The Femme Fatale and the Bad Boy are Sister and Brother

[Jackson Burnett]

You've met her.  Maybe not in person, but she appears in almost every James M. Cain and Raymond Chandler novel.  Pulp fiction would have never gained an audience without her.  She appears in movies and in novels of all types today.  The femme fatale -- the sexy, seductive woman who leads men to destruction.

Women wonder why men are so stupid they can't recognize her for what she really is.

You've met him.  Maybe not in fiction, but in real life.  In high school, he drove his muscle car too fast.  He might have smoked cigarettes or messed a little with illicit drugs.  He never follows the rules;  only his own.  There is a certain violence about him, either expressed or just below the surface.  In literature, he is Stanley Kowalski.  He appears regularly in romance novels and in almost every motorcycle movie.  The bad boy -- the sexy, seductive boy/man who lives close to danger.

Men wonder why women are so stupid they can't recognize him for what he really is.

The appeal of the femme fatale and the bad boy is the same:  danger.  

A relationship with a femme fatale may lead to physical, spiritual, or financial destruction.  A relationship with a bad boy may lead to lead to death and humiliation.

Neither will ever be June Cleaver baking cookies or Ward Cleaver, smoking his pipe and reading the newspaper and waiting for Wally and the Beaver to get home from school.  Both will always be more intriguing.

The risk of danger and destruction make the femme fatale and the bad boy sexually exciting.

The femme fatale and the bad boy are truly sister and brother.

 

Jackson Burnett, author of The Past Never Ends  https://www.amazon.com/author/jacksonburnett