Starbucks' Vagina Dentata

This week, Starbucks unveiled its new Pike Place roast and held a love fest in Bryant Park to celebrate the massive chain store's attempt to get back to its roots, celebrate their "history and heritage," and capitalize on nostalgia.

To boost sales, they've brought back their original mermaid logo, a move that the Wall Street Journal says should disrupt people and get them talking. I don't know how disrupted I feel, but I do want to talk about this new old logo, which has an interesting history and a fascinating subliminal meaning.



One of my favorite online essays is "The Mermaid," by writer Heinz Insu Fenkl, which tells the story of the Starbucks logo. In it, Fenkl gives a brief history of the image, which began as you see it today on the Pike Place cups: A topless mermaid spreads her fins to the viewer. These double-tailed mermaids, also known as Baubos, are sirens related to Sheela-Na-Gig, the ancient Celtic figure who terrifies and seduces men by spreading her legs to show her powerful vagina.


Sheela-Na-Gig

Disruptive indeed. So much so that, Fenkl writes, "Starbucks had to change their corporate logo because some consumers found the suggestive split tail of their topless siren too lurid and sexually suggestive. A simplified logo was introduced, hiding the siren's breasts under waves of hair, and that in turn was cropped and enlarged so the split in the siren's tail would no longer show."

Today, the split tail has returned--though it's still a cleaned-up version of the original 15th-century image.


The logo midway to today

Fenkl doesn't mention the vagina dentata, but that image is very tied up in mermaids, sirens, and Sheela-Na-Gig. According to Erich Neumann, "a meat-eating fish inhabits the vagina of the Terrible Mother." One could argue that the Starbucks siren is two-tailed Echidna--"Mother of all Monsters," the half-woman/half-serpent of Greek mythology who spawned an army of destructive beasts (not unlike a spawn of chainstores?)--she is an original "terrible mother."



So why is Starbucks bringing its vagina dentata out of hiding and into plain sight right now? Maybe they were inspired by the hilarious and brilliant film Teeth. Maybe they hope consumers are more comfortable with exhibitionism than they used to be. Maybe they're thinking sex sells.

But more likely, they're frightened and in need of protection.

Images of women exposing their genitals were used by primitive peoples to drive away evil spirits, calm rough seas, and scare away enemies with the threat of castration. In the face of a recession, Starbucks is banking on the power of the vagina dentata to work its ancient magic and keep the wolf from their door.


Chast, from The New Yorker