Feeling Good in Brazil

In Brazil, we are told, vanity, as an excessive pride in one's appearance, is not viewed as a negative attribute. All the people, men as well as women, are expected to go to great lengths to look good. As a result of the tremendous pressure to look slim, beautiful and young, Brazilian women were reported in 2014 to spend eleven times as much on beauty products as British women.

Yet even in this society which worships the youthful figure, there are women who want their sisters who are no longer young and slim, to feel beautiful and sexually attractive without the need to have a tantalisingly elusive body form, or undergoing surgery.

Silk: Desirable and Decadent?

In its long history of perhaps more than five thousand years silk has been prized for its beauty, preserved as a state secret, reserved for royalty and condemned as decadent. Above all, it has been associated with women and feminine allure. Said to have been introduced by the Chinese Silk Goddess, Lady Hsi-Ling-Shih, wife of the mythical Yellow Emperor in about 3000 BCE, silkworm farming was for long ages restricted to women.

Silk clothes became so popular among high society that this 'useless luxury product' was reserved by law for use only by the imperial family. Later, when silk exports reached Europe, the Roman Senate, anxious to stem the flow of gold to the East, declared the wearing of silk clothes to be decadent and immoral. Few material substances, have exhibited greater power to excite human passions than this product of a humble worm.