An Open Letter To The People Who Forgot My Snake Pubes
By Medusa
I’ll be honest with you: I wasn’t going to write this letter. It has been a long 3000 years and I really didn’t want to have to weigh in on yet another usage of my likeness. I dropped my lawsuit against Versace decades ago. I never even saw Clash of the Titans. I am tired.
But then I saw an article announcing that a seven-foot-tall nude sculpture of me holding the decapitated head of Perseus would be installed across the street from Manhattan’s criminal courthouse. Well, as you can imagine, my interest was piqued. And I would be lying if I said that I wasn’t a touch optimistic at the righteous role reversal. So I clicked on the link to get a glimpse of this long overdue atonement. And I have one question:
Where the fuck are my snake pubes?
It’s not that I don’t appreciate the artist’s intent. According to the article, Luciano Garbati created this piece in 2008 in response to questions he had about my characterization throughout history. And let’s be clear: those questions were VERY VALID. Frankly I’m disappointed that it took men three millenia to realize that a young woman raped by a megalomaniacal god, eternally punished for that rape by a different megalomaniacal god, and then brutally murdered at the behest of a megalomaniacal king might not be the villain in this particular story, but I digress.
When Garbati finally realized this travesty he decided to do something about it, creating this sculpture which has subsequently gone viral–photographed and tweeted and now it will be placed across the street from the criminal courthouse in New York City as part of a wider artist-led initiative to challenge classical imagery and its roles in present culture.
It’s all great, really, except for the fact that this statue is not me. It is a man’s version of me, which is precisely how I got into this predicament to begin with.
Don’t get me wrong, the statue is gorgeous–resolute and somber and my ass looks amazing. But she doesn’t have pubic hair. From what I can see, she barely has a vulva. So you’ll forgive me if I’m a bit confused when I hear that my likeness is being trumpeted as a symbol of feminist rage against the subjugation of women’s bodies by a male-dominated society only to discover this likeness reinforces an image of female bodies that’s subjugated by the male-dominated gaze.
Yes, I know female pubic hair might still make people uncomfortable. Snake pubic hair, probably even moreso. But we can all agree that adult women have pubic hair, right? This isn’t news. And, yes, due to my current circumstances that pubic hair is reptilian, but that doesn’t change the fact that it exists. It is there. It is a part of me.
Yet, there I am. Snake-less.
Now, am I surprised that after being immortalized due to a sexual assault I am now finally being empowered only by being depicted as virtually sexless? I’ll be honest with you: NOT REALLY. I’m very familiar with Western culture’s long-standing issue with female pubic hair. I mean, look at almost any piece of art created in the last 3000 years: hairless women are depicted as the sexual ideal, the epitome of beauty. Hirsute women? Not so much.
But the thing is, the vast majority of those paintings and statues were created by men. And their omission of female pubic hair wasn’t a mistake. It wasn’t even about enforcing some artificial beauty standard. It was about codifying a power dynamic, controlling the narrative. And if history has taught us anything it’s that men love to control the narrative. Why the hell else do you think I survived my rape and transformation into a gorgo only to go on to be the villain in 3000 years worth of books and songs and bad action films?
And honestly, that’s what’s so exhausting about this whole thing. From the smooth marble vulva of Praxiteles’s Aphrodite of Knidos to Kim Karshanian’s naked selfie in her bathroom, this construct–that sex and beauty and feminine value are dictated by an archaic ideal of a hairless body–still exists. It is still putting parameters around the female experience. Which is bad enough, but then you went a step too far. You put those parameters around my snake pubes.
Listen, if you want to use me to challenge the patriarchal system that got you here, to stand in front of a courthouse to remind awful men of the power behind women’s rage, that’s fantastic. Gods bless. But you can’t cherry pick what parts of that system you attack while still using me to prop up others. You can’t challenge our eons-old patriarchy by selling icons that reinforce a beauty standard defined by that same patriarchy. That’s not how this works.
Ugh, I’m so tired. Aren’t you people tired? It must take so much energy to still be fighting this battle. It must be exhausting to still be twisting reality to fit this narrative, to sanitize people and their bodies to better fit someone else’s version of what empowerment should look like. And I appreciate being the banner under which others are rallying, I really do, but we can do better. We can ask for more.
Demand your genitals, people. Demand your snake pubes.
