My Tattoo

Two weeks ago I booked an appointment for my new tattoo. For those unfamiliar with the process, the first step involves sitting down with the tattoo artist and discussing what exactly you want tattooed into your skin. I had known what I wanted for the past year; however, re-answering the question for my new tattoo artist made me realize that the meaning behind my tattoo is something I would like to discuss in my blog. For the past two weeks, I’ve been harvesting my thoughts into sentences that would make some kind of sense. Even though my blog is still riding that initial stream-of-consciousness, through many edits, I’ve managed to direct that stream into something resembling order.

On my back, I have a patchwork of tattoos flowing down my spine. And now, to extend, and also to conclude, the narrative I started to tell a while ago on my body (is there a more sincere canvas than your body to tell a story?), I want to add a dewy black fox tattoo. Inspired by the enchanting Kitsune myth, the nine-tailed fox I will soon have inked to me embodies the centuries old stories of the intelligent, strong, and the resilient spirits of self-sufficient women, who are ostracized by society because they were feared. In choosing to bring this image I have in mind to life, I deliberately opted for a non-male artist. Because I believed that a male artist wouldn’t be able to capture the essence of a fox navigating a world that often misunderstands her strength better than a female artist with a shared journey with that fox.

Of course, akin to many creative inspirations, my idea for my last tattoo did not directly come to me in a flash of insight. An animated story I watched a couple of years ago provided the raw materials I’d eventually mold into the design for this ink.

Love, Death + Robots: Good Hunting

I will not delve into the details of the story. Rather I am planning to stick to the deuteragonist of the episode, Yan, who is a Huli Jing, a nine-tailed fox spirit that can shapeshift into a beautiful woman to seduce men and feed on their yang, “[their] masculine force of action,” (Jung-Palandri, 1991). We see Yan first appear as a kid, watching her mother, who is also a Huli Jing, get decapitated by a male hunter while her life is spared by the son of the hunter, who will later become the protagonist. 

The story is set in the 19th century, in an alternate universe where the British Empire colonizes China. The overall episode is a commentary on how industrialization and society affects individual lives. We observe characters embodying capitalism, industrialization, and, most likely, humanity–not merely as a species, but as symbolic manifestations of the essence of being human. “This story is an allegorical tale about, [putting] it rather bluntly, the cultural rape of China by the British Empire during the Age of European Colonialism,” says some critics, making it easier for me to connect back to how Yan’s story is actually that of the oppressed, weakened, and ostracized, of the “raped China” (MacMaster, 2019).

Femme fatale & The Ostracized Women

 In the end, Yan transforms into a femme fatale, in my words. A femme fatale is often described as mysterious and seductive, and she often uses her charm, beauty, and cunning–“fox like”–intelligence to manipulate and deceive men. “[A] femme fatale has been dismissed as a sexist figure of male fantasy but also defended as a subversive character who transgresses women’s limited social opportunities,” (Ostberg, 2023). She is often ostracized because she “brings disaster to anyone with whom she becomes [] involved,” (Ostberg, 2023). What makes her dangerous is not her captivating beauty but rather her intelligence–out of place and unexpectedly formidable when found in a woman. As its French suggests, it’s what makes a femme fatale a “fatal woman.” 

The story of Yan, which starts with the tragic loss of her only female role model, is shaped by the traumatic events she experiences due to the “bewitchment” she possesses. She gets separated from her savior, the son of the hunter, who later appears as an engineer for the British, representing the ones who adapted to the industrialization and technological advancements of the era well. When they reconnect after years through an encounter, the son of the hunter saves her from an obvious assault case. Again. We learn that this beautiful, strong, and intelligent woman, Yan, has been using her skills to bewitch men to survive. Their paths diverge again.

Years later, we see Yan in a robot form, asking help from the engineer. She tells him that a British man drugged her and, replacing her limbs with automaton pieces, turned her into his sex slave. She kills him to escape that hell. The magic has fully left her body after her full automation. Listening to her story, the engineer transforms her mechanical body into a form that can shape shift from woman to fox. Receiving the help, Yan uses her seductive powers that are re-introduced to her body to get revenge on those who have done wrong to her. In the end she leaves Yan. 

She is a femme fatale. She is fully industrialized. There is no magic in her body. No body part left from her mother. Only mechanical parts that are tuned by men, who are successfully navigating the society.

Watching Yan’s story (and also you can read the short story that inspired this episode here) I found myself asking the same questions: Why is there an expression called “femme fatale”? Why is femininity fatal? Is masculinity not? Were those men who assaulted her, who changed her not “fatale”? There was something not clicking. The men in the story were bad guys. Yan was the morally-wrong victim who later resorted to violence to bring justice for their wrong doings. However, there was something given about the men’s evil nature. They were bad, and that was it. But Yan’s fatality inherited the decisions Yan made. The evil of the men was a product of their superficiality. Yan’s crimes were a product of her judgment and reasoning. A woman who thinks was fatale. And society ostracizes them.

via GIPHY

What about other examples?

Yan’s story (Huli Jings’ stories) is not the only story where we see this type of treatment towards women of knowledge. Throughout history, women who were categorized as witches have been hiding behind a wall of fear caused by their lifestyles’ mystery, often misunderstood by society. However, as history shows, these women did not bear supernatural powers but their intelligence was heavily influenced by the scientific advancements of the time (Zwissler, 2018). They had a keen understanding of herbs, medicine, and the natural world that set them apart and that was not available to the majority of the population (Manzor-Coat, 1993). Unfortunately, in these societies, people who thought such knowledge can’t exist (or can’t be understood by women) or must be a work of the satan often overlooked these practitioners, resulting in their unfair ostracization from the community. The fear of the unfamiliar and a societal resistance to intelligent women led to the marginalization of these women called witches. They kept getting scapegoated as the cause of various misfortunes, including plagues. When people looked for someone to blame, they often blamed marginalized groups, including these women who are believed to practice witchcraft (Cole, 2010). Even in fairytales, the antagonist was always portrayed as a self-sufficient, knowledge practitioner woman who is almost always a witch and almost always is evil intended against the pure, naive, and ready-to-be-rescued girls. 

However, one story out of many (1001 to be exact) tells us how an intelligent woman can escape the norms. The story of Scheherazade from the One Thousand and One Nights tells us how a woman escapes death, who is a king who promised to “marry a virgin every single day and deflower her at night, and then kill her at dawn,” (NPR, 2013). Scheherazade, through her knowledge of folk stories and art of persuasion, manages to bring the good out of this cruel man. Hanan Al-Shaykh, a Lebanese re-teller of the One Thousand and One Nights, says she believed Scheherazade was the first feminist, who was also “a philosopher, an artist, a writer, [who] was trying through literature to humanize the king and men around her,” (NPR, 2013). Al-Shaykh warns that this belief is not what the general population believes in. She suggests that most of the women in her life condemned Scheherazade and believed that she is “a slave sitting and telling [] stories so [she] won’t [get] kill[ed].” However, I am more aligned with Al-Shaykh’s thinking. I believe that Scheherazade’s eloquent plan shows us how a woman who has a right to read, is allowed to tell stories, and whose voice heard by men in power is not fatal, not a misfit, but someone to be celebrated. She demonstrates that a woman can be more than just a passive victim; she can be an active just like Yang, intelligent just like renaissance scientists, and resourceful agent of change just like a king. Her storytelling prowess keeps her alive, yes, but it also highlights the power of narrative, intellect, and having a voice to be listened to as tools of survival and influence.

Coming back to my tattoo, I still don’t have it. However, by retelling the story of Huli Jing on my body through the hands of an artist who is making her voice, her art heard through her practice, I want to ensure that the stories of Yans are told the way they would have wanted them to be. I aim to carry the intelligence, elegance, beauty, and voices of Yans, femme fatales, witches, and princesses with me, always reminding myself that I have a voice to be heard and stories to share.

References

Cole, Lucinda. “OF MICE AND MOISTURE: Rats, Witches, Miasma, and Early Modern Theories of Contagion.” Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies 10, no. 2 (2010): 65–84. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23242141.

Jung-Palandri, Angela. “GENDER AND SEXISM IN CHINESE LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE.” Schnftfestschrift: Essays in honor of John DeFrancis, August 31, 1991. https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1794/5777/gender_and_sexism_in_chinese_language_and_literature.pdf;sequence=1.

Liu, Ken. “Good Hunting (Part 1 of 2).” Strange Horizons Fiction, October 9, 2012. https://web.archive.org/web/20121120182707/http://strangehorizons.com/fund_drives/2012/special-issue-hunting1-f.shtml.

MacMaster, Joseph. “Off the Beaten Path | Love, Death & Robots S1E8 – Good Hunting.” Chicago Film Scene, September 28, 2019. https://chicagofilmscene.com/love-death-robots-good-hunting-review-off-the-beaten-path/.

Manzor-Coats, Lillian. “Of Witches and Other Things: Maryse Condé’s Challenges to Feminist Discourse.” World Literature Today 67, no. 4 (1993): 737–44. https://doi.org/10.2307/40149572.

NPR Staff, f. “Scheherazade: From Storytelling ‘slave’ to ‘First Feminist.’” NPR, June 9, 2013. https://www.npr.org/2013/06/09/189539866/scheherazade-from-storytelling-slave-to-first-feminist. 

Ostberg, R. (2023, September 21). femme fatale. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/femme-fatale

Zwissler, Laurel. “‘I am That Very Witch’: On The Witch, Feminism, and Not Surviving Patriarchy.” Journal of Religion & Film 22, no. 3 (2018): 6.