The Shrinking Goddess
Power, Myth and the Female Body
Wild and strange stories have circulated about the female body since antiquity. While legends of poisoned hymens and fanged vaginas circulated, the first female figure – Mother Earth – was recreated as a crooked rib. Ranging from the absurd to the empowering, these myths not only survive but continue to wield power today.
The Shrinking Goddess brings together myths about the female form and traces the subsequent male efforts to ‘tame’ it. Mineke Schipper examines how women’s bodies have been represented since records began – the first Venus and vulva figures date to 40,000 BCE – and around the world.
Drawing together the vast reservoir of myths, proverbs, art, science and scripture that shape how women are seen in the present day, Schipper reclaims the female body as a source of power.
Readers of Angela Davis, Mary Beard, Audre Lorde, Betty Friedan and Germaine Greer will want to read this book.
‘Mineke Schipper provides a fascinating and wide-ranging compendium of fact and fiction through the ages.’ – J. M. Coetzee
'Fascinatingly researched, clearly written and wonderfully illustrated, The Shrinking Goddess takes back the story of the female body and sexuality from patriarchal mythmakers, fearmongerers, and misogynists, both ancient and modern. Doing so, Mineke Schipper opens the way for a dialogue among people of all genders and sexualities seeking to topple the usual hierarchies and find another way, another world.' –Jane Caputi
'A cultural and anthropological study of misogyny via global artworks, texts, myths and proverbs. Only by seeing what has been done can we undo it.’ – New Statesman
Mineke Schipper is a cultural historian and writer. She is the author of seven critically acclaimed works including Never Marry a Woman with Big Feet: Women in Proverbs from Around the World and Naked or Covered: A History of Dressing and Undressing Around the World.
Her writing has been published in The Times, El Mundo and the Los Angeles Times, among others. Schipper was foreign secretary of Dutch PEN, chair of Index on Censorship Nederland and currently serves as Emeritus Professor of Intercultural Literary Studies at the University of Leiden, with visiting professorships in Nigeria, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Burkina Faso and China. She received a Royal Order of Knighthood for her contribution to social and cultural studies. She lives in the Netherlands.
