I didn’t care so much that Kim Kardashian was supposedly “blowing up the Internet” with artfully shot naked photographs. Say what you want about Kim – and the woman does not lack for people saying things about her – she breaks a mold. She is no longer, at age 34, what Hollywood considers ‘young’ (for a woman), and she is also – to the horror of much of the Twitterverse compelled to comment on such matters – a mother.

Posing naked.

The audacity.

Then my friend Joanna linked to this article in Elite Daily (written by a woman). Joanna acknowledged that that there may be valid reasons to criticize Kim, but not in such a “sexist, fat-shaming, sexuality-shaming bullshit” kind of way.

This reminded her of another woman, who was also dismissed as a no-talent, flash-in-the-pan brainless bimbo soon to disappear into the ether from which she had recently emerged: Madonna.

And I started thinking about archetypes.

About Aphrodite.

We love to watch Aphrodite, celebrate Aphrodite, and we love to judge, hate and despise her.

She’s been stomped into a stereotype and restricted to a limited range of acceptable behaviors.

You can dismiss – as the Elite Daily article does – the culture’s fascination with “idiot bimbos” as the sign of a depraved and intellectually deficient pop culture. I would argue something that Hollywood has long understood: we are fascinated by people who represent archetypes, those primal patterns of behavior that form the structure of the human psyche. Whether it’s done consciously or not – and an icon like Marilyn Monroe constructed her persona very consciously — certain people have a talent that goes beyond what we recognize as talent (acting, singing, dancing) and is all about invoking an archetype in the collective mind of the public.

Monroe, for example, began her career as a ‘girl next door’ ‘sweetheart’ Everywoman. When the studio dropped her and her career seemed a dead end, Monroe realized that this position had been locked up by actresses like Doris Day. What America lacked was its own, homegrown answer to the European sirens (Brigitte Bardot) making such an impression on audiences.

Monroe took note, and leaned into an archetype that probably came more naturally to her anyway.

She turned herself into the epitome of the Aphrodite woman.

Aphrodite: goddess of passion, desire, womanly beauty, pleasure, joy, impeccable taste. Scholars have argued that before she became known as Aphrodite to the ancient Greeks (and Venus to the Romans), she was — in earlier incarnations in unconquered civilizations — Ishtar (to the Egyptians) and Inanna (to the Sumerians).

Inanna was no ‘idiot bimbo’. She was the goddess of love and fertility – and warfare (all is fair in love and war!). She was independent, self-determined, brilliant, powerful and unabashedly sexual, crying out lines like, “Who will plow my vulva?” The first hero’s journey ever recorded was the heroine’s journey featuring Inanna’s ambitious descent into the Underworld. She had complicated relationships with men, especially her younger lover Dumuzi. Temples were built in her honor. Kings established their legitimacy by invoking a ritual sexual act that united their image with hers.

As the system we now recognize as patriarchy gained power, it revised the prevailing mythology to reflect and justify a changing world.

Inanna – and the sexual confidence that she represented – got demoted.

Recently, someone asked Mark Zuckerberg in a public forum why he wore the same shirt everyday. Zuckerberg responded that he didn’t want to waste time and mental energy on “frivolous” decisions. Zuck, within the hypermasculine context of Silicon Valley, is dismissing the Aphrodite values of style, design and beauty. Of course, they are only frivolous when you apply them to your appearance or your environment, which is what women do. Apply them to objects such as cars, smartphones or computers, and they become deep and important (“game changing”).

What if female sexuality was regarded as deep and important, even when it expresses itself in unconventional ways? What if we understood it as something other than a systematic objectification of women, but a living, electric force that connects to art, creativity, self-esteem and spirituality? What if we understood sexual confidence as something that does not promote ‘slutty’ behavior, but protects girls with a strong sense of worth and instinctive, healthy boundaries? What if we understood deep sex appeal as something more than a one-size-fits-all media representation, but complex and interesting that engages the mind as well as the eye?

If Kim K was a guy, I have the feeling we’d be writing articles about her branding, marketing and business savvy that enabled her to get – and maintain – such a grip on the public imagination.

But she isn’t.