Sex bomb

Jayne Mansfield Sex Bomb (1957)

Pin-up girl riding a bomb on a B-17 bomber

Sexbombe , a compound of sex and bomb , is a colloquial (and sometimes disrespectful) term used in German-speaking countries since the 1950s for a woman with a distinctly feminine, striking body shape, especially a large, luscious breast and bulging hips, but as narrow as possible Waist (partly achieved by constricting corsets) - and with great sexual charisma .

Famous representatives were mainly among film stars such as Jayne Mansfield , Jane Russell , Rita Hayworth , Marilyn Monroe , Gina Lollobrigida , Sophia Loren and Brigitte Bardot , who all skillfully and consciously flaunted their 'curves' and their charisma in various films set the scene (and should set!). Many of these stars - like the type of 'sex bomb' itself - are still considered to be a crush and idol of many men.

In the English-speaking world, the term sex bomb is less common. The more frequently used word bombshell (“bomb” or “grenade”) describes a sensational, surprising effect and is also used to refer to the explosive power that men assume in the corresponding female shell. Bombshell was the name of a 1933 Hollywood film starring Jean Harlow . During the Second World War it was also common on the American side to decorate the noses of military aircraft in particular with pin-up pictures (cf. nose art ) , which embodied the term sex bomb in that sense. The concept of chemical warfare with sexually active substances, immortalized in literature by Stanislaw Lem in the Futurological Congress, was planned as a sex bomb approach in the USA and was awarded the Ig Nobel Prize.

Similarly, in German Granate was used in youth for an attractive young woman or its effect on men. Regardless, Welsh singer Tom Jones had a hit in 2000 with the song Sex Bomb . The expression sex-bomba is also found in Slavic languages.

See also

• Blonde-haired stereotypes
• Sex symbol
• Femme fatale
• Dragon Lady
• Heavy hum

literature

• Karl Grammer: Signals of love. The biological laws of partnership . dtv 34180, Munich 2002, ISBN 978-3-423-34180-6 .
• Elke Müller-Mees: The aggressive woman . Weitbrecht , Stuttgart 1993, ISBN 3-522-71350-8 .
• Jürgen Trimborn: The pose as a means of staging the sex bomb in American films of the fifties and sixties . Leppin, Cologne 1997, ISBN 3-9804380-6-6 .

Web links

Wiktionary: Sex bomb  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

• The legend Marilyn Monroe
• Sex Bomb (film with Jean Harlow)
• Wolf Wagner: Social change and the body ideal (PDF; 249 kB)
• Killer women on the go . In: Der Spiegel . No. 43 , 1991, pp. 294 ( Online - Oct. 21, 1991 ).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Peter Braun: Personal designations . In: Series German linguistics . tape 189 . Niemeyer, Tübingen 1997, ISBN 3-484-31189-4 .
2. ^ Stephanie Ann Smith, Household Words . University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, Minn. 2006, ISBN 0-8166-4553-1 .
3. ^ Rudolf Muhr, Bernhard Kettemann: Eurospeak . In: Austrian German: Language of the Present . tape 1 . Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2002, ISBN 3-631-39694-5 .