Camille Paglia has a new article up at Salon that includes a lot of babble about Hillary that I can't get down with - but her analysis of Hollwood's leading ladies is - as always - incisive (I've linked to page three, where the action is). She argues that Hollwood's leading ladies have become, well, anything but titillating:

"One could see it in the banal pack of glamazon young actresses on the red carpet at the Oscars -- with their parched, stylist-honed outfits, their bony Pilates arms, their immobilized faces and simpering smirks, and their vapid, perky voices. All of them were upstaged in an instant by Marion Cotillard, the best actress winner whose French sensuality and sparkling vitality simply leapt off the TV screen. In France, there's still a mystique about female sexuality, a quiet magnetism that has been completely lost in the U.S., where at least our major movie stars once had it."

And you know, she's totally right! Look at Renée, Cameron, and Nicole from this year's Academy Awards! Those cheekbones! Kidman denies having had botox done - puh-leaze! Have you ever seen a face that tight? 40 year old ladies don't look like that sans-botox.

This isn't to say that these women aren't under *intense* pressure to conform to these changing beauty standards (which, as Paglia notes, now include muscular arms and wrinkle-free, emotionless foreheads). But it is to say that this image is, well, not very hot. Perhaps its glamorous or fierce. But it's not bombshell.