Ester Freider
“From the beginning, nothing has been more alien, repugnant, and hostile to woman than truth—her great art is the lie, her highest concern is mere appearance and beauty.”
– Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil (1886), Aphorism 232
The word seduction implies that there is a certain impurity to one’s advances towards another. The impurity lies in an objectification of the victim – they are remade into a tool for political, financial, and social gain. Or can one seduce simply for the sake of seducing, like how Camus reads Don Juan as a life-affirmer unconcerned with outcomes? Can seduction be a simple indication that one loves life more than they fear for themselves?
Making a historiography of seduction would take a lifetime. Think of Delilah’s raspberry-pink dress that flocks and flares under the arm of Samson in Rubens’ iconic painting. Or Frank Sinatra, whom the state of New Jersey charged with seduction in 1938 for having enticed a woman "of good repute to engage in sexual intercourse with him upon his promise of marriage” . Why confine the seducer to one whose chosen pleasure is sex? Salesmen. Blackjack dealers. The glass shelves in delis that clot your eyes with cake, meat, cheese. Seduction is the sensor of desire. It’s looking for that hole that desire leaves in the dirt.
Recently, I’ve become obsessed with the idea of a seduction economy – or rather the practice of seduction economics – based on the idea of “attention economy”, in which economic researchers treat human attention as a scarce commodity. As forms of social media based livelihood, such as influencership and the more general scope of content creation, become more and more common, being the victim of seduction becomes quite ingrained and mundane. Never before has advertising been so .. omnipresent, yes, but also so peer-to-peer. No longer are brand mascots major celebrities and cartoon characters, but rather everyday women acting as rentable “freelancers” who get a cut when they make a Tik Tok about the newest laser hair removal product or coolest gym in London. My ads on Instagram are full of beautiful rando’s whose micro-earnings depend on their faces being high-trust.
But of course, this practice has its origins in far older methods of seduction. My friend Alyona Baranoff is currently researching seduction as a form of unpaid labor. She pointed out the trend of memes like this:
This trend seems to dispute the conventional assumption that men are attracted to “natural” or to women who are “themselves”. It seeks instead to accredit the aesthetic craft of seduction, made possible with a boundless amount of time and money, that men willingly give themselves into. Through the lens of this demystification, the sugar daddy/sugar baby dynamic shifts from a sort of charity to a clear transaction of goods (crafted beauty for money). It also causes me to question the approach someone, particularly a man, has to dating apps – are you looking to date the crafted image, or do you just like what the image says about the artist behind it? Seduction as a signature. As power that functions as a sign of power.
But, there are also some more immanent and perhaps organic forms of seduction. The invitation to dance, or the use of an online chatroom. When I was on a trip to Bulgaria with my best friends two summers ago, we visited the Devil’s Throat – a cavern with a whirlpool-like underground waterfall, gushing into a maw of stone. The whole tour, as we bypassed thin passages and steep staircases in the dark, the young male tour guide flirted with my friend. It wasn’t a case of getting her number as it was clear we were just passing through. But it was cute and gentle. Can seduction be that too? An invitation to play?
I saw a preview of Luca Guadigninos’ adrenaline-dripped Challengers a few days ago, in which Zendaya plays a fierce tennis champion who homie-hops between two best friends. In the most famous scene, she initiates a threesome only in order to see the two men kiss. You get the impression that she loves life – or passion, or power – more than she loves anyone in particular. She refuses to look for refuge, instead striving to live unabated. Perhaps that is the spirit of homie-hopping anyhow – a preference for the feeling over the person. My boyfriend found this film demoralizing; I found it life-affirming. Like the scent of an opened, dew-covered magnolia or the motion of your calves on a bike. It’s the first time I’ve cried out of pure hunger for life. Seduction as a commitment to life.
This collection of writing and images ambulates between all these definitions of seduction and more. Rather than trying to take a moral stance on what it means to seduce, we are just playing here. It’s a big glass case of Nietzche, bible stories, microtrends, diagrams, skincare, saints and sirens. Take what delights you and eat it whole.