Seafoodpunch

Medusa wasn’t always a spiteful lady with a hissing hairdo. Taking a closer look at what she had to deal with growing up explains why she turned ino the enraged monster most people have come to associate with the name.

Medusa was the daughter of Phorcys and Cetus. Cetus, Medusa’s mother, was a hideously ugly sea-monster and bore more resemblance to a fish full of raggedy teeth, than a woman. Medusa’s father, Phorcys was the infamous ‘Old-Man of the Sea’ with an apparent taste for ugly ladies. I doubt Medusa would ever want to be seen with either parent in public.

Medusa’s grandparents were a different story altogether. Her beautiful and voluptuous Grandmother, Gaia, gave birth to all of the Greek gods. She is as high up there as it gets, and the Greeks wouldn’t even swear in her name, unless they were really serious. You never, EVER cross Gaia.

This is also the where it gets weird: Before Gaia, there was nothing, but every lady wants a man in her life. So, this fruitful god of the gods had to give birth to a man to marry. This is how Medusa’s grandfather/Uncle, better known as Pontus- came into being. Pontus-wasn’t as ambitious as his wife/mom (and who would be with a family-history like that?). He was just happy being the sea-god that he was, busy contemplating how wrong it was to get it on with his mother to make more inbred children.

Medusa had all this to deal with, but you would think that she at least had some sort of special gift, since she was directly related to some of the most powerful gods out there, right? No! It sucked. And that would piss me off too.  Out of her three sisters, she was the only mortal one with no real skills to speak of. 

The one thing Medusa did have going for her, though, were her looks. She didn’t always have a head full of snakes. In fact, some stories claimed her to be drop-dead gorgeous. Every man who caught a glimpse of her, would start drooling and obsessively lust after her. This did get to Medusa’s head though, and she eventually became a snob, repeatedly insulting higher gods by proclaiming that nothing was really as impressive as her beauty.

Unfortunately, being as unlucky as she was, it was no surprise that Medusa’s beauty became her curse as well: Disgusted with Medusa’s vanity, the goddess Athena turned her into the creature that men came to fear instead of lust after. Not only was Medusa’s long shiny hair turned into a pile of writhing snakes, but any man who approached her would turn into stone (and not in a good way, like they did before).

The more complicated version of the story involves Poseidon, who just couldn’t help himself after seeing the gorgeous Medusa, and proceeded to rape her in Athena’s temple (this was a major insult to the virgin Athena and her reaction can be described as nothing more than extreme). In a way, Athena took away the one thing Medusa had going for her. Now a monster, it was all downhill for Medusa from there.

Perseus eventually beheaded Medusa and was proclaimed a hero. His statue, with Medusa’s head held high by his muscular hand, stands tall in many cities. But I always feel sorry for the headless body lying underneath him who hadn’t seen a good hair day in centuries.

In my opinion, the most horrifying thing in the whole story happened after Medusa’s beheading: After getting her head lopped off and it rolled onto the ground, Medusa gave birth to two HUGE babies (they supposidly sprang out of her bloody neck.) One of her kids was Pegasus-a winged horse-and the other a handsome man-Chrysaor. Chrysaor established himself as a hero and eventually had a cute three headed baby of his own.

Poor Medusa. You would be grumpy too if you had to carry around a pair of twins that weigh more than a volkwagon and anyone who came around to help turned into a useless statue.

Medusa really did have a hard life and kudos to her for handling herself so well in a fight, pregnant with a horse and a giant. Hopefully, during times like family game night, Chrysaor told his own three headed offspring what a courageous grandmother he had.