What is?

December 4, 2022 2:10 PM

Present for my partner. They can not see what the image is supposed to be. Their guess is WAY, WAY different than what I see. (They love the bag regardless.) So... what is it? Bonus points for anyone who has corroborating evidence.

Will share what each of us saw after a while... Just want to let everyone have a chance to view without being biased.

posted by a non mouse, a cow herd to Grab Bag (46 answers total)

Best answer: I see a fertility symbol. A woman with upraised arms, with her overall body shape designed to evoke a uterus and fallopian tubes, sitting on the moon, which symbolizes menses. Many similar examples here. Here's an almost identical one labelled Pagan Moon Goddess. It also kinda looks like a rocket ship.
posted by nouvelle-personne at 2:12 PM on December 4, 2022 [29 favorites]

Rocket ship flexing its biceps.
posted by chesty_a_arthur at 2:13 PM on December 4, 2022 [7 favorites]

I think a moon woman (fertility type figure). I might also guess stylized dagger or throwing dagger, but not with that style and color.
posted by Glinn at 2:13 PM on December 4, 2022 [2 favorites]

Goddess on a moon.
posted by lapis at 2:15 PM on December 4, 2022 [3 favorites]

Anchor.
posted by plant or animal at 2:15 PM on December 4, 2022 [1 favorite]

Spaceship was my first thought, then person with upraised arms in front of a moon, vaguely fertility-idol-ish. If forced to I could see my way clear to “fancy knife.”
posted by Stacey at 2:19 PM on December 4, 2022 [5 favorites]

A stylized whale.
posted by amanda at 2:20 PM on December 4, 2022 [7 favorites]

"Lady sitting on a crescent moon" was my first impression.
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 2:21 PM on December 4, 2022 [4 favorites]

At first glance, my mind goes to swimming nudibranch, like a Spanish dancer or blue dragon. I can’t pinpoint why.

Other two things I see is someone triumphantly doing biceps curls and a smiling face with a big nose that extends across the mouth.

I suspect none of these are correct, but that’s what I see.
posted by [insert clever name here] at 2:23 PM on December 4, 2022 [1 favorite]

stylized ladygarden?
posted by 5_13_23_42_69_666 at 2:27 PM on December 4, 2022 [1 favorite]

I saw what nouvelle-personnel sees.
posted by holborne at 2:32 PM on December 4, 2022

In order:
Fish/whale/shark
Anchor
Winged humanoid (e.g. angel, demon)
posted by SaltySalticid at 2:32 PM on December 4, 2022 [1 favorite]

The very first thing I saw was a sword and crescent moon. Then I saw a picture of a figure with upstreached arms.
posted by Saucywench at 2:33 PM on December 4, 2022 [2 favorites]

Vulva & non-full moon / person probably intended to be a woman flexing & non-full moon
posted by aniola at 2:35 PM on December 4, 2022

Stylized, presumably female figure seated on a crescent moon. Knife/ dagger in front of a crescent moon was my 2nd visual.
posted by theora55 at 2:41 PM on December 4, 2022 [1 favorite]

A punch dagger splitting the Moon.
posted by SPrintF at 2:43 PM on December 4, 2022 [5 favorites]

Clione limacina, the sea angel
posted by cyclopticgaze at 2:46 PM on December 4, 2022 [4 favorites]

Pagan moon goddess
posted by indexy at 2:49 PM on December 4, 2022 [2 favorites]

I see a predynastic Egyptian “bird woman” figurine.
posted by mumkin at 2:50 PM on December 4, 2022 [2 favorites]

My first impression was of a woman in sort of a triumphant, raised arms pose. Then I thought maybe it was actually a knife. Then I paid more attention to what looked like a crescent moon behind the possibly-a-person, then I noticed the moon and stars motif of the whole thing and concluded the big crescent was definitely a crescent moon and decided the figure was meant to represent both a vagina and clitoris and a triumphant/confident woman standing in front of a crescent moon. The clitoris also looks like an open mouth, so I picture her sort of howling at the moon in a display of woman power.
posted by Redstart at 3:14 PM on December 4, 2022 [5 favorites]

Based on the entire bag, all of the symbols, and seeing other art in similar styles, pagan moon goddess, with a nod towards symbolizing other aspects of the divine feminine.

"corroborating evidence" - I searched for "pagan moon goddess tapestry tye dye", since I've seen a lot of similar art as tapestries. The "fairy goddess tapestry" looks pretty similar. It doesn't mention a moon in the description but most people are familiar with the shape of a crescent moon.

If you put the center motif as a black and white silhouette in a different context, I could see it looking like a rocket ship. But that's not the context it's in.
posted by yohko at 3:22 PM on December 4, 2022

At first I saw a dagger, was pretty sure that wasn't right-- on my second look I see a woman sitting on a crescent moon.
posted by geegollygosh at 3:35 PM on December 4, 2022 [1 favorite]

I see either a stylized woman-ish figure with flexing arms, or a downwards-pointing phallic symbol, both superimposed over a crescent moon.
posted by Dip Flash at 3:44 PM on December 4, 2022

Fertility goddess figure sitting on a crescent moon.
posted by oneirodynia at 3:50 PM on December 4, 2022

corroborating evidence

It’s certainly being sold as a Goddess.

GODDESS MOON & STARS GODDESS ALTAR CLOTH
Altar Cloth Goddess
Purple Goddess Altar Cloth
posted by zamboni at 3:51 PM on December 4, 2022 [2 favorites]

Meant to add: in sort of a stylized uterus + celtic design motif.
posted by oneirodynia at 3:52 PM on December 4, 2022

Moon goddess dagger for nocturnal rituals.
posted by MonkeyToes at 3:54 PM on December 4, 2022

Rocket ship
Airplane
Dagger
Woman with upraised arms

Having gone through all those, I believe it’s clearly supposed to be a woman / fertility symbol. But I saw those other things first.
posted by Winnie the Proust at 3:58 PM on December 4, 2022

Shark-bomb
posted by asimplemouse at 4:11 PM on December 4, 2022 [3 favorites]

A humanoid figure, arms outstretched in a kind of bicep-curl pose. Behind them, a horizontal crescent moon.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 4:14 PM on December 4, 2022

I see a predynastic Egyptian “bird woman” figurine.

I agree with mumkin--it's a stylized version of that figure combined with a crescent moon. Very Goddess Spirituality.
posted by velvet_n_purrs at 4:19 PM on December 4, 2022 [1 favorite]

Echoing others, the first thing I saw was a sea angel.
posted by saladin at 4:24 PM on December 4, 2022 [1 favorite]

The first thing I saw was a woman with upraised arms. After reading the comments here, I can see lots of the things people have mentioned, but the woman was what I saw without prompting and immediately on seeing the image.
posted by dg at 4:56 PM on December 4, 2022

Pagan/Wiccan Goddess-y symbol
posted by matildaben at 4:59 PM on December 4, 2022

It’s certainly being sold as a Goddess.

I mean, yes. People can argue about whether it is a good example of what it's supposed to be, but it's very obviously supposed to be a pagan goddess/fertility symbol with a moon. The anatomical connotations are pretty standard for the genre.
posted by lapis at 5:41 PM on December 4, 2022 [2 favorites]

It didn't really resolve as anything for me. Bottom looked like a stylized whale or fish, but then the top didn't make sense 🤷
posted by muddgirl at 6:20 PM on December 4, 2022

Dagger over a moon
posted by emd3737 at 6:54 PM on December 4, 2022

Cuttlefish
posted by Mavri at 7:56 PM on December 4, 2022 [1 favorite]

Stylized killer whale?

(Is this one of those inkblot tests where what you see says something about you??)
posted by Vatnesine at 8:03 PM on December 4, 2022

*phones Bob at the Laundry* Um, I think we have another one of those...

(Curly rocket ship, btw.)
posted by How much is that froggie in the window at 8:27 PM on December 4, 2022 [2 favorites]

Uterine penis/ uterine silhouette penetrating/ crossing a crescent moon.
posted by porpoise at 10:30 PM on December 4, 2022 [1 favorite]

It didn't really resolve as anything for me.

I got it to resolve the same way I did wine smelling at a food service job. We would all sit around and my coworkers would all have a glass of wine and talk about its flavor notes. (My boss said some very high percent of wine tasting is in the smell of it. I don't like alcohol, so I just smelled it. My boss disapproved. I told him some very high percent of wine tasting is in the smell of it. He still disapproved.) Anyway, we'd get to me, and the question was, "what does this smell like to you?". To me, it always just smelled like wine. But I learned pretty quickly the jargon and was actually better than my coworkers and identifying the notes of whatever it was supposed to smell like. I thought of them as homonyms. For example, this doesn't smell like cocoa or cherry blossoms or whatever at all, but someone's going to say it does. So this is "cocoa" and this is "cherry blossoms" even though really it's all just rotten grapes.

The answer I gave earlier is sort of the imagery equivalent of wine tasting. I really just saw the moon and some swirls on top of a pattern. My next step was to check and see if it was phallic because it was sort-of phallic shaped and that's what everyone sees in vague imagery. Or at least they did when I was in high school and restaurants. I decided it wasn't. Next stop, try the vulva. Yep, there it is, if you squint. I also had to decide that it was probably irrelevant to mention the spilling stars and the many moons and stars in the periphery and the 4 smaller, simplified versions of the main image in the corners.

It reminds me of a carrot.
posted by aniola at 11:31 PM on December 4, 2022 [2 favorites]

Gene Simmons' tote bag? (Corroborating evidence here)
posted by Calvin and the Duplicators at 1:34 AM on December 5, 2022 [3 favorites]

Bat'leth crossed by d'k tahg.
posted by some little punk in a rocket at 3:16 AM on December 5, 2022 [3 favorites]

'Moon goddess.' Quotation marks because I'd expect it to be sold under that name, or something very similar.
posted by box at 4:15 AM on December 5, 2022 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Y'all are awesome. I posted and then told my partner if I posted during typical US business hours, I would expect some good answers in no more than 15 minutes or so. But since it was a Sunday, to get a real good set of answers, we would probably want to wait until, like 10 a.m. today or so.

Lo and behold, TWO MINUTES(!) after posting the "correct" answer is posted. (It's exactly what I saw, and when they noticed in the store and said they liked it, I thought that was the reason why.) Anyway, they are very, very happy that others saw....

.... a whale!

Thanks for all the answers. Even the not so serious ones are great!
posted by a non mouse, a cow herd at 10:05 AM on December 5, 2022 [2 favorites]