Chelsea's no sex symbol

She's bright, the daughter of a former president, and attractive (sort of). But Chelsea Clinton is no sex symbol

We're used to swallowing plenty in the cause of image enhancement. Let's see: lately there's been the Nicole and Robbie are-they-or-aren't-they moment (As If); Dido continues to feign as much working class attitude as you can muster when you're called Florian etc; and Naomi had a recent stab at notching up some intellectual points with that Bill Clinton photo op.

We know the rules back to front. If a person in the public eye is looking a bit short on adult appeal they get themselves nominated Rear of the Year; if they're somewhat lacking in street cred they take a well-publicised spin round the Notting Hill Carnival; and if they need a bit of an all-round leg-up there's always the walkout with Mick Jagger.

There are currently more officially recognised strategies for manipulating public profiles than there are people to take advantage of them and just how far the publicists and marketing people are prepared to go is anyone's guess. Who's to say that the whole Kylie bottom fixation wasn't dreamt up at a strategy weekend in the summer of 2000? What if Madonna's people recommended "a major geographical relocation, ideally to Europe," back in the mid-90s. ("Memo to senior advisers: see scope for establishing Madonna as Europe-based mother confessor for visiting American celebrities.")

However, there is such a thing as an image shift too far and when we get a whiff of one we tend to be rather unforgiving, as is the case with the attempted sexing up of Chelsea Clinton.

You know when the celebrity spinners have been thrown a really tough one because straight off they panic and go in with the big guns. So it was that in January Chelsea turned up in the front row of the Versace couture show, sandwiched between Gwyneth Paltrow and Madonna and, despite the makeover, cut the appearance of a Heat magazine raffle winner. Since then she's been photographed in London with Sophie Dahl, Destiny's Child, Kevin Spacey and pretty much anyone passing through who counts as A list and fashionable.

Now the rebranding is supposedly complete with the publication of Vanity Fair's June issue containing a celebration of Chelsea, the "sex symbol" and "the new JFK Jr" no less. Chelsea is 22, apparently bright, certainly an Oxford graduate student and the daughter of an ex-president, but one thing she emphatically ain't is a sex symbol. This is not to say that she isn't attractive - although if she is then it's in that special way that people claim Camilla Parker Bowles to be, ie, only discernible in the flesh . But to suggest she is the embodiment of our collective sexual fantasies is a bit like calling her dad a moral giant.

It may seem harsh to jeer at the new improved Chelsea but what the hell. The rot has to stop somewhere and when glossies start elevating women to the rank of sex symbol just because they've got a couple of bodyguards and an "in" with Donatella, that's when it's time to address the difference between power, connections and sex appeal.

This one is surprisingly simple. Where men are concerned a liberal amount of power and connections does magically convert into sex appeal in nine out of 10 cases, with or without the traditional bonuses of reasonable looks and charm (see Bernie Ecclestone's success with the opposite sex, or Bill's, for that matter).

Women, on the other hand, can be as well set up as Christina Onassis and still fail to ignite the necessary interest (you may remember that Christina resorted to paying her ex for sex - something that not even David Mellor was reduced to). There are, of course, exceptions, but on the whole you'll find that being boring, pompous, sexually inadequate and plagued with halitosis is no obstacle to the love of a focused woman, whereas even the hint of a hairy chin is too much for most male fortune seekers.

In the same way a male sex symbol needs to be attractive but his personality shouldn't ever be an issue. Female sex symbols, though, have to be fabulously sexy to both men and women, and therefore gorgeous, and pretty much beyond reproach. This explains why female sex symbols are in such short supply and Nigella is in such demand. No one pretends that Gwyneth is a sex symbol (too whiney) or Madonna (too sinewy) or Victoria Beckham (please). So why, pray, Chelsea? And if the need to identify a new sex symbol among the ranks of the young, free and spectacularly well connected is so overwhelming, then of course it has to be Zara Phillips.

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