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beautyqucens · 2 years

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atychiphobia

noun. abnormal and persistent fear of failure, to the degree that it has negative effects on the pattern of one's life.

i. it is your birthright to fail. as your parent’s only child, there is no one to pick up your slack. no one to distract when you stumble. elaine and nathaniel move from the city that never sleeps to a cozy small town. one that you’re not sure is ever awake. they want the picket fence and the family picture perfect on the mantle. your father wanted a boy, you’re pretty sure. your mother? she was thrilled to find out they were expecting a little girl. beautiful baby clothes bought before you were even born. she can’t wait to play dress-up with her new doll daughter. you were to follow in her footsteps. probably left on the doorstep of some orphanage if you weren’t the most popular toddler in your kindergarten class.

ii. luckily, kids aren’t very meticulous with their ranking. you had friends and that was enough. you get to see another day! you’re enrolled in every extracurricular program your mother could find as soon as you’re old enough. ballet was first. back when you still thought your mother doing these because she loved you. it was fun. gymnastics next. every time your leotard needs replacing, it does. every time you want new shoes, you get them. rose-tinted glasses, you think this is the life. they’ll go however far you need for competitions. for beauty pageants. they care, they support you. they push you because they love you. it pays off because you win.

iii. it’s a formative memory the first time you don’t. it wasn’t even a loss, really. it was second place. if you were being honest, you liked the girl that won. you guys got along amazingly behind when you were off stage. away from the artificial warmth of stage lights, there was the genuine kind between friends. it softens the blow. don’t worry, your parents will compensate for that! there’s no congratulations, no mention of being proud of her regardless. your mother reminds you there’s no such thing as a participation trophy. you want to scream. i didn’t just participate, i came second! you want to throw a fit and cry, lash out like the child you are. you don’t. you get into the car and the drive home feels twice as long. you wipe your tears with the sleeve of your sweater and ignore the disappointed glances your mother makes through the rearview mirror. you try to sniffle as quietly as possible. convince yourself that the way your dad turns up the radio is for your sake as well as theirs. you won’t let it happen again. no matter how many competitions you win after that, you’re never able to clean your slate of that night.

iv. high school is terrifying. it’s a universal truth that the night before your first day is anxiety-inducing. at least, you’re pretty sure it is. you rise before the sun on your first day. sitting in front of your vanity, you’re doing your makeup while your mother straightens your hair. today is important, bella. you’re not a child anymore. you know she’s not concerned with your education. it’s not important because it’s a new chapter of your life. it’s important because high school is perhaps the peak of teenage social ranking. you have your safety in val. there’s no need to claw your way to the top because you’ve been attached at the hip since you were children in ballet classes. that doesn’t make it less terrifying. it does make it less lonely.

v. you’re underestimated. it’s something you learn to weaponize while you’re there. nothing more than a pretty face, right? those who want to swoop in and play the hero to your damsel in distress. or the ones that never assume you could be calculated and vicious. she’s an airhead, not the mastermind behind anything. everything comes on a silver platter. luckily there’s no such thing as a fear of peaking in high school. you don’t take any risks once you’ve settled into your routine. you’ve got your friends and your place on the cheer squad; that’s all you need. you can’t fail if you never try. you’d never call that a ‘negative impact on your life’. it’s not like you were sheltered. you still went to parties, had friends, made memories. just from your comfort zone. from the perfect pedestal your parents had placed you on.

vi. applying for college was a truly terrifying time. there was no way to do so without stepping into uncharted territory. you claim you don’t care, but your hands tremble as you open acceptance letters. you’re only worried because you don’t want to spend all day listening to your mother harp on at the flower shop. because frat parties are way more fun than high school parties. the truth seeps in. because you don’t want your friends to move on without you. because getting rejected was getting rejected. it’s a foreign concept in your life. your parents don’t even want you to go to college, but you’re sure they’d scream at you for getting rejected. like some ugly spot on what was meant to be beautiful. you can’t fail if you never try.

vii. surprisingly, you get in. the amount of pride you feel is lame. not to mention quickly overshadowed by your mother’s dramatics of leaving her to slave over the flowers alone. hire someone else, elaine! bella is going to college. even if it’s just for some ‘stupid easy a course’. it was just the formal adult version of gossip, and you knew how to gossip. you knew how to take vile words and coat them in honey. much like when you’re talking to your professor. after the realization you might actually enjoy this subject, effort levels in class changed dramatically. turns out wanting to stick rose thorns into your eyes wasn’t a side effect of the working world, just your mother. you were trying, and like proving your family correct, you were failing. never called on by your professor, never taken seriously. he doesn’t even set his pen down when you ask him why. the scribble of ballpoint pen against paper is the soundtrack to a new rock bottom. “bella, i’m trying to not waste everyone’s time.” he won’t even look at you when he says it. suddenly, you feel like a child standing in front of your parents wanting to throw a fit about being second. i’m here! i got into this class like everyone else did! but you didn’t back then, and you don’t now. that wouldn’t have been pretty. what are you if not pretty?

viii. rebellion is a slow process. well, getting everyone else to acknowledge your rebellion is a slow process. it’s subtle at first. it’s putting bright red dye over the highlights in your hair and your mother shoving a bottle of head and shoulders shampoo into your hands after some frantic googling. it’s darker eye makeup and style. it’s exactly like a pretty girl’s attempt at a spiral, but you’re not. at least, you wouldn’t call it that. it’s the most in control of your life you’ve ever felt. like you’re only now taking the training wheels of your mother’s suffocating love off your bike. now, the fear of stumbling is even greater. you don’t want to have to go back home with skinned knees and hear your mother talk about how she knew you weren’t ready to go off by yourself. you no longer wait to be called on in class. when a question is asked, your peers politely raise their hands while you blurt out an answer. you are trying to be better. you will not fail.

ix. it takes a while to settle into your new self. no longer just the shiny trophy on the mantle. you wear clothes that you like, that are comfortable. you’re not about to start looking like a bum, but the pressure to be perfect was becoming such a tacky accessory. gone and buried alongside bella, still wrapped around her throat like a necklace. you don’t have to worry about that anymore. you’re holding the shovel. you’re breathing. for your parents, it’s a worst-case scenario. they are praying for your failure, and though it drives you, it also terrifies you. how do you go on if you fail? how do you cram newfound wings back into the small cage you used to live in? they try to convince you to quit while you’re ahead, but you refuse. you can be so stubborn when you want to be. a trait swallowed down your entire life coming out full force now that you’re not going to let your beauty speak for you.

x. dani logan is a missing person. you’re trying to interview people, but coolsville is stuck in their rut of not taking you seriously. someone put a stack of fliers on top of your special quotes clipboard! it was grade a bullshit until danny swept in to save you. there’s this new level of responsibility on your shoulders. honestly? you’re scared of buckling under the weight of it. not that you’d tell anyone. wasn’t this what you wanted? to be taken seriously? to get involved? there was no way that came without strings attached. a life could very well be resting in the hands of danny logan’s ragtag group of misfits. which is about as promising as it sounds. didn’t your parents ever warn you about trying?

#𓆩 ♡ 𓆪 ⊹ ˚˖⋆｡ musing. › i was raised up to be admired ; to be noticed.#don't ask why this is first person #feels more poetic idk why #aka a stream of consciousness abt ara & her self worth issues #also the roman numerals made sense with the first concept but now i'm not changing it even tho it's soc #mysterytask

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mask131 · 6 months

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The truth about Medusa and her rape... Mythology breakdown time!

With the recent release of the Percy Jackson television series, Tumblr is bursting with mythological posts, and the apparition of Medusa the Gorgon has been the object of numerous talks throughout this website… Including more and more spreading of misinformation, and more debates about what is the “true” version of Medusa’s backstory.

Already let us make that clear: the idea that Medusa was actually “blessed” or “gifted” by Athena her petrifying gaze/snake-hair curse is to my knowledge not at all part of the Antique world. I still do not know exactly where this comes from, but I am aware of no Greek or Roman texts that talked about this – so it seems definitively a modern invention. After all, the figure of Medusa and her entire myth has been taken part, reinterpreted and modified by numerous modern women, feminist activist, feminist movements or artists engaged in the topic of women’s life and social conditions – most notably Medusa becoming the “symbol of raped women’ wrath and fury”. It is an interesting reading and a fascinating update of the ancient texts, and it is a worthy take on its own time and context – but today we are not talking about the posterity, reinvention and continuity of Medusa as a myth and a symbol. I want to clarify some points about the ACTUAL myth or legend of Medusa – the original tale, as told by the Greeks and then by the Romans.

Most specifically the question: Was Medusa raped?

Step 1: Yes, but no.

The backstory of Medusa you will find very often today, ranging from mythology manuals (vulgarization manuals of course) to Youtube videos, goes as such: Medusa was a priestess of Athena who got raped by Poseidon while in Athena’s temple, and as a result of this, Athena punished Medusa by turning her into the monstrous Gorgon.

Some will go even further claiming Athena’s “curse” wasn’t a punishment but a “gift” or blessing – and again, I don’t know where this comes from and nobody seems to be able to give me any reliable source for that, so… Let’s put this out of there.

Now this backstory – famous and popular enough to get into Riodan’s book series for example – is partially true. There are some elements here very wrong – and by wrong I do mean wrong.

The story of Medusa being raped and turned into a monster due to being raped does indeed exist, and it is the most famous and widespread of all the Medusa stories, the one people remembered for the longest time and wrote and illustrated the most about. Hence why Medusa became in the 20th century this very important cultural symbol tied to rape and the abuse of women and victim-blaming. HOWEVER – the origin of this story is Ovid’s Metamorphoses, from the first century CE or so. Ovid? A Roman poet writing for Roman people. “Metamorphoses”? One of the two fundamental works of Roman literature and one of the two main texts of Roman mythology, alongside Virgil’s Aeneid. This is a purely Roman story belonging to the Roman culture – and not the Greek one. The story of Medusa’s rape does not have Greek precedents to my knowledge, Ovid introduced the element of rape – which is no surprise given Ovid turned half of the romances of Greek mythology into rapes. Note that, on top of all this, Ovid wasn’t even writing for religious purposes, nor was his text an actual mythological effort – he wrote it with pure literary intentions at heart. It is just a piece of poetry and literature taking inspiration from the legends of the Greek world, not some sort of sacred text.

Second big point: The legend I summarized above? It isn’t even the story Ovid wrote, since there are a lot of elements that do not come from Ovid’s retelling of the story (book fourth of the Metamorphoses). For example Ovid never said Medusa was a priestess of Athena – all he said was that she was raped in the temple of Athena. I shouldn’t even be writing Athena since again, this is a Roman text: we are speaking of Minerva here, and of Neptune, not of Athena or Poseidon. Similarly, Minerva’s curse did not involve the petrifying gaze – rather all Ovid wrote about was that Minerva turned Medusa’s hair into snakes, to “punish” her because her hair were very beautiful, and it was what made her have many suitors (none of which she wanted to marry apparently), and it is also implied it is what made Neptune fall in love (or rather fall in lust) with her. I guess it is from this detail that the reading of “Athena’s curse was a gift” comes from – even though this story also clearly does victim-blaming of rape here.

But what is very fascinating is that… we are not definitively sure Neptune raped Medusa in Ovid’s retelling. For sure, the terms used by Ovid in his fourth book of Metamorphoses are clear: this was an action of violating, sexually assaulting, of soiling and corrupting, we are talking about rape. But Ovid refers several other times to Medusa in his other books, sometimes adding details the fourth-book stories does not have (the sixth book for examples evokes how Neptune turned into a bird to seduce Medusa, which is completely absent from the fourth book’s retelling of Medusa’ curse). And in all those other mentions, the terms to designate the relationship between Medusa and Neptune are more ambiguous, evoking seduction and romance rather than physical or sexual assault. (It does not help that Ovid has an habit of constantly confusing consensual and non-consensual sex in his poems, meaning that a rape in one book can turn into a romance in another, or reversal)

But the latter fact makes more sense when you recall that the rape element was invented and added by Ovid. Before, yes Poseidon and Medusa loved each other, but it was a pure romance, or at least a consensual one-night. Heck, if we go back to the oldest records of the love between Poseidon and Medusa, back in Hesiod’s Theogony, we have descriptions of the two of them laying together in a beautiful, flowery meadow – a stereotypical scene of pastoral romances – with no mention of any brutality or violence of any sort. As a result, it makes sense the original “romantic” story would still “leak” or cast a shadow over Ovid’s reinvented and slightly-confused tale.

Step 2: So… no rape?

Well, if we go by Greek texts, no, apparently Medusa was not raped in Greek mythology, and only became a rape victim through Ovid.

The Ancient Greek texts all record Poseidon and Medusa sleeping with each other and having children, but no mention of rape. And the whole “curse of Athena” thing is not present in the oldest records – no temple of Athena soiling, no angry Athena cursing a poor girl… “No curse?” you say “But then how did Medusa got turned into a Gorgon”? Answer: she did not. She was born like that.

As I said before, the oldest record of Medusa’s romance but also of her family comes from Hesiod’s Theogony (Hesiod being one of the two “founding authors” of Greek mythology, alongside Homer – Homer did wrote several times about Medusa, but only as a disembodied head and as a monster already dead, so we don’t have any information about her life). And what do we learn? That Medusa is part of a set of three sisters known as the Gorgons – because oh yes, Ovid did not mention Medusa’s sister now did he? How did Medusa’s sisters ALSO got snake-hair or petrifying-gaze if only Medusa was cursed for sleeping with Neptune? Ovid does not give us any answer because again, it is an “adaptational plot hole”, and the people that try to adapt Ovid’s story have to deal with the slight problem of Stheno and Euryale needing to share their sister’s curse despite seemingly not being involved in the whole Neptune business. Anyway, back to the Greek text.

So, you have those three Gorgon sisters, and Medusa is said to be mortal while her sisters are not. Why is it such a big deal? Because Medusa wasn’t originally some random human or priestess. Oh no! Who were the Gorgons’ parents? Phorcys and Keto/Ceto, aka two sea-gods. Not just two sea-gods – two sea-gods of the ancient, primordial generation of sea-gods, the one that predated Poseidon, and that were cousins to the Titans, the sea-gods born of Gaia mating with Pontos.

So the Gorgons were “divine” of nature – and this is why Medusa being a mortal was considered to be a MASSIVE problem and handicap for her, an abnormal thing for the daughter of two deities. But let’s dig a bit further… Who were Phorcys and Ceto? Long story short: in Greek mythology, they were considered to be sea-equivalents of Typhon and Gaia. They were the parents of many monsters and many sea-horrors: Keto/Ceto herself had her name attributed and equated with any very large creature (like whales) or any terrifying monster (like dragons) from the sea. The Gorgons themselves was a trio of monsters, but their sisters, that directly act as their double in the myth of Perseus? The Graiai – the monstrous trio of old women sharing one eye and one tooth. Hesiod also drops the fact that Ladon (the dragon that guarded the golden apples of the Hesperids), and Echidna (the snake-woman that mated with Typhon and became known as the “mother of monsters”) were also children of Phorcys and Ceto, while other authors will add other monster-related characters such as Scylla (of Charybdis and Scylla fame), the sirens, or Thoosa (the mother of Polyphemus the cyclop). Medusa herself is technically a “mother of monsters” since she birthed both Pegasus the flying horse and Chrysaor, a giant. So here is something very important to get: Medusa, and the Gorgons, were part of a family of monsters. Couple that with the absence of any mention of curses in these ancient texts, and everything is clear.

Originally Medusa was not a woman cursed to become a monster: she was born a monster, part of a group of monster siblings, birthed by monster-creating deities, and she belonged to the world of the “primordial abominations from the sea”, and the pre-Olympian threats, the remnants of the primordial chaos. It is no surprise that the Gorgons were said to live at the edge of the very known world, in the last patch of land before the end of the universe – in the most inhuman, primitive and liminal area possible. They were full-on monsters!

Now you might ask why Poseidon would sleep with a horrible monster, especially when you recall that the Greeks loved to depict the Gorgons as truly bizarre and grotesque. It wasn’t just snake-hair and petrifying gaze: they had boar tusks, and metallic claws, and bloated eyes, and a long tongue that constantly hanged down their bearded chin, and very large heads – some very old depictions even show her with a female centaur body! In fact, the ancient texts imply that it wasn’t so much the Gorgon’s gaze or eyes that had the power to turn people into stone – but that rather the Gorgon was just so hideous and so terrifying to look at people froze in terror – and then literally turned into stone out of fear and disgust. We are talking Lovecraftian level of eldritch horror here. So why would Poseidon, an Olympian god, sleep with one of these horrors? Well… If you know your Poseidon it wouldn’t surprise you too much because Poseidon had a thing for monsters. As a sort of “dark double” of Zeus, whereas Zeus fell in love with beautiful princesses and noble queens and birthed great gods and brave heroes, Poseidon was more about getting freaky with all sorts of unusual and bizarre goddesses, and giving birth to bandits and monsters. A good chunk of the villains of Greek mythology were born out of Poseidon’s loins: Polyphemus, Antaios, Orion, Charybdis, the Aloads… And even his most benevolent offspring has freaky stuff about it – Proteus the shapeshifter or Triton half-man half-fish… So yes, Poseidon sleeping with an abominable Gorgon is not so much out of character.

Step 3: The missing link

Now that we established what Medusa started out as, and what she ended up as… We need to evoke the evolution from point Hesiod to point Ovid, because while people summarized the Medusa debate as “Sea-born monster VS raped and punished woman”, there is a third element needed to understand this whole situation…

Yes Ovid did invent the rape. But he did not invent the idea that Medusa had been cursed by Athena.

The “gorgoneion” – the visual and artistic motif of the Gorgon’s head – was, as I said, a grotesque and monstrous face used to invoke fright into the enemies or to repel any vile influence or wicked spirit by the principle of “What’s the best way to repel bad stuff? Badder stuff”. Your Gorgon was your gargoyle, with all the hideous traits I described before – represented in front (unlike all the other side-portraits of gods and heroes), with the face being very large and flat, a big tongue out of a tusked-mouth, snake-hair, bulging crazy eyes, sometimes a beard or scales… Pure monster. But then… from the fifth century BCE to the second century BCE we see a slow evolution of the “gorgoneion” in art. Slowly the grotesque elements disappear, and the Gorgon’s face becomes… a regular, human face. Even more: it even becomes a pretty woman’s face! But with snakes instead of hair. As such, the idea that Medusa was a gorgeous woman who just had snakes and cursed-eyes DOES come from Ancient Greece – and existed well before Ovid wrote his rape story.

But what was the reason behind this change?

Well, we have to look at the Roman era again. Ovid’s tale of Medusa being cursed for her rape at the hands of Neptune had to rival with another record collected by a Greek author Apollodorus, or Pseudo-Apollodorus, in his Bibliotheca. In this collection of Greek myths, Apollodorus writes that indeed, Medusa was cursed by Athena to have her beautiful hair that seduced everybody be turned into snakes… But it wasn’t because of any rape or forbidden romance, no. It was just because Medusa was a very vain woman who liked to brag about her beauty and hair – and had the foolish idea of saying her hair looked better than Athena’s. (If you recall tales such as Arachne’s or the Judgement of Paris, you will know that despite Athena being wise and clever, one of her main flaws is her vanity).

“Wait a minute,” you are going to tell me, “The Bibliotheca was created in the second century CE! Well after Greece became part of the Roman Empire, and after Ovid’s Metamorphoses became a huge success! It isn’t a true Greek myth, it is just Ovid’s tale being projected here…” And people did agree for a time… Until it was discovered, in the scholias placed around the texts of Apollonios of Rhodes, that an author of the fifth century BCE named Pherecyde HAD recorded in his time a version of Medusa’s legend where she had been cursed into becoming an ugly monster as punishment for her vanity. We apparently do not have the original text of Pherecyde, but the many scholias referring to this lost piece are very clear about this. This means that the story that Apollodorus recorded isn’t a “novelty”, but rather the latest record of an older tradition going back to the fifth century BCE… THE SAME CENTURY THAT THE GORGONEION STARTED LOSING THEIR GROTESQUE, and that the face of Medusa started becoming more human in art.

[EDIT: I also forgot to add that this evolution of Medusa is also proved by strange literary elements, such as Pindar's mention in a poem of his (around 490 BCE) of "fair-cheeked Medusa". A description which seems strange given how Medusa used to be depicted as the epitome of ugliness... But that makes sense if the "cursed beauty" version of the myth had been going around at the time!]

And thus it is all connected and explained. Ovid did invent the rape yes – but he did not invent the idea of Athena cursing Medusa. It pre-existed as the most “recent” and dominating legend in Ancient Greece, having overshadowed by Ovid’s time the oldest Hesiodic records of Medusa being born a monster. So what Ovid did wasn’t completely create a new story out of nowhere, but twist the Greek traditions of Athena cursing Medusa and Medusa having a relationship with Poseidon, so that the two legends would form one and same story. And this explains in retrospect why Ovid focuses so much on describing Medusa’s beautiful hair, and why Ovid’s Minerva would think turning her hair into snake would be a “punishment fit for the crime”: these are leftovers of the Greek tale where Medusa was punished for her boasting and her vanity.

CONCLUSION

Here is the simplified chronology of how Medusa’s evolution went.

A) Primitive Greek myths, Hesiodic tradition: Born a monster out of a family of sea-monsters and monstrous immortals. Is a grotesque, gargoylesque, eldritch abomination. Athena has only an indirect conflict with her, due to being Perseus’ “fairy godmother”. Has a lovely romance with Poseidon.

B) Slow evolution throughout Classical Greece and further: Medusa becomes a beautiful, human-looking girl that was cursed to have snake for hair and petrifying eyes, instead of being a Lovecraftian horror people could not gaze upon. Her conflict with Athena becomes direct, as it is Athena that cursed her due to being offended by her vain boasting. Her punishment is for her vanity and arrogant comparison to the goddess.

C) Ovid comes in: Medusa’s romance with Poseidon becomes a rape, and she is now punished for having been raped inside Athena’s temple.

[As a final note, I want to insist upon the fact that the story of Medusa being raped is not less "worthy" than any other version of the myth. Due to its enormous popularity, how it shaped the figure of Medusa throughout the centuries, and how it still survives today and echoes current-day problems, to try to deny the valid place of this story in the world of myths and legends would be foolish. HOWEVER it is important to place back things in their context, to recognize that it is not the ONLY tale of Medusa, that it was NOT part of Greek mythology, but rather of Roman legends - and let us all always remember this time Poseidon slept with a Lovecraftian horror because my guy is kinky.]

EDIT:

For illustration, I will place here visuals showing how the Ancient art evolved alongside Medusa's story.

Before the 5th century BCE: Medusa is a full-on monster

From the 5th century to the 2nd century BCE: A slow evolution as Medusa goes from a full-on monster to a human turned into a monster. As a result the two depictions of the grotesque and beautiful gorgoneion coexist.

Post 2nd century BCE: Medusa is now a human with snake hair, and just that

#greek mythology #medusa #gorgon #athena #gorgons #poseidon #neptune #minerva #ovid #rape in mythology #greek monsters #roman mythology

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