This tiny tome doesn't take long to read. And while the examples it casts—of Bardot and her films—are no longer contemporaneous to us, the key points, it seems, remain true: There's something in the Lolita that's both infuriating and compelling because she is a blooming woman that men don't (yet) have rightful access to.

Bardot, whose sexuality was artless and frank, retains the quality of a young girl untouched by experience; she isn't answerable to a male gaze even if she was springboarded into fame for it. Her body is hers, her decisions to make love or engage men are hers; for her, then, a man is as much an object as a woman typically is. Her body undressed is not a tool of submissive seduction; it is her body, she who remains the actor, she who decides whether to offer it or dance away.

This conflict is what Beauvoir claims contributed to so much moral reproach when BB's star was born: Latin countries couldn't deal with the notion of a woman without artifice (which, while implying intelligence, also implies a subjugated conniving which is weirdly easier for the patriarchy to swallow), while Americans accept her wholeheartedly because they accept the guileless woman in theory if not always in fact.

I haven't decided to what degree I agree with all this or find it applicable to now. But it does add nuance to the way things have gone since. The patriarchy has bigger problems than the sexy gamine; it's now being asked to deal with the fact of its artifice-peddling women angrily tearing away their many corsets. Bardot in her roles never struck one as motivated to either play by or flout the rules; she simply existed despite them with complete peace of mind (even if only to be tamed by a good strong man, per narrative demands).

Maybe there's something here that can be learned—barring that parenthesis.

This book is so creepy.