Beautiful Lady |
Nothing pleases a man more than to be thought fascinating.
George Bernard Shaw remarked that what really flatters a man is that you think him worth flattering. (1) The eyes are the windows of the soul, and when a woman gazes at a man with rapt attention and hugely dilated pupils, she unconsciously communicates the one thing that makes a woman really, truly sexy: she's interested in you. This serves her well if the interest is feigned.
As the humorist Richard Jeni says, "Honesty is the key to a relationship. If you can fake that, you're in."
And, that is precisely what Renaissance Venetian courtesans figured out how to do--they faked it, thus bequeathing on Deadly Nightshade their own name, Belladonna, because a cosmetic preparation was made from the berries which, when instilled into the eye, causes rapid, wide dilation of the pupil.
There was a price: the deceiving eye was sometimes itself benighted. In cases of incipient glaucoma, repeated and careless use caused blindness.
(1) "John Bull's Other Island" (1907) Act IV
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