<em>Game of Thrones</em> and the Paradox of Female Beauty
Warning: Season 6 spoilers abound.
It’s the scene the entire Season 6 premiere of Game of Thrones—and in some sense the series up to this point—has been building toward. There stands the Red Woman, Melisandre, the goddess behind so much of the show’s deus ex machina, in her bedroom. A fire crackles. A candle flickers. Music, at once sharp and flat, plays. Melisandre, regarding herself in a foggy mirror, unbuttons her dress. It falls away. All that remains is her necklace—a choker made of metal, completed with a red stone. The tension builds. The notes swell. She gazes at herself. We gaze along with her.
And then—a gong rumbles into a dramatic crescendo—she is transformed: An old woman, naked, stares back in that mirror. Melisandre’s glossy red hair has been replaced with sparse, white strands. Her eyes have sunken; her breasts have
