Reverse painted with gouache on transparent acetate on a background layer of ink on Yupo paper studies on the vanishing vulva and female anatomy and how the Ancient Greeks wrote women out of worship.
The Vanishing Vulva: How the Ancient Greeks Wrote Women Out of Worship
by KristinD on February 10, 2021
Written by Lydia Serrant, Contributing Writer, Classical Wisdom
“With the increase of literature, poems and plays that depicted women as passive participants in reproduction, and excluded women from the process of creation, feminine roles were pushed to the perimeter of society.
Classical Greek artists often depicted the phallus. Indeed, Greek statues flaunted their masculinity and were usually carved nude. Females and goddesses were mostly robed, or their genitals were replaced by perfectly smooth triangles with the vulva or labia missing entirely.
The most popular surviving myth that involves the vulva is the story of Baubo. When Demeter, goddess of the earth lost her daughter to Hades, Baubo flashed her vulva to Demeter to make her laugh. Whilst this was an act to show feminine unity, at the same time it made the vulva a subject of humor and jest.
The vulva and female genitalia had lost its connection and respect as essential to life itself and had become the subject of fun and pleasure, which it still is to this day. Baubo herself is depicted as an old woman, who is beyond reproductive years, and was known to be bold, outspoken and sexually liberated.
So it was that the phallus, and the phallus alone, became the symbol of power, protection and the source of life.
Instead of the equal partnership that the phallus and the vulva enjoyed in early civilized society, female genitalia was labeled a mere receiver of life, a convenient incubator secondary to the seed.
The rest, as they say, is history. A history that is marred by the suppression and almost complete destruction of feminine symbols, feminine power and feminine identity. However, as times change and we enter a new age of free expression and fast communication, old ways are being rediscovered and feminine and masculine roles are being redefined. Perhaps the old ways and the power of the goddess have not been as truly lost as once thought.”
