Early on in my graduate studies, I came across the burgeoning field of body modification studies. This field focused on ancient visual appearance, especially the clothing that people wore and the way that dress and adornment conveyed cultural, theological, and historical values. It was also clear that clothing could be a form of social control.
As I became a father to three daughters, my awareness of how society and especially men in society control the presentation and adornment of the women in their life became greater and greater. I began to pay attention to every celebrity outfit, fashion ad, character in film, picture book—anything and everything that performed a woman’s dress, why it was important, and why my daughters had to/should choose to look that way. I would ask myself, What does this say to my girls? Who is it telling them to be and why? We are not the first human generation to dominate women’s bodies by controlling how they appear.
In truly wonderful and clear open-access (=free!) article by Dr. Ellena Lyell (Exeter) and Dr. Laura Quick (Oxford), we can see how the book of Esther portrays men’s control over women through clothing and conformity. The article is fantastic and demonstrates how when we pay attention the garments, jewelry, and other dress that modify each character, we can see dynamics of power, of gender, and also, I think, of colonization. Although Lyell and Quick focus on many characters, I want to outline briefly the pair, Queen Vashti and Esther.
At the beginning of Esther, King Ahasuerus wishes to show off his prize wife, Queen Vashti and he orders her to wear a royal crown:
He ordered Mehuman, Biztha, Harbona, Bigtha, Abagtha, Zathar and Carcas, the seven eunuchs who attended him, to bring Queen Vashti into the king’s presence wearing her royal crown. He wanted to show the peo- ple and the officials her beauty, for she was very attractive (1:10–11).
Vashti refuses (1:12), and in doing so refuses to be paraded merely as an object of beautiful physical appearance and adornment. Since she refuses to be controlled by the King, he seeks by law someone who will not mind being objectified in this way.
Enter Esther. She is collected from young women who are legally bound (2:12) to be cosmetically treated for the pleasure of the King. For twelve months Esther and the other young women are subjected to the “beauty treatment” prescribed at the King’s orders:
Six months with oil of myrrh,21 and six months with balsam22 and various cosmetics used by women. Then the woman would go to the king in the following way: whatever she asked for would be provided for her to take with her from the harem to the royal palace. In the evening she went, and in the morning she returned to a separate part of the harem, to the authority of Shaashgaz the king’s eunuch who was overseeing the concu- bines. She would not go back to the king unless the king was pleased with her and she was requested by name (2:12–14).
If the ancient world had cosmetic surgery, this process would it be. Unlike Vashti, Esther does not protest at her cosmetic development. As Lyell and Quick note, what is more important than her beautiful appearance is that she willingly conforms to royal law and is “seen to be conforming to the conventional male expectations of dress and adornment.”1 She is a very different queen from Vashti, obedient, compliant, and willing to take the crown that Vashti refused to wear on her head (2:17).
Wearing the crown allows Esther a certain amount of power. Because of her obedience to appear as the King desires, he grants her the request to bring Haman to a banquet (5:2-8). As Lyell and Quick note, “By conforming to male expectations in dress, then, Esther is actually afforded a power to affect a change in the position of her people.”2
Is this conformity worth it for Esther? Lyell and Quick trace the development of garments and dress through Esther as through they are the primary characters themselves, and in the end, Mordecai ends up dressed in ways that mimic Israel’s high priestly garments while Esther is swallowed by her Persian attire: “Hadassah [Esther’s Hebrew name] and the modicum of power that she appropriated through her Persian disguise is ultimately subsumed by it.” While her relative, Mordecai, transforms into the dress of an ultimate Israelite, Esther’s ethnic identity—as reflected by her clothing—dissolves.
Reading backwards then, what appears to be Esther’s harmless acquiescence to the King’s commands, can be understood as a kind of colonization. Esther’s body is colonized so that her people might survive. And while Mordecai rises to power and prominence in the King’s court, Esther’s transformation into the ideal Persian Queen, compliant and obedient, causes her to fade into the background. In the final words of the book, she is nowhere to be found, and it ends with the exploits of two men, the one who had power over her body and the other whose body is empowered by her sacrifice of autonomy.
Lyell and Quick 2021, page 6-7.
Lyell and Quick 2021, page 11.
Fascinating read! I think I’m tracking with their argument, though without reading the full Lyell & Quick article (which is now on my to-do list, thanks to you!), I may be off. For obvious & understandable reasons, “colonisation” is an almost invariably bad term in the academy, and there may be convincing reasons to see what happened to Esther as just such a thing. That said, I feel I ought to arrive at any conclusion slooooooowly that might cause me to read backwards nefarious or negative intentions into the “Author” of those events. You’ve definitely given me something to ponder, so thanks! The connection between cultural incarnation & colonialism, the way they may feed back & forth into each other, the chicken & the egg, the crown of Esther & the crown of thorns.