For so long, the story of Medusa has been told as a tragedy—an existence marred by punishment, by exile, by a so-called curse. But I see her differently. I see her not as a victim, but as a force, a reckoning, a gift.
When I was younger, I believed the idea of turning men into stone was a nightmare, a cruel and isolating fate. But as I’ve grown, as I’ve navigated the world as a woman, I have come to understand the weight of the gaze—the way it presses, the way it lingers, the way it reduces. There is a kind of petrification in being watched too closely, in feeling the eyes of men dissect you without permission, in existing as something to be consumed rather than someone who simply is.
Medusa is the uno reverse to that fear. She does not shrink. She does not freeze beneath their scrutiny. She is no longer the prey, but the predator—the one who gazes back and unmakes those who would have unmade her. She is beyond their reach, beyond their hunger, beyond their power.
Athena’s so-called punishment was never a curse. It was a liberation. A stripping away of vulnerability, of powerlessness, of forced submission. Medusa was given the ultimate gift: the ability to walk through the world without fear. To silence the leering, to dismantle the threat with a single glance.
The Gift is my love letter to her. To every woman who has ever felt small beneath the weight of an unwanted gaze. To those who have learned to disappear in the hopes of safety. To those who have been told to fear their own power. This is an ode to the untouchable, the unshaken, the unstoppable.
Medusa was never the monster. She was the answer.
Printed on 12x16 C1S Tango Paper