♀️ Femme // Fatale

In the introduction of her book Fantasies of Femininity (1997), Jane M. Ussher says that every woman's personal journey encounters contradictions between sex and a foray of sexual images that have come before her. Now, I paraphrased that because in the book she talks about herself as a scholar, but I wanted to reframe it in the context of women’s experiences. This notion of contradiction is compounded by her quotation of Freud that opens the book: “Throughout history people have knocked their heads against the riddle of femininity…to those of you who are women…you are yourselves the problem.” I’ve taken this quote out of context, but it is still relevant as men continue to believe that women and their femininity—their sexuality—are an enigma.

In this essay, I’ll be discussing both the male and female gaze, porn, sexualization in society, and how women navigate sex today?

Gazes

I believe that media likes to reflect real life, or at least idealize it in some form. It gives us something to emulate. This idealization is what has created the male gaze—but if there is a male gaze, then there is also a female gaze. This thought is what has led me to return to the topic of my dissertation: female sexuality. I hope to re-examine the topic and do it justice, and there’s a lot left for me to uncover. This won’t be an exhaustive text, and I do not wish to reach anywhere so lengthy as 15,000 words.

Discussions about the female gaze have actually been growing in tandem with literature regarding the male gaze since the 1970s. (Thank feminists and lesbians). The term male gaze was coined by Laura Mulvey in 1975 in her essay about narrative cinema and visual pleasure. The term female gaze hasn’t been coined any particular mastermind or masterwork, but has been adopted as a natural foil to the male gaze.

When originally doing my dissertation, I argued (quite heatedly) in my viva that my topic wasn’t about the male gaze (sorry, David)—I didn’t want anything to do with it. My dissertation was about women, femininity. But thinking back on the topic now, to negate the male gaze is to negate the female experience. The male gaze is the lens through which we see ourselves everyday

What are these gazes, I hear you ask? The male gaze (primarily in cinema and art), positions women as an object of heterosexual male desire. Women’s feelings are less important than how the female body is framed, and men are placed in positions of power over women, socially and sexually. Man is subject, woman is object. Sex scenes in male-gaze films tend to see male orgasm as acceptable because the male character is using the female for sexual release.

The female gaze, however, is not about objectifying men into sexual desirables, like a two-sides-of-the-same-coin scenario. It actually sees people as people. “It seeks to empathize rather than objectify.” (Telfer, 2018) It’s intimate and emotive. It’s empathic to what we see on screen (Soloway, 2016). And it returns autonomy to women. Céline Sciamma, the director of 2019’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire, has referred to the film as a “manifesto about the female gaze.” It follows Marianne, a painter who is hired to paint a portrait of Héloïse, a young noblewoman who has refused to pose for portraits because she is resentful about her upcoming arranged marriage. Marianne has to memorize Héloïse's features in order to paint her secretly, which leads to scenes involving a woman gazing at another woman. Héloïse soon returns Marianne’s glances.

This is not to say that the female gaze does not look without desire; take The Handmaiden (2016), which is about a Japanese heiress, Lady Hideko, and her maid Sook-hee during the Japanese occupation of Korea. During the first act, they have sex and discuss how Hideko should pleasure her husband once she is married. We see the same scene in the second act, but the man is forgotten and female pleasure is the focus of the scene. The camera is no longer a voyeur, but instead honest. The male gaze views sexuality as a commodity for consumption whereas the female gaze views sexuality with intimacy and autonomy.

Portrait of a Lady on Fire was directed by a woman, and The Handmaiden directed by a man; both implement the female gaze, but it's actually less about the gender binary and more about an equal, honest, human gaze. Female is used the same way feminism is used to describe [gender] equality. But both of these films involve characters forming Sapphic relationships. This is because lesbianism is an allegory for autonomy. In its fledgling form, the female gaze, in cinema, must queer itself because it rejects the patriarchy.

Most of Hollywood’s output is male-gazey. And it harms men as much as women: Henry Cavill (The Witcher, Superman) and Hugh Jackman (Wolverine) have expressed their discomfort with having to maintain the look of their muscles on set through dehydration to appear like the idealized version of a powerful, masculine man.

In my research, and my own experience of gazes of desire, I’ve noticed that the male view of sexuality is formed through visual traditional media by the likes of film, television, music videos, and porn. Visual media reflects patriarchal sexism and is usually kept in its original context (i.e. Megan Fox’s body in Transformers is always going to be for male heterosexual consumption because we view her through Michael Bay’s camera.) Female sexuality, on the other hand, is tied to the written word, like fanfiction or erotica, where there is space for interpretation and the use of imagination. In my algorithm of TikTok, women are reading erotica because it's a safe space where they are able to explore their sexuality and desire without judgement.

Cinema and art are both reflections of society and images for society to emulate. As we move into adolescence, we form relationships (with other people and ourselves), and we develop an understanding of our sexuality and who we’re attracted to. This is a confusing time, so we naturally reach out towards media to gain a better understanding of ourselves; we assume the script that we think we’re expected to follow.

Following a script

When I was a teenager I had teen magazines where I would read about girls and boys asking questions about their first relationships and sexual experiences. There would be an ‘agony aunt’ trying to lend a sympathetic ear to some very confused and hormonal teenagers. Teen magazines have largely gone out of fashion now, almost wholly replaced by the internet.

Fantasies of Femininity (1997) discusses early on in the book that teen magazines have agony aunts that gave frank advice about sex if a teen queried about it. The magazines in question were generally regulated media that discussed sex in the safe space of a magazine. Teen magazines also showed what was age appropriate for girls to emulate: look at The Saturdays, Katy Perry, and Alexandra Burke on the covers of Shout, Bliss, and Top of the Pops in the early 2010s. The images shown were not very sexualised. Teen mags were pop culture curated for that demographic.

Teen magazines are now obsolete and have been replaced by social media (alongside TV and advertising) where there is little to no regulation for the safety of teens. The normalization of porn in all media and the common sexualisation in advertising and social platforms (Instagram ads/ ads of headless women to sell clothing, and our apparent obsession with sex-centric shows like Love Island, Too Hot to Handle and Naked Attraction) has seeped into other corners of the internet, leading to the sexualisation of teens much earlier. Due to the lack of teen spaces on the internet, they emulate the look of influencers, causing them to appear much older than they are. Teens are well-versed in makeup, their own style, how to pose in photos. The time of awkward teens is over and has been replaced with mini adults. In the celebrity world I can think of a very clear example of this disparaging progression:

Above: Pictures of Lindsay Lohan at 12 (1998), and Millie Bobby Brown at 15 (2019). They are both on the red carpet for events. Lohan doesn’t appear to be wearing any makeup, perhaps some light eyeshadow, whereas Brown is wearing makeup perhaps expected to be worn by someone many years her senior. Lohan is styled to look her age and Brown has been styled in a more mature fashion. The images are only twenty years apart, but with the rise of social media, kids are growing up faster.

Social media blurs the lines of what is age appropriate because teens are exposed to adult desire: how to look, dress, act—even how to have sex. Young people now emulate what they see on Instagram and Tik-Tok where there is no regulation. I recently saw a Tik-Tok of a 13-year-old who was proud that she looked older than 13 through the amount of makeup she was wearing. This phenomenon is also visible by the way young actors and singers are viewed in the public eye.

This desire or even expectation for girls to look like women is dangerous as it allows for adults who know themselves to take advantage of and groom minors. Adults use Instagram and Tik-Tok and yet these apps aren't regulated. Kinktok is a hashtag on Tik-Tok where minors could be exposed to an adult space, through the for-you-page. I know of adult users that do block who they suspect are minors, but not everyone does. If social media companies aren't going to regulate their platforms to what is age appropriate, parents will have to.

But why is there such an attraction to looking young, being young? What is our society's obsession with youth? Rosalind Coward, author of Female Desire (1984) has come to the conclusion that it’s the sexually immature body that fits the current ideal. Youth presents a body which is sexual – exudes sexuality, in its vibrant good health, the female body is fertile. An older woman who is sexually experienced is seen as a slut, through her experience.

Pornification

A common place to land when trying to learn about sex without judgement is porn sites because “Pornography has always promised to reveal the truth... [but] its function is to distort the truth by recasting sexual experience in terms of power relations between human subjects.” (Hardy, 2009) Another industry built on the male gaze, porn succeeds by exploiting the bodies of women. Women can and do enjoy porn, but they face a strange moral dichotomy because liking porn can be seen as unfeminine due to its use of the male gaze. It can also be seen as un-feminist because it perpetuates the sexualisation of women. As radical feminist Andrea Dworkin once wrote, “pornography formalises male supremacy in our society...” (Pornography, 1981).

There are of course more ethical ways to get your porn—there are directors and performers that employ the female gaze in the creation of their porn, where it is more about intimacy rather than power. Male gaze porn has men as the subject and women as an object. Dworkin had been cited having said that "All heterosexual sex is rape" in her book Intercourse (1987). However, this quote isn’t quite accurate—she was quoted by friend, John Berger, after her death: "If you believe [that] normal sex is an act of dominance..." (Viner, 2005) My understanding of this, then, is that the unequal Man/Woman social structure as it stands has to follow them into the bedroom because women are not equal to men socially, economically, etc., and therefore men often dominate, oppress and possess women in the bedroom because they bring with them their own social lived experience.

Female gaze porn has women as the subject. “We seem to have reached the point at which any clear separation between the real and the representation has collapsed or been turned inside out.” (Hardy, 2009) This collapse is clear in everyday conversations when we hear anecdotes from friends about the lads they’re seeing—men who are more concerned with their own pleasure and climax, and who don’t bother to understand female anatomy. When female pleasure and climax are negated, do we become vessels for male pleasure and therefore male power? The real is when all partners are engaged and it's an honest experience. Interestingly, amateur porn has become more prevalent on these sites because it is a representation of the real. Even more recently, people have turned to porn and sex work in the wake of the pandemic, namely OnlyFans, as a way to subsidise their income or sometimes change career paths entirely. Some producers cite incomes as large as six figures since starting. Sites like OnlyFans change the power dynamic of our expectation of porn. Money is power, and people, particularly women and queer people, have been able to set their own subscriber rates and control the gazes on them; through doing so they’ve reclaimed agency in a porn space for themselves.

Sexual Beings

In 1984, Coward wrote that heterosexuality is the normative form of sexual behaviour and is an acceptable form of sexual arrangement because we have to rely on instincts that lead us to reproduce. In western literature about sex, heterosexual sex has been written off as a means to an end in order for women to have babies; and thus been dubbed the reproductive sex. But this idea is outdated. Interestingly though, Coward, later on the in chapter, makes the point that women are only fertile four days out of the month during their ovulation period, so having sex outside of this period of time would only lead to female sexuality and pleasure, whereas “men’s sexuality on the other hand is unavoidably reproductive”. However, this notion isn’t widely adopted; women are seen as the reproductive sex because of pregnancy.

In days gone by, women having sex and discussing sex was widely considered a taboo subject. What made it a taboo in the first place? Heteronormatively, is it the penetration itself? — are women changed people because of it? The answer is absolutely no, but I have no doubt that women have been made to feel differently after confessing such a thing to friends. A woman’s worth as property being tied to if she’s had sex before is a patriarchal idea.. I’d like to think we’ve moved past that archaic idea, as having conversations about sex is more common.

But what happens when women want to get experimental in the bedroom? Abby Lee, author of Girl With a One Track Mind (2006) says in her introduction that her friends would be uncomfortable if she mentioned deviations with a male partner instead of vanilla sex, which led her to writing her own sex blog.

But it’s been fifteen years since then! Are women still scared of judgement from their peers? Sex isn’t strictly about reproduction anymore.

People have sex for the intimacy and companionship, which granted, sex has always been about these things, but in 2021 it’s certainly been recontextulised. Casual hook-ups, one night stands, friends with benefits, seeing someone, dating, relationship, married. Companionship has only grown in importance because of the pandemic. There have been projections that this will be the “summer of love.” And people are desperate for sex after being in lockdown for 18 months. Hook-up culture allows people to experiment and figure out what they like in the bedroom.

Now, it's becoming more accepted that women have similar levels of libido as men. It’s been discovered that what arouses women varies. But how has this been cultivated in society? Sex has taken on another phrase: “sexual play” or “adult play”. This gives the connotation of escapism from the realities of adult life; it also allows for adult toys as part of that play. Sex toys sales have allowed for some deconstruction of taboos of sex. Sex toys are now being sold in Boots and Beauty Bay under the banner of sexual wellness. This normalises sexuality away from sex shops where there might still be a lingering taboo. Sexual wellness turns masturbation into women allowing themselves to connect with their bodies and experience their bodies and pleasure on their own terms.

This has been dubbed a female sexual liberation by April Huff in her article “Liberation and Pleasure: Feminist Sex Shops and the Politics of Consumption” (2018) as it revolutionises women having sex away from any patriarchal power. “The general shifts in attitudes and sexual practice are probably more important. Both have allowed heterosexual women to be explicit about a sexuality autonomous from reproduction, an autonomy which previously was only possible for lesbians.” (Coward, 1984)

Living with duality

So how are women meant to embody and enact their sexuality? It’s a damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don’t situation. Unfortunately, for the most part we have to live with the patriarchy, meaning we (as women) are assigned one of two identifiers by the patriarchy: Sexual or sex-less. In these two categories there are two sub-categories: A sexual woman is either a Vixen or a Slut and a sex-less woman is either a Mother or a Prude. I’ve picked these words specifically because none are wholly bad, and none are wholly good. Women live in a strange catch-22 embodying everything in their lives. But for the sake of this essay, let me define them.

Vixen is a sexual woman who seduces men into bed but is desirable for her ability to become submissive. A slut is a sexual woman who has sex a lot and therefore doesn’t respect herself. Mother is the easiest to define because her body becomes sexless after having children and therefore “serving her purpose.” A prude is a woman who refuses sex, depriving men of “what they need.”

Except women don’t fit into these boxes.

Women negotiate how they choose to embody their own femininity every day. This gives them autonomy, and, whether they realise it or not, women living their lives authentically is what is most important. A woman’s worth is not lessened by her choices. She can choose to become a mother or she can choose to be a sexual being (or both!). It can be argued that when women perform their sexuality that they are only doing so for the male gaze, but it comes down to their choices and what they consent to do for themselves. What a woman consents to changes everyday and therefore so does what they choose to perform and embody.

Author's note: By no means is my research exhaustive and I am aware that it's very white-centric, in my continued research I intend to diversify my findings, this essay was to get my thoughts in order. Hopefully, if I'm able to make this a professional dance work, I intend to have diverse dancers to inform the work and amplify their voices and their experiences.