As I went through my teens and became an adult in 1965, there were many stunningly beautiful women who came across my television and cinema screens: Brigitte Bardot, Sophia Loren, Jayne Mansfield, Marilyn Monroe, Ava Gardner, Grace Kelly, Deborah Kerr, Jane Russell and Farrah Fawcette to name a few. This was the ninth and the first years of the tenth stage of history from a Baha’i perspective. In my 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s, from the 1960s through the 1990s, many more beautiful women continued to flow into and out of the mass media. -Ron Price, Pioneering Over Four Epochs, February 27th 2005.
Symbol of an entire sexual revolution they were, each of them in their way-- and I was only twelve, thirteen, fourteen and I kept getting older and they kept coming. Embodiments of steamy sexual desire, smouldering sensuous beauty, lusty busty, leggy, curves everywhere, cleavages deep as the dark oceans, full-figured gals they were, one and all, alluring angels, always seductive, physical powerhouses, big-chested cutiepies, attracted men, photographers and headlines-- didn’t they all? Princesses of pout, icons, countesses of come hither--35-23-35 stats and more, everywhere more, glamour galore, tending to many marriages and troubles, temptresses: who could resist the pulchritude?
All my life they’ve been coming, always coming, up and out there, flaunting themselves before my eyes-- incredible things I can only look at, from a great distance, get turned on by, but never, absolutely never, get near, touch. Part of the whirlwind of the senses they were at the other end of dull-everydayness, its continuum of quotidian time meeting as it did like out of some blue the psychedelic, where tension was increased always without resolution, catharsis or any genuine epiphany. Sex: the last frontier, extraordinary incident, outrageous stimulation, instinctual sources of erotic heat, part of some basic permissiveness where one looks longingly in this inchoate world, diffuse, so diffuse, where a truly powerful ideology was just opening up a new vision of life, part of a moral repertoire to be drawn on by all and helping me cope with these awesome sexual, stunning beauties, traces of sand to be washed away eventually by waves, not part of the decline of the West but the end of civilization and a hubris rearing its head with its refusal to accept limits, its sympathy for the abyss, its rage against order, its awareness of apocalypse.
And, for me, a substitution of instinct, impulse and pleasure by those essentials of restraint in my years, my life in this post-industrial society1 looked like it was going to take the whole of my life.
1 Daniel Bell, The Coming Of Post-Industrial Society: A Venture in Future Forecasting, Basic Books, NY, 1973. The birth of this society took place in the years after WW2, the second Seven Year Plan(1946-1953) just after I was born.
Once ranked number six on Playboy’s 100 sexiest women of the twentieth century and also named the most beautiful woman in the world, Sophia Loren has been acting in movies all my Baha’i life. In the year my mother first had contact with the Baha’i Faith, 1953/4, Loren acted in four films. She had just started her acting career in the early fifties. In the year I joined this Faith, 1959/60, Loren acted in six films; in the year my pioneering life began, 1962/3, she acted in another six. One of these latter films(1962) was Boccaccio where she stared with Anita Eckberg. She won the first Oscar for a foreign language film in 1961. Some regard Loren as the most celebrated actress of the last fifty years(1953-2003). This month Loren turned 70. Both she and I are getting old. -Ron Price with thanks to “The Official Sophia Loren Website,” September, 2004.
1 With appreciation to Roger White for this title from “Death of the Greengrocer,” Whitewash, Haifa, 1982, p.22.
This icon of the cinema during my pioneering life, this woman of grace, elegance, beauty and charm, unpretentious, as sexy, as seductive, as they get, she came out of the woodwork and blazed across the screen and blew me away, yet again, one of thousands of beauties that played in the background of my life, all my life really, right from my first memories when I was only three or four, before breasts bud, before groins fill out, jostle and strain toward their imperative destinations.
And they still blaze and dance, still jostle and strain keeping the concupiscible appetite on heat, always wanting more than I can get or should get or would get or could get. What’s the big idea anyway? Is it some kind of cosmic joke: sticking this incredible pulchritude in front of my nose and saying: you are only supposed to look. Don’t touch; it’s only for show! It’s to reproduce the species; that’s why there’s such awesome force here. I’ll give you a taste, but don’t ask for more than your lot, your share of this coruscant energy that pops and glitters, spurts and tangles to achieve life’s unthwarted, fecund purpose. -Ron Price, September 25, 2004
As I think of beautiful actresses I find myself grieving over Meg Ryan. Though never what one might call gorgeous, she had a unique beauty. Notice the "had." I can't believe someone so good-looking would ruin her look with plastic surgery. The same could be said for Jennifer Gray (sp?). In terms of gorgeous, I am a Nicole Kidman guy!
Boy, you got to carry that weight a long time!
Posts: 401 | Location: Georgia | Registered: 14 October 2005
I'm a 27 male (and not gay) but that doesn't mean I can't appreciate 1950s/1960s glamour. Vivien Leigh (who played Scarlet O'Hara in Gone with the wind), Audrey Hepburn and Julie Andrews (as she was in The Sound of music) were beautiful. (I don't know about Leigh but Hepburn and Andrews retained grace and elegance).
In the 1970s, actresses broadly divided in to either covering up entirely to avoid being patrinised by men or showing off everything- both aren't that alluring. Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia in Star Wars marked a changed- damsels in distress (though able to look after themselves too) appeared to be in fashion. In the 1980s, women showed that they were capable of being very funny and selling a movie on their own terms eg Julia Roberts (very attractive). Many more teen actresses emerged in the 1980s, such as those on The Breakfast Club, Drew Barrymore, Jennifer Grey (very attractive in Dirty Dancing) and others that are little known.
At the start of the 1990s, a succession of girl next door women followed eg Meg Ryan, Sandra Bullock. Women probably preferred seeing them because they weren't threatening.
Towards the end of the 1990s and the start of 2000, stunningly beautiful and clever girls were more confident to flaunt their sexuality- and why not- eg in Coyote Ugly, the wonderful Jessica Alba in Sin City.
Seeing all these responses to the subject of "the stunningly beautiful actresses," I shall add the following about a woman whose main beauty was in her voice. She was not unattractive but she is known for her voice not her beauty. I tend to link my reactions to Garland to my general value system. __________________________ SINGING OF 'THE JUDGEMENT DAY'
After a long siege from various physical and emotional ailments, Judy Garland was hospitalised in 1959. I became a Baha'i that year. Garland was the most famous female entertainer during the years 1944-1963. She had been the image of the "typical American teenager"1 when my mother became a Baha'i in 1953. Garland died in 1969 from an overdose of sleeping pills, six years after the democratic theocracy at the base of the Baha'i system had been established, that 'blissful consummation' referred to by Daniel.2 -Ron Price with thanks to 1Stephen Harvey in Colliers Encyclopedia, Vol 10, pp.579-80; 2 See Shoghi Effendi, God Passes By, 1957, p.151.
I was growing up, Judy, when you were winning all those accolades. And when I became a Baha'i you were at the bottom of the barrel and you rolled in and out of that barrel until you died ten years later, alone and desolate, a world away from your kids and a million miles away from your inner self which you never found in your roller-coaster ride through fame and glory.
But along the way you tried to teach us how to be happy, to put on our best show as we all got ready for that judgement day1 which was spreading around the world during your life2 and ours in those years at the start of this Formative Age.
1 Judy sang about this 'judgement day' but she, like the wider society in which she sang and performed, had no idea of its relation to this new religion, the Baha'i Faith. 2 Judy Garland's life, 1922-1969, occupied the years of the first half century of the Formative Age(1921-1971), especially during her years of success after 1935 when the teaching Plans had been put in place.
I've found that, for me at least, after a certain point a thread begins to get too long for my liking. So I stop osting. Others, of course, may want to keep going. On the subject of beautiful women I think one could go on forever--at least I could. But I shall stop for now and wish all you lovers of beauty a long life of visual pleasure.-Ron Price, Tasmania.
Meagan Good Charlize Theron Rachel Roberts (The chick who played Sim1) Ashley Judd Rosario Dawson Kandyse McClure (from Battlestar Galactica) Monica Bellucci Alexis Bledel (Most beautiful eyes I have ever seen)
As far as "Stunningly Beautiful Actresses" go, the first name that pops in my mind is Jennifer Connelly. She was stunningly beautiful during her teenage film days and is even more so today. Plus she's a stunningly great actress, perhaps not getting enough credit for all those roles- leading and supporting- that always added class to whatever film she was in. I'll always believe she should have been nominated for and won the Oscar for her role in Requiem for a Dream. Now if only she would appear in some comedies for a change, I mean, she was awesome & achingly gorgeous in Career Opportunities. Haven't seen her latest films, Little Children & Blood Diamond, not even sure when they'll open to little hick villages like I live in. Still I look forward to Jennifer's starring in Macbeth next year with Philip Seymour Hoffman.
Posts: 8731 | Location: State of Insanity | Registered: 22 September 2005