WHEN WOMEN FIGHT ALONGSIDE EACH OTHER
That’s all well and good but one might argue that Amazons don’t actually exist and are creatures of the imagination. Indeed. That is why they will always be relevant. Something that doesn’t actually exist tends to garner a lot of praise. Hurray for the woman who doesn’t seek to be a lady who lunches, who doesn’t proclaim herself to be Peggy Bundy or Donna Reed, who doesn’t willingly limit herself simply to end up unwittingly fed up. Hurray for the woman who seeks to celebrate life as is her right, without having to take on an abundance of extra roles. Amazons were a legendary tribe of hunters and fighters, descendants of the god of war Ares and the nymph Harmonia, or according to another version of the legend, the goddess Athena. Their true heirs are women who fight on every level of everyday life, either winning or losing, demanding or giving things away, enticing with their words or raising their voices.
One version asserts that their name comes from the combination of the privative prefix a-and the ancient Greek word “μαζός” (mazos), and means without a breast, since they maimed or cut off their right breast so that it would not interfere with the use of a bow. However, the prefix a- in ancient Greece could also be cumulative, so Amazon could also be interpreted as “having large breasts”. One cannot be certain though, since all those explanations come from later antiquity. To quote a few from Wikipedia, their name could be rendered as: untouchable, honorable, wearing a belt in order to safeguard her breast plate or garment, warrior, young, powerful and extraordinary woman, daughter of the moon goddess Selene, proud mother.
