Sex and the Fertility Goddess: Why We're So Conflicted About Modern Femininity Part 2

So in honor of Halloween, I’m talking about sexualization. 

Actually.
...that is kinda clever

 On one hand, we live in the most promiscuous age in human history.

(I know. “Wait, as a responsible historian, shouldn't you assume that people of the past were essentially like us with the same desires and tendencies. ” You’re right. People have always had a natural inclination for promiscuity. But humans have also always had the capacity to foresee consequences. Great-grandma was not an idiot, and sex equaled pregnancy essentially up until 1918-ish when it became legal to sell condoms in the US.  

In case you missed the last two decades of “I Dreamed A Dream” anthems, being single and pregnant, while still traumatic today, was like the bullet-train to misery at almost any other place or time. So long story short: as a rule women, despite having fully-functioning hormone-producing ovaries, pretty much always waited to get married before they had sex until very recently.)

On the other hand, the sexualization of women is literally older than the alphabet. They think this statue is twenty thousand years older than the first glyphs used in either China or Mesopotamia. Notice how she doesn't have a face, but all the other important bits.

So it’s kind of a wash whether women face more pressure to be sexual creatures today than they did in the past. I guess, you might say that navigating the line between being sexy or chaste is itself the height of historical femininity, rather than femininity being one extreme of either option. I mean just take the cues from our ancient forebears. Aphrodite may have been the goddess of female seduction, and Artemis the goddess of virginity  but neither was the ultimate female deity in the Pantheon.  And it wasn’t just the Greeks who did that.

Essentially every religion makes a divine mother the the highest of all women, although she very often had more erotic and/or celibate peers. (Catholicism being the obvious outlier here with a more-than-chaste holy mother... but just go with me for a second here)  This mother goddess is also known for her creative and nurturing powers in most of her forms. Extending the physical title of mother to its symbolic meaning, these dieties preside over things like harvests, plantings, skills, crafts, wisdom, healing, and/or rainfall.  

Now obviously, I am not an adherent of ancient Egyptian/Norse/Shinto/Quechuan mythology. But how we frame our God/gods tells us something about how we view ourselves. And our modern goddesses are not maternal. Collectively we give a lot of attention to the straight-up sexpot aspect of femininity in whatever it's current popstar incarnation--mostly in reverence for the female body rather than female creative genius.

And I think that’s reason number two that we’re so conflicted about femininity. Our cultural paragons for femininity are beautiful but infertile. They are entertainers, repeating the words that someone else gave them. They have their fame for performing rather than writing, making, shaping, growing, creating.

And that’s the real crime of modern sexualization.  It's not that there is anything inherently wrong with acknowledging/talking about/celebrating the female aesthetic. But women, collectively have become like roses. It’s not that we haven’t always been valued for our form, but we also used to be praised for our function. In pursuit of  modern ideals we’ve lost our fragrance and fruit and are left only with quickly-fading petals. There is no lingering perfume or sustenance in our exemplary females.

(Side note to explain that the ability to produce edible, super-nutrient dense rosehips have largely been bred out of roses in preference for depth of color and/or vase life for the blooms. And your Valentine’s bouquet probably smelled like nothing so...sorry Juliet, roses don't smell as sweet. )  

Women are meant to be mothers, and not limited to the literal sense.  We are nurturers, healers, shelterers, but above all creators. Fertile, not just in the width of our hips, but in the abundance we produce from the pain we are willing to endure.

We labor. We create.  That’s what femininity is supposed to mean. A little sexiness is inherent in our power but that's merely a consequence. The real goal is being powerful. So go be awesome, you beautiful mother goddesses....and midwives. 

But that's for Part 3.

-Stephanie