Feminine symbol: the origins and different signs of women
The feminine symbol, or symbol of the woman or the female, is well known and used. But are you sure you know all its meanings, even the most hidden ones? It is a sign that can be seen everywhere, from public toilets (both handmade and in vector form) to the emojis on our mobile phone, which represent an illustration of it. We don't always know what the signs we send with our body mean when we don't really want to reveal what we feel. Watch this short video to find out the meaning of the most common signs.
What is a symbol?
Let's start from the basics: a symbol is a sign that corresponds to particular or universal contents or values. To understand better, it is good to give an example. The flag, generally used to make the meaning of this term understood, is a symbol of the homeland; the home, symbol of the family; etc. It is therefore any What, a gesture, an object, an animal, a person, whose perception is universally or in a more restricted context recognized as an "other idea."
Humanity has always needed symbols. Even today, in addition to the most universal examples reported, men use them: the necklaces we wear around our necks represent a symbol that portrays something meaningful or pleasant for us. The symbols we use o that attract us express something of our personality and our experience.
The gender symbol: feminine and masculine
Moving on to what strictly interests us, a pictogram (also in the form of an illustration with emoji or vector) is defined as a pictogram that represents biological sex or sociological gender in many fields, from medicine to biology, from sociology to politics of type. The places where it is easier to see pictograms representing the symbols of the female and male gender are public toilets, especially from the 1960s onwards. The male symbol tends to be in the shape of the shield and the spear of Mars, the god of war; the female symbol, on the other hand, is the bronze mirror of the goddess Venus.
The standard gender sexual symbols are that of Mars and that of Venus, for male and female respectively. More than from the gods, however, the symbols seem to derive from the two planets Mars and Venus precisely, therefore from astrological symbols, and the elements of iron and copper, in relation to alchemy. The alchemical tradition, in fact, arises at the origin of modern western symbols that indicate masculine and feminine and the beginning is placed in medieval times, when alchemy began to spread and to cross the centuries, unchanged, precisely because its tradition is expressed with symbols, which are its custodians. One of the objectives of the alchemists is to lead the initiate to find unity with himself, merging into a whole all the opposing elements such as masculine and feminine, in order to eliminate the traditional separation between the two genders.
Originally, the symbol in question was used to indicate the sex of plants, ie the sex of the individual in a given cross, since most plants are hermaphroditic.Symbols change over time, always maintaining a certain integrity; in recent years, for example, in medicine the symbol of the square is preferred for the masculine and that of the circle for the feminine.
The feminine symbol in sociology
The gender distinction is binary, indicating male and female in their stereotypical role of what is expected to be male and female. In the first case, as mentioned, the symbol is linked to Mars, god of war, and represents the spear and shield that a warrior who was the protector of men must have.
As for the female symbol, however, we refer to Venus, the Roman goddess of love and beauty, whose Greek correspondent is Aphrodite. The sign depicts the mirror, an instrument used mainly to glimpse pride and external appearance, characteristics tendentially associated with the woman. The standard icon of a woman, in fact, foresees a figure caregiver, kind, caring and beautiful: all character elements that society has associated with the female gender. In relation to alchemy, of which we have mentioned the origin, the symbol of the vector is an icon that indicates a bronze mirror with a handle. Venus is considered the most feminine planet of our solar system, while copper is bronze were very popular for making mirrors in antiquity.
The different symbols of the feminine
The female symbol is certainly not just a unique one, although the bronze mirror is certainly the most famous and recognized in Western culture. The sign to indicate the woman, different from the one to indicate the man, is the circle together with all the shapes characterized by sinuosity and rounded and rotating shapes. In short, the sign for the female is everything that recalls sinusoidal curves and trends. , such as the wave, the spiral, the concentric circle, the oval, the shower, the S, the intertwined rings and so on. These are the main archetypal signs to symbolize the female. Very different, therefore, from those that indicate the male, harder and clearer, like the arrows, the square and the points. The man, from the archetypal point of view, is more rigid than the woman, less soft, and the male symbol is symptomatic of this.
Female symbol: the circle
First of all, immediately after the most famous symbol that we find in every public and non-public bathroom, is the circle, the main sign to indicate the female woman. It is the perfect figure with no beginning and end, everything comes together and then starts over from no one knows exactly what point. Cyclical is also the time of women, from the monthly menstrual cycle to the hormonal cycle of fertile life. The circle also symbolizes the maternal womb, represents union and emanates a sense of completeness and hospitality: not surprisingly, the circle since ancient times (in art, in sculpture, in nature) has symbolized harmony and completeness.
Female symbol: the sine wave
The adjectives of softness and fluidity have always been assimilated to women, the wave is also a malleable and malleable substance, it is the opposite of rigid and hard, it can flex, contract and reopen with great strength, rhythmic and oscillating. Just like a sinusoid, like a "wave, a visual representation of the woman herself: the swinging sinuosity, not without inlets and openings to get lost in.
Female symbol: the spiral
The spiral movement recalls the moment of birth: when a woman gives birth to a new life, she does so through a spiral movement. During childbirth, the fetus performs an internal rotation that is reconnected to a spiral, thanks to this action the release is facilitated. As you can easily guess, the spiral comes from the circle, and once again we understand how this is the primary sign of femininity.
Female symbol: the concentric circles
Back to the circle concept. It has always fascinated our sight since we were children, when we threw a pebble into the sea or lake to observe circles widening and expanding in the water, all originating from that center caused by us. it moves away from the center, so the maternal womb also expands from month to month in expectation of a baby. The feminine is reconnected to this: from "one to many circles of different dimensions, continuous because from one" another opens, one inside the other. It symbolizes an "energy that expands and increases progressively, which takes strength from the inner center.
Feminine symbol: the drop
Once again, from the point of view of archetypal signs the female figure is connected to motherhood. In this specific case, to maternal nourishment. The drop indicates here the milk that oozes from the nipple, dunqeu the lymph which, as in vegetables, flows in the branches and leaves, in the mother goes to nourish the child. It is also connected to the drop of morning dew that is barely visible on the blade of grass: all images and illustrations of the creative nature. Still, however, the drop can recall the circle, which moves by pouring part of its contents from one side to the other. other, therefore, swings, descends, falls, bringing nourishment, strength and growth.
Female symbol: the egg
The egg symbolizes a new life. A life that is not yet seen, which is about to be born but which is forming and growing. The egg stands for fertility, the largest cell in existence, which also marks the menstrual cycle . Again, the oval shape of the egg refers to the closed circle, just as the ovarian cycle marks the same journey every month: the growth and exit of the egg, then its expulsion.
Female symbol: the they
We cannot properly speak of a curve, but of a real S. It is the sigmoid, a particular "wave that owes its name to the Greek letter sigma, literally "similar to an they". It makes you think of the same female body, sinuous in its curves and rich in its anatomy, of them: the hips, the curve that rises and expands to the breast, the buttocks and the spine. All these particular and harmonic waves create a sinuosity that is unique to the female.
Feminine symbol: the intertwined rings
Still in the context of sinuous waves, the rings recall the "intertwining of waves. The image is similar to that of the DNA structure, the illustration of a helix spiral that symbolize the feminine for their formation and repetition of It is a reference to the cyclical nature of things, events and biological life, thus evoking becoming and transformation.
Feminine symbol: the circular spindle
This is the simplest but most expressive stylization of the vulva. A sign that can be found since prehistoric times, it represented the female body in its simplicity and nakedness; in sacred art the spindle symbolized the divine. Even today it can be found in famous paintings, in this case we will speak of the "mystical almond".
