Street: Can you tell us a little about vagina dentata and how it originated? Persephone Braham: The vagina dentata has many manifestations, from the classical Greek figure Scylla (a beautiful woman from the waist up, with the slavering jaws of three dogs for genitals) to Eve and Mother Nature --- with her grottoes, caves, quicksand bogs and amphibious serpents. The role of the hero in typical American foundation myths has, as his principle task, the destruction (or at the very least the de-fanging) of the toothed vagina.
Street: Do you know if there have been attempts to present this myth in pop culture?
PB: David Avalos's milagros (little quasi-religious sculptures) conflate religious imagery with vaginas surrounded by barbed wire, razors, etc. Also, Salvador Dalí was famously terrified of the vagina and represented it as a giant lobster.
Street: Are there myths similar to the vagina dentata that our readers should know about?
PB: Eve, mermaids, et.al. are variations on the vagina dentata because they destroy their male victims through temptation (desire for forbidden fruit, knowledge, sexuality). It's fascinating that men inflict the damage on themselves by treating women as passive objects of desire.
Street: Would you say there's a trend in society today toward presenting women as weak, while men have to be the heroes?
PB: There is definitely a consensus that women are represented in popular culture as hookers, victims and doormats. When they are strong - like Sigourney Weaver or Glenn Close (in Alien and Working Girl and Fatal Attraction) - they are generally evil sexual predators. Come to think of it though, I haven't seen too many of this type since the '80s.
Street: Are there myths that illustrate this tendency that have been presented in contemporary culture?
PB: Since this is my research, I tend to see references to it everywhere. I am particularly intrigued by the new Rapex device invented by a South African woman to fight the rape epidemic there. Chomp.
