Milkmaids, the Olympics, and the sad demise of cultural image-terms.
I was looking at photographs the other day and decided that the only description I could give to the image of a young woman who appeared in some of them was that she looked like a milkmaid. Now I grew up on a farm, and it can be accurately said that I once was a milkmaid, as one of my chores was milking the goats (my brothers milked the cows, although I did that more challenging task occasionally it wasn’t a daily chore). Unlike probably 99.9% of the American native-born population, I know what it is like to sit on a low stool, thighs spread and knees popped up at an angle while the feet are pulled underneath, close to the stool, to allow that certain necessary cantilever to the body in order to reach over and access the udder with the arms at the proper angle perpendicular to the body.
I know the indescribable comfort of placing your human cheek on the hairy flank of an ungulate, and the meditative rhythm of squeezing the teats (only two of them on a goat) to stimulate milk flow. I know the smell of the milk as it hits the air (steaming at cold temperatures, of course), the dry smell of the straw in the milkstall, the grassy-earthy-mammal scent of the goat herself. And the joy of watching the she-goat’s kids (yes, usually two of them) as they await the return of their mother, who, as she is a milkgoat and bred to such purpose, was usually more than happy to have some of her bounty diverted for human consumption. Yet I don’t really look anything like a milkmaid.
I never particularly had that outdoorsy, sturdy look about me that one associates with milkmaids. Nor that broad, placid face that speaks of close knowledge of the bovine. And my hair isn’t the right color, having never had, even before it turned white, any cast whatsoever of honey about it. But as soon as I described this image to myself this way, I realized it was likely that no one else would know what I was talking about, really, for although the term milkmaid really did fit her, because this woman did not have her hair in braids nor was she wearing a dirndl — the stereotypical image of a milkmaid — this term is one with almost no cultural currency. Unless, of course, there’s some video game out there of which I am unaware and in which the leading character is not a tomb raider, but a milkmaid.
In fact, I fear most Americans probably don’t even know what a dirndl is, unless they watched the 20th Winter Olympics from Torino — the opening ceremonies, to be exact. Not even I, growing up a very German part of the country in the 1960s, really knew what an authentic dirndl was, but because the dirndl skirt became, inexplicably, a popular fashion towards the end of that decade and into the 1970s, I was familiar with the basic concept.
As I used the term “milkmaid” to describe the appearance of this young woman to myself and must confess used it disparagingly, because, as with most words that name appearances or professional attributes, they can be employed variously to show admiration or disdain (like “shark” to mean Great-White-like or “shark” to mean lawyer-like), I realized there was nothing I could do to restore the subtle, rich meaning of this term, except perhaps write a really brilliant poem* that would crystallize the word’s image and so capture its every nuance that even for the reader who grew up watching the Brady Bunch (where Marsha in fact wore dirndl skirts) or the reader with the even greater remove of having grown up listening to 50 Cent, the term would blaze to life. Otherwise I could only mourn the passing of yet another image-term from our culture.
This gets me back to the Olympics. I love the Olympics. Especially the winter games. I am not athletic particularly, nor do I generally follow sports, except, of course, for baseball. Yet I look forward to the Olympics, especially the winter games, and I have in my mind the images and the terms they have displayed over the years, especially from the various opening ceremonies. The Olympics historically have been a huge repository of image-terms at the same time as they generate or popularize new ones (e.g. the “method-air” from this year’s games). Yet apparently very few Americans chose to watch the Olympics this time around, preferring to know who was booted out of the competition on either “American Idol” or in an extreme irony, “Dancing with the Stars.” (This brings immediately to mind, of course, the high concept of “Skiing with [or Biathloning with, or Skeletoning with] the Olympians,” wherein Julia Mancuso, wearing her trademark handmade tiara, would instruct a non-skiing, aging minor celebrity, say Bud Cort (“Harold and Maude”), through the ‘ins and outs of giant slalom’ (can’t you just hear the spokes-announcer lovingly mouthing that phrase) and compete against Janica Kostelic, Croatian downhill gold-medal holder, teamed with say, former steroid freak Mark McGwire….)
Armed now with both my milkmaid and Olympic moments, I thought, Could it be that all the image-terms and all the cultural symbolism displayed at the opening ceremonies, as part of the Olympic tradition, and inherent to the various games themselves are also fast-fading? Can it be true that we are no longer as a people interested in watching the athletes getting misty-eyed at the raising of their flags as they stand on the medals podium? And the lone child in national costume singing her country’s anthem in the midst of a huge stadium, is she no longer a poignant symbol of the eternal hopes of humankind? Might she as well, ditching the dirndl, skip the Olympics and take her act to the next “European Idol” regional competition?
Maybe I shouldn’t be so bereft of hope. Maybe Peter Webber’ll direct a sequel to “Girl with a Pearl Earring,” called “The Milkmaid”….
More later,
Lynne
*And the poem certainly wouldn’t be this one:
Behold the milkmaid all awash,
good maid, may I have a little nosh….
What, your nutrients are borrowed all?
Nothing’s behind your unscaled wall?
That placid face is but made of stone?
That honey hair fore’er your own?
Your arms so strong but never to grip
that except the bovine’s tip?
© 2006 Lynne Warren all rights reserved.
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