Screwtape Letters
",,,,The age of
jazz has succeeded the age of the waltz, and we now teach men
to like
women whose bodies are scarcely distinguishable from those of boys. Since
this is a kind of
beauty even more transitory than most, we thus aggravate the female's chronic
horror of growing
old (with many excellent results) and render her less willing and less able to
bear children.
And that is not all. We have engineered a great increase in the license which
society allows
to the representation of the apparent nude (not the real nude) in art, and its
exhibition on
the stage or the bathing beach. It is all a fake, of course; the figures in
the popular art
are falsely drawn; the real women in bathing suits or tights are actually
pinched in and
propped up to make them appear firmer and more slender and more boyish than
nature allows a
full-grown woman to be. Yet at the same time, the modern world is taught to
believe that is
being "frank" and "healthy" and getting back to nature. As a result we are
more and more
directing the desires of men to something which does not exist—making the
role of the eye
in sexuality more and more important and at the same time making its demands
more and more
impossible. What follows you can easily forecast!" pgs. 102-103
From Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis. Copyrighted 1948.
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Last Modified: 2 November 2024 EST
