Dis-Figuration

Sexy is out-of-fashion. This becomes rather natural as its allure got lost following the breaking of its taboos circa late-’60s. Paradoxically, the attraction of sexy’s seclusion got de-mythified by its own liberation. Nowadays, sexy still speaks to us, however it doesn’t question us anymore. Now it only reveals itself as yet another ground for social, economic and epistemological power struggles following analysis à la Foucault. However, even more drastically, sexiness has fallen trapped under suspicion of dishonesty. In a post-modern time in which we search for authentic inter-personal relationships, sexiness emerges as a mask that hides unfulfilled promises. It is the seduction that Baudrillard analysed in De la séduction(1979), in a search of a deeper understanding of the “sacred horizon of appearances.” His argument is not a pursuit of hidden meanings, but in remaining at the level of the manifest signs. However, Baudrillard’s attraction for ‘seduction’ rather than ‘interpretation’, points to the fact that in the ‘sexy’ there is a delay between the sign and the signified. It is the—unfortunately many times experienced, in my case— personal acquaintance with the delusion of sexiness. The sexy offers an image that conceals something that is never revealed because is never present. This movement ranges from the basic idea of make-up to the high grounds of marketable products in consumerist societies. The architecture of the sexy never draws beyond facade