"What's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?"
What's a barely-clad Jungle Girl doing on a writers’ web site?
Richard Rockwell explains it so well...and presents the perfect graphics.
Our Goddess has migrated from her former Home Page: Proactive Positively.com....
She's transformed herself - from Amazon into Muse
Those of you who appreciate her may also relate to Women Who Run With the Wolves : Myths...
and stories of the Wild Woman Archetype. 2 years on the New York Times Bestseller list.
ARTICLE CATEGORY: The View From Here
Jungle Girl Goddess, Symbol of Passions In Prose
I’m the one whom Helga, editor/author of Passions in Prose.com gets to do her web graphics. So, when she created her first site, the former Proactive Positively.com, she asked me to come up with a masthead that symbolizes the positive aspects of activism.
To energize me for a quick start, clever Helga sent me a graphic she knew I would hate; a picture of a sweaty, muscle-bound guy in a bathing suit holding the world-globe in a power embrace.
This atrocious, bad-taste graphic reminded me of the “before” picture in a deodorant commercial or T.S. Eliot’s ApeNeck Sweeney pretending to be Atlas. A dumb brute-like creature forever in the same place, forever strong-arming the world; a satiric cartoon of the paternalistic male whose ideas are frozen in time in support of an unchanging status quo with men in charge and women, “receptive” and submissive to their man, nowhere in sight.
What would be the opposite of this symbol of brute force, domination, paternalism and unthinking male energy? Voila, inspired, I replaced the bare-chested brute Macho Man with a scantily-clad, voluptuous, curvacious Jungle Girl. But Helga was worried. What would readers think? What is a half-naked woman doing on a site about ‘Activism’? I suggested this prototype is perfectly suitable--- a provocative, energetic, take-charge ‘Amazon’.
Still alarmed, Helga reminded me she is too diminutive to qualify as ‘Amazon’; she likes men too much to be considered a feminist ‘ball-breaker’; she doesn’t work out, power walk or engage in any athletics more strenuous or daring than hiking and horse-back riding.
The obvious answer to maintaining my Jungle Girl was to compromise with Helga. I agreed to beef up the bikini, thereby conceal more cleavage, and convince Helga her alternate persona is the Goddess archetype. Naturally – (do I detect a bit of Ego?) - she bought it! :)
The Goddess symbolizes the active and creative power of the female, including the power to bring out the best in us and evoke our individual potential.Goddess worship is the world’s oldest religion that has become transformed into a modern quest for spiritual growth combined with respect for the environment.
Today, The Goddess is a spiritual philosophy that values living a peaceful and spiritual life, living in harmony with nature and equality between men and women.
The goddess has three aspects. Prior to the “creative” aspect, (represented by the pregnant woman) prior to the “wisdom” aspect (represented by the old wise-woman) there is “future potential” aspect (represented by the sexually attractive aspect of the goddess) with the potential to give birth and the potential to greater wisdom through experience.
The goddess philosophy believes that sex is natural and a good thing. The sexual attraction aspect of the goddess represents the life force as FUTURE POTENTIAL.
While all three aspects are championed by Helga’s site, it is the unleashing of "future potential" which best represents Helga’s website. Contrast the goddess celebration of life and celebration of female sexuality to the Puritanical view of some religions that sex is dangerously sinful so women need to be kept locked up.
In paternalistic parts of the world (like Afghanistan) women are forced to wear a heavy veil to block, hide and control their feminine power. In fundamentalist parts of the world, religious books tightly control the sexual life of women, but have a double standard for men. These religious books may talk of "equality" but are always written by men. Women priests are very rare (surprise) in religions that take a negative or puritanical view of sexuality (typically it is only the woman who gets killed for “adultery” while the man can have many wives).
When men write the rules, they develop a tradition that women's sexuality is dangerous and should be tightly controlled by men. This view of women has now become part of the cultural wars over, “Is female sexuality dangerous and potentially evil? “Is it best if a girl is controlled by her father before her marriage and then is it best if she submits to her husband?”
In contrast, the goddess philosophy teaches us that female sexual power is a healthy part of nature, which should be celebrated as a symbol of life, human pleasure and the future potential of humanity.
Helga’s celebration of life, her unleashing of positive energy and her win-win activism are well represented by the jungle goddess.
Pro-active, intelligent, heroic, and deeply spiritual, the Jungle Goddess is the embodiment of female sexual power, a symbol of each individual's power to create, change, and transform the world by taking active charge of his or her own life.
______________________
Want more Jungle Goddess/Muse? Click here:
Writer's Block: Help Me Find My Muse!
~ Richard Rockwell ~
Copyright 2000
To energize me for a quick start, clever Helga sent me a graphic she knew I would hate; a picture of a sweaty, muscle-bound guy in a bathing suit holding the world-globe in a power embrace.
This atrocious, bad-taste graphic reminded me of the “before” picture in a deodorant commercial or T.S. Eliot’s ApeNeck Sweeney pretending to be Atlas. A dumb brute-like creature forever in the same place, forever strong-arming the world; a satiric cartoon of the paternalistic male whose ideas are frozen in time in support of an unchanging status quo with men in charge and women, “receptive” and submissive to their man, nowhere in sight.
What would be the opposite of this symbol of brute force, domination, paternalism and unthinking male energy? Voila, inspired, I replaced the bare-chested brute Macho Man with a scantily-clad, voluptuous, curvacious Jungle Girl. But Helga was worried. What would readers think? What is a half-naked woman doing on a site about ‘Activism’? I suggested this prototype is perfectly suitable--- a provocative, energetic, take-charge ‘Amazon’.
Still alarmed, Helga reminded me she is too diminutive to qualify as ‘Amazon’; she likes men too much to be considered a feminist ‘ball-breaker’; she doesn’t work out, power walk or engage in any athletics more strenuous or daring than hiking and horse-back riding.
The obvious answer to maintaining my Jungle Girl was to compromise with Helga. I agreed to beef up the bikini, thereby conceal more cleavage, and convince Helga her alternate persona is the Goddess archetype. Naturally – (do I detect a bit of Ego?) - she bought it! :)
The Goddess symbolizes the active and creative power of the female, including the power to bring out the best in us and evoke our individual potential.Goddess worship is the world’s oldest religion that has become transformed into a modern quest for spiritual growth combined with respect for the environment.
Today, The Goddess is a spiritual philosophy that values living a peaceful and spiritual life, living in harmony with nature and equality between men and women.
The goddess has three aspects. Prior to the “creative” aspect, (represented by the pregnant woman) prior to the “wisdom” aspect (represented by the old wise-woman) there is “future potential” aspect (represented by the sexually attractive aspect of the goddess) with the potential to give birth and the potential to greater wisdom through experience.
The goddess philosophy believes that sex is natural and a good thing. The sexual attraction aspect of the goddess represents the life force as FUTURE POTENTIAL.
While all three aspects are championed by Helga’s site, it is the unleashing of "future potential" which best represents Helga’s website. Contrast the goddess celebration of life and celebration of female sexuality to the Puritanical view of some religions that sex is dangerously sinful so women need to be kept locked up.
In paternalistic parts of the world (like Afghanistan) women are forced to wear a heavy veil to block, hide and control their feminine power. In fundamentalist parts of the world, religious books tightly control the sexual life of women, but have a double standard for men. These religious books may talk of "equality" but are always written by men. Women priests are very rare (surprise) in religions that take a negative or puritanical view of sexuality (typically it is only the woman who gets killed for “adultery” while the man can have many wives).
When men write the rules, they develop a tradition that women's sexuality is dangerous and should be tightly controlled by men. This view of women has now become part of the cultural wars over, “Is female sexuality dangerous and potentially evil? “Is it best if a girl is controlled by her father before her marriage and then is it best if she submits to her husband?”
In contrast, the goddess philosophy teaches us that female sexual power is a healthy part of nature, which should be celebrated as a symbol of life, human pleasure and the future potential of humanity.
Helga’s celebration of life, her unleashing of positive energy and her win-win activism are well represented by the jungle goddess.
Pro-active, intelligent, heroic, and deeply spiritual, the Jungle Goddess is the embodiment of female sexual power, a symbol of each individual's power to create, change, and transform the world by taking active charge of his or her own life.
______________________
Want more Jungle Goddess/Muse? Click here:
Writer's Block: Help Me Find My Muse!
~ Richard Rockwell ~
Copyright 2000
~ © Copyright 2002, Passions in Prose.com All Rights Reserved. ~