"I never loved another person the way I loved myself. I never wanted a love that meant surrender of my self-possession. I saw what it did to other people when they loved another person the way I loved myself, and I didn't want that problem."
"When I'm caught between two evils, I generally like to take the one I never tried."
The American actress, singer, comedian and playwright Mae West (1893-1980)'s type as SEE is very clear. The status-seeking through famous partners and diamonds as status markers, the demonstrative physical presence, the strategic management of her own public image as the primary project of her life — "I'm my own original creation", she was reported as saying, the comfort with and enjoyment of men as instruments of pleasure and status simultaneously ("Men are my life, diamonds are my career"), the people-reading (not abstract-theoretical) intelligence applied to commercial opportunity — all these are SEE markers.
West didn't dominate through SLE-style physical force or aggressive intimidation, but through charm, sexual magnetism, wit, and the deliberate management of her own image as a brand. Her quote about love shows both the narcissistic qualities of the type (not necessarily clinically narcissist — West wasn't necessarily one) and SEE's attitude towards strong emotions and pathos (unvalued and contact/flexible Fe), despite the type's Fe being strong enough to occasionally utilize it strategically. In general, SEE is perhaps the most "emotivist", the most emotionally flexible type of the socion. This sometimes leads to people typing them as T types in dichotomic-MBTI, due to a lack of deep, persistent feelings, despite their clear people-orientation.
She began performing professionally at fourteen, spent years in vaudeville learning what worked and what didn't, wrote, produced Sex on Broadway in 1926, which got her convicted of obscenity (yeah, even the 1920'ies were far more puritan times than now), sentenced to ten days in prison, and emerged from jail a star. This is the SEE intelligence applied to publicity: recognizing that scandal, correctly managed, is indistinguishable from marketing. "I believe in censorship," she said later. "I made a fortune out of it." The Hays Code censors who tried to suppress her double entendres only succeeded in making them more famous. Every banned line became a legend. She understood that the audience's imagination, properly titillated, is more powerful than anything she could actually show them. "When you got the personality, you don't need the nudity."
West deliberately connected diamonds, wore them ostentatiously, and spoke about them with an enthusiasm, reflecting the type's infamous love for material bling.
Her management of men as a category was SEE's characteristic relationship with the social world organized around attractiveness. "Save a boyfriend for a rainy day — and another, in case it doesn't rain." "I only like two kinds of men: domestic and foreign." "All discarded lovers should be given a second chance, but with somebody else." The wit in each case works because it refuses the romantic convention that any individual man is irreplaceable, and replaces it with consumer Gamma quadra-style logic of variety and surplus.
Her willingness to challenge the moral guardians of society shows Talanov's style "anti-Di" traits, that are, intriguingly, shared with ILE. But while ILE is an intellectual non-conformist, SEE's non-coformism is more sensory and social. The type challenges moral authority not because it has thought through the logical foundations of the prevailing moral code and found them wanting, but because the moral code is experienced as an external constraint on sensory (including sexual) life, personal freedom, and social dominance — and SEE certainly does not accept external constraints on any of these things!
The late-life interest in metaphysics and spiritualism (she was genuinely interested in the occult and held seances) can be interpreted as SEE's suggestive Ni. At least, given her command of physical space and love for material goods, her S dichotomy is quite clear even in your standard dichotomic MBTI.
"Personality is the glitter that sends your little gleam across the footlights and the orchestra pit into that big black space where the audience is." She knew exactly what she had, what it was for, and how to use it. The audience received it and could not look away.
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