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Authors: Betsy Prioleau
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sports and nicknamed “Chubs.”
He’s open about the scars and therapy, and his lovers are both protective and committed, with Anjelica Huston staying with him for seventeen years. Although he cheated openly on model-actress Cynthia Basinet, she explained why she couldn’t leave him: “I saw such a wonderful vulnerable person . . . I vowed never to hurt him.” It was, she said, part of “his spell,” the “old Jack Magic.”
The more extreme the flaws, the greater the need for compensatory attractions. Russian writer Ivan Turgenev may be one of the least heroic yet most lovable ladies’ men of the nineteenth century. Author of such masterpieces as Fathers and Sons and A Month in the Country , he was plagued with neuroses, having been brutalized by a sadistic mother who faked death scenes to get her way. He was a weak-kneed, nervous “gentle giant,” prone to hypochondria, hallucinations, and melancholy.
Nor did he strike a bold figure. Tall and stoop-shoulded, he had grayish eyes that gazed dreamily out of a “round, mild, handsome,” somewhat feminine face. But he possessed surprising reserves of strength and an audacious, trailblazing genius. Ignoring his mother’s curses, he expatriated, broke rank, and became a major “innovator” of Russian literature.
His weak/strong alloy, among other charms, made him a heart-stopper. Seduced by a chambermaid at age fifteen, Turgenev was avalanched by women, among them a Berlin mother of four, an aristocrat who called him her “Christ,” and quintessentially, mezzo-soprano Pauline Viardot. She was besieged by suitors, but he scattered them all with his gifts and white-lightning compound of frailty and personal force. Viardot took him home to France, where she lived with him and her husband in a lifelong ménage à trois.
Despite the propaganda, bulletproof self-esteem and a perfect package aren’t the ticket. It’s an “enigmatic tang” of injury, a pinch of flaw in the confidence brew that fells women every time.
Charisma: Refining the Definition
Women can just feel a ladies’ man on the premises. Suddenly the room is charged with ions and thrumming with sexual tension and promise. He doesn’t need every charisma attribute: joie de vivre , intensity, creativity, titanic libido, tear-away originality, fondness for women, or manly self-esteem tinged with androgyny and fallibility. A great lover can throw sparks with just a few choice allures; they are that potent.
Erotic charisma, though, isn’t easily coded and formulated. Mysteries remain. Why, for example, are men like Al Gore, Bill Gates, and comedian Robin Williams non-sizzlers when they fit the criteria? Why don’t the standard recipes—big self-belief, expressivity, rapport, and communication skills—work? And what about the evolutionary psychologists’ precepts, such as status, wealth, and stability?
The topic, as James M. Donovan highlights in the Journal of Scientific Exploration , is largely unexplored. Charisma, he writes, is “much more bizarre than commonly assumed,” and bears little relation to any special personality type. Scholars agree: it’s been relegated, they say, “to the back burner of research,” and confusion reigns—even about the definition of the word. We can tease out traits, float theories, but we can’t demystify that magic radiance—yet.
What we can say for sure, though, is that we know charisma when we see it, and are bespelled. When women encounter a magnetic man, they imbue him (similar to transference in psychotherapy) with their “forbidden impulses and secret wishes,” investing him with what they crave and aren’t getting. As such, the ladies’ man is a valuable resource, a Rorschach of women’s deepest, unmet desires.
Can men en masse acquire charisma, or is it an innate “gift” as the ancients believed? I ask Rick the fire captain, and he says he knows only one thing: you can’t fake it. Biologist Amotz Zahavi and others have confirmed
He’s open about the scars and therapy, and his lovers are both protective and committed, with Anjelica Huston staying with him for seventeen years. Although he cheated openly on model-actress Cynthia Basinet, she explained why she couldn’t leave him: “I saw such a wonderful vulnerable person . . . I vowed never to hurt him.” It was, she said, part of “his spell,” the “old Jack Magic.”
The more extreme the flaws, the greater the need for compensatory attractions. Russian writer Ivan Turgenev may be one of the least heroic yet most lovable ladies’ men of the nineteenth century. Author of such masterpieces as Fathers and Sons and A Month in the Country , he was plagued with neuroses, having been brutalized by a sadistic mother who faked death scenes to get her way. He was a weak-kneed, nervous “gentle giant,” prone to hypochondria, hallucinations, and melancholy.
Nor did he strike a bold figure. Tall and stoop-shoulded, he had grayish eyes that gazed dreamily out of a “round, mild, handsome,” somewhat feminine face. But he possessed surprising reserves of strength and an audacious, trailblazing genius. Ignoring his mother’s curses, he expatriated, broke rank, and became a major “innovator” of Russian literature.
His weak/strong alloy, among other charms, made him a heart-stopper. Seduced by a chambermaid at age fifteen, Turgenev was avalanched by women, among them a Berlin mother of four, an aristocrat who called him her “Christ,” and quintessentially, mezzo-soprano Pauline Viardot. She was besieged by suitors, but he scattered them all with his gifts and white-lightning compound of frailty and personal force. Viardot took him home to France, where she lived with him and her husband in a lifelong ménage à trois.
Despite the propaganda, bulletproof self-esteem and a perfect package aren’t the ticket. It’s an “enigmatic tang” of injury, a pinch of flaw in the confidence brew that fells women every time.
Charisma: Refining the Definition
Women can just feel a ladies’ man on the premises. Suddenly the room is charged with ions and thrumming with sexual tension and promise. He doesn’t need every charisma attribute: joie de vivre , intensity, creativity, titanic libido, tear-away originality, fondness for women, or manly self-esteem tinged with androgyny and fallibility. A great lover can throw sparks with just a few choice allures; they are that potent.
Erotic charisma, though, isn’t easily coded and formulated. Mysteries remain. Why, for example, are men like Al Gore, Bill Gates, and comedian Robin Williams non-sizzlers when they fit the criteria? Why don’t the standard recipes—big self-belief, expressivity, rapport, and communication skills—work? And what about the evolutionary psychologists’ precepts, such as status, wealth, and stability?
The topic, as James M. Donovan highlights in the Journal of Scientific Exploration , is largely unexplored. Charisma, he writes, is “much more bizarre than commonly assumed,” and bears little relation to any special personality type. Scholars agree: it’s been relegated, they say, “to the back burner of research,” and confusion reigns—even about the definition of the word. We can tease out traits, float theories, but we can’t demystify that magic radiance—yet.
What we can say for sure, though, is that we know charisma when we see it, and are bespelled. When women encounter a magnetic man, they imbue him (similar to transference in psychotherapy) with their “forbidden impulses and secret wishes,” investing him with what they crave and aren’t getting. As such, the ladies’ man is a valuable resource, a Rorschach of women’s deepest, unmet desires.
Can men en masse acquire charisma, or is it an innate “gift” as the ancients believed? I ask Rick the fire captain, and he says he knows only one thing: you can’t fake it. Biologist Amotz Zahavi and others have confirmed
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