Olympia was the most scandelous representation of a prostitue in 19th century painting. Or so was called out by the critics of the salon. For example, Victor de Jankovitz wrote that "the expression of [Olympia's] face is that of being prematuraly aged and vicious; the body's putrefying color recalls the horror of the morgue." The critic Geronte called Olympia "that Hottentot Venus, with a black cat, exposed completely naked on her bed, like a corpse on the counters of the morgue, this Olympia is dead of yellow fever and all ready arrived at an advanced state of decomposition."
- Berheimer, Figures of Ill Repute, p 102

Such drama! Why was the paiting so threatening? While the cricts of the period were often drowned in erotic nudes, shamefully created to flatter the male viewer; depicted frontally and sans pubic hair, when the saw Olympia they cried scandal and saw death. Why? One can hardly look at Olympia's face today and recall the "horrors of the morgue" or the "yellow fever." Olympia's scandal, I would posit, is due to its simultaneous activation and exposure of the dynamics of the production of woman as fetish in patriarchal consumer society.