Pop Goes The Soda

Shake the bottle hard enough before you drink and its guaranteed that when you flip the lid,  soda will explode like surf swept by wind as sea lashes sand. The fact is –  a woman cannot be suppressed.

Queen Victoria’s frowning face and her black dress after she lost her Albert stamped the 19th Century.

A harsh morality reached from her throne and tiny shore, all round the world, whispering that sex was evil – and if you did it outside the marriage bed you were surely damned.

Poor women, already in the 18th Century they were plagued with fear, “Does he Love me? Does he not?”

But how could they know? No one dared touch. And so for a hundred years they married men they had not really tried, and then  sewed their passion into tight right fabric rings, each prick of the finger a dart of quiet remorse.

It was artists such as Lawrence Alma Tadema, Edward Burne Jones, John William Godward, Frederick Goodall, Arthur Hughes, Talbot Hughes, Frederic Leighton andJohn Everett Millais who finally led the way – letting them froth in sweetness from their corsets.

And show their true sensual selves

But in the 1950’s in America, there they were back in the parlor. But this time they were goddesses. They were the sweet smiling faces that met the men who returned from the city to the suburbs, their homes sparkling the same perfection of their uncreased dresses, their unruffled selves, no matter what the day had held.

Believe me they were not happy.

By the 60’s, they were stuck between the suburban queen and the amazon who would emerge ten years later. Frantic they made secret calls on street corners.

Trembling in fear, they wept that they could not be that golden girl.

 

It has been quite a task for artists to record the duality of a woman’s being, but as you see the pendulum keeps swinging.

Now, finally free to frolic as she wishes, to be at one with her natural being, its women themselves who recognize they are still not safe. Somewhere something is ticking, and so they are forever prepared. That froth that hit the sand, that bursting passion, is now instead insecticide.