4 minute read
Glorious Greek Girls
GLORIOUS
GREEK GIRLS
TRIGGER WARNING: SEXUAL ASSAULT
BY SARA HARKINS
Rick Riordan made every teenager wish to be Poseidon’s child, but Liv Albert made every woman think twice. At some point, we’ve all been interested in Greek myths and the elusive stories of the Gods and Goddesses. Every trope, every tale, every storyline has all seemingly been recycled from an older mythology story. Yet, these retellings are never quite told for women.
Liv Albert, author and creator of the hit podcast, “Let’s Talk about Myths Baby!” knows this better than anyone else. With 800,000 – 1 million downloads per month, it’s clear that people are interested in a new perspective. Her podcast retells myths in a sarcastic and entertaining way, recognizing that not every myth has meaning, but it is loaded with biases that are more sinister.
Greek myths come from lore and oral storytelling, which was made into literature and retold throughout history. In older retellings and more commercialized works, many claim men or Gods were “with” women — they “seduced” her, “fell in love” or “carried her off.” All are euphemisms, and Albert makes sure to call it what it is.
“I think it’s really important to look at these stories and use correct terminology,” says Albert. “I do describe it as assault and abduction when that’s the case. There’s a lot of times in myths where it’s explicit that it’s not consensual and I think that’s important, too.” Albert says that often people will defend the assaulters in Greek Myths since the language used in those stories protects their actions. But that doesn’t mean their actions are validated, it means that the people who translated these sources saw it that way.
This is precisely why translation is so important and why retellings need to be told accurately – there are repercussions to not analyzing messages and passing them on, and it’s reflected in our society’s behaviors and thoughts.
Not only is there bias in the language towards women, but in the characters of women. “So often, the ones who are known to be beautiful are known for that because it ruins something in some way,” says Albert. Helen of Sparta was beautiful and blamed for the Trojan War. Pandora was beautiful and blamed for all the evils in the world. Women in Greek myths are demonized for their beauty, seen as a symbol of power to men or completely unimportant.
Even when women are given power, it’s limited. Penelope and Clytemnestra from the “Odyssey” were left in charge when their husbands went to war, and yet in some retellings, there is a man left to watch over or rule alongside them. In these stories, Albert says, “these women weren’t actually given the credit for the power that they logically would’ve had.” Even one of the most powerful women, the Goddess Athena, was aligned with men in every way; she was the man’s goddess. Inherently, Athena would not have been that, but the sources we have used her as an agent of the patriarchy.
One thing is to be made clear – women are underrepresented in mythology because of how it came to us through history. It’s not that their stories weren’t important or being told, it’s that we don’t have them because it wasn’t passed down. “What we do have is a lot of works that weren’t written by men but written down by men,” says Albert.
As Greek Myths become more popular with the success of Madeline Miller’s “Song of Achilles,” and Albert’s podcast, she notes, “women have always loved Greek Mythology … but now we can retell these stories from a real place of agency and power.” Medusa even became a symbol of the #metoo movement in 2018 as her story was re-examined. Although seen as a monster in books like “Percy Jackson,” original sources state that Medusa wasn’t harmful. She lived at the edge of the earth and was sexually assaulted by Poseidon, then punished and killed with the help of Athena. As more women see her as this status of survivor, Albert notes, “Men have to come up with all these other reasons why that’s not what she is.” She’s a monster. She’s terrorizing the lands. She’s evil. She deserved to be killed.
It shows the lengths people will go to bury women’s stories, but people like Albert are ensuring that no woman’s story is lost in translation.
Photographed by: Jacob Lawall, Elinor Franklin
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