"The construction of this kind of femininity – an it is constructed, no woman looks like this naturally – is accomplished for the sake of men, who use it to limit the power of women, to flatter the male ego, and to sell products of consumption. It is extreme differentiation from maleness/masculinity. I was attracted to this idea of woman because of the power it represents, the extreme self-confidence which is for me elusive, beguiling, a paradigm.

The elusiveness of the personal, sensual and economic power represented here is exactly what makes this image function so spectacularly as advertisement (the allure of the self-confident, elusive, beguiling woman is transferred to an object being sold). And it is also what causes the women who construct it most successfully (Rita Hayworth, Marilyn Monroe, Madonna…) to attain mythic stature.
And this is the tragedy of this kind of woman:
underneath the construction are self-doudt, anxious, insecurity.
The construction of this kind of femininity is the construction of a lie."

Wayne Salazar
Winter 1987