Note BH — Chapter XVIII · PARAESTHESIA (continued 2)

This is the psychological explanation for woman’s love of histrionic spectacles. Almost two-thirds of all theatregoers are certainly women. Still so much demi-nude femininity is presented on the stage, presumably to amuse men and so few semi-nude men for the amusement of women. Why do so many women run to the theatres to see the nudity of their own sex? Men do not care for the sight of nude men? The reason is that feminine nudity is presented on the stage not for the amusement of the few men, but mostly for the amusement of the great throng of women.

The female body has a sexually stimulating effect upon woman (Colin Scott, Am. Jour. of Psych., Feb. 1895). The pride of the female, says Weininger (Sex and Character, p. 201), is something quite peculiar to herself, something foreign even to the most handsome man, an obsession of her own body, a pleasure which displays itself even in the least handsome girl, by admiring herself in the mirror, by stroking herself and by playing with her own hair, but which comes to its full measure only in the effect that her body has on man. Woman desires to feel that she is admired physically. The normal woman regards her body as made for the stimulation of the man’s sensations. This complex emotion forms the initial stage of her own pleasure. The female body has hence a greater exciting effect upon women than the male body has upon men. Female nudity produces a greater impression upon her than the male body ever does. Statues of female forms are more liable than those of male forms to have a stimulating effect upon woman.

The same emotions are evoked in woman at the sight of female clothes. Woman takes it for granted that her clothes, just as her body, have an erotic effect upon the male. Hence female clothes awaken in women a complex emotion akin to the sight of the female body. Woman becomes sexually excited by her own clothes. For this reason clothes are to woman of the greatest importance. The desire for beautiful clothes is an irradiation of the sex instinct. The purpose of dress is the attraction through covering. For the parts covered are rendered more conspicuous.