Gaia's Revenge Dress: The First Vengeance in the Cosmos

One of the most famous dresses in the whole spectrum of fashion history might be the one worn by Princess Diana, the very night Charles admitted to his infidelity in a TV documentary (which now he blames his private secretary for making him confess). It is carved into our minds and hearts as the revenge dress. While any sensible person would go into hiding, Princess Diana did the legendary thing and walked right into the most buzzing event of the day, to a gala at the Serpentine Gallery, in her black off-the-shoulder dress hugging her curves with a chiffon train that flowed as the wind blew. Keep in mind, to my lovely amusement of how these details lay themselves as Easter eggs in the story, that Serpentine means “serpent, evilly cunning” in Latin and Diana’s dress was made by the Greek designer Christina Stambolian.

That night, with one single dress and without a word, in the hottest moment as the world’s most famous betrayed woman, Diana made her statement to the world. And thus, the revenge dress was born. Which brings me back to my story, the birth of revenge, the first-ever revenge in the whole cosmos; Gaia’s revenge.

Greek mythology is a remarkable piece of literature that not only shaped our language but also how we view and shape the world around us. A true reflection of who we are. We shape art and art shapes us. If you go to your bookstore, you will see recently published books emerging in every corner, telling how much the ancient story is still relevant today. That is the exact moment when a woman will stare blankly at a wall because if you recall your favorite goddesses and their stories, you will find a pool of evil ladies. When you first think of a goddess, what comes to your mind could be their ethereal beauty, divine powers, rule over nature, and their care for the beings under their holy jurisdiction. But these were rarely the things that put them at the heart of a story. If you have turned many pages and are still reading about the same goddess, if she was made the heroine of the story, then it is very probable that you are reading about a vengeful, cunning, and evil heroine, leading her scheming ways.

In the ancient telling of these stories, we find female characters at the heart of the story with more layered portrayals. Still, double standards and oppression were existent from the beginning. Women were seen as deceitful and cunning and should be kept under “restraint.” Not to forget that the Greeks were infamously patriarchal after all. In modern narratives, the situation got even more dire; the goddesses and ancient female characters are cut down to their mischief and lost their essence and dept of their stories throughout the course of echoing our tales. They are told in a “born evil, act evil” narrative. If I mention the name Medusa, you will most likely think of a monster who kills everybody in a blink without a reason. Pages and pages of vengeful women. Not to mention, the Greeks called the era before the existence of mortal women “The Golden Age,” where everything was joyful and perfect. The examples are infinite.

There is a first to those vengeful women and it is quite a story. Rather than a femme fatale who unleashes her schemes as she roams through the hills of Mount Olympus, she is a woman who are pushed to the edge to do what she had to do. She is our Mother Earth, Gaia. In the very beginning of the very beginning, Gaia avenges her husband/brother Ouranos, the Sky Father, for how he trapped their children inside her and gives birth to the first revenge in the cosmos. Revolted by the sight of their 13th set of children, a triplet of one-eyed giants and sons with an extra 49 sets of hands and heads, the Sky Father shoves them back into Gaia’s womb at first sight, literally burying her children inside her.

Gaia wasn’t to sit still. She sharpened her knife, literally for nine days and nights. She goes to Mount Othrys to fashion the most terrible artifact made of diamonds and other rocks and finds among her children to help her avenge their lost brothers. This dark son of theirs, spending most of his time in the underworld and jealous of his father’s powers, accepts the task in a heartbeat. He goes on to castrate his father, leading to the birth of the most famous of all goddesses, the beauty itself, Aphrodite, and to the psychoanalytic theory that will throw a phallic object as an explanation for our troubles into our faces for years to come. And Gaia grasps and weeps at the sight of the blood-soaked horror, shedding her holy tears.

From our ancient stories to our pop culture movies, making the woman a vengeful creature from birth seems to be the norm. In fact, we rarely hear the stories of women who take revenge for the injustices they had to endure, but many stories of how their lives are robbed by it. It is scary to think about how women are depicted from the dawn of time and how this shaped our view of ourselves and others. Our history and literature have rarely been written by women, and we are often depicted very far from our nature, as products of male imagination. More sadly, these are what we are given to learn about and define ourselves. It is quite a wonder if this is in any part why male friendships are much longer-lasting and consistent than female relationships. When we went back to the story of the first-ever revenge in our memory, it wasn’t a vengeful creature that we found; she was a mourning mother. It wasn’t an act done out of spite or an inherently unstoppable trait. The first revenge in the cosmos is crafted in the hands of a woman as a mourning mother, feeling betrayed, worthless, disregarded, in grief.

To honor the story, I am giving Gaia her revenge dress. On Mount Olympus, nothing speaks more of a goddess than a distressed walk into the forest. Imagined with a captivating red silk gown with a matching silk shawl, it is only fitting for a goddess who is seeing red. The dress reveals a light burgundy silk layer underneath, inviting you to lift the curtains and look beyond the narratives we are given.