The Sex Goddess in American Film, 1930–1965: Jean Harlow, Mae Wes ...

is “obtainable” in any real sense. While Hegeman poses the question of “whether Lorelei works at seduction or somehow simply, passively, embodies sexual attractiveness,” the answer appears to be that she simultaneously does both (534).

The sex goddess always alludes to but almost never actually produces sex (unless it is suggested off screen). The abstract idea of sex itself appears both as coded in her image and the narrative only euphemistically, and this substitution often appears as an infantilization that occurs in her mannerisms and speech, just as Hegeman states that, for Lorelei, her own “childishness helped complicate the details of her own sexual and economic exchanges” (538). Hegeman believes that these dually related exchanges always involve men because, for the sex goddess, “the source of her attractiveness [is] those who see it and value it” (544). In this instance, Hegeman also repeats some earlier feminist views that the sex goddess creates desire only for men.

While Arbuthnot and Seneca specifically refer to lesbian desire, none of the aforementioned critics account for the desire by some heterosexual feminine-identified women, as well as some gay men, who also see and value the attractiveness of the sex goddess image. Thus, this book will further explore the relationship of camp performance as it is expressed through gay culture and female impersonators in its relationship to the image of the sex goddess, as well the oft-overlooked, culturally significant, desire of heterosexual feminine-identified women to identify with the image of the sex goddess. Finding a sense of agency in the image of the sex goddess, these feminine-identified women often so strongly identify with the sex goddess as to deem her image worthy of imitation, as demonstrated through the extensive repetition of her image in celebrity and popular culture, e.g., Madonna. In other words, how can one continue to argue that the sex goddess image is entirely a male construct whose value is only determined by men when her image is, in fact, one that is, for the most part, constructed and performed by women and gay men, as well as admired by so many people of different genders?