What does it imply to be a human image, of intercourse or anything? The loss of life of Raquel Welch at 82 invitations us to consider what occurs to our intercourse symbols once they age. What’s, in any case, the cultural longevity of the bombshell, the femme fatale? We are likely to assume that they relinquish this standing. Ms. Welch didn’t. She maintained it, alongside together with her dignity. How is that this potential?

Ms. Welch was not primarily an actress, though she acted in dozens of films. She was an icon of a sure style, a display screen siren of the sexual revolution. Her identify grew to become synonymous with a industrial type of eroticism, based mostly on her specific model of lush magnificence: hourglass determine, almond-shaped darkish eyes, plentiful hair and that well-known, equally plentiful bosom.

Essentially the most indelible picture of Ms. Welch’s early profession is definitely the well-known poster from 1966, promoting her function as Loana, the cave girl in “One Million Years B.C.” In it, she stands on some ancient-looking panorama of sand and rocks, tawny hair over one shoulder, clad in a tattered deerskin bikini. Her pose is without delay defiant and welcoming — arms outstretched, legs aside — and a fantasy of bodily perfection from civilization’s prerepressive “id,” seemingly unhindered by the fashionable constraints of clothes or sexual prudery.

With that function (for which she spoke nearly no traces), Ms. Welch acquired the picture she would by no means shake: a girl of almost primitive, animalistic attract, a residing pinup. The New York Occasions assessment of the movie hailed Ms. Welch as “a wonderful, respiration monument to womanhood,” and therein lay the paradox of her profession: Monuments don’t breathe, and so they don’t age, both.

Whereas different Hollywood actresses got here up within the enterprise by means of the bikini function, Ms. Welch was uncommon in that she remained so solidly fastened inside the class. Marilyn Monroe was a Playboy cowl mannequin who developed right into a bona fide film star throughout her transient life. Ditto for Jayne Mansfield. Sophia Loren — whose magnificence was fairly just like Ms. Welch’s — efficiently negotiated a stellar dramatic profession. And Jane Fonda completely transcended her Barbarella sexpot poster days to grow to be an acclaimed actress.

Why then did Ms. Welch stay in our creativeness as Loana on the poster, even after successful a Golden Globe in 1973 for her function in “The Three Musketeers”? To make sure, she might not have shared these different actresses’ stage expertise, however there’s one thing else. In some way, Ms. Welch match completely into a really particular American imaginative and prescient of consumable feminine sexuality, a imaginative and prescient born within the late ’60s however which took root within the ’70s.

Partially it’s a glance — all hair and cleavage — but in addition an angle. Objectified, sure, however self-aware. Quietly assured, even armored in her drop-dead sexiness, out there however defiant. The closest comparable up to date is likely to be Kim Kardashian, who’s a star with out being an actor, a commodity creating her personal model — Pygmalion and Galatea in a single.

To look at Ms. Welch banter with Johnny Carson on his present in 1968 is to see her stroll this tightrope. Earlier than she comes onstage, Mr. Carson and his sidekick, Ed McMahon, stammer collectively about how unnerving they discover her magnificence. Mr. McMahon jokes nervously about how seeing Ms. Welch backstage had unhinged him utterly. Usually glib, Mr. Carson struggles for phrases to explain her, whereas making the common hand gesture for large breasts. When Ms. Welch strides onstage coated up in a high-necked, floor-length gown of angelic white (a sight gag that implies all three are in on the joke), the 2 males appear undone by her soft-spoken poise. Requested about being a intercourse image, she says with devastating simplicity, “You’ll be able to’t struggle a picture.”

And he or she by no means did. As an alternative, Ms. Welch leaned into it and one way or the other nature helped her alongside. Though she might have had some “exterior” assist sustaining her youthful face and determine, Ms. Welch by no means seemed unnatural or “pulled.” As an alternative, she seemed recognizably like herself till the top. Voluptuous, chiseled, with a face-framing auburn mane.

And, cleverly, she capitalized on that look by advertising and marketing a model of it to different girls within the type of her profitable line of Raquel Welch wigs, which she hawked on QVC. The web site for her wigs, all approximating her personal hairstyles, featured a lineup of fashions who resembled Ms. Welch bodily, interspersed with images of Ms. Welch herself carrying the wigs. The message was clear: Purchase this simulacrum of a part of my physique and be a part of me on this array of beauties. A complete acceptance, even embrace of the self-fetishizing, body-fragmenting on the coronary heart of a lot magnificence tradition.

That this message was nonetheless viable in any respect when Ms. Welch was over 80 is testomony to her distinctive standing. She might by no means have been a full-blown film star, however Ms. Welch was a intercourse image all her life. It’s not clear that that is fascinating and even potential for different girls. And plenty of have suffered in our ageist tradition for seeming to attempt too exhausting to protect their attraction after a sure age (even when they may truly be artistically reinventing themselves: See Madonna at this yr’s Grammys).

A number of notable celebrities have achieved related longevity. Rita Moreno is a pistol at 90. Ms. Fonda is elegant at 85. Ms. Loren is an elder stateswoman of glamour at 88. However these girls don’t do “va-va-voom” any longer. They don’t seem to be self-conscious commodities, or “respiration monuments.” That title belonged solely to Raquel Welch; it might retire together with her passing — and that’s in all probability for the very best.