Female Sexuality; The Reality

​If our Playboy Bunny represented female sexuality as imagined from the outside, this Goddess is what happens when the woman herself gets a vote.
Suddenly, two arms simply aren't enough.

Inspired by the multi-armed goddesses of Hindu tradition, she stands bare-breasted and unapologetic, crowned in pearls, holding four objects freighted with several thousand years of ideas about women, sex, temptation and knowledge.
And, just to keep things complicated, she's wearing a chastity belt.

Mixed messages, anyone?

​In one hand, an orchid—a nod to Georgia O'Keeffe and those lush, sensual flowers that generations of viewers have insisted suggested female anatomy. O'Keeffe herself resisted that interpretation, which makes the reference even more interesting: once again, who  decides what the image means—the woman who created it, or the people looking at it?

In another hand, the apple and the serpent.
​Eve takes a bite, humanity falls, and somehow the woman has been answering for it ever since.
Curiosity becomes disobedience.
Knowledge becomes sin.
​Female appetite becomes dangerous.

​Then there is the owl of Athena, goddess of wisdom. Because perhaps knowing—knowing one's mind, one's body, one's desires—isn't something to fear after all.

​And finally, Pandora's vessel. Not a box, despite what centuries of retelling have taught us, but a pithos—a large Greek storage jar. Pandora opens it and releases suffering into the world.
Another curious woman.
Another catastrophe.
Another woman blamed.
But the story has an important footnote: Hope remained.
Perhaps that deserves more attention.

​Our Goddess holds all these contradictions simultaneously: temptation and wisdom, innocence and experience, restraint and desire, danger and hope. Her breasts are exposed while her sexuality is literally under lock and key. Pearls—those old symbols of purity—form an extravagant crown on the head of a woman who no longer looks particularly interested in being pure for anyone.

​Good luck putting that back in the bottle.