Arianna Huffington: Sex Symbol?

"Legendarily coiffed, she's as fond of girlish ruffles and racy black lace as she is of pantsuits—and is not above flaunting her yoga-toned limbs." If you think that sentence describes, oh, Gwen Stefani, you'd be wrong. She is ... Arianna Huffington, sex symbol. "Yes, you read that right. Sex symbol," writes Hephzibah Anderson in her new AdWeek column, "Sex and the Media." In it, Anderson tracks Huffington's success from the late '60s, when she was Arianna Stassinopoulos at Cambridge, a "tall, glam Greek" in an Alfa Romeo.

When she met writer Bernard Levin, she was smitten and "prepped for their first date by studying topical talking points—a classic courtesan touch." In fact, Anderson argues, it's by using the "seductive and tantalizing tricks of a modern-day courtesan" that Huffington has gotten to where she is today. "She harnesses [her sex appeal], inhabits it, makes it fully her own. And like a true courtesan, those charms are ultimately self-serving." Click to read the entire column. (More Arianna Huffington stories.)