A Resounding "Eh"

"I don't want your love unless you know I am repulsive, and love me even as you know it."

however. i don’t like the implication that victims of violence (regardless of gender) lose their agency once they are subjected to that experience. i think that overlooks the way that stories are used to illuminate parts of our culture that are harmful, that we don’t like to think about, that aren’t addressed how they should be, and their power as a means of expression and healing for people who need a place for their experience of violence.

i’m not saying there’s not a place for retellings where persephone is a badass with a healthy relationship with her sugar daddy husband hades and medusa has been blessed with the power to protect herself from men rather than cursed and sought out to destroy by men as a monster for the rest of her life (and actually athena is a feminist icon supporting other women). i’m just saying that these are the retellings i see hyped up constantly as being inherently better than stories where the woman subjected to violence isn’t your modern cardboard cut-out Strong Female Character or in which there is no experience of violence at all. i don’t think that’s a responsible way to frame the conversation around injustice experienced by women in mythology and modern literature. worse, i see people claim that these are the true intent of the original myths. i…. don’t even know what to say to that except don’t trust shit you see on the internet making historical claims without checking their damn sources. that’s all

1) a fundamental misunderstanding of the myth,

2) a fundamental misunderstanding of greek religion and culture despite trying to make claims about the theoretical “original” myth (i won’t even get into that but there’s a lack of understanding the academic theory that claim is based on and how trustworthy it is, which is not at all imo),

3) the inability to engage with stories about women without it being through the lens of a male perspective or at the very least without a romantic relationship,

4) the desire to continue to understand complicated or difficult stories at the level of childhood which is where most people first heard greek myths – and to not be told that they were taught simplified versions of those themes because they were children but now they have a likable version of hades in their mind and try to defend it at all costs for some reason. and they’re unable to relate to older women or mothers so they can scapegoat demeter without realizing that she’s the point of the story,

6) that people will talk in circles about wanting to restore agency to and empower female figures in ancient literature while simultaneously overlooking complicated and powerful women. people want persephone to be powerful and in control so bad but they totally write off how powerful and compelling demeter is, in fact most retellings leave out huge chunks of the story that don’t feel “relevant” to modern audiences when they were the most important parts to ancient greeks and probably the reason why the myth exists in the first place (justification for rituals to demeter, including the eleusinian mysteries and the thesmophoria in athens). there’s all kinds of theories about the “original” persephone but i see no reason to believe and of them are true or that there was a version of her that exists before this story, unless it’s as a component of demeter (they’re referred to together as the demeteres so i can see arguments for her existence as a facet of demeter’s role in the pantheon).

it’s also for the sake of this glamorized aesthetic where persephone is simultaneously a flower goddess and queen of the underworld – a revisionist “girl power” image of the goddess that appeals to what seems to the modern reader like a radical contradiction of life/fragility/femininity and death/power/masculinity. imo this is neither radical in terms of modern feminism to align weakness with womanhood or to put this version of powerful women on a pedestal, nor in terms of the ancient greek understanding of these themes since life and death, agriculture and famine, earth and the underworld go hand in hand in these stories. demeter is also a chthonic deity as well as her better known role as an agricultural deity (or really, because of this role – chthonic due to her association with earth and the ground and her control over life & death, as an agricultural goddess). so we could easily apply the “goth flower power” aesthetic to demeter as well, but she’s old and unmarried and has no “shipping” potential so nobody cares about her enough to do so. not that i particularly want this treatment for her but it’s just that much more obvious that people don’t get this myth or greek mythology at large (even though they think they do because they read percy jackson in elementary school – a book series, by the way, that does the “demeter is an overprotective, hovering, toxic mother” thing lol)

i also think that people don’t want to be told their favorite retelling is “wrong” so they have to try to justify it by denying that the extant version of the myth is the “right” version by trying to deny its legitimacy, either by calling it fanfic or by making claims about an original “feminist” version of the myth, and as much nicer as it sounds for a matrilineal pre-greek society to tell the story of a young girl choosing to walk into hell and stay there, you’ve gotta be living in a fucking fantasy world if you think that’s the most likely theory of persephone’s origin (my friend showed me a video about this topic where one theory is that she’s derived from this super ancient ultra powerful goddess who was a daughter of poseidon or something and i just ????? like no. sorry. i just don’t see it. where the fuck are your sources)

Cropped image of medieval-stylized printed text, focused on a line which reads: “This wenche thikke”

This wenche thikke and wel y-growen was, With camuse nose and yën greye as glas; With buttokes brode and brestes rounde and hye, But right fair was hir heer, I wol nat lye.

In modern English (had to look up “camuse”, so that’s as good as my source, but I know the rest)

This wench was thick and well-grown With a pug nose and eyes grey as glass; With buttocks broad and breasts round and high, But right fair was her hair, I will not lie.

I don't even know if you use perfume, but if you do, this is what you would use.