To describe feminine coquetry would oblige me to descend to banality. If we go to a ball or a fashionable _soirée_, if we observe women at the theater, their toilettes, their looks and expressions, or if we read a novel by Guy de Maupassant, "Fort Comme la Mort," or "Nôtre Coeur," for example, we can study all the degrees and all the degeneration of this part of the sexual psychology of women. Many of them have such bad taste that they transform themselves into caricatures; dye their hair, paint their eyebrows and lips to give themselves the appearance of what they are not, or to make themselves appear young and beautiful. These artifices of civilized countries resemble the tattooing, nose-rings, etc., with which savage women adorn themselves. The latter are represented by earrings, bracelets and necklaces. All these customs constitute irradiations of the sexual appetite or the desire to please men. Male sexual inverts (vide Chap. VIII) also practice them, and often also certain dandies with otherwise normal sexual instincts. =The Pornographic Spirit in Woman.=--This is absolutely contrary to the normal feminine nature, which cannot be said of eroticism. Among prostitutes, as we have seen, the pornographic spirit is only the echo of their male companions, and in spite of this, we still find a vestige of modesty even in them. No doubt, in very erotic women, sexual excitations may lead to indecent acts and expressions, but these are rare exceptions and of a pathological nature. Natural feminine eroticism, not artificially perverted, only shows itself openly in complete intimacy, and even here modesty and the æsthetic sense of woman correct and attenuate it. Normally, all obscenity and cynicism disgusts women and only inspires them with contempt for the male sex. On the other hand, they are easily stimulated to eroticism by pictures or novels, if they are sufficiently æsthetic, or even moral. This is a great danger for both sexes, especially for woman--eroticism dissimulated under hypocritical forms, and intended to idealize dishonest intentions (vide de Maupassant: "_Ce Cochon de Morin_"). =Modesty and Prudery in Woman.=--In woman the sentiments of modesty and prudery have a peculiar character, which results from her natural disgust for pornography on the one hand, and also from her attachment to fashion and prejudice. Many women have a perfect terror of exposing certain parts of their body, even to a medical man. This fact depends on convention, and sometimes on the absence or perversion of sexual feelings. Brought up to prudery, sometimes to an absurd extent as in England, these women lose their natural feeling and often suffer from the excitation, indignation, and perpetual fright, which result from it. The exaggerations of prudery, moreover, easily lead to opposite excesses, or else degenerate into hypocrisy. The prude is ashamed of the most natural things, and undergoes continual torment.