Essay.

Sexy is as Sexy does

AThereOs nothing attractive about trying too hard. But as one woman discovered, not trying hard enough can be just as unappealing. By Cheryl Strayed

I remember when I couldnOt wait to be sexy. When sexy was simple and pureNnot much more than a swipe of red lipstick, a string bikini, and a certain way you tossed your hair. This was back when I was a girl, during the years of my motherOs reign, in which she managed to keep me from the red lipstick and the string bikini, but was entirely powerless over the tossing of hair.

Lucky for me, I had lots of it. Long and thick and blonde. At 14, I practiced that hair toss for hours, imitating the sexy women IOd seen in movies and on TV: an unnatural, pony-like whip of the head followed by a delicate chin-lead shimmy, which culminated in an expression of utter vacancy and remote surprise. Sexy was my future domain, I knew, as I gazed at myself in the mirror, my lips ever so slightly parted in a come-hither smirk. It was there so palpably I could smell its fumes, like a motorcycle idling, just waiting for me to hop on.

And hop on I did, revving the engine all through my teens. I starved myself bone-thin; painted and plucked and bleached and buffed and shaved and shellacked myself until IOd become the very incarnation of sexy as I perceived it then. I dressed the part, too, parading around in as little clothing as possibleNtruly suffering for beauty, since I lived in arctic Minnesota. The cold didnOt matter to me. I was warmed by the singe of stares I received when I entered a room, the object of envy or desire, approbation or scorn. Sexy indeed.

Except, of course, I wasnOt. I realized, as girlhood gave way to young adulthood, as I discovered feminism, that the personal became entirely political. If sexy was that motorcycle with its engine idling, there still wasnOt anyone on it. I wasnOt the driver and never had been, I understood with painful clarity. I was the motorcycle itselfNan object

of beauty to be admired for the sum of its parts and not much else. The sexy I