What If We Cultivated Our Ugliness? or: The Monstrous Beauty of Medusa
“Medusa’s ugliness grew and grew, becoming something greater than herself but still part of her legend.”
This is Role Monsters, a series on monstrous female archetypes by Jess Zimmerman.
Myth and folklore teem with frightening women: man-seducers and baby-stealers, menacing witches and avenging spirits, rapacious bird-women and all-devouring forces of nature. In our stories and our culture, we underline the idea that women who step out of bounds—who are angry or greedy or ambitious, who are overtly sexual or insufficiently sexy—aren’t just outside the norm: They’re monstrous. Women often try to tamp down those qualities that we’re told violate “natural” femininity. But what if we embraced our inner monsters?
*
Why would you do that to yourself?
Well of course, If I’d looked like that, I might have believed in myself too. I might have tried harder. I might have spent less time berating myself for my flaws.
Jess Zimmerman is the author of Women and Other Monsters and an editor at Quirk Books. Her essays and opinion writing have appeared in the Guardian, the New Republic, Slate, Hazlitt, Catapult, and others.
Enter your email address to receive notifications for author Jess Zimmerman
Success!
Confirmation link sent to your email to add you to notification list for author Jess Zimmerman
More by this author
I Gave Up Pants—But Femininity Is Just As Binding
I stopped wearing pants in the name of physical comfort, with the emotionally uncomfortable result that I now present as a woman who wears dresses all the time.
Theory of Knowledge
An example of the just-world phenomenon: If anyone found out, they would think I deserved it. When it’s the girl who gets hurt, they always do.
Who Is Steven Hotdog? Or, Untangling the “Braided Essay”
A personal essay of the Steven Hotdog form needs the interior experience, the exterior fact, and the meaning that connects them—in order to work its magic.
More in this series
When It Is Considered Monstrous Not to Want Children, and Monstrous to Want Them Too Much
“Most cultures have a female monster who preys on pregnant women and children. In ancient Greece, her name was Lamia.”
What Keeps Me Up at Night: How Do I Meet My Son’s Needs If I Can’t See Them?
This is where, for me, motherhood divided into ‘Before’ and ‘After.’
Bridging My Family’s Language Barrier, One Filthy Russian Idiom at a Time
My family may not get much of my writing, but our mutual appreciation for ill-advised sexual mayhem transcends language.