gaze

It may say something about what we do here;
all this staring at other women's bodies, other (nameless) girls,
pictures in which faces are cut, blurred or turn from the camera.
Her head; cropped.
No head.
No brain.
The perfect body.
The perfect soul?
What soul?
Does she even exist?
Does it matter?
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"You hate that you bought the lie and they sold you one"Drake
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I have sold my soul to the idea that my body means more than my brain.
It means and matters more than anything.
So much more.
See.
I admit at the outset: You have one.
No challenge. No foul.
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Sometimes I get tired of what academics, media theory people,
anthropologists, and the like, refer to as 'the gaze'.
The male gaze.
What tires me is the knowledge of the gaze, all day, every day, the knowledge that 'they' are right.
The white, male, heterosexual, patriarchal, euro-centric gaze.
The gaze that sees my body and casts me aside:
Neither made remarkable by any exceptional flaw nor
ascending to the esteemed ranks of the hourglass or the razor.
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I'm tired of being seen in and out of the beauty-sex-mould-straitjacket-casket,
of seeing myself there, of seeing my own face and body in the mirror:
I gaze at me and you - the gaze - tell me what I see:
Failing. Average. Unremarkable. Or thick, wounded, frail.
Failure. Lazy. Fat.
Unexceptional. Unacceptable.
I'm so tired of it.
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I hate make-up.
Zeroing in on every flaw. Blotting out the bad.
Exaggerating lips and lashes.
Painting myself up.
Today! A trophy! Tomorrow! A bulls-eye!
I can pretend you want me.
(Play paperdoll, play, play, play, it's all you'll ever do, play-pretend-pathetic-pretty-pitiful.)
While I'm still young.
While I'm still 'product'.
Take a sample?
Hell, it's free, it's always free.
You can look.
You can touch.
Take it for a test-drive.
If you don't like it you can put me back on the shelf
with the others.
Unexceptional.
You break it? You don't have to buy it.
They won't even clean me up.
They'll leave me lying split and spilled on the floor.
Please, tread on me nonchalantly as you browse.
As you pick out another.
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I'm so tired.
So tired of my moulded bras and mascara and skinny jeans and volumnising conditioner.
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Sometimes I feel like screaming:
Please, please just tell me that you want to fuck me! I only put on this fucking shit,
this fucking shit that I can't afford, so that you'd imagine what I look like naked!
...You fucking cunt...
...You don't even know that I have a face...
Or! Just tell me what I've suspected all along:
THAT I'M UGLY AND I'LL NEVER BE GOOD ENOUGH
AND YOU WILL NEVER LOVE ME
AND YOU WILL LET YOUR SLICK EYES SLIDE RIGHT OVER ME.
YOU'RE SO FUCKING BORED BY THE SIGHT OF ME, AREN'T YOU?!
TELL ME I'M WASTING MY TIME:
PRETENDING THAT I SPEAK THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE,
THAT FEELINGS MATTER,
THAT YOU WANT TO MAKE ME CUM,
THAT YOU DIDN'T JUST WATCH MY MOUTH MOVE
WHILE YOU STARED AT MY TITS.
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You exhaust me.
Leave me alone.
Get out of my head.
Get out.
Get out.
Get out.
I hate you.
I hate your voice in my head.
IT'S YOUR VOICE!
NOT MY VOICE!
But it's the only way I can speak myself now, speak to myself now, at myself now,
barking orders, criticisms and commands, prescribing;
giggle,
cut a blunt fringe,
paint your toenails,
bend over slowly,
play with your hair,
tone your thighs,
fuck him, fuck him, fuck him,
and be grateful.
Be grateful they looked
because, God forbid, you didn't-can't-won't see me.
God forbid; I go by in my own world and on my own way.
God forbid; I do not care.
Yes.
Only that is forbidden.
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What does it matter?
I'll never scream it.
Never say it.
Only pray it, cry it, whisper it.
Because - baby - I think about you all the time.
I cannot get you out of my head.
-
I cannot get out.
I cannot get out.
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"Taught from infancy that beauty is a woman's sceptre,
the mind shapes itself to the body,
and roaming round its gilt cage,
only seeks to adorn its prison."
Mary Wollstonecroft.