NONFICTION:

The New Age of Sexism: How AI and Emerging Technologies Are Reinventing Misogyny.

Infuriating and necessary.

The Fallen: The Lost Girls of Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries and a Legacy of Silence.

What struck me most about this was that while I had been familiar with the Magdalene laundries; I didn’t understand the complexity of the socio-economic, political, and religious confluence of forces that allowed these to operate for so long and so quietly, let alone the intensity of the long-term trauma that these women suffered.

Not Built in a Day: How Slavery Made the Roman Empire by Emma Southon

I’ve enjoyed, but haven't been blown away by Emma Southon’s other books. This one is different. This one is a FORCE and really brings to light not just slavery in Rome, but also a wider global and historical view of slavery.

The Conjuring of America: Mojos, Mermaids, Medicine and 400 years of Black Women’s Magic-Lindsey Stewart.

While I sometimes found the writing distracting, this book is well worth it for its excellent research that highlights and weaves together the vital and powerful history of African-American women.

FICTION:

I found this trilogy by mixing up my Emily Wilsons. There’s Emily Wilson, the esteemed recent translator of the Odyssey and the Iliad, and now known for her savage review of Christopher Nolan’s film. Then there’s this Emily Wilson, Emily H. Wilson, brilliant writer of this fabulous retelling of Sumerian mythology. (To be fair, both work with mythology and ancient storytelling. )

While I love ancient mythologies, I admit that my knowledge is extremely Greco-Roman and Egyptian-centric. Diving into Sumerian mythology was a thrilling delight. These texts do what any good historical fiction or mythological retelling does best: they immediately make you want to do more research, dive deeper, and connect the shiny pieces that have been glossed up for you with their dustier historical fragments.

The Water Outlaws by S.L. Huang

A gender-bent reimagining of the Chinese literary epic the “Water Margin.” Written by an esteemed stuntwoman with a degree in Mathematics from MIT, this novel is fast-paced, vibrant, funny, gripping, and wonderful.

I never expected to be completely enraptured with Greco-Roman pottery. Replicas were decor in the homes of my Greek-American relatives. It was somewhat of a drive-by portion of frequent museum visits…the palette and patterns blurring together into a black and terracotta sea, with the occasional absurd image jumping out and pulling me under.

How things have changed. Enraptured by narrative, scenes of daily life and myth, the quodians to the sacred, object and image. Show me a vase and show me a story, both about how ancient greco-romans thought, acted, and communicated.

I’m deep in further research and writing, but in the meantime, I’d like to highlight a few of my favorite recent encounters.

This little oinochoe (jug for pouring wine ) was used during the Anthesteria Festival, one of the four festivals of Dionysus. The owl, Athena’s most infamous animal, is armed like a hoplite citizen-soldier, with a shield and a spear. I love that the arm is human, and I can’t tell if the other appendage with the shield is a wing or another human-on-owl arm. This piece was most likely meant to convey the military might of Athens, but really it just makes me giggle. (This piece delighted me so much that I now have a replica in my kitchen.)

This pelike jug (usually used for storing wine) depicts the Gigantomachy, the epic fight between the giants and the Olympian gods. Loooooook at the composition of this one!!!!! This is one of those designs in which the vase's shape adds to the scene's dimensionality. So much of Greco-Roman pottery has been translated into 2D drawings, especially from the 18th century onward. This is a piece that defies such flattening and must be experienced fully in its voluptuous form.

I love this splendid oinochoe for several reasons. First of all, I find depictions of Amazon fascinating. They’re one of the most popular recurring mythological themes on Greco-Roman pottery. Themes of women, strength, autonomy, and foreignness are intertwined. Their clothing is always more patterned than that of other women. I particularly love how the vase's handle mimics a common Amazonian pattern.

They are the rare women considered worthy of the infamous ancient Greek male protagonists, and top it all off…wait for it… they are even NAMED in this vase. The women depicted are Iole, Antiope, and Penthesilea.

The god Kabeiros in the form of the Dionysos Chthonios (an aspect of the Greek god associated with the Underworld, death, and chthonic/earth-based mysteries) is depicted reclining, with an egg in his left hand and a kantharos from which a snake is drinking in his right.

A god feeding a snake wine with an egg in the other hand pretty much everything.

Here is not just a hydra ( a vessel for carrying water) but a meta-hydra with the act of getting water with the vessels it’s depicted on. I love pots on pots.

and finally….this ferocious little lion. So fiersome, so wee.

I may be a glutton for books, but I’m a glutton who loves to share the best parts of my decadent consumption. I present you all with a feast of my favorite non-fiction reads of 2025, complete with links for further tastings.

Honestly, I am probably going to read all three of these books again, as they are becoming even more prescient by the day.

Everyone Who is Gone is Here - Jonathan Blitzer

This book blew me away with my own ignorance and the complexity and depth of our central American crisis and the United States’s role in it. Everyone should read this.

Goliath’s Curse - Luke Kemp

This is such a douzy, but an important one. I had to read it slowly and incrementally so as not to get overwhelmed by its contents combined with our current state of affairs. (Thank you, Sophie Strand, once again for an incredible rec.)

Be a Revolution - Ijeoma Oluo

I love Oluo’s other books, “So You Want to Talk About Race” and “Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male Power” and this one is no different. It’s both inspiring and practical; a vital and necessary combination in these times.

Proto - Laura Spinney

Oh my goodness, this is so fascinating. I love finding out about cross-cultural patterns and where they overlap, merge, and reshape. Looking at this ancient unwritten language illuminates so much about how ancient humans functioned and how we crossed paths with each other, whether through trade, conquest, or migration.

The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper - Roland Allen

I love a micro-history, and this is a particularly wonderful one. Did you know that the modern Moleskine brand launched the same year as the Palm Pilot? Our history and relationship with thinking and paper is even more fascinating than I could have imagined. This is a gem.

Threads of Empire - Dorothy Armstrong

You’ll never be able to look at a carpet the same way after reading this book. Carpets are a portable time capsule of history, often made by hand by those least in power, women, the poor, and the illiterate, and can become some of the greatest emblems of political and social power. How historians and nations continuously struggle to grapple with this paradox is fascinating in itself.

In Open Contempt - Irvin Weathersby Jr.

The Barn - Wright Thompson

This powerful book re-examines the brutal murder of Emmitt Till, looking deeply through the lens of deep locality, place, and the surrounding socio-political forces. The ‘secret’ of this history is how we handle trauma and repress histories, especially when we live both within and adjacent to them.

Master Slave Husband Wife - Ilyon Woo

Ilyon Woo first won me over with a seemingly humble but absolutely engrossing book about a woman’s 19th-century divorce and the Shaker community. This book is absolutely no less engrossing. Woo’s research and storytelling is a treasure.

Smashing Statues - Erin L Thompson

Girl on Girl - Sophie Gilbert

Toxic - Sarah Ditum

Madame Restell - Jennifer Wright

For an added treat, the audiobook is narrated by former child-star and now writer Mara Wilson.

Woman - Lillian Faderman

All That She Carried - Tiya Miles

Read this. We get so few histories from domestic women’s objects, let alone one from an enslaved black woman. These are the histories that deserve our attention.

Women’s Work: The First 20,000 Years - Elizabeth Wayland Barber

The Apothecary’s Wife - Karen Bloom Geviritz

The Cure for Women - Lydia Reeder

Ancient history lovers, these are for you.

Penelope’s Bones - Emily Hauser

The Missing Thread - Daisy Dunn

Helen of Troy - Bettany Hughes

Alexandria - Islam Issa

I went to Paris last year. Can you tell?

Adventures in the Louvre - Elaine Sciolino

I read this before my first time visiting the Louvre as an adult. It makes the absurdly overwhelming behemoth of a museum an excitingly approachable quest.

Inventing the Renaissance - Ada Palmer

Even more interesting than our plethora of Renaissance innovations is the invention of the Renaissance itself.

The Seven Ages of Paris - Alistair Horne

The Madman’s Library - Edward Brooke Hitching

Part of the ‘Madman’s” series, each one of these books is fascinating, with bite-sized chapters and luscious images for whenever a curious intellectual escape is needed.

and finally…

The Body is a Doorway - Sophie Strand

I’m fortunate that many of you have found your way here via my brilliant friend Sophie Strand’s substack (truly the best substack). If you’ve only read her substack and not her books, please, treat yourself and dig into any of her incredible publications. This one is particularly special. I pre-ordered it but didn't want to wait to read it, so I bought it at Sophie’s book launch in Woodstock. I then gifted my extra copy to a friend. My friend’s neighbor was captivated by the book and then borrowed that copy. My friend then bought the audiobook so she could listen while her copy was on loan. I have never seen anything like this happen before to any other book that I’ve shared. This is a book that’s not just a drop in the bucket, but continuously ripples.

thank you for being here.

I read a lot of books this past year, and what I read most were retellings of Greek mythology. I want to become fluent in the language of ever-shifting, shaping, adapting, and forging of classical mythology. It’s impossible to fully know a myth, even if its figures are so often literally set in stone. Instead, a curious mind can explore its infinite refractions, reflections, and reformations. And by studying this fluidity and breaking apart the perceived rigidity of the foundational stories, we find a broader and more malleable present and future.

Over the years, my favorite retellings have been from heavyweights Madeline Miller, and Natalie Haynes. I’ve also enjoyed Pat Barker and Jennifer Saint’s work, but not as passionately. There has been a boom in retellings, and the past couple of years have been great for new releases.

Here are my favorites that I read in 2025.

The Hymn to Dionysus by Natasha Pulley

I loved this beautiful story so so much. What does it mean to be human? Where are the lines between being an automaton and being truly wild? Who will guide us if we find ourselves being too much of the former, forgetting nature, forgetting ourselves?

Enter Dionysus.

This story is queer, lovely, and touching.

Wearing the Lion by John Wiswell

I’ve never been particularly drawn to the story of Hercules (Disney aside), but I’ve recently become more interested in when, why, and how it’s told. It’s one of the most popular stories told on Greek and Roman vases, only to later fall out of fashion when the story of Perseus became more politically potent. However, in our ongoing age of toxic masculinity, this wonderfully tender and blunderingly earnest depiction of Hercules captured my heart entirely.

(Credit is due to a couple of my favorite local bookstores, Rough Draft in Kingston, NY and Oblong Books in Rhinebeck, NY for bringing both of these books to my attention.)

I, Medusa by Ayana Gray

This is the first depiction of Medusa that I’ve encountered that beautifully incorporates race. We are used to so many white-washed, British-accented gods and goddesses. Here, Medusa reads as being black, a foreign acolyte of Athena facing ridicule from the other Greek women for her hair, skin color, and outsider status. Her becoming cursed by Athena reads as both more cruel and unfortuantely, more believable. Through the ages, we continue to pit women against women, insiders against outsiders, fair-skinned against dark, goddess against mortal.

The Shadow of Perseus by Claire Heywood

Finally, a book that focuses on the women trying to deal with the insecure and impossible character of Perseus to the very best of their ability. Unfortunately, the world they live in unfailingly continues to reinforce the worst of his nature and crushingly redeeming qualities.

Aphrodite by Phoenicia Rogerson

I listened to the audiobook, and it’s a truly delightful full-cast production. The story focuses on Aphrodite’s otherness in Olympus, not a sibling or offspring of the other gods holding court in Olympus, but rather a strange deity born in the dark from the castration by the titan Chronus of his father Uranus’s balls. Aphrodite—-’ from the foam’…is born of the sea foam of this castration. With this retelling, we see how Aphrodite works to find a place in Olympus, and create her myth. It’s funny, beautiful, and remains with you.

Alcestis by Katharine Beutner

I’ve never thought much about Alcestis, the wife who sacrifices her life for her husband’s because Apollo has a pact with him that he doesn't have to die then, only to realize when the time comes that it requires a willing sacrifice to take his place. In this telling, Alcestic does this because turns out, there’s really not much freedom anyway with being a man’s wife in ancient Greece. What’s so beautiful but this telling is that Alcestis ends up unexpectedly finding love with Persephone, goddess of the underworld. I love this queer bent to the tale, combined with the acknowledgement of the reality of the hardship of being female in most of ancient Greece.

Retold: The Grecian Women series by Hannah Lynn

These short, poignant novels focus not on the magic of myth but on the underlying humanity. They are relatable, striking, and powerful. Also I adore the cover art.

Honorable Mentions

The Fates by Rose Blythe

The Witch of Colchis by Rosie Hewlett

Daughters of Sparta by Claire Heywood

The Songs of Penelope series by Claire North

(props again to the excellent cover art of this series)

Also read this past year, but was not blown away by:

Herc by Phoenicia Rogerson

Psyche and Eros by Luna McNamara

Thanks for reading! This is a young and growing subtack, so if you enjoyed this post, it helps a great deal if you like or share it.

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I am used to seeing women in stone. Some of these women are weeping under willow trees and over urns, graves, and tombs. Others are perched, lounging, or proudly standing upon buildings and plinths. Sometimes these women are holding up the buildings themselves in the tradition of ancient classical caryatids. They are architecture, archetype, and allegory all at once, and anything but individual. All too rarely (and rarer still if you exclude Queen Victoria), I come across a statue of a woman who lived, breathed, and is being honored for her individual life. Then I started to stumble upon Sappho.

Of the 14 sculptures of women on view in the Petrie European Sculpture Court at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, only two are based on historic women rather than as allegory or myth. One of these women is Lucretia, an ancient Roman noblewoman praised for being so pious that after her rape she takes her own life. (This is cited as leading to the establishment of the Roman Republic). All the other women are nameless slaves, martyrs, times of day and year, and of course, various mythological women in various states of distress and undress. And then there’s Sappho.

Sappho is one of the most famous women in the ancient Western world and the only one to be wildly famous for her own art. When you look at the label of an ancient greco-roman sculpture of a woman, the odds are she will be a queen or a goddess. Or simply labeled “queen or goddess” because why else would a woman be in stone? Sappho was renowned for her lyric poetry in ancient times, and depictions of her appeared on vase paintings and coinage. She was periodically rediscovered over the years before reaching a steady level of fame again since the 19th century.

Sappho was born on the island of Lesbos and lived approximately between 630 and 570 BCE. Not only was Sappho writing, she was teaching young women how to do the same, falling in love with them and forming rivalries. Sappho served at the head of what would later be described as one of the world’s first literary salons, known as the “house serving the muses”, a school of poetry and music for wealthy girls. In statuary, Sappho is usually depicted with a lyre, laurels, and possibly scrolls or writing tablets; symbols of her own work and prestige.

In the time of Homer, Lesbos was famous for its beautiful women. Men who never could have known what Sappho looked like claimed that she was famously unbeautiful. This was a point of fascination, because how could someone who wasn’t beautiful write of love? And how could a woman from Lesbos be known for anything other than being beautiful? Lesbos would later gain a reputation as an island of women who defied male sexual expectations, and with this, the women would come to be regarded as masculine and subversive. Sappho would the later queer terminology of “Lesbian” and “Sapphic love” for her poetry on same-sex female love. She was famous for not being famous for her beauty.

Like most women of ancient history and history as a whole, we know extremely little about her. We only have her words, and 97% of those words have been lost. This has never stopped men from filling in the gaps, putting words in her mouth, and shaping her appearance to the needs and ideologies of the time. She is often described as the tenth of the ancient Greek mythological muses, further removing her from the fact that she was a woman who actually lived, breathed, and made her own art.

While we have an abundance of fictitious imagery of Sappho across the ages in stone and painting, we also have women in art whose appearances dominate museums and monuments, yet remain anonymous to most people. Learning a few of their names and pieces of their stories brings the thrill of recognition and resistance to patriarchal norms. Join me in seeing a few more women as women.

Audrey Munson

If you live in the U.S., and in particularly in New York City, you most likely have encountered Audrey Munson’s image in stone. As James Bone writes in The Curse of Beauty: The Scandalous and Tragic Life of Audrey Munson,

“She is the second-largest female figure in New York after the Statue of Liberty. Her gilded form stands twenty-five feet tall, holding a crown aloft as the symbol of the city, atop the vast Municipal Building across the street from City Hall. She frolics in the Pulitzer Fountain outside the Plaza Hotel at the southeast entrance to Central Park,…..(she’s the) centerpiece of the Maine Monument in Columbus Circle at the opposite corner of Central Park. She stands on the arch at the end of the Manhattan Bridge as the Spirit of Commerce, waving on commuters to their toil. She once also stood sentry at the Brooklyn entrance of the Manhattan Bridge as Miss Manhattan and Miss Brooklyn. But those colossal forms now flank the entrance to the Brooklyn Museum. Audrey is immortalized in stone at the New York Public Library and on the Frick House on Fifth Avenue. She is the reclining bronze figure of Memory on the Straus Memorial on the Upper West Side. She is the two grieving stone figures on the Firemen’s Memorial on Riverside Drive. wherever you go in New York City, Audrey is looking at you.”

Once you start to recognize Audrey, you start to see her everywhere. The Frick Collection is one of my favorite museums, and I only recently noticed her above the entrance.

Audrey was born in 1891 and at 17 sought a career as an actress or chorus girl to help support her and her mother, but quickly became a favorite model in the New York City art scene. She was at her modeling height during New York’s Beaux Arts building spree, and all these new flamboyant buildings needed statuary. The statuary was Audrey. She became known as the ‘most copied girl in America.”

Unfortunately, she was poorly compensated for her work and had a difficult life. To give an example of her dating life, James Bone again writes,

“A man turned up at the artist’s studio where she was posing and pleaded to see her. He had seen a figure of Circe, the Greek goddess of magic, for which she had posed, and fallen in love with her statue. Now he wanted to meet the woman in the flesh, not in stone. Audrey found him handsome.”

This trope of falling in love with a sculpture of a woman isn’t a new one. There is, of course, the myth of Pygmalion and Galatea, the sculptor creating a statue so beautiful that he falls in love with her and prays to Aphrodite to make her human. but then there’s Phryne.

Phryne

Phryne was another woman born poor around 371 BCE in Boeotia, Greece. She worked as a hetairai, a type of ancient grecian courtesan who was trained to be well versed in literature and art. She was so successful that she became one of the richest women in the Ancient world. After the city walls of Thebes were destroyed by Alexander the Great, Phryne funded the rebuilding with the condition that the new wall was inscribed with "Destroyed by Alexander, restored by Phryne the courtesan.” Phryne was also the lover and model of the famous sculptor Praxiteles, who used her for one of the most renowned and sensual sculptures of the ancient world, the Aphrodite of Knidos. Men were known to travel far to ‘see’ the sculpture. The tale goes that Aphrodite saw this sculpture and asked when Praxiteles managed to see her naked.

The art circles of Audrey’s time in the early 20th century and their obsessions with the Western classical ancient ideal and its stone women were no different. Audrey was a fan of Phryne. She once stated that “a model who loves the art to which she contributes is never satisfied until she has been selected to impersonate the famous beauty of Athens.” It’s not hard to see why this is the version of her life trajectory that she would have preferred. Instead, Audrey Munson was committed to an insane asylum in upstate New York at the age of 40 for the type of vague reasons that typically only applied to women in that era. She lived out her life quietly there for the next 64 years of her long life, dying at the age of 104 in 1996.

Emma Hamilton

Lady Emma Hamilton, née Emma Hart is another one whose face is another one that once you recognize her, you start seeing her everywhere. Emma was a model and muse for the painter George Romney, but was also painted by several other artists, including Thomas Lawrence and, notably, by the female greats of the era, Angelika Kauffman and Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun. Born into poverty in Cheshire, England as Amy Lyons in 1765, Emma moved to London as a young girl and worked her way as a maid, model, as well as a dancer for theatrical quack doctor James Graham’s “Temple of Health”

Being beautiful, impoverished, she soon became mistress to various British aristocrats. One of these British aristocrats, diarist Charles Greville, unceremoniously passed her to his uncle, Lord William Hamilton, diplomat to Naples. Lord Hamilton was an avid collector and enthusiast for all things ancient Greco-Roman antiquities, and his home became a wealthy expat Greco-Roman art salon. Emma, who grew up without education or financial security, not only thrived at these salons but became the center and main attraction.

In her performances at these salons, known as her “Attitudes,” using only some fabrics and a few props, she would pull from her internal rolodex of the tragic women of ancient Greco-Roman art and become a Cassandra, Circe, Cleopatra, Medea, Dido, Niobe, or Ariadne. She was one of the statues that these British aristocrats encountered on their European grand tours. A living and breathing performance of an ideal, but just until we became too aware of her actual fluctuating flesh, foibles, and faux pas. (Even the Metropolitan Museum of Art still uses the language of “before she started to gain weight and lose her looks” in their description of an artwork of her in the collection.)

She became indispensable to Lord Hamilton socially and politically. They quietly married. Emma became a close confidante of Queen Maria Carolina of Naples, sister of Marie Antoinette, as well as championed Britain’s most celebrated war hero of the moment, Lord Horatio Nelson. With Nelson she would have a passionate public affair that would last throughout the final six years of his life. Together, they would be deemed the ‘most famous couple in the world’. Ellen Weineck, curatorial assistant for the National Maritime Museum, writes,

“She became a significant political actor in her own right and she intended her actions to promote British interests. Politics has traditionally been viewed as a masculine field, and so her achievements have been overlooked. However, Emma created her own form of soft power, using her intelligence and charm to great effect. She took seriously the need to help her country in its struggle against France, writing persuasive letters and giving information to diplomats. She took on the role of mediator between the British government and the Neapolitan royal family.”

However, Emma’s affair with Nelson decimated her reputation, as well as her social and financial security. This didn’t stop her likeness from being used as the model for ‘Mourning Britannia,’ a widely printed image of Nelson memorial memorabilia, even though Emma was not allowed to attend Lord Nelson’s funeral. Before his death, Lord Nelson pleaded for his country to take care of his Emma and their child. There was no benefit to the British government in doing so, and Emma spent her life waiting for justice, trying to maintain the image and entertainment that was expected of her. Lavishly spending and hosting, including for members of the royal family, she ultimately fled to France to escape debtors and died shortly thereafter.

While I love spending time in the liminal spaces of museums and monuments, it often gets lonely by the simple fact of being female, let alone anything other than the perspective of an able-bodied straight cisgender white male. There are, in fact, so many of us that are not that, even as our current political moment is trying extremely hard to convince us of otherwise.

Irvin Weathersby Jr writes in In Open Contempt

“It’s a troubling feeling to gaze upon a statue or memorial and see yourself depicted in the absence, like looking at a mirror that doesn’t return your reflection.”

However, instead of passively being carried away by the white patriarchal river rapids, you can start to slowly build muscle to go against the current and stop in the places you are directed to overlook, or under-explore.

I first started to do this by looking for Medusa, fascinated by her shifting visages of monster, protector, villain, and victim. The terracotta jar attributed to Polygnotos at the Met is my absolute favorite depiction that I’ve encountered. She is beautiful and gently sleeping before her unprovoked execution. We are allowed to care and be angry about her death.

I then looked for the Venus of Knidos to catch glimpses of Phryne, that witty, savvy, and successful courtesan who funded the rebuilding of Thebe’s city walls with the condition that ‘paid by Phryne the courtesan’ be engraved on the structure. This statement reminded all the residents of Thebes that courtesans and women could not only claim space but create and protect it.

And now I’ve started looking for Sappho. She is not the ‘tenth muse’, a fictitious mythological creation that allows us even more easily to put men’s words in her mouth rather than remember her own. She is remembered for what she wrote, yet we are more likely to see an imagined image of her rather than the poet herself. Yet this doesn’t take away from her power. I look at these statues as monuments to permission to think and remember Sappho, and all the individual women we don’t see preserved in such stalwart materials as stone and metal.

Sappho lived, created, and was celebrated for her words and success when so few women were, let alone a queer ancient Greek one. So much of women’s work throughout the ages biodegrades before we remember to care; the fibers of clothing and tapestries, the nurturing of flesh and families, the creation and maintenance of home and hearth, and most of all, their own words. Sometimes we need the coldness and hardiness of statuary to remind us of women’s soft power and soft arts, their lost words and labors, and endless unrecognized impact.

Daisy Dunn in The Missing Thread writes

“..the women of Lesbos were keen weavers of floral garlands..…. …Sappho steadily earned a reputation as ‘a weaver of tales’, as she once described Eros. She grew up to weave stories, and garlands, and songs about those garlands, so making local women’s handiwork the subject of celebration. Her words preserved their blooms for centuries after they withered away.”

I am grateful for every time a statue of Sappho greets me.

She reminds us to keep looking, discovering, and remembering.

Hidden amongst the guises of goddesses, gorgons, and allegories, sometimes a type of small miracle happens.

You’re actually able to glimpse through time a fragment of a real woman’s life.

Sources + Recommended Reading

This post took forever because I kept falling down delicious rabbit holes. For those who are interested in doing the same, dig in!

Books:

The Missing Thread: A Women’s History of the Ancient World by Daisy Dunn

Fallen Idols: Twelve Statues That Made History by Alex von Tunzelmann

Smashing Statues: The Rise and Fall of America’s Public Monuments by Erin L. Thompson

In Open Contempt: Confronting White Supremacy in Art and Public Space by Irvin Weathersby JR

Penelope’s Bones: A New History of Homer’s World Through the Women Written Out of It by Emily Hauser

The Greeks: A Global History by Roderick Beaton

Making History: The Storytellers Who Shaped the Past by Richard Cohen

All That She Carried by Tiya Miles

The Curse of Beauty: The Scandalous & Tragic Life of Audrey Munson, America’s First Supermodel by James Bone

England’s Mistress: The Infamous Life of Lady Hamilton by Kate Williams

Emma Hamilton: Seduction and Celebrity by Quintin Coleville and Kate Williams

Women’s Work: The First 20,000 Years by Elizabeth Wayland Barber

Articles:

Audrey Munson, the Venus of Washington Square by David Owen, The New Yorker

The Unsung Female Muses of New York’s Public Sculpture by Allison Meier

“What’s In A (Lesbian) Word” by Kira Deshler, Paging Dr. Lesbian

Making Queer History: Sappho

Depicting Sappho: The Creation of the Original Lesbian Look by Eleanor Medhurst, Dressing Dykes

Political Agent: Emma Hamilton’s Many Identities by Ellen Weineck, National Maritime Museum/ Royal Museums Greenwich

Podcasts:

Natalie Haynes Stands Up For the Classics: Sappho

Natalie Haynes Stands Up For the Classics: Phyrne

ArtMuse Audrey Munson

ArtMuse Emma Hamilton

I like animated GIFs, a lot. Amidst the chaos and anxiety of the internet, GIFs are a calming flickering balm. With routinely devastating daily news, GIFs are a type of digital transferable temporal sanctuary. When I am especially anxious, I am especially prone to fixate on GIFs. Unlike another gem of the internet, GIFs are less prone to be adapted to hate speech than the meme (i.e. Pepe the frog, any meme about a female politician…) If my iphone is a pandora’s box (née jar) of digital anxiety, the animated GIF is the hope left behind.

I first fell hard for gifs over ten years ago when I was applying to graduate programs. As I weighed my future, finances, and of investing in another degree in the arts, I kept finding myself drawn again and again to GIFs of Taylor Swift awkwardly dancing. This was pre-1989/folklore/ Eras Tour Taylor Swift. Yes she was famous, but not anywhere near the astronomical sphere that she orbits in today. At that point, she was an extremely successful young artist with a nearly unheard of amount of control over her own career and narrative for someone so young, let alone female. The awkward dancing was a reminder that you can be powerful, but also really really awkward. It makes that young female power a bit less daunting, like early suffragettes knitting on stage advocating for women’s rights.

The other vital element of these GIFs is the sheer unadulterated joy. Joy at her good fortune and joy at being able to celebrate and fangirl over the talented people around her. It’s also a subterfuge against anxiety. High pressure awards show stress?? Have the most possible fun you can have while whole-heartedly supporting your peers.

As I would anxiously search for these GIFs, I soon became disappointed to find that there was no main repository. In time, many of my favorite GIFs became increasingly hard to find. The ubiquitous becomes the ephemeral, circulating in and out of the internet’s fancy. I needed a place where I could find them without fail and without clogging up the storage in my phone. So I made one on tumblr, Awkward Taylor Swift Dancing.

I then combined this with one of my other most calming things, museums. My favorite time to go to a museum is in the evening. Most museums have at least one night of public evening hours, and more so for members. The change in hour and crowd levels allow your relationship with the works to also change and as a result become more intimate. Combining pop culture with art history via GIFs is another form of this process for me. The format of famous paintings and digital GIFs also muddles the lines between high art and low, mass consumption and unique creations.

During the pandemic, the outside world shrunk as the internal world within my phone became simultaneously more expansive and more threatening. Needing the soothing balm of cat GIFs and being frustrated with the popular ones circulating, I took advantage of having very photogenic cats and started making GIFs of my cats. Integrating into GIPHY, I found myself able to pull up gifs of my cat on a variety of social platforms and communication channels. There’s a particular joy in finding one unexpectedly, like when my partner searches 'judgy cat’ GIFs at work on google teams and our very own judgy cat comes up. A familiar lighthouse in the consuming chaos of the internet.

With last year’s presidential election and the now current administration, Moo Deng, the viral baby Pygmy Hippo in Thailand became a necessary nutrient in my GIF diet. Her tenacity! Her fearlessness! Her tiny size! If only we all could channel her (then) tiny ferocity against this big bad world.

I am not great at making gifs. I’m a painter by training and never would be mistaken for a savvy animator. Occasionally I brush up my skills, but for the most part I make GIFs when my brain is anxious, which is also not a great time to learn new skills. For me, it’s not about making something sleek and shiny. It’s about spending time with an image that brings me joy. Slowing down, frame by frame.

Like the emoji, GIFs are close to a visual universal language as we get in our modern world, but with specificity and freedom of being a linguistic tools not exclusively being made by the makers of emojis, unicode. Albeit, this is changing rapidly with AI and ‘make your own emoji’ and stickers, but these are more made for personal use than internet dissemination. Making one’s own GIFs and setting them free to circulate amongst internet communication culture is adding new words to an ever evolving abstract dictionary. With a world evermore complicated and isolating, pinpointing a feeling or idea with a short frame by frame shareable moving image is one digital connective thread that I don’t want to let go of.

This is not the piece I set out to write. I’m a voracious reader, and set out to share my favorite reads of the previous year in somewhat of a glorified listicle to be dashed out at the beginning of January. Yet as 2025 kicked off with more of a maelstrom of anxiety and upheaval than even my chronically anxious brain had prepared for, a simple list would not do. I kept thinking and avoiding thinking about the moment of chaos we were in. I also thought about what I read last year and why, and kept on reading trying to channel my anxiety into something productive for the daunting year ahead. (If you crave more of a listicle,skip ahead..there’s lots of photos & links.)

This is a kind of mental self-portrait in books from last year, and it is primarily one of women. I sought to hear their voices, learn their stories, histories, and attempt to fill in their gaping holes in our shared cultural consciousness.. By doing so, hopefully slowly working to reform the patriarchal neural pathways of my brain that have been shaped by problematic pedagogies since before I was even born. What happens when half our population is left out, and heaven forbid you fall into any smaller group within this, whether it be your sexuality, race, or disability, or anything other than a heterosexual cis able-bodied caucasian male. Every unaccounted for difference leads to further isolation within our world of the homogenously accepted narratives.

As a misogynist narcissistic strongman has taken the highest office again in my country, repressive, repulsive and problematic ideologies have a bigger and more immersive platform than ever before. Correcting histories, mythologies, and silence helps me to hear the truth amongst the chaos, repression and erasure.

Some books I listen to like music, a favorite album on repeat, reveling in themes, feelings, familiar characters and sentences: a pleasant escape or a repeated schooling. Other books I read like quests, searching for understanding book after book. Reading is also a method to let my brain wander when the chronic pain in my body demands I physically stop or listening to a book can push me forward to keep going on a particular project or path. It also can subdue an anxious brain. In 2024 I was anxious a lot, and so I read a lot. 115 books to be exact.

Here are my favorites.

NONFICTION

Unwell Women: Misdiagnosis and Myth in a Man-Made World by Elinor Cleghorn

This is one of those books where you’ll probably need multiple breaks from reading to process your outrage, I know I did. However it’s the type of outrage that also makes you feel more sane by having greater clarity of what women are up against medicine, and how this has been viewed historically and hysterically. As someone who has suffered from chronic pain since my early 20’s and last year I needed to mentally prepare for the exhausting process of more specialists, doctors and diagnosisis. This book reminded me to bold and not accept shame or disbelief from the medical establishment.

As a companion for this book, I also highly recommend Invisible Women by Caroline Criado-Perez. This is the type of book that I regularly lend out to long distance friends, only to end up buying a new copy because I re-read this to remind myself that I’m not crazy. Nearly our entire world is not designed for female bodies and the consequences can be devastating.

A History of Women in 101 Objects by Annabelle Hersch

As Hersch writes in the introduction, this is “a collection chosen by a woman who has a penchant for the unimportant and anecdotal, and who enjoys taking imaginary walks through the distant past.” I bought a physical copy of this book and fell in love with nearly every single item and story featured in this book…and then I discovered the audiobook. Each item has a different famous female narrator. This time around I find myself instead looking up the incredible women narrating that I’m unfamiliar with instead of the items themselves. I oscillate between this and being comforted by the voices of familiar famous women I admire like Gillian Anderson, Katy Hessel, or Rebecca Solnit. For a book that opens with bringing to the forefront the complex relationship with using objects to tell us about women and women being regarded as objects. The audiobook gives another layer of humanity to the lost and recorded voices of women.

Normal Women: 900 Years of Making History by Philippa Gregory

Philippa Gregory is primarily known as a historical fiction writer, with her most famous novel being The Other Boleyn Girl. Her novels are incredibly well researched and this is her deep dive into the history of British women, not the famous ones we may know but everyone else. Medieval women tend to only enter the records when men complain about them and there are more dicks than women in the entire 250 feet of the Bayeux Tapestry, this book is an investigation into the lives of ordinary women that are nearly entirely forgotten because a man never wrote down their names.

Wonderful dives into studying women during these formative years in western culture.

“While seemingly engaging with the medieval period, Pre-Raphaelite and Victorian artists created sensual representations of the few medieval women they could access, once again filtering them through Victorian sensibilities. They are cast as virgin, victim, mother, whore or hag, with the image of an unobtainable maiden trapped in a tower repeated ad nauseum….

… the truth is that foundations of Victorian-era medievalism lay on shaky ground. The texts preserved and copied down the centuries had already suffered from multiple stages of editing and erasure. The versions read in the nineteenth century had been repeatedly revisited, with women cast in socially acceptable ways for ever-changing audiences.”

Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages, Through the Women Written Out of It - Janina Ramirez

“The main parallels between the sixteenth century and today, both eras categorized by rapid shifts in visual culture and technology. Renaissance innovations saw a new emphasis on women’s beauty in popular entertainment of all kinds- from fashionable stories containing long, lingering descriptions of naked young women (often in deadly peril, waiting to be rescued by a hero), to endless images of newly realistic naked goddesses being churned out in sculptures, paintings, and prints.”

How to be a Renaissance Woman : The Untold History of Beauty & Female Creativity - Jill Burke

“In many ways, settling on Helen as an ideal woman made perfect sense. First, a large amount of classical literature praised her beauty but did not detail it, which gave medieval authors a chance to prove their own ability by expanding upon the classics. Second, in establishing the supreme qualities of womanhood, it is difficult to argue with a woman that was so gorgeous that she started a war. Third, linking concepts of beauty gave them the classical cachet that medieval people believed conferred authority, despite the lack of ancient literary portraits to work with.”

The Once and Future Sex: Going Medieval on Women's Roles in Society - Eleanor Janega

Great histories of lady movements and movers…and their hair.

The Bluestockings: A History of the First Women’s Movement - Susannah Gibson

Radical Spirits: Spiritualism and Women’s Rights in Nineteenth Century America - Ann Braude

The Great Divorce: a Nineteenth-Century Mother's Extraordinary Fight Against Her Husband, the Shakers, and Her Times - Ilyon Woo

Beyond Vanity: The History of Power of Hairdressing - Elizabeth Block

Chasing Beauty : The Life of Isabella Stewart Gardener - Natalie Dykstra

Ninth Street Women : Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler: Five Painters and the Movement That Changed Modern Art by Mary Gabriel

The Grimkes: The Legacy of Slavery in an American Family - Kerri K. Greenidge

The Woman They Could Not Silence - Kate Moore

A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them - Timothy Egan

Eyeopeners

Monsters : A Fan’s Dilemma by Claire Dederer

Democracy Awakening - Heather Cox Richardson

Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World - Naomi Klein

Strong, incredible, inspiring women.

The Recovering: Intoxication and Its Aftermath - Leslie Jamison

Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk- Kathleen Hanna

Dear Sister: A Memoir of Secrets, Survival, and Unbreakable Bonds- Michelle Horton

Histories of art, animals, places, and animals in places.

The Madman’s Gallery : The Strangest Paintings, Sculptures and Other Curiosities From the History of Art - Edward Brooke-Hitching

Catland: Louis Wain and the Great Cat Mania - Kathryn Hughes

St. Marks is Dead : The Many Lives of America’s Hippest Street - Ada Calhoun

Platypus Matters: The Extraordinary Lives of Australian Mammals - Jack Ashby

FICTION

MYTHOLOGY

While I have spent this past year examining women’s history, I’ve also been examining the stories we tell about them. With Greek mythology forming such a pillar of western culture, as well as my own Greek heritage, I’ve mostly been spending time amongst the ancient gods. My current cannon of female-centric retellings in this field are Natalie Haynes, Pat Barker, and of course Madeline Miller. Most recently, Hannah M. Lynn has also been added to the list.

The Children of Jocasta - Natalie Haynes

I purchased this book automatically because of my love of Haynes’s work and went into this retelling somewhat blind but generally familiar with the stories of Oedipus and with faith in Natalie’s work. I think this is the way to go. I went into this with some hesitation because the family suicide centricity of the Oedipal tales is triggering subject for me, but Haynes nuance and new lens makes this read a fascinating journey.

Divine Might: The Goddesses in the Greek Myths - Natalie Haynes which follows Pandora’s Jar: Women in the Greek Myths.

Hera - Jennifer Saint

I never felt warmly toward, or felt any identification with the much maligned Hera, which is what makes this novel such a worthwhile read.

Athena’s Child , A Spartan’s Sorrow, Queens of Themyscira

And because I’m writing this more than halfway through February of 2025, I now have a few more to add to this list which I was pleasantly surprised by Hannah M. Lynn’s Grecian Women Trilogy.

I read a few mythology compilations & examinations as well.

Gods and Mortals - Sarah Illes Johnson

Stephen Fry’s Greek Myths 1-3

While Fry’s retellings are overall good (some name-dropping aside), it’s still a white male and I still yearn for other voices. However, the various mythology inspired artworks included makes the physical editions worth a glance alone.

Venus & Aphrodite: A Biography of Desire - Bettany Hughes

The Madonna Secret - Sophie Strand

Despite already knowing Strand as a prolific and powerful writer, I was still knocked over by this reimagining of Mary Magdalene. A thread throughout my readings this past year has been that when women tell the story, the story changes…and how. What a different world it would be if we viewed religion and mythology through a female lens.This is a book that stays with you like a spirit.

I also highly recommend the Flowering Wand for some Dionysian wandering and pondering which I am 100% going to re-read this year.

HISTORICAL FICTION

Philippa Gregory - The Plantagenet and Tudor Novels 1-15.

Having been introduced to Gregory’s work through her nonfiction volume Normal Women, I was delighted to dive into her historical fiction. While several of her books from this series have been made for film or television, the book that took me most my surprise and stayed with me long after was “The Queen’s Fool” (#12 in the series.)

The Fraud - Zadie Smith

What a great find from my local free tiny library.

The Familiar- Leigh Bardugo

I am obsessed with this cover and this book. It also shares a thread with the “Queen’s Fool” with historic Jewish mysticism and prejudice.

The Briar Club - Kate Quinn

Kate Quinn is one of my favorite historical fiction writers and never disappoints

The Shadow of the Wind (Cemetery of Forgotten Books #1) - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Dark and gorgeous.

The Wolf Den by Elodie Harper

Pompeii and its women come to life.

ROMANTASY

I did not expect to get into Romantasy this past year, but I’m so glad I did. What a balm for the soul and wonderful escapism. In particular, I fell hard for the works of Sarah J. Maas. While the Court of Thorns and Roses series is the best entry point, my favorite series are Throne of Glass followed by Crescent City. I love how Maas handles trauma with nuance and care. Romance novels being read by the traumatized victims of sexual violence as they physically train adds a wonderful layer of emotional training and healing in ACOTAR book 4. I love female POV for sexuality and that the males in all of these books take on birth control responsibilities evenly, often taking a preventative tonic. Perhap female perspectives and shared sexual responsibility is the ultimate fantasy.

Sarah J Maas

Throne of Glass Books 1-8 (Start here)

A Court of Thorns and Roses 1-4 (ACOTAR) (or start here)

Crescent City Books 1-3 (read after)

also:

From Blood and Ash - Jennifer L. Armentrout

Fourth Wing - Rebecca Yarros

I still have a Goodreads account, but as I try to untangle myself from various corporate overlords, I’m also migrating to Storygraph. You can find me on both platforms for my full reading lists.

Thank you for reading.

Thank you for being here.

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It’s February of 2016,  Ye (going by Kanye West at the time) debuted his song “Famous” containing the lyrics: "I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex / Why? I made that bitch famous."  Ye infamously claimed he had  Taylor Swift's approval for these lyrics before the song's release: "I called Taylor and had a hour long convo with her about the line and she thought it was funny and gave her blessings.”  Taylor denied the use of this specific lyric, but not that they had the conversation. No one really cared about the specificity of truth. No one was more ready to attack than the teams behind Ye and Kim Kardashian, and the American public.  

This drama which was recorded by the Kardashian/West team, and strategically released in promotion for both a social media platform (snapchat) and content during the long running reality tv show Keeping Up With the Kardashians ahead of the release of Ye’s incendiary “Famous” music video . (This video featured a naked wax lifelike figure of Swift in bed with West and Kardashian amongst several other other public figures).   We were primed for the “cancellation” of Taylor Swift on World Snake Day (July 16th) when Kim Kardashian used the day to negatively attach the snake emoji to Taylor Swift.    Taylor’s feeds were spammed with snake emojis, “TaylorSwiftisOverParty became the top trending hashtag wordwide, and Swift withdrew from the public eye to sit out the storm. 

It doesn’t take much digging to find out that Ye and Kim Kardashian are infamously unreliable narrators. Yet in this moment, without questioning, without looking at context, motives, facts and blatant manipulation,  Ye and Kim were believed.  The conversation was recorded without consent, which itself is a shady tactic when attempting to affirm consent on a different issue.  All media and public narratives can be edited, manipulated and presented as ‘truth’.  It’s what reality tv is made of and what its prodigies like the Kardashians and Donald Trump have built their empires on.

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I won’t go into the full timeline of the Ye, Kardashian and Swift feud which spans from the 2009 MTV VMA’s with the “Kanye Interrupt” during Swift’s acceptance speech and continues through 2024 with Swift’s Kardashian (and later Ye) dis track “thanK you aIMee”/“thank You aimEe” released on the anthology version of her most recent album The Tortured Poets Department.   (However if you do want/need to dive deeper/relive this saga, take your pick of any of the following compilations: New York Times (‘24), Billboard (‘24), Rolling Stone (’24). )

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However, we are going to start in 2015.

Taylor Swift’s cultural cache was soaring higher than ever before with her critical darling album 1989 which took her full throttle into the world of mainstream pop. It looked as if we reached peak Swiftomania. Ok, we definitely had not….but back then it looked like this was high as this young female singer-songwriter and cultural creator could go.  

This was a very good time for Ye to make amends for the infamous 2009 VMA’s incident and this time with his then wife, Kim Kardashian in tow. 

Kim Kardashian has officially full on entered the narrative.

Look at her by Ye’s side during the Grammys!

Look at her awkward dancing with Taylor!

(This was peak awkward Taylor Swift dancing. I would know…I created the tumblr.)

Of course, 2015 is also the year where Donald Trump from the escalator of Trump Tower announces that he would be running for president of the United States of America.

I know. It’s not great. I offer this palette cleanser of some Moo Deng gifs.

( I may have made a bunch of Moo Deng gifs this month because I needed them and not enough existed. )

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And now it’s 2016.

Ye’s single “Famous” is debuted in February and Swift’s heels are brought to the backlash flames 🔥🔥.

June 16, 2016

Kim brings up the Ye/Swift incident in an interview with GQ. This is perfectly timed ahead of next month’s episode of Keeping Up With the Kardashians addressing the Swift drama and West’s “Famous” music video.

Jun 24 2016

Subtlety? Not on Ye’s watch. The music video for “Famous” premieres . It features lifelike naked wax figures depicting several celebrities in bed together with Ye, including Swift, Kim Kardashian, and Donald Trump. I won’t link to this video because I find the whole thing an unethical low blow. No one’s body should be stripped nude without their consent. Even celebrities. And like that rich narcissist dude in your MFA program that no one can stop, the sculpture is then exhibited in an art gallery after the video’s release.

July 17, 2016

Kim releases Snapchat receipts of Taylor seemingly giving Kanye permission to release “Famous.” Highlighted in this conversation is Taylor saying “If people ask me about it, I think it would be great for me to be like, ‘Look, he called me and told me the line before it came out. Like, joke’s on you guys, we’re fine.’” Kim Kardashian has been teasing that her Twitter followers that they should start following her snapchat because shes about the drop the BIGGEST OF BOMBSHELLS EVER. The secret recording of Taylor Swift's phone conversation with Kanye, seemingly agreeing to the use of her name on his song Famous. The words "respect" and "friends" are also thrown around a lot in the conversation (mainly by Taylor.)

And guess what? ??? Kim says it’s National Snake Day, a pointed dig at Taylor which leads to all Taylor Swift’s social media accounts get relentlessly spammed with snake emojis.

For the record that apparently no one but me is checking, there is no National Snake Day that I can find. There IS World Snake Day which actually was the day before these posts, Saturday July 16th 2016. Saturdays don’t conveniently sync up with the Keeping Up With the Kardashians Sunday night timeslot. Why on earth would we want to get bogged down with accuracy and truth now?

Nevertheless, #TaylorSwiftisOverParty became the top trending hashtag worldwide.

Keeping Up with the Kardashians season 12 episode 11, “Got MILF” premieres, giving airtime to explaining Kim and Ye’s side of the Swift drama. “Filmed the whole conversation” and “knew it was going to be controversial” “So many fake things going on.” The rest of the episode is otherwise unrelated to Swift, but this snippet is used for its promotion. This episode airs almost exactly one month after the GQ Interview is released.

(Note on reality tv timelines…The follow up show to KUWTK, “the Kardashians” will go on to blatantly air episodes out of order, creating their own timeline events while further confusing the viewer and reality.)

Taylor releases her own statement the same day asking for the full unedited footage to be released.

Her defense falls on deaf ears.  It was deemed “calculated and manipulative”. The reasoning? It shows up as a ‘search’ result in her notes app, which isn’t the off-the-cuff reaction that the public was salivating for. She has several million followers and is being put to the flames. It feels difficult to fathom that a young powerful woman who has been in the public eye since her teenage years would not choose her words wisely before sharing her defense with millions of people.

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Also in 2016…. an election unlike any we’d seen before.

Medusa and Perseus slaying Medusa become viral political meme for the 2016 election.

The most popular of the memes showed Trump as Perseus holding the head of Hillary as Medusa after a sculpture by Cellini.

and going further with this gladiatorial image with the American flag and a sword raised. Real cute.

“To some people, a woman with power and a voice is always a monster. And for some people, death and disfigurement are an appropriate response to such women…

The memes/ statue provide a perfect illustration of what many women felt and continue to feel about the violence they experience at the hands of some men. Not only do these women face it in their daily lives, but they see it all around them presented as a norm, everywhere from newspaper headlines to the walls of art galleries and museums…. Medusa may have snakes in her hair, but also still has a face and a body….

We are so accustomed to seeing these images that we barely notice the cruelty that underpins the story. “A hero and his trophy”

She is damaged first by a god, then by a goddess. And finally Perseus comes looking for her to kill her and mutilate her, to satisfy the whim of another man.”

Natalie Haynes, Pandora's Jar: Women in the Greek Myths

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September 2016 - Kanye leads a ‘fuck Taylor Swift’ chant amongst thousands in Nashville, TN (Taylor’s adoptive hometown and early career launchpad.)

“Lock her up!” Republican chant of 2016, often lead by Donald Trump himself.

I’m sorry.

Here’s a gif of Moo Deng’s bum getting booped and another of her flopping down to be hosed off.

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SNAKE TIME.

It’s time to take a glimpse at the relationship between snakes, women, and FEMALE POWER.

Our cultural associations with snakes and women could easily take up an entirely different essay or more. There’s enough to fill an entire museum with our psychological associations and artistic representations of the relationship between snakes and women that humans have been making thousands of years. (I for one, would very much like to go to this museum.) Medusa, a mortal gorgon with a head of snakes, is one of the most easily recognizable figures in ancient Greek art.

As Claire Litt succinctly puts it in her essay Blood, Stone, Snake, Woman, ‘the Medusa myth is an archetype, ..the symbolic fertility of long hair, the punishment and ostracization of the victim of sexual assault, and the association of snakes with knowing things – in this case, of the loss of virginal ignorance.’

If we follow our most popular version of the myth, Medusa is a beautiful, mortal gorgon. She goes to see the new temple of Athena, where she is raped by the sea god Poseidon. Athena, offended by the act in her temple, punishes Medusa by transforming her hair into snakes while also giving her a gaze that turns anyone she looks at into stone. Medusa isolates herself in a cave, where Perseus, aided by multiple gods, beheads her in her sleep. Medusa’s destruction is only because Perseus was given a quest to get him out of the way so that a king could marry his mother. Her death is for a trophy, (and ultimately a weapon)…not defense. With Medusa, she is more powerful in death than she ever was in life. Her severed head becomes a weapon, able to be welded without her body, consent, or consciousness.

We can easily view Ye as Poseidon, Kim as Athena, and Taylor as Medusa.

If we continue to view Taylor as Medusa in this narrative, the hyperrealistic wax figures of naked celebrities in Ye’s “Famous” music video are directly correlated with the destruction of Taylor Swift’s public image. In this case, Swift’s-downfall as weapon that not only literally objectifies its victims, it does so while stripping them of all clothing simultaneously..forever freezing them in a state of naked vulnerability.

Gorgons make a grim noise , and if history has taught us anything, it is that a women making noise - whether speaking or shouting, is intrinsically disruptive. - Natalie Haynes, Pandora’s Jar.

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We were given a media literacy test.  We failed.   The next media literacy test that America would fail would have far more dire results..the election of professional narrative manipulator and fellow reality tv alumni, Donald Trump.  

Opening credits for The Apprentice

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After 2016 - the Snake slaps back.

Taylor Swift deletes every instagram post on her feed, and then starts posting again with a snake video, becoming a theme of her 2017 clapback album Reputation.

When she takes this album on tour, the theme of snakes is embraced even more wholeheartedly, along with her first embraces of witches. The snakes are sometimes behind her implying attack, but we soon realize Swift is in control of the snake ending with giant snakes awkward dancing to Shake it Off with Swift and her dancers. The main snake is named…Karyn. The tour was also the best tour I had seen of Swift to that point. She had never seemed so….alive.

2018 - Christine Blasey Ford & a new Medusa meme.

I’m going to quote again from the incredible Natalie Haynes whose work on women and Greek mythology occupies sacred space in my brain. This essay from the Guardian is great, and so are all of her books. (I think my arms flailed with nerdy. kindred joy while reading “Pandora’s Jar: Women in the Greek Myths” and this Guardian essay. )

Haynes writes :

In 2018, we saw one example of Medusa being used to fight back against a narrative that literally silences women. At the time, Prof Christine Blasey Ford was giving evidence against supreme court justice nominee Brett Kavanaugh, who she claimed had sexually assaulted her many years before. He would go on to be appointed to the court. A meme circulated that showed a gender-switched reversal of another Perseus statue by Antonio Canova from the beginning of the 19th century. Canova’s statue shows Perseus in gleaming white marble, every inch the young hero, holding the head of Medusa. The 2018 meme showed Luciano Garbati’s reimagining of Canova’s statue, with Medusa naked, holding the severed head of Perseus. Some versions of the meme came with an accompanying text. “Be thankful we only want equality, and not payback.” The first time I saw this, I gasped. Then I wondered why I’d never gasped at the Canova statue.

January 2020

The snake emoji rears its flat green head again to flood female presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren’s Twitter after the Democratic debate. #WarrenIsASnake trended along with #NeverWarren. The snake social media shakedown was unleashed after Warren stated that Sanders told her privately that he didn’t think a woman could win in 2020. Sanders denied saying such a thing, even if it ended up being still true four years later. However, after a while the hashtags flipped as a method of support for Warren by Warren supporters.

March 2020

The full unedited West/Swift phone all is leaked. It is proven, as Taylor had been saying since the beginning, at no point does she agree to ‘bitch’ being used in “I made that bitch famous.”

Taylor is redeemed and has since restored her reputation . but it’s otherwise quiet. We are always more fascinated by the destruction than the redemption, the lies shout louder than a corrective truth. However, Taylor reaches a new level of pop cultural relevance and power with her enviable pandemic productivity with releasing two critically acclaimed and psychological zeitgesty albums folklore and evermore.

November 2020

Joe Biden wins the presidential election. Trump is voted out of office.

December 2023

Taylor Swift is named Time’s Person of the Year. In her interview, she address the Ye/Kardashian shakedown.

“You have a fully manufactured frame job, in an illegally recorded phone call, which Kim Kardashian edited and then put out to say to everyone that I was a liar…

..that took me down psychologically to a place I’ve never been before. I moved to a foreign country. I didn’t leave a rental house for a year. I was afraid to get on phone calls. I pushed away most people in my life because I didn’t trust anyone anymore. I went down really, really hard.” - Taylor Swift, Time Magazine, Person of the Year Interview 2023.

In April of 2024 Taylor releases the song “Cassandra” on the Tortured Poets Department Anthology edition.

So, they killed Cassandra first 'cause she feared the worst

And tried to tell the town

So, they filled my cell with snakes, I regret to say

Do you believe me now?….

When the first stone's thrown, there's screaming, In the streets, there's a raging riot When it's "Burn the bitch, " they're shrieking

When the truth comes out, it's quiet.

Elizabeth Lesser writes in her brilliant book Cassandra Speaks: When Women are the Storytellers, the Story Changes

It is Cassandra’s story, and it is the story of any woman who has been dismissed, gaslighted, or punished for having an opinion of her own. It is the old trope of the hysterical girl or the scorned woman who is not to be believed as a witness to her own experience…

Women have been ignored, ridiculed, punished, even killed for their opinions forever. But without the balancing of the power of her voice - things in the world end in disaster. Cassandra’s voice is your voice.

Of course, in 2024 Trump has been reelected, once again defeating a female presidential candidate.

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The translation of “Medusa” actually is guardian or protectress.

Let’s do by right by her towards other women and for ourselves.

Let’s think about the themes and narratives that are in the zeitgeist and what they are telling us about the moment we are living in.

Let us go beyond headlines, reactions, assumptions and provocations.

In the age of fake news and reality tv programming, let us make an active effort to find and make space for the truth.

Let us not hide in the cave, but wield our strength and autonomy while we are alive.

If we don’t, we might very well be turned to stone and have our own power used against us.

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Recommended Reading:

If Looks Could Kill: How Medusa became a potent political meme - The Guardian, Natalie Haynes.

Blood, Stone, Snake, Woman: A Brief History of Association - Claire Litt

Pandora’s Jar: Women in the Greek Myths -Natalie Haynes

Cassandra Speaks: When Women Are The Storytellers The Story Changes -Elizabeth Lesser

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I’m an interdisciplinary artist, thinker, writer, and weirdo.   Writing has always been part of my practice, but only recently have I realized how fundamental it is and it ties everything together.   I give presentations all the time to my friends, and occasionally at an esteemed academic conference or two (Kimposium, Swiftposium).  I do curatorial experiments periodically.  I make paintings. I make weird digital content.  And I write.  This is finally the place for all of these things to live together.  

I have my hands in a lot of pots.

This is where all the pots can get their attention. 

Whether tiny teapots of giant amphoras. 

Why is this substack called “the Secret Toilet?”

Let’s go back to London and the Great Exhibition of 1851 aka the Great Exhibition of Works of Industry of All Nations aka the Crystal Palace, aka the start of the trend of World’s Fairs that would last for over a century (and still continue to this day).   From May to October of 1851, over 6 million people passed through the glass and iron halls of the Great Exhibition’s Crystal Palace.   It was a celebration, or rather a flaunting of modern design and industry meant to display the industrial and colonial dominance of the British Empire. 

Art! Technology! Blatant & over-the-top colonialism!

While there were over 100,000 exhibitions from around the globe to view, there was one bit of cutting edge technology that any visitor to the exhibition could use, provided you had a penny. That penny granted your entrance to a small ornate private room with a towel, a comb,  shoe shine, and most important of all - a clean flushing toilet. The first paid-to-use flushing toilet in the UK was in a small private room in a public building amongst hundreds of strangers and exhibits.

As Edward Hollis writes in his brilliant book on lost interiors The Memory Palace, this was “the most visited – and the most profitable – exhibit in the whole of the Great Exhibition. In twenty-three weeks, 827,280 people visited them, and they made a profit of £1790, since everyone who went in had to pay a penny for the privilege. No apology was needed. They were among the most popular interiors in the whole of the Crystal Palace, as ‘they’ must be in all public interiors; but they did not appear in the Queen’s diary. Punch published no cartoons of them, and no engravings appeared in any catalog. We are left with no record of their character, other than a euphemism,,,.     

….The water closet was the meeting place between cold china, polished brass, encaustic tile, and quivering, shivering buttock. No wonder no-one wanted to recall the experience.”

This private flushing toilet at the Great Exhibition was something so popular, so formative and fundamental and now so forgotten. 

Let’s put this experience in some context.  Mid-19th century Great Britain: there’s a massive population explosion.  Along with this, comes a human waste explosion. ..but the infrastructure stayed relatively the same with as many as 100 people sharing a single toilet. Sewage was EVERYWHERE. Not only were the streets and rivers of London extremely gross, they were also extremely dangerous.  Devastating cholera outbreaks swept the city in the 1830’s and again in 1850’s. 

And then there’s the Great Exhibition and then there’s this bathroom. Amongst revolutionary technology and wonders such as kitchen appliances,  daguerreotypes, a predecessor to the fax machine, a jacquard loom and the infamous Koh-i-Noor diamond, here was the real beacon of hope.  A small private room, where your waste and its associated fears could be flushed away in an instant.   For the nearly million visitors that used this toilet, this would have been an unforgettable experience in their lives.

Some of the most seen, most touched, most experienced things in human life are the things that aren't preserved because we don’t think they're worthy of preservation or because of their current ubiquity we assume they will always be there.  I often think about iconic gifs that were everywhere 10 years ago but have already sunk into the darkest recesses of the internet to decay and disappear.   It’s all the little things that often go unrecorded by history but we ultimately absorb into our cultural landscapes without our notice.   What we are always thinking about when we are not really thinking.  The microplastics of miscellanea that make us up on a molecular level.  

This substack is a place on the internet for discussing, digesting these (and whatever else may strike my current fancy).  

We make no effort to remember what we already know, but what if we tried to?

Welcome to the Secret Toilet.

……

I LOVE BOOKS.  Here’s some recommended reading that helped inspire this post.

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The Memory Palace: A Book of Lost Interiors by Edward Hollis

At Home: A Short History of Private Life by Bill Bryson