The eroticism of Theda Bara was generalised, with no particular item or mode of behaviour coming in for particular emphasis. In any event her breasts were not vast, so there was little scope for concentration on them!

Not so with Jean Harlow. This latter actress usually gets the credit for focussing the erotic interest, for the first time on the screen, on a woman's breasts. At the end of the nineteen twenties it was the flat-chested flappers who symbolised screen sex. Harlow's breasts were only large (34-inch bust) compared to the boyish females who had appeared on the screen before her- but she heaved up her breasts and used them to advantage.

Harlow was said to be a compulsive exhibitionist, a "sexual provocatrice who knew the effect her body made on men." Her nipples were supposed to expand as the room temperature went up; and before a Press conference she would rub them with ice.