"twisted steel and sex appeal"

[James Landau]

I first encountered this expression as "spring steel and sex appeal", which
makes more sense than "twisted steel..."  Who wants to self-describe as
"twisted?"

The phrase occurred in a magazine article---unfortuantely I cannot recall
what magazine.  It was not applied to a male.  Rather the article was about
female cadets at West Point and the phrase was a quote from one such cadet
(cadette?) giving what she said was a general impression of female cadets.
It is of course possible that she was taking a phrase that she knew was
used to describe males and turning it around to describe females.

Google gives only 24 hits for "spring steel..." and 2990 for "twisted
steel", so I suppose 99% of the people who use the expression have twisted
minds.

Speaking of  Schwarzenegger, before he became Danny DeVito's sidekick he
became famous for the movie "Pumping Iron", the title of which baffled me
for the longest time until someone explained to me that "Pumping" was a
verb rather than an adjective.

OT:  The cantor at our synagogue referred to somebody who sent out "cards
with green plants embalmed, er embossed on them."  Someone accused him of a
Freudian slip.  I defended him by saying it was merely a malaprop.  The
cantor however insisted that it was indeed a Freudian slip rather than a
malaprop, leading to an interesting way of classifying verbal muffs.  (e.g.
has any collector of Bushisms accused the President of Freudian slips?)
Anyway, added the cantor, since the green plants were dead by the time they
were attached to the cards, they were indeed embalmed.

Speaking of slips, Barry Popik was NOT guilty of one when he typed "Kong
King".  That is the correct title of the Swedish version of the film.



> [Original Message]
> From: Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM>
> To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Date: 1/7/2006 6:11:49 PM
> Subject: "twisted steel and sex appeal"
>
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM>
> Subject:      "twisted steel and sex appeal"
>
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>
> The mention of "muscular Christianity" reminded me of this semi-jocular
cliche'. It generally appears in the form "I'm 180 pounds [or whatever]
of..." and is used when awesome specimens like myself wish to poke a little
hyperbolic fun at ourselves (showing by humor that we're "just like" lesser
guys), or when we wish to impress nifty chicks by emphasizing the obvious,
that we're not like those other guys at all.
>
>   I've a feeling, though, that some unauthorized individuals may be using
the expression, because a search reveals as many as 3000 raw Googlits, the
earliest from 1990. Can anybody antedate the phrase ?  (I'd be surprised if
it predates the weightlifting boom that started about 1979 and brought the
word "Schwarzenegger" into English.)
>