chapter 2 The Great Gatsby 26

Myrtle is described as not particularly pretty. None-the-less, what she lacks in real beauty is made up for with sexual attraction. Myrtle is voluptuous or "thickish"..... she is "smouldering"

She was in the middle thirties, and faintly stout, but she carried her surplus flesh sensuously as some women can. Her face, above a spotted dress of dark blue crepe-de-chine, contained no facet or gleam of beauty, but there was an immediately perceptible vitality about her as if the nerves of her body were continually smouldering. She smiled slowly and, walking through her husband as if he were a ghost, shook hands with Tom, looking him flush in the eye. Then she wet her lips, and without turning around spoke to her husband in a soft, coarse voice: