[Insert Name of Female]: The Hidden Story

People Magazine, US Weekly, OK Magazine and other tabloids take women and throw them in the spotlight, baring all for the world to see. Though we may not consider these women who are splashed upon these magazines as world leaders, they are often the ones that lead cultural and social changes in the modern world.

These women dictate not only how we style our hair, how we dress, or what new manicure we might try, but also what charities we donate to, what new cause we should give time to, and to what world news we should pay attention. As we raise them up for pointing us towards these good causes, we simultaneously attempt to tear them down with risqué stories of their reckless pasts. Who had an affair? Who took drugs? Angelina Jolie is a humanitarian and a spokesperson for women’s rights, but didn’t she have a troubled not accepted-by-society-as-a-whole childhood? And didn’t she have an affair? Despite all the good she has done and will do, the media will never let go of what she did when she was younger and thus we will not allow her be a saint.

We take this idea of women being thrown up on a pedestal for all to see and judge and we move it back 1400 years. We look to Theodora, as portrayed by Lynda Garland in her work “Theodora, Wife of Justinian”. Justinian’s change in law that allowed him to marry Theodora was not only beneficial to him but other women across the empire. After their marriage Theodora worked with Justinian on keeping destitute young women out of prostitution, something Justinian may have given less thought to before his marriage. Though, as Garland states, “it should not be a general rule, it should not be automatically assumed that Justinian’s legislation to ameliorate the status of women was undertaken under the influence of Theodora,” anyone studying this relationship would be a fool to think that Theodora had no influence over his policies. Their policies include foundations for the care of infants, the elderly, and the sick. Though Theodora was able to help accomplish all these tasks, she was forever known as the prostitute queen. She was an actress with no morals, who had slept with multiple men, and had an illegitimate child. She would never be able to leave behind her sinner status.

It is easy on the surface to define these women as saints or sinners. Theodora did x and y and was never able to dispel her tainted past. Angelina Jolie did a variation of x and y and will forever be followed by her past. And society continues to shove them back on the pedestal, back onto the cover of the magazine for judgment.