The Epilogue of the Golden Breast: Juliet’s Real Tragedy
What a bronze statue taught me about the objectification of women
It was June this year that I was a young tourist in Europe, just graduated from a sheltered high school career and desperate for a breath of fresh summer air. There was a certain magic to the cobblestone streets of Italy and the buildings older than my country, every street whispering tales of ages past. Our last day in Italy before driving up north to Austria, we stopped in fair Verona. It was there that I met her — Juliet. Or Giulietta, as the Italians say.
Of course, even before that day, I had come across her countless times. I had met her in English classes, in amateur theater posters, in song lyrics, in film adaptation. She was always beautiful and always in love, and often tragic, at least to those faithful to the source material. But I met her in person at the Casa di Giulietta, a medieval-era house with a courtyard rich with greenery, overlooked by the balcony upon which she was said to have given her famous monologue. We know this lore is all a fantasy. The house was real, but the story was from the imagination of men. Still, once imagination is breathed into existence and exhaled into the public consciousness, it becomes real in its own way.
Juliet stood under the balcony. She was a statue, but the kind of statue with such a rich story that you expect her to look up and start speaking to you. Yet even if she was made of flesh and bone rather than bronze, I had the strange feeling that she wouldn’t have anything to say. Her face was so solemn. She clutched her dress with one hand, the other draped absentmindedly over her shoulder. She was the victim of a great tragedy, that was evident enough. But as I looked at the silent Juliet and the crowds surrounding her, I found myself doubting that anyone knew Juliet’s real tragedy. We all knew, of course, that she was the victim of suicide and impossible love, but that was years ago, when she was but thirteen. No, this Juliet did not mourn the loss of her Romeo. The world had done enough mourning for her by now, and she had no need to dwell on the past.
I saw the true source of Juliet’s anguish all too quickly. Beneath her dark bronze face was her body, a developed, woman’s body. This body was polished golden. But this was not by design of the sculptor. Surrounding the poor Juliet were crowds of tourists, thirstily throwing up their cell phones for pictures, placing their hands on her right breast with jovial grins on their faces that stood in sharp contrast to her sorrowful frown. Again and again, they rubbed her breast, ensuring that it always shone bright gold and no one could forget Juliet’s violation. It was for tradition’s sake, so they said. To bring good luck, of course. It is only a statue. One man from my tour group even stuck his tongue out and pretended to lick her breast. He was somebody’s father.
Strange. Just as Juliet was forged in the imagination of men, it is in their imagination that she lies in purgatory, a child morphed into a woman, a woman morphed into an object, painted and prodded and groped like some sort of sick plaything. Like Dolores of Nabakov’s Lolita, she is a tragedy turned into a fetish. And the most morbid fact of it all is that I could easily be her. Were I frozen, helpless, placed upon a podium before a thousand uncaring travelers, my body would cease to be my own. The bodies of a statue, you see, are only different from our own in that they have neither lungs nor bones. They cannot move and they cannot scream. Under the ominous omnipresence of the male gaze, a sinister fantasy is realized in the form of Juliet. She is the ultimate feminine ideal of the patriarchy: docile and submissive. Helpless and aware of her own helplessness, an awareness permanently etched onto her face.
Let it not be forgotten that any woman, any girl, can become Juliet. When we are silenced, abandoned, controlled, we are the ones who can neither move nor scream. When women are touched and photographed, objectified, ogled, and fetishized, even screams of protests cannot suffice. Our bodies never know peace, for even when alone in our rooms we feel the invisible eyes, we feel the invisible hands. They keep us as still and silent as Juliet.
And what if I told you that this was not even the original Juliet statue placed on display in Verona? The first Juliet was taken inside years ago, placed behind a display case, because so many tourists touched her breast that a hole formed in her chest. They touched her until they wore her away.
In all honesty, I don’t even think that most of these tourists thought too deeply about what they were doing at all. But isn’t that the whole problem? This sexualization of a tragic thirteen-year-old persists because crowds upon crowds have decreed it as normal. A crowd of men, a crowd of women, a crowd of the young and a crowd of the old. I doubt they’ll stop coming to touch her anytime soon. Soon they may have to make a third statue.
Juliet continues to haunt me, because even if we put every statue away from groping hands, I know that there’s no way she can be saved. She can’t ever be put out of her misery, because she’s so much more than a statue. She’s an idea, and ideas are immortal. Ideas cannot die from a drink of poison and a curtain call. There is no final act in the never-ending play of womanhood, repeated billions of times a day, a performance passed on from mother to daughter. So I remember Juliet and feel a painful sort of kinship. We are two girls, both alike in our lack of dignity, though I am flesh and she is bronze. The difference means little to many.
Oh my God. This is absolutely amazing! As a straight male, I loved this, Aswell I100% agree that the soul act of disregarding a womans rights as and idea is disgraceful. Absolutely amazing article and I am definitely sharing this with others.
https://letmegooglethat.com/?q=bronze+sculpture+shiny+where+women+touched+the+penis