on feminine desire 🕯️

the female gaze, reclaiming + expanding desire, and 10 delights.

1.0 male beauty

I go to Malibu when I need to reconnect with myself, in search of myself. I find her near the surfers (my muses) whose ankles are tan and whose shoulder blades peak through worn t-shirts. I want to stare at them for hours and if I was able to I would cry at how beautiful they are. Not in the physical attraction sense but because their beauty––male beauty––has been unacknowledged for so long. Sometimes we tell men how ‘handsome’ they are or how ‘dapper’ they look or some other manly compliment. But why not beautiful? Beauty has been an inherently feminine concept for much too long. In fact, the second definition of “beauty” on Google is quite literally “a beautiful woman.” But also included in its definition is beauty as “the pleasure of perceiving another’s details, giving intense pleasure or deep satisfaction to the mind.” Beauty is not and can not be limited by gender. My soul knows that when my eyes fall upon these surfers. They embody an effortlessness, a messiness, a saltiness, a sunkissed-ness, an earthiness, a liveliness. All of which I want for myself. But if I too had it, would they still be the focal point of my gaze?

1.1 the female gaze

I want to soak myself in the female gaze, which I imagine to be a warm bath with dark rose petals floating atop swirls of soapy, musky goodness and glowing candles on the ledges that are messily dripping down themselves. I want to inhale all the art that captures the female gaze, which is more subtle and nuanced than the male gaze. I want to walk through a gallery of live male hands with pronounced knuckles + veins and protruding thumb joints that nearly make a right angle and lightly manicured nails that show that they tend to themselves. One hand plays with a pencil while another grips an ax, another holds a flower by its base, and another drips with honey.

The female gaze is so much more than just attraction––it’s not looking for the flexing of muscles because it’s already being dazzled by the most ordinary of things. It embodies a human-ness that the classic (often sexist) male gaze does not. One where peculiarities are celebrated and magnified, where objectification isn’t possible because we are so zoomed in on their beauty that we have found a universality in it. We have found God in the smooth divots of their collarbones and the tiny freckles across their nose and their cowlick that makes their hair swirl into a little curlicue above their neck and the dimple on their chin (which was an angel’s finishing touch moments before they were born).

1.2 female desire

I discovered the concept of the female gaze via Charli XCX's ‘Boys’ music video that came out while I was in college. At the time it felt like the most empowering thing I’d ever seen because men were rarely the source of direct lust like that and because my straight guy friends would become a lil flustered while watching it. It felt like a feminist win that we could simultaneously get off on. But what it really did was capture the mundanity of the female gaze + masculine joy in a non-toxic way that hadn’t been done before in pop culture. Yes, there were some muscles flexed but there was also Ezra Koenig brushing his teeth and Flume reading a book and Khalid getting kissed by puppies and Joe Jonas eating a pancake laden with sweet, sticky syrup. Nothing that lust-worthy had ever felt like it was directly made for us, because so often it was made of us.

gr8ful 4 this

It reminds me of the popular IG account @hotdudesreading that captures exactly what you’d think it does. Its voyeuristic nature is undeniably erotic. Maybe that’s what it is––we (women) are finally becoming the voyeurs instead of always being the ones on display. It’s this pivot where the observed become the observers, the specimens become the scientists, the muses become the artists––and it feels positively powerful. We have always been looking, secretly and meekly, but now we are owning where our eyes wander for a little too long. We are shining our spotlight on our desires and proudly waving to our little pieces of God from behind our light. But through this pivot, we can’t just switch roles and call that feminism. We have to be intentional to reimagine our role as the respectful observer, and our relationship to the observed as one of cherishment + celebration and not objectification.

1.3 slippery slope

Feminism is defined as “the advocacy of women's rights on the basis of the equality of the sexes” and equality implies something becoming equal to another thing that already exists. But what if what already existed wasn’t enough? With women being objectified for nearly all of eternity, it’s easy to think that we can now reclaim our power by objectifying men too. Tic for tac. But ‘equality’ in a toxic, patriarchal society is a slippery slope. Once we get what (white, cis-het) men have had, we soon realize it was never enough to begin with. Yes, we now can play too, but it’s in the same, old playpen with the same shitty toys and the same shitty dynamics. It’s like finally getting a seat at the table only to realize the people at the table fucking suck and the table is made from shit and the chairs aren’t comfy.

Embodying toxic masculinity as a woman is not feminism. Cat calling a hot guy on the street is not feminism (it’s objectification of men). Casually fucking someone and then ghosting them is not feminism (it’s emotional immaturity and avoidant behavior). Grinding away at your 9-to-9 so you can be called a girl boss is not feminism (it’s mistaking your job as your inherent worth (thank you capitalism)).

If we continue to view the goal of feminism as equality of the sexes whilst living in the reality that is our patriarchal society, it’s clear that this level of ‘equality’ will never be enough. We’re already seeing this when feminism is solely focused on sexism and puts its blinders on when racism, classism, and ageism come into the picture. Equality without the latter incorporated is not equality.

1.4 hijacked desires

Throughout this ongoing fight to get what men have, we have lost sight of our soul’s true desires and taken on men’s as our own. Ask yourself, how many of your dreams are really your own (and not a product of societal/familial/etc. conditioning)? The fight for equality still needs to be won, for so many oppressed groups still do not have access to this bare minimum/basic human rights. But in tandem to this foundational work, we need to be reigniting feminine desire within ourselves.

(And it’s not just women whose desires have been hijacked. Men too need to realize that what they have is not enough, that they too are settling. Just because they are in the seat of power does not mean they are liberated.)

1.5 reclaiming desire

“Desires are states of mind that are expressed by terms like ‘wanting’, ‘wishing’, ‘longing’ or ‘craving.’”

For so long we were only meant to be desired, we weren’t allowed to desire. But desire is a part of our DNA, our life energy. So far, I’ve discussed desire in primarily sensual contexts, but it is so much more than that. Desire is our birthright. It is the all encompassing energy behind our soul-driven curiosities. It is no surprise that our sexual libido is tightly interwoven with our divine ability to create––the sacral chakra (pelvic region) encompasses desire, sexuality, pleasure, creativity, passion, receiving and giving, connection, etc.

Desires are what drive us to follow our dreams. Desires come to us as intuitive pings, popping into our mind with no cause other than our humanly existence. But how often do we listen to these pings? Rarely, unfortunately. When we’re fighting for the bare minimum (à la Maslow’s hierarchy of needs), it’s hard to hold space for these pings and dedicate oneself to self-actualization. And that has led to a disconnect with this primal, innate nature of desire. It has led us to look externally for what we want rather than turn inward. We look to our rational brain rather than our divine intuition. One creates fake control over our realities while the other surrenders to what is and what will be via divine trust.

1.6 feminine desire as the north star

I don’t want to be a C-suite girl boss giving Ted Talks about improving your productivity and workplace culture. I don’t want to be a fuck boi who feels empty after each one nightstand yet fears intimacy. I don’t want to work a 9-to-5 (which, by the way, directly mirrors a man’s 24-hr testosterone cycle, are you surprised) to support somebody’s else’s dreams while I consequently neglect my own. Our ancestors say we’re lucky to be able to have dreams like these, but I think we’re settling. If we aren’t constantly questioning what came before us, thinking beyond what has been and reimagining what can be, then we’re accepting less than we deserve.

I want to be running in meadows, making potions, rubbing oil on my body, joining braiding circles, picking wildflowers, and divinely fucking my soul partner in a forest. I want to cry tears of joy when I have my first real bleed after finally removing my hormonal IUD of 4+ years. I want to grow out my armpit hair and relish in the lack of ingrowns and remind myself that despite everything the beauty industry tells me is wrong with me, I am beautiful in my natural, God-given form. I want to have 4-hour long conversations with a supportive group of spiritually-minded women where I’ve never felt so seen in my entire life. I want to create art every day because it is a gift the universe gave me and because I know my creations will touch someone, if only just a little bit.

via @palesors

Look within and no where else / Hear the tiny whispers that we’ve shushed for years / Listen / Begin to weave yourself back together / Like the braiding circles you forgot you long to join / Start to remember / As you blow softly on the tiny flame / Our softest, most inner parts that are God / Awakening / The stream that flows beneath flows once again.

10 Delights 🍁

When I tore my ACL last year, I slipped into a low-grade depression during the 5+ weeks you have to wait before getting surgery. Every day felt like purgatory until I stumbled across ‘A Book of Delights’ by Ross Gay. He thought it would be nice to write about a delight each day and ended up creating this book as a compilation of them. The nourishing way in which he views his world slowly began to change how I viewed my own. Below, I create shortened versions of my own delights:

1. Hearing someone’s smile through a phone call.

2. The tips of my fingers getting warm and pink and a little chapped as I get back into playing my guitar.

3. Going to the grocery store for one ridiculous ingredient to make an entire meal around.

4. Seeing someone walking somewhere with a bouquet of flowers.

5. An old woman commenting on how I underline as I read, saying how she appreciates that “lost art” and how we’re “kindred souls.”

6. When people say “a quarter to” or “a quarter past” when telling the time.

7. Receiving long emails from a friend overseas instead of texts/DMs.

8. Dozing off at the beach and then waking up to someone yelling “dolphins!” and then seeing dolphins.

9. Wearing a long, white, flowy cotton nightgown with lace trim.

10. Dropping off a book at the street library with a special note in it and wondering who will find it.

delights can look as simple as this. (delight #11: my morning nourishment)

3 Quotes 💡

Author Shakti Gawain on living authentically:

"Often people attempt to live their lives backwards: they try to have more things, or more money, in order to do more of what they want so that they will be happier. The way it actually works is the reverse. You must first be who you really are, then, do what you need to do, in order to have what you want."

Artist/author @sighswoon on the balance of intention and letting go:

“Manifestation is having this distinct energy that’s a mixture of intention and surrender…You have to be open to jumping into the stream and letting it take you, but also you pick the stream.”

Matchmaker @issyliving on how our deepest desires are not random:

“The universe isn’t implanting you with desires that can’t be fulfilled…It’s all available to you.”

With love,

– Kristen 🍂 🎃