDY: Mata Hari (née Margaretha Geertruida
Zelle)
Transport Them
make him the center of the universe - CASE STUDY: Pamela Digby
Churchill ...
make him laugh - CASE STUDY: Carole Lombard (née Jane Alice Peters)
be brilliant in conversation - CASE STUDY: Veronica Franco
learn to cook - CASE STUDY: Nigella Lawson
be a muse - CASE STUDY: Alma Mahler Gropius Werfel (née Schindler)
Lead Them to the Bedroom
set the erotic stage - CASE STUDY: Cora Pearl (née Emma Crouch)
take charge in the bedroom - CASE STUDY: Catherine the Great (née
Sophia ...
walk on the wild side - CASE STUDY: Angelina Jolie
talk dirty - CASE STUDY: Mae West (née Mary Jane West)
switch hit - CASE STUDY: Colette (née Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette)
Think More Like a Man ( in Matters of the Heart )
refuse to commit - CASE STUDY: Queen Elizabeth 1 of England
go after what you want and damn the consequences - CASE STUDY:
Camilla Shand Parker-Bowles
call your own shots - CASE STUDY: Ninon de Lenclos
play the field - CASE STUDY: Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald
Build Your Power Base
be a rebel with a cause - CASE STUDY: Susan Sarandon (née Susan
Abigail Tomalin)
hone your talent - CASE STUDY: Edith Piaf (née Gassion)
develop your mind - CASE STUDY: Clare Boothe Luce
Cautionary Tales
don’t get greedy - CASE STUDY: Anne Boleyn
don’t lose your head - CASE STUDY: Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots
don’t be a pushover - CASE STUDY: Lucrezia Borgia

in closing
Acknowledgements
books and databases consulted for Simply Irresistible
index
art credits
Copyright Page

To Mathilde and Mollie Brent with thanks to Paul Dixon
“I don’t want to live—I want to love first, and live incidentally.”
—Zelda Fitzgerald
preface
It has long been my ambition to write a how-to book on romance. Not for me the
Great American Novel or a definitive history—my fascination is for the details
of people’s romantic lives. I never fail to ask a couple how they first met, and
what attracted them to each other the most. For me, the sentence “I met an
interesting man” is the beginning of hours of delightful speculation.
I come from a long line of women who treated seduction dead seriously—and
who remained successful in their pursuits as long as they had a breath in their
bodies. In my immediate family alone, my grandmother, at fifty-six, wooed a
younger man out of bachelorhood after she had been twice widowed. My
mother, whose yearbook picture bore the legend “wolverine,” still entertained
gentleman callers when she was seventy-five. But within the context of my
family, I was a particularly slow starter. When I was a mere ten or eleven years
old, my grandmother became so concerned that boys were not showing the
expected level of interest in me that she and my mother sat me down for a talk.
Up until that time, I was an obedient little girl with a straight A average—a
credit to any other family. But dates with boys? They actually expected me to
have dates? I didn’t even have breasts.
So it was under two generations of maternal guidance that I tossed aside my
schoolwork and boned up on my flirtation techniques. It was rough going. As I
sat cross-legged and alert in my stiff school uniform, my grandmother advised
me in the delivery of “come hither” remarks that make me writhe with
embarrassment even today. Her personal favorite was, “I dreamt about you last
night,” which she said should be communicated with an air of mystery. “What if
he asks what I dreamt?” I asked earnestly—a question that invited her obvious
disdain at my lack of imagination. When, at eighteen, I finally worked up the
nerve to use that line at a garden party, a bird flying overhead took strategic
relief on my forearm.
Still, while my progress was slow, I had a respectable collection of semi-
besotted teenaged suitors by the time I was sixteen. My first boyfriend, Pete,
wrote me poetry every day while I was away at school and signed all his letters
“Te quiero” (“I love you” in Spanish). I had a smattering of summer romances
with boys from Long Island, Boston, and Iowa, with whom I subsequently
corresponded. But the year I inspired a barroom-style brawl between two guys