Shameless

I had a nice conversation with my spirit daughter last night.  We talked about religion, patriarchy, and all the good stuff that mamas and daughters should talk about but often don’t.  Fortunately, we are very like minded, so it was a good conversation.
In our discussion, I brought up this statue.  This is “Eve,” by Rodin.  If you are unfamiliar with the story of Adam and Eve, the gist of it is that God created Adam and Eve and they did not know that they were naked or have any shame.  But they ate the fruit of a tree that God had specifically  forbidden them to eat, and then they realized that they should cover themselves.
I always loved this statue because this is could have been a sculpture of me at the time I discovered it.  I had a little bit of pudge on my belly, and my thighs didn’t really gap, and I had been ashamed of my body from my earliest memory.
To me, this image is the perfect depiction of how I felt about my body.  Don’t look.  I’m ashamed.
And in the course of discussing this with her, I thought, “women didn’t know shame until God gave it to them.”  And, if you grew up in any Christian environment, you probably know this, but have you ever thought of it that way?  God made us ashamed of our bodies.

Now, I don’t believe any of these stories are literal.  I know that shame comes from social expectations.  But the most ancient form of manipulating a society is religion.

I don’t really have anything else to say.  I just wanted to put that out there before I forget to write it down.