South Sea Maidens: Western Fantasy and Sexual Politics in the South Pacific
Book by Michael Sturma; Greenwood Press, 2002

Adventures in Paradise
We are all familiar with the South Sea maiden. She has thick long hair decorated with a fragrant floral garland, or perhaps a hibiscus behind her ear. She wears a grass skirt on occasion, although more often a hip-hugging floral print pareu. At least in male fantasy and National Geographic, she is likely to be barebreasted.

In his autobiography Songs My Mother Taught Me, Marlon Brando tells us his boyhood obsession with Tahiti began from looking at National Geographic magazines. Unlike most of us, Brando was able to give his fantasies material form. While filming Mutiny on the Bounty on location Brando began cohabiting with his Tahitian costar, Tarita-tumi Terriipala. From 1966 he became owner of his own Pacific atoll, Teri'aroa, occupying about 1500 acres near the island of Tahiti. For Brando, who freely confesses pursuing one exotic woman after another, we may suspect that the South Sea maiden represented at least a subconscious feminine ideal. 1 Even before making Mutiny on the Bounty, Brando had relationships with at least two women who portrayed Polynesian beauties on film. 2

In some ways, too, this study is inspired by adolescent fantasies. I'm not quite sure how my fascination with the South Pacific originated, but I remember in particular a television series, "Adventures in Paradise," which aired on ABC in the United States from 1959 to 1962. In the TV series the protagonist Adam Troy (played by Gardner McKay) plied his schooner Tiki between South Sea islands searching for adventure. The name Adam Troy itself, I can see in retrospect, evokes both a prelapsarian Garden of Eden and a classical Golden Age often associated with the South Seas. So this book, as are many pilgrimages to the South Seas, is in part a journey of self-exploration. The original idea for "Adventures in Paradise" came from the novelist James A. Michener. Seated in a director's chair and surrounded by lush vegetation, Michener introduced the first episode of the TV series, which premiered in May 1959. He explained to viewers that for him paradise had always been in the South Pacific, and that central to the lure of the South Seas were "desirable women."

From early European contact in the Pacific, the South Sea maiden occupied a special place in the Western imagination. The "island girl" is an integral part of the adventure, sensuality, and romance associated with the South Pacific. She figures prominently in the writings of early Pacific voyagers, is central to a genre of fiction exemplified by writers from Melville to Michener, is discussed at length by anthropologists, is featured in numerous films, and is still a staple of tourist advertising. Although less in evidence these days than in the past, the South Sea maiden remains a powerful symbol. Women of far-off lands have always been romanticized and eroticized in the Western imagination. The American Indian maiden, the black Venus of Africa, and the slave girl of the Turkish harem are all stereotypes embedded in Western thought. In the late seventeenth century, escapist fantasies centered on Oriental harems; no fewer than thirty seraglio plays were written in France alone. 4 Arguably, though, it is the South Sea maiden who has the most purchase as a symbol of feminine sexuality and who most vehemently affirmed what I call the "nubile savage." 5 When James Cook visited Hawaii, his surgeon's mate David Samwell found the young women "exceedingly beautiful," comparing them to Venus rising from the waves. With so many sexually available women, Samwell enthused, "there was hardly one of us that may not vie with the grand Turk himself." 6 Thus the images of classical mythology and the Oriental harem were often combined to magnify the South Sea maiden's allure. As one turn-of-the-century writer crudely put it, the South Seas woman embodied "all or nearly all of Eve's conquering paraphernalia, condensed into the supplest, the naughtiest, the most bewitching piece of coloured womanhood the earth has to show."

Although the South Seas are constructed primarily as a male utopia, it seems Western women often identify with similar fantasies. The turn-of-the-century writer Beatrice Grimshaw wrote effusively of the Pacific islands and their sensual magnetism. The sound of the sea for Grimshaw echoed "the song the sirens sang to strong Ulysses." She told her readers, "Beauty of form did not die out with the Greeks: the Diana of the Louvre and the Medici Venus may be seen any day of any year on the far away islands." 8 The anthropologist Margaret Mead assumed the identity of a village taupou (ceremonial maiden) in Samoa, suppressing the fact that she was a married woman to do so. 9 More recently the travel writer Mel Kernahan confesses her fascination with the exotic woman. As a child she would play dress-up in her mother's slit slip, with padded bra and a silk flower behind her ear. 10 The Pacific created a space of adventure and liberated sexuality for women as well as men.
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