Collages
NEXT >> Click Image

Opprobrium

© Patricia Simko
April 2007

•  •  •  •  •  •  •  •

This collage addresses the recent clamor in the news about Anna Nicole Smith. I like what my friend said about her, that she tried to take advantage of this sexist society, and lost, all while being its victim. She was dissed...but also devoured...so she was loved because she sold lots of papers and TV time. She served herself up to the public's appetite for a bimbo, a gold digger, oversexed and dumb. Then they hated her—a creation of their own projections. Rabbi Shmuley Boteach suggests there are 4 classes of the archetype of the despised woman; the greedy gold-digger, the publicity-seeking prostitute, the brainless bimbo, and the backstabbing bitch...these are the caricatures of the despised, contemptible woman, the forms that we create to hold the hatred of our own dark sides which we cannot tolerate, and therefore project onto someone else...Anna Nicole, for example. Somehow it is women's sexuality that is the target of the most hatred, the most vicious hatred, and the most barbaric of responses, by primitive and so-called 'modern' cultures, by women and men alike. Mary Magdalen was perhaps the first archetypal figure we have for the despised woman...except of course for Eve. We see woman-hating clearly in cultures where genital mutilation is practiced. It is more hidden or disguised in our culture, but equally pernicious. In the Boteach's book, Hating Women: America's Hostile Campaign Against the Fairer Sex, the groundswells of such hatred are discussed. I see Anna Nicole Smith as a modern-day Marilyn Monroe, without the talent and without the vulnerability, but that is what makes her modern.