Frazetta Woman, By Whitney Farmer – Un Pop Culture

May 12, 2010 Whitney Farmer 22 Comments

A few years ago during Comic-Con in San Diego, I was with a group enjoying BBQ and beer at that dive north of the Marriott and within walking distance if you aren’t wearing ridiculous fantasy-inspired footwear. The standard pop-quiz of “Who’s your favorite comics hero?” went around the table and and stopped with me. I said Tarzan. No one got it, and I stopped trying to reason through beer-haze.

When I moved away from the epic land of Nirvana and Pearl Jam, and the home port of Deadliest Catch, I chose Tarzana. Edgar Rice Burroughs settled there with his family after he began to be a successful writer. Standing in line at the post office, you can look in a display case at his canceled first royalties check, drafts of his Tarzan storylines, first editions, and the deed to the ranch he bought there that would inspire the entire community to embrace his noble savage in their town’s name. Tarzan to me was a hero who had become epic without depending on the supernatural. He was more likely to subjugate arrogant colonials than the creatures that lived as peers in his jungle world. Because my prepubescent dream was to live in a hollowed out tree with a pet falcon eating acorn pancakes a’ la My Side of the Mountain, this Lord of the Apes captured my imagination. From the covers of the Tarzan books, I discovered Frank Frazetta. And then I started to hit puberty. There is a possibility that the events are connected.

Since I was a girl, my fantasies of love have contained battles. That Sleeping Beauty slept through the slaying of the dragon bothered me. Snow White really irritated me, especially her weak sloping shoulders that were in fashion when Disney committed this ideal feminine image to celluloid. I remember concluding that she and her wimpy Prince who had really icky bright red lips were a good match. I wanted to be a princess when I grew up, but I didn’t know how to not get in fights and to not tear my clothes or get dirty. Then I read about Jane, who stayed in the jungle and slept beside a savage.

As girls begin to develop into women, they enter into a type of obstacle course that includes a stadium full of spectators as well as competitors. Someone will be the first to get a ‘training bra’, someone will be the first to wear lipgloss or wear a stylish outfit that prevents you from playing rough on the playground at recess. Inevitably, someone will be the first to start her period, and someone will be the first to french kiss. During junior high, I would glance at the mirror often enough to make sure I looked like everyone else. I remember not being proud that I looked like everyone around me, but relieved.

Then, over the three months of summer between 8th and 9th grades, my body changed completely. And I didn’t know what to do.

It didn’t help that I was still using ‘training bras’ when I had clearly moved up from the minors, or that I had a leathery male P.E. teacher who had contempt for women’s bodies. I was a cheerleader, and suddenly the uniforms that we had made didn’t fit. The hand-me-downs from my model sisters that had snagged me a “Best Dressed” title in the school paper pinched and pulled. Only in the water did I feel comfortable, and I quit cheerleading and began to walk to the high school where they allowed me to swim varsity because our junior high was a feeder school.

Then I saw pictures of Frazetta’s women. They looked like me, with chests and wide shoulders and dimples and muscles. And they were in the middle of the battles, against snakes and demons and unknowable terrors. It’s true that they often were captives, but it always looked to me like their enslavement would be temporary and that they would be part of the imminent fight for their freedom, even if a barbaric rescuer had arrived. Their troubles had not happened because they were weak but only because they had been outmaneuvered by a strong or cunning adversary. It happens to the best legends. I saw in Frazetta’s art the woman who I wanted to be when I grew up.

Once upon a time, I had a nightmare that I was wrestling with a snake. In my dream, I remember watching myself so that I could learn how to have victory over a serpent. The snake’s body was like the trunk of a tree and I struggled to stay on its back while my hands gripped near its head, but not close enough. At the moment when I thought I had subdued it, it was able to turn around and it sank its fangs into my arm. I woke still feeling the poison like fire in me. Then, I got up and went into the battle that we all encounter daily. But now, I make certain that I attack the head of the beasts that I face, keeping my grip strong, not getting caught in a coil that would squeeze me into silence, and not letting bitter poison into me. I battle against monsters daily. But I am built for it.

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Quote of the Blog, from iconic enemy Thulsa Doom: “You broke into my house, stole my property, murdered by servants and my pets, and THAT is what grieves me the most! You killed my snake…”