Trying On The Male Gaze
What if the male gaze fits us better than we expected?
José
I am sitting on the cracked, faux black leather couch in a white beam of LED light. Underneath the sparkling sheath of my green-blue dress is my matching tangerine orange underwear set. José is crouched on his knees on the floor in front of me.
I notice the way he sees me. His drunken eyes double-take as I open my legs. I look down over the lip of my dress and back up into his brown eyes, teasing. I want to control him. It’s like I’ve made up a game with my own body. I will spruce up these used goods. Put the fruit back on the shelf at the supermarket, nice and ripe again.
I touch myself over my underwear as I look up at him. I am putting on a show for him. I quite like it. I feel powerful, in control. I notice the grey hairs in the scruff of his beard as he sips his beer. He leans in closer, tasting me with his nose.
When we are fucking in his room, the breath is forced out of my lungs by the weight of his body and his protruding belly. He has cute brown moles on his face, deep brown eyes, and a wicked smile. Eight years older than me. He comes quickly. I feel dainty, young, fresh.
José drives me home at 3 in the morning. In his car, I hug my knees, my orange underwear back on but readjusted and slightly twisted. He winks at me, and I pause for a moment. I wonder. We can both look at my body, but perhaps we see very different things. How does he see me? As some kind of walking beauty? Humanly imperfect yet highly fuckable?
Todor
Todor starts to kiss my neck, and I am not a fool. I know that means he wants to fuck me. Three years younger than me, with plenty of muscle, I don’t want it to end. I love the feeling of his focus and attention, the feeling of his desire quietly unleashing itself, as he grabs my wrists and leans his whole body over on top of me.
After we have sex, I get up. I want to shower. I ask him if he wants to join. He is already inching across the shower’s step, the deep, muscular curve of his back temporarily hidden from my view as I let the warm water rush down my face, through my hair, over my shoulders. Todor is quite a bit taller than me, but I feel him close, and I lift myself up onto my tippy toes to kiss him. Our lungs pant with the heat of the water vapor, hardly catching our breath. I feel weightless.
Read more about Todor here and here.
Ariel
In Valle de Bravo, I am walking up the stairs at the spa. I am wearing these white and dark blue floral leggings that my dad got me. They are comfortable, but I think they are ugly. My English friend, Ariel, trails up the stairs behind me.
“Your butt looks great in those leggings,” she says, “I didn’t know you had junk back there.”
My eyes open wide as I round the top of the staircase.
“Really?” I say to her, glancing back at my ass to see how I look, “Thank you.”
I read things into her comment that I know I shouldn’t. I teeter between friendship and attraction. I can’t help it. She’s bisexual too. Yet, instead of guilt, I feel a sense of pulsing, silent pride. I keep secrets. I don’t like to, but sometimes I have no choice.
I flick a smile towards her. I wonder where her boyfriend is.
Read more about bisexuality here and here.
Gym Girls
I am sitting at an outdoor cafe. I look over the rim of my computer screen to see girls with perfect butts, boobs, and bodies glide out of the gym. Some adorned with a small fluffy pooch. Some wearing sunglasses under the gray sky. The tech bro in a t-shirt next to me stares at them for longer than I do. A wave of wanting washes over me, yearning almost, hitting me across my face and shoulders like a hot spray.
I, too, must do 1,000 planks and pushups and sculpt my butt to gain the tech bro’s attention. Stop eating fried chicken. You’ll never get abs like that. Having a brain or a personality in this world doesn’t matter.
Art
My nude body is in the New York Times. My first anonymous feature in a dream publication, and it happens to be that I’m lying upside down on a frozen, rotten staircase in a haunted, crumbling house in Mexico City. My body is art.
I lounge around with the other nude models, helping the photographer craft the perfect picture. Compare, compare, compare. I cannot help but notice the curves of the other girls’ thighs or their slightly saggy boobs.
I see I am one of the only ones fully unshaven. I wonder if their men prefer them that way, or they prefer themselves that way, or who gets to decide these things. Probably, it’s the razor companies. Some exec who wants to buy a bigger house in the suburbs.
The Sauna
Later, I go to the sauna in Mexico City. I think of José in his drunken stupor. Tasting me with his nose. I sit in the baking heat in my thin, light-blue bikini. I feel like I could go out and get any guy I ever wanted.
Sure, José is a man, and yet his eyes are far less judgmental than my own. Can men even tell the difference if I weigh 5 pounds heavier? Do they like my butt cheeks just the same if they sit like a shelf or sag slightly in the middle, like an ever-older piece of cheap plywood from Ikea, drooping from the weight like it’s filled with books?
I consider that the female gaze, the gazes we give each other, and the visions of edited people on Instagram are harsher than any way a man could see us. Much less a human man with a cute smile, lovable tummy, and receding hairline.
Baking, I leave the sauna. I still suck in my stomach a bit when I bend over to get in and out of the cold plunge tub. But I let the thong of my bikini bottom line my lower back. I leave the full, swelling cellulite of my butt cheeks out on display. The slight muffin top of my tummy, even, is there within the reach of people’s eyes. I let my square bikini top hang there also. Enough boob for there to be something to see.
I shiver in the cold plunge water, hugging my knees for warmth. Here I am, body imperfect, trying this new gaze on for size. Actually, I kind of prefer the loose-fitting worship of the male gaze to whatever goggles I was wearing before. When I catch a glimpse of myself in my reflection in the sauna’s glass wall, I see the elegance of my waist and a well-proportioned lower middle.
José, continued.
José drives up to my front door. He stops the car. He kisses me on the cheek.
I choose to ignore the judgments of my mother and the women of her generation.
Their standards sharper.
Their attention to detail.
Their whispers crueler than catcalls, even.
I see myself through José’s gaze.
I am a queen.
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