Piece of Mind: Reduced to This

So I'm currently reading *Cleopatra: A Life* by Stacy Schiff, and realizing how far we've fallen as a culture. Oh, of course, they did kill their parents and siblings back then to solidify their political ambitions, but that aside, they were really quite civilized.

Cleopatra, above all, was the full package: a brilliant strategist, a regal beauty, saavy in social machinations as well those of business and politics, fluent in many languages, a doting mother, a sexual seductress, revered as half-god and half-human, a highly-successful ruler, and a dang good interior decorator.

Now, there's a broad who effectively reduces my self-image to amoebic proportions -- forget Alessandra Ambrosio. And yet, which item in the above list of exceptional qualities do we most often hear in any discussion of Cleopatra VII? The sexual seductress. Ironically this effectively reduces her, in the scheme of all remarkable and peerless historical icons, to the category of, well -- Alessandra Ambrosio. Cleopatra: The Vickie's Secret model of ancient history and -- oh yeah -- last Egyptian Queen and demigod.

Talk about objectified women. Cleopatra's is surely the most flagrant example in all of history.

This should really tick me off. And when I was in college, it would have. When I was in my twenties and thirties and a bit of my forties, it would have. Now, in my mid-well-okay-maybe-later fifties, it just sorta does. Funny how objectionable objectifying is when you still qualify for it.

At my age, I'm thinking of the legacy I'll leave. Sure, I hope future generations remember me as a fairly-intelligent, effective, and influencial woman, but would it really be so bad if someday my grandchildren told their kids that Granny still got a few cat calls well into her fifties???

Don't worry...I am appropriately ashamed.