#was feminine and he also wrote that cabin poorly in general

[aishabellasbigblogofeverything]

I love this meta! I really wish that Rick had expanded on the Aphrodite kids more, the girls and boys. For the girls, it goes without saying that I wish he had portrayed their femininity in a more positive light and didn’t shame them for being feminine, or had even used femininity as a sign of strength rather than a sign of weakness. Drew should have gotten a redemption arc, and Silena should’ve been given more screentime as well and also maybe not died in the Battle of Manhattan.

And for the boys, I wish he had expanded more on what being a male child of Aphrodite means, considering so much of the Aphrodite cabin is wrapped up in them being hyperfeminine and the girly girl trope. Their cabin is pink and flowery, their claiming is done by enveloping them in a pink haze and giving them glamorous hair and dresses, they love gossip and fashion, they speak like valley girls, their rite of passage involves breaking hearts, the list goes on. And aside from Mitchell(and also the brief “Aphrodite’s sons and daughters I wasn’t too worried about”), whenever Aphrodite kids are mentioned, they are always girls, so as to emphasize their femininity(which is scorned and derided). It’s as if being an Aphrodite kid inherently makes you more feminine than other demigod children(for the most part, at least).

It would be nice to see how an Aphrodite boy operates and is seen at camp, and how they’re looked down upon not just because of the general narrative and in-universe disdain for femininity, but because they’re boys who don’t operate according to the strict masculine gender norm of manhood. It all could’ve been so interesting and given us a new and more diverse and profound view of femininity, but nope, Rick just did the “Aphrodite kids are the stock girly girls who are mocked because they’re shallow weak and stupid and not much else” trope and nothing more. It’s sad. Ofc, it’s not a surprise, because the not like other girls trope was strong in that era, and PJO is not unique in the slightest in this regard. But it’s disappointing all the same.

So i was scrolling through the drew tanaka tag as one does and found this post by @curseofdelos that i was like !!!!! about, and i read through it and I was like. Yes, but also… 

So this is my also. I suggest reading the post first as it does very well in explaining the issues with Piper and Drew’s writing and why that’s harmful. 

But I’d like to take it a step further and extrapolate to the bigger picture of cabin 10. 

What about the boys? 

TL;DR: There are a lot of in-text and meta negotiations of masculinity versus femininity that occur in /influence PJO/HOO, and that leaves boys in the Aphrodite Cabin in an awkward limbo. 

Before we get into the nitty gritty, I first want to establish that masculinity is not femininity. Which like, duh, but that means that anything that is not masculine can and will be considered feminine. Point blank, no nuance (There is a literature backing, but I think its a bit too much, so I’ll just put it at the end if you wanna find the article I’m referring to). 

And that’s what Rick is operating on, while you can’t deny it is a spectrum, at the time of writing TLH and such, there was a general societal understanding of masculinity as being macho and strong and rejecting softness for hardcore or whatever. And this positioning is where femininity comes in, and where we can begin to talk about Cabin 10. 

Rick writes Cabin 10 as inherently feminine, thus attaching “beauty” to this narrow idea; best shown through describing the cabin as a Barbie house and Piper's claiming ordeal. It is a place where there is nothing “masculine,” leading to the stereotype of Aphrodite kids not being able to fight, since war is masculine and thus out of their purview. 

This does deconstruct with Silena and then Piper, but the existence of Drew proves that it is still upheld and important enough to the story. 

I do believe that Rick tried to have his “oh you can still be feminine without being hyper feminine!” moment with Piper & Drew’s conflict, however, he failed to give Drew enough agency to make it seem like there was a genuine conflict rather than just “mean girl v girl-next-door.” (again, @curseofdelos explained it very well, go read!). 

Now with the girls out of the way, the boys are kinda… lost in the sauce? The only Aphrodite boy we get is Mitchell and it is very telling that a lot of people hc him as gay… which again is the posturing of masculinity vs femininity and whatever is not masculine is therefore feminine. And being gay is being attracted to masculinity and this feminine etc etc (according to societal norms). The fact that he is the only male Aphrodite kid rep is again, telling and really affirms the inherent femininity of Cabin 10. 

“Hey! He’s not the only ‘Aphrodite’ Kid! What about Michael!” And Michael just further proves my point! He’s the son of Venus, and Roman counterparts are considered as more “warlike” than their Greek ones. War being considered masculine and a rejection of femininity, as established earlier w/ Cabin 10 kids not being warriors. Now, Micheal exists as a (hyper) masculine counterpoint to Drew’s (hyper) feminine, making the Roman Venus a direct opposite as the Greek Aphrodite. 

This is actually, kinda commendable in terms of plot, since it helps reinforce the differences between Greek and Roman and how extreme they were. Great storytelling device, bad everything else. 

One more thing I want to touch on is the vilification of femininity, and why it must be rejected in the pjo/hoo. You can only fight if you adopt masculine traits, and therefore not fighting and still surviving means that you are doing something dishonorable like, abusing charmspeak (Drew) or using magic (Circe, Medea, etc) or even spying (Silena). Which is a very masculine idea, of how things should be solved by violence ( i mean, look at violence perpetrated by men compared to women in our society…) I think I’ve said this before, but in Piper’s arc, there needs to be an antagonist to prove how she doesn’t “fit in” at CHB, and create that tension of her either choosing to save her father and betray or continue the quest as is; and that antagonist ended up being Drew, and that makes sense bc Cabin 10 is against what Piper is characterized as, and she just is a rejection of that femininity. 

Anyways, let me not get away from myself. Basically, within the story, there is no real opportunity for the characters to reject gender stereotypes without falling into others. And Rick wrote himself into that hole. 

Literature Referenced: Shippers, Mimi. “Masculinity and Femininity, Theories of.” The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Gender and Sexuality Studies, 2016. Edited by Nancy A. Naples. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.