I'm currently reading the biography of Cleopatra by Stacy Schiff. Why is it that whenever there is a powerful intelligent woman she gets portrayed as a vixen or temptress? Cleopatra was incredible. She was smart and powerful in a time when there were big personalities on the stage (Julius Caesar, Mark Antony, Cicero)
The author writes that despite all this Cleopatra nevertheless survives as a wanton temptress, not the last time a genuinely powerful woman has been transmuted into a shamelessly seductive one. Clever women, Euripides had warned hundreds of years earlier, were dangerous.
Times definitely have not changed. Every time a woman is intelligent and in a position of power she is often times portrayed as a bitch or not given credit for her accomplishments. Why is that?
