<<would you say the fig leaf is symbolically masculine, or feminine?
I would say it was symbolically symbolic, perhaps the most honest icon of hiddenness: it covers the likeness of the body and becomes a physical symbol of non-corporeal hiddenness or hiding. As an attachment of the Roman church to Greek statuary, it is the concrete gesture of a change in being towards the world--of the transition from its immediacy to its mediation through religion and understanding. That is, it is the iconic gesture of the apprehension of the world through shame.
