My original idea
for this blog was more about the advertising aspect of having an entire
magazine dedicated to the Fifty Shades media phenomenon. Put out, this month,
by Topix Media Lab, it’s kind of a glitzy one-off that has the “feel” of “Cosmopolitan” when Helen Gurley Brown
was running the show.
And then I saw
the timeline on page 18 that identified a “tiny ivory statuette with over-sized
breasts and an exaggerated vulva” as a Naughty Neanderthal’s crafting of the
first piece of prehistoric pornography.
I think I’m
allowed to say vulva, here. I’m not on the Michigan statehouse floor where Rep.
Lisa Brown has been banned from speaking because she uttered the word vagina
and offended the men who were trying to legislate hers and everyone other woman's in
that state. You don’t have to stop reading. I have a tiny soapbox and I’m onto
another subject—sort of.
Trust me; I’m
very happy that erotic romance has become a topic of conversation because of
the popularity of E. L. James’, Fifty Shades of Grey novel but the magazine's attempt to
identify the tiny, ivory statuette as a naughty Neanderthal’s first attempt
at prehistoric pornography had me shaking my head.
The truth is, the
ivory statuette is just as likely to be representative of a respectfully
worshiped symbol of a female deity. Not a pornographic representation of the
female form. Someone from some long ago, Paleolithic civilization might very
well have carved the statuette with as much reverence as later, male-deity
worshipers carved a Christian cross.
While
researching this subject, I came across a 2009 Discovery News article; written by Jennifer Viegas, that I think
might have been where the Fifty Shades magazine contributors
gleaned the data for their assumption. According to the article, Nicholas
Conard, who reported the find and led the project where the Venus of Hohle Fels
(the statuette pictured in the article, listed below) was found,
remarked that nothing had changed in 40,000 years. Dr. Paul Mellars, who
according to the 2009 article; was at the time a University of Cambridge
archaeologist at Stony Brook University’s Turkana Basin Institute, is quoted as
saying that he assumed a guy had carved it-- “...perhaps representing his
girlfriend”.
It seems Dr.
Mellars couldn’t help but be struck by the very sexually explicit depiction of
a woman and seems to be comparing the figurine to a Paleolithic Playboy. See the entire article here: http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/05/13/sexy-female-artifact.html
Author, Merlin
Stone, in her 1976 book When God Was A Woman, gives the people during the Paleolithic period a little more credit and proposes a different picture. Women during this period were revered as the givers of life and recognized for their fertility but they
were also warriors, sages, judges, healers and anything else they wanted to be.
They didn’t need to ask for permission or wait for it to be bestowed upon them.
The text in the Fifty
Shades of Grey magazine identifying the ‘Naughty Neanderthal’ carving
as pornographic was probably meant to be cute but the assumptions put forth by
these men in the academic world makes me wonder if their two-thousand year-old, culturally ingrained attitudes didn’t influence their judgment.
What do you
think?
Paris
