the female gaze

Teach the girls that we were taught to look at pictures through the eyes of a man, Alone in the dark room of a cinema where each spectator builds dreams & fantasies, Our empathy with the hero is always a he, and we frame a woman body as a man would. I am calling out for Laura Mulvey* and learning to trust my own gaze, peeling off my mind those male blankets that were put in front of my head. How is a girl looking at other girls at men at the world. Gaze at girls, gaze at their breasts, their thighs, their legs like watching a man’s hand, a torso, a cup of coffee or a cigarette. Is it because our sex is hidden that every other part of our body has to be sexualized? Is it so scary that we don’t have any visual form that says I have desire like a hard dick. * Laura Mulvey « visual pleasure and narrative cinema »