“I think the idealization of women is indigenous to men.
There are various ways of idealizing women, especially sexually,
based in almost every case on their inaccessibility. When a woman
functions as an unobtainable love object, then she takes on a mythical
quality. You can see this principle functioning as a sales device in
advertising and in places like Playboy magazine. Almost every movie
you see has this quality, because you can’t embrace the image on the
screen. Thousands of novels use this principle, because you can’t
embrace a printed image on a page.”
– James Dickey,
Self Interviews, p. 153