Pallas Athena: The Beautiful Fighting Girl

Aug. 27, 2018, 12:37 p.m.

We know her mostly from magical girl anime. She's Usagi, Rei Ayanami, Madoka Kaname, and Mikasa Ackerman. Usually, we witness her transformation from regular girlhood through physical nudity or emotional trauma. She is characterized by trauma that is often sexual. We see her pain and see her die over and over again. Her uniform shows off her breasts and legs to viewers.

"The icon of the beautiful fighting girl is an extraordinary invention capable of encapsulating polymorphous perversity in a stable form. She radiates the potential for an omnidirectional sexuality latent with pedophilia, homosexuality, fetishism, sadism, masochism, and other perversions, yet she behaves as if she were completely unaware of it all" (158, Beautiful Fighting Girl, Saito Tamaki).

The beautiful fighting girl is Pallas Athena. She is a product of patriarchal imagination, who was birthed from the head of her father. The beautiful fighting girl is a media strategy. Athena and Rei Ayanami are synthetic creations of an absent father.

Like Athena, she is a virgin. Her inaccessibility is constantly fetishized.

She cares only about self destruction. Sometimes, like in Sailor Moon and Puella Magi Magica Madoka, she wants to save the world. Most of the time, she has no motive of her own. She is at once capable and captive. Her magic represents the time in a girl's life before she has to become a woman, but whose magic inevitably leads her into all the tired tropes of womanhood — of being a mother, wife, and domestic worker. A strong girl eventually grows up and turns into a strong woman, so that her strength is used by everybody around her.

Athena and Medusa used to be the same Libyan goddess. In a retelling of the myth, Athena made Medusa who she was by making her ugly and banishing her to an island with her sisters. There is a duality to this story, because Athena's actions can be read as both an act of revenge against and protection for Medusa. Similarly, the beautiful fighting girl reads as a strong woman, pseudo-feminist, made by men for male consumption.

The beautiful fighting girl is a myth. She is an elevation of self fetishism and masochism. The strong girl, captured through image, is a pointless character. Her backstory, her motives, and her future are defined through pointless achievements, glamor, and suffering. Sailor Moon's cookie cutter plot is really an excuse to accessorize, Madoka finds out her monsters are really other magical girls, Rei was just a puppet used to orchestrate the singularity, and Mikasa's role as protector is superfluous.

Look at your chart. Look at the places Pallas Athena touches in you. Does it aspect your Sun? Does your self image grow in sync or contrast to the beautiful girl who fights? Maybe it's in your seventh house and the representation of the beautiful fighting girl is the mirror that distorts your image to the world. Maybe it's in your twelfth house and the beautiful fighting girl is a private character that releases your shame, anger, and desires.

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