Tan Men/Pale Women : Color and Gender in Archaic Greece and Egypt, a Comparative Approach

The Resource Tan Men/Pale Women : Color and Gender in Archaic Greece and Egypt, a Comparative Approach

Label

Tan Men/Pale Women : Color and Gender in Archaic Greece and Egypt, a Comparative Approach

Title remainder

Color and Gender in Archaic Greece and Egypt, a Comparative Approach

Statement of responsibility

Mary Ann Eaverly

Language

eng

Summary

"One of the most obvious stylistic features of Athenian black-figure vase painting is the use of color to differentiate women from men. By comparing ancient art in Egypt and Greece, Tan Man/Pale Women uncovers the complex history behind the use of color to distinguish between genders, without focusing on race. Author Mary Ann Eaverly considers the significance of this overlooked aspect of ancient art as an indicator of underlying societal ideals about the role and status of women. Such a commonplace method of gender differentiation proved to be a complex and multivalent method for expressing ideas about the relationship between men and women, a method flexible enough to encompass differing worldviews of Pharaonic Egypt and Archaic Greece. Does the standard indoor/outdoor explanation--women are light because they stay indoors--hold true everywhere, or even, in fact, in Greece? How "natural" is color-based gender differentiation, and, more critically, what relationship does color-based gender differentiation have to views about women and the construction of gender identity in the ancient societies that use it? The depiction of dark men and light women can, as in Egypt, symbolize reconcilable opposites and, as in Greece, seemingly irreconcilable opposites where women are regarded as a distinct species from men. Eaverly challenges traditional ideas about color and gender in ancient Greek painting, reveals an important strategy used by Egyptian artists to support pharaonic ideology and the role of women as complementary opposites to men, and demonstrates that rather than representing an actual difference, skin color marks a society's ideological view of the varied roles of male and female"--

Assigning source

Provided by publisher

Cataloging source

DLC

Government publication

government publication of a state province territory dependency etc

Illustrations

illustrations

Index

index present

Language note

Text in English

Literary form

non fiction

Nature of contents

bibliography

Context

Context of Tan Men/Pale Women : Color and Gender in Archaic Greece and Egypt, a Comparative Approach

Structured data from the Bibframe namespace is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License by Bates College. Additional terms may apply to data associated with third party namespaces.

Context

Work of