art created by @tessaragabrielle - Staedler fineliners, colored pencils, and markers on paper
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
I was one of the judges for the @teamgirlpowa ‘Feminist Fire’ poetry contest (you can see the result post here). When we were discussing the theme before we launched the contest, I happened to read an article by Andi Ziesler on embracing feminist anger. In that piece she wrote: “female anger is a taboo that…is supposed to be kept tightly under wraps lest it spring open like some sort of jack-in-the-box Medusa.” The image struck me as really funny, and so I was inspired to draw this piece of art.
As an example post for the #teamgirlpowa contest, I shared a poem of mine, Becoming the Queen. That poem takes Snow White, combines her story with that of Sleeping Beauty as she was originally portrayed, and imagines her fighting back against sexual abuse. Writing that poem was healing for me, as a survivor of sexual assault, and I feel like the poem demonstrates my own, often understated, version of feminist fire.
Like Sleeping Beauty, Medusa’s story is one that begins with rape. (Sadly, many myths and fairy tales do.) In Ovid’s version, she is transformed into a monster after being assaulted in a temple; becoming a monster is meant to punish her, however—for being raped in the temple and not outside of it, presumably.
More recent re-imaginings of this myth have made the transformation a gift, given to her for protection: Medusa never has to fear being weaponless again, when the sight of her face alone has the power to kill any attackers. Thus, feminists recast her as a positive symbol of women’s righteous anger in the face of oppression. While Medusa is generally seen in the mainstream as a scary or evil creature, for some she represents empowerment. She’s something of a double-edged sword, in that way.
Process Images:
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