A thing that winds me up is the way people refer to someone as being a ‘muse’…
In mythology, the Muses were nine goddesses who symbolized the arts and sciences.
Today, a muse is a person (a woman, the vast majority of the time) who serves as an artist’s inspiration. Writers, painters, musicians, and other artists have muses. Scientists have muses.
The general insinuation, is that the muse themself does very little. It is their presence that inspires all the creativity in the artist, or the “thinker”.
But is that really all they do? Or… do the conversations they have with the “creators” take said creators down routes and paths of thought that, had they just been sitting, thinking and left to their own devices, they would never have taken… Do they sit and help solve problem that arise in plots and theories?
Historically women have used male sounding names to be taken more seriously, because women as thinkers and creators were not given the weight they deserved… so might it not be true that if women contributed to works of art, philosophy and scientific research, they were put in the “muse” category because that way the work is the man’s creation, and taken more seriously as a result?
Nowadays, though, most people are a little more enlightened than that… so should we not be pulling people up for referring to their “muse”, denying the artistic, or intellectual merit and autonomy of the individual in question?
Shouldn’t we be referring to people as collaborators and co-creators? These people have feelings, thoughts and talents. They are not icons and symbols, inanimately present simply to encourage introspection and thought in others.
Thoughts, anyone?
This post was originally published as ‘”Backwards in High Heels”
My Name is Not Debbie 