Being sexy is actually a pretty old fashioned concept—the word has been around since the turn of the twentieth century. Take the noun sex and add the –y suffix and you have an adjective to describe something which is sexually appealing. In 1905, the monthly journal The Review of Reviews used the word in a book review: “As one good lady said with a sigh of relief on laying down one of Allen Raine’s stories—‘nothing sexy in her books’”. Here was its first appearance in English print.
Does this mean nothing sexy was going on in society before this time? Well, we know plenty of sexy things have happened in history, so the answer is probably no, but before sexy there was sexful (appearing in the 1896 novel Yellow Aster), and before that there was only its synonyms.
The word is often used positively to describe a desirable appearance or, as the quote above shows, in the past it was a quality sometimes treated with disdain. In 1912 the Colorado Springs Gazette had its own interpretation: “If a woman is genuinely keen to win the affections of a man she is a universal woman of the real sexy sort”. These days, thankfully, men might also associate the word sexy with women who are self-confident or successful.
But does a man who is sexy have the same qualities as a woman who is sexy? Look at these sentences:
- The man looked across the room and saw a woman sitting with her drink. Incredibly sexy, he thought.
And here:
- The woman looked across the room and saw a man sitting with his drink. Incredibly sexy, she thought.
Do your associations with the word change when the gender roles are swapped?
Not only applied to the topic of people, sexy can also be used as an adjective to describe something that excites interest: “Corn and soybeans may not sound as sexy as electronics or aerospace” (Wall St. Jrnl. 22 Sept. 1/6, 1970), or: “I intend to make sure that we look beyond the pretty screens and sexy specifications to concentrate on what really matters to..the user” (What Personal Computer Dec. 7/1, 1991).
Sexy across cultures
In some cultures, the concept of sexy is forbidden. In Japanese popular culture, it is often not as desirable as being cute. In many Western countries, sexy is splashed across the media – magazines, TV, music (and as early as 1923, the Los Angeles Times was criticizing the movie industry: “Motion-picture directors are suffering from..an obsession for sexy bare shoulders and sexy love-making”). In these cultures, the pressure for people to be sexy can be intense, but in this digital age where airbrushing is used extensively, it’s becoming a thing of fantasy.
Sexy translations
This is an English word that has entered into many other languages, but when translating it, there may be more appropriate terms in the target language depending on the context. Take Japanese as an example. If you wanted to say “She is sexy”, you could say “Kanojo wa sekushii” (lit: “She sexy”), but if you translate the quote shown above from What Personal Computer, it wouldn’t make any sense to use sekushii here, since in Japanese sekushii is only used a sexual context.
Sexy has been around for a while now and, unlike its short-lived predecessor sexful, it doesn’t show any signs of going out of fashion.
