Womanly VS Sexy

This weekend I was in bed with my laptop in the morning watching “Witness” one of my favorite movies. I bought the special edition DVD last week so that I could see the documentary on the making of. The director, Peter Wier spoke about the difficulty of casting the Amish female lead part. He said that he screened several young girls who were attractive enough but too hip for the part and who were quote “Sexy but not womanly.” That really impressed me. He said that when he thought of the word womanly, Italian women came to mind. And so they sent the casting director to Italy to find someone. By then Kelly McGillis had already arrived on the set and nailed it. The differentiation between womanly and sexy really grabbed me and I guess I was just also pleased to hear that a man really appreciated that or even noticed the difference. It was one of the many appealing aspects of Kelly McGillis’ portrayal of an Amish woman. Everything that women usually add to themselves in order to complete the image of “woman” in their mind is stripped away in Amish culture. It lets you see a woman as she is. The sexy part, which I believe is a social construction parlayed into a pervasive marketing tool to which I claim no considerable resistance is like the additives and preservatives found in pure food. Sensuality which I believe is natural is not exactly the same as sexiness. And womanliness is something else again. Apparently, according to Weir not all women are womanly just by default of being female. I began to wonder about the women I know who I feel are womanly and what that might mean to me.