Aphrodite Epithets Aeshethics
Ambolgera: delaying old age - bottles and bottles of beauty creams and orange-smelling balms, moisturizer, hair dye, cosmetic surgery lines dotting skin
Apaturia: the deceitful - deleted texts, hooking up in a dark alley, telling someone you love them when you don’t, lying about where you go at night, patting away tears so your lover doesn’t worry
Areia: Spartan, war-like - broken plates and vases, wearing jewelry like armour, coldly calculating which words will hurt the most and spitting them like daggers, all is fair in love and war written in lipstick
Anadyomene: of the sea - white caps as waves crash on the beach, sea foam silk with white lace, hair wild from the sea salt air, skinny dipping
Apoptrophia: the expeller - ripped jeans and patched vests, short hair, calling out cat-callers and misogynists, pretending to know a stranger until she feels safe
Chryse: Lesbos - the tingle in your hand when you want to hold someone else’s but you don’t quite have the courage, limbs and sheets tangled together, holding your girlfriend’s hand just a little tighter as an act of resistence, using hips to pin your girlfriend to the wall, hickeys not-quite-covered by makeup
Gamelii: protectress of marriage - a soft bouquet, a wedding dress, blushing spouses, believing in true love, an aged couple spending their final years hand-in-hand
Melinaia: the dark, the black - confidence from a late-night adventure, opposing whiteness as the epitome of beauty, black girls embracing afros and braids and dreads, sorrow at the noses broken off statues to pass them off as white
Kourotrophos: given to many dieties, protector of children - realizing how fragile a newborn baby is, falling asleep while reading to little kids, watching a little too closely as their ball rolls in to the street, subconciously putting yourself between them and any perceived threat
Pandemos : common to all people - compassion, defending your family, kissing your lover at pride, a sense of community
Urania: heavenly - the indescribable feeling of love from your dieties, knowing you are loved without doubt, being moved to tears by the ferocity of your adoration
Kallipygos: beautiful buttocks - t h i c c
Enopilos: bearing weapons - sharp eyeliner, rings that hold poison, stilettos with blades in the heel, leather jackets that scream “I dare you”, a dagger tucked beneath a corset
Philomeides: laughter-loving - an inside joke that brings your best friend to tears, a child screeching with joy as their parents chase them, nervously giggling after your first kiss with someone new, sitting on the floor drunkenly laughing with your partner
Porne: the prostitute - coloured condoms, sex positivity, taking back one’s body, enjoying the power sex gives you; comforting the empty-eyed and the dope-sick, hiding nervous glances in a dangerous neighbourhood, sisters spreading the names of dangerous clients
Praxis: sexual action - sucking on fingers, moaning names, scratches on someone’s back, the imprint of straps on a woman’s hips, grooves where ropes carefully bound, hair-pulling, lip- biting, slowly kissing
