Decoding the Sheela-na-gig

Sheela-na-gigs are old, bald, naked female figures on churches, walls, and towers (as well as in museums) in Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and England, similar to grotesques throughout Europe, to Baubo in the Middle East, and to Kali and other goddess figures in India and Southeast Asia. While most surviving sheelas are medieval, Irish legend and older carvings suggest connections to pagan crone goddesses. According to lore and scholarship, sheelas offer protection and warning or serve as fertility, birthing, or erotic figures. While most sheelas do not have breasts, they are likely to hold open or point to their vulvas, offering a puzzling message about the presumed creator of many surviving figures—the medieval Catholic Church. Contemporary feminist scholarship is more likely to regard sheelas as empowering female figures through shifting roles in the rhetorical relationships between the figure as agent and the decoder.