This essay deals very well with only part of the issue. Whilst 'boys looking at pretty girls who want to be looked at' is one aspect (amplified through social media technology), I propose that there are plenty of boys and girls who want to get to know 'the opposite sex' with a wider curiosity in mind than only sex. There is much to be discovered and enjoyed in platonic boy-girl relationships even when sexual attraction may be forever bubbling around in the background. Not all primal urges have to be acted on immediately. Delayed gratification has its advantages.
True, we may not have had access to social media etc. in our teenage years (70s), but the differences among our peers in terms of sexual interest and behaviour were already clear and pronounced.
In the current generation there is already far too much focus on sexuality in our culture, while the true issue is most likely a more fundamental struggle with identity, sense of belonging, sense of direction in an increasingly chaotic and aggressive world... We should perhaps think about what we can do to starve the beast that wants to push increasingly younger children into an increasingly destructive oversexualisation.
It's interesting to read this a week after turning 60 - down the other side of the sexual attractiveness peak. Today a man smiled at me in the grocery store and it was nice not to be ignored, as most often happens as men's eyes scan your face, unconsciously note your age and coast past you. Rendered invisible.
As a young woman, I remember exactly the conflicted feelings that come with attractiveness. Being glad I was, but not with the unwanted aspects of too much attention. The frequent gawker, the occasional stalker.
An older woman told me then that one day I would miss it. I feel it mostly as relief actually. A lack of self consciousness. Freedom, makeup or not, good hair day or bad.
But I'll admit it. Sometimes I miss it. The power's the thing. And the strangely un-feminist feeling that you're getting womanhood right somehow.
Great essay. Thank you for sharing and unravelling the current dilemma faced by young girls.
About the final conclusion… I’m not sure it’s just modern social norms. Women have not been allowed to be themselves for many generations and in many cultures all over the world. We had no right to our own lives, our own bodies, our own wisdom and power for hundreds, if not thousands of years.
After a brief illusory excursion into equality, now we are supposed to hand over our rights to our own sexuality and fertility too… including the label 'woman' itself...
If young girls believe physical/ sexual attractiveness is their best asset, it’s hardly their fault. It may not be what they really want… It may only give them an illusory experience of being a somebody, a valid member of the human race, albeit very briefly...
The Atwood quote is so on point. I read robber bride more than once many years ago.
Now where to find an equivalent piece for young men? of what our bizarre hyper anti-and ultra sexualization of males and females is doing. a lying denial of our humanity and the mis-assignation of blame! It shows up in bizarre forms of body hatred and in the many anti-body addictions too!
Thank you for sharing this. So much for us to engage with for we the human living in a world that is, basically, a total lie to everyone looking for what is true.
Muchas gracias.
All the best with what is changing. Everything changes!
A really deeply insightful essay. Thank you so much. I would add another factor - which is the easy almost unavoidable access young girls now have to being exposed to hard core pornographic videos online - which must provide a rather terrifying distortion of their pre-adolescent fantasy of what "becoming a woman" might entail. I can't help but suspect that children watching adult male sexual fantasies graphically played out in online video is yet another factor contributing to the "dis-ease" young girls and young women are feeling about their bodies and their female identity. I wish everyone I know would read your essay - but instead they'll let NPR tell them what to think about all this. : /
Remember corsets so tight they could kill you? Women would have ribs removed to achieve the perfect waistline. Not so long ago when pointy-toed high heels were all the rage, some women had their feet surgically altered. We can blame men but really we do these things too ourselves. Some people never get over themselves.
> They do not see you; they just like what they see. Hungry eyes…
It’s in the opening part, so it kind of predefines one side of the story, the “men” side. And it is so wrong.
“They” do not see “you” - two vagueness, how do we navigate here? Is it within a social “good” paradigm like beast men and innocent, naïve girls? Really? When I lived next to an elementary school yard, the part close to my windows was a favorite spot for 8-9-10-year olds. It was in the shade of huge trees, right across the school building, a safe harbor to smoke, drink beer, and be a model girl for others. Yes, this was an abode for girls, boys never went there. Boys were on the opposite side, playing football. Boys didn’t have a spot to gather and smoke and drink. But the best part was about linguistics. My vocabulary range increased exponentially from sheer listening to these “girls” - who in fact were still in the toddlers’ age, just oversize and overoutspoken. They didn’t recite poems or fairy tales. I have never heard such weird, disgusting, obscene, absolutely ugly words, expressions and full, lengthy sentences from any man, sober or not, normal or macho. These girls were not quiet, they went full scale, not bothered that 15 yards away there was a huge block of apartments, with balconies and open windows. It was an amazing experience. The end of feminine innocence, in a way.
If I were to be this “they” in the above sentence, I would want NOT to see “you” - the girl with such disrespect to everything and everyone around, including yourself - like the ones above.
Now a different interpretation of this opening sentence. If “they” mean “men”, well, the first part is true. They do not see you. But the second part is completely wrong, and it shows the lack of understanding of deeper layers of the human mind, in either sex. “They” (in both sexes) cannot “like” “what they see” because - they do not see you, right? So, what is happening there?
One person (“man”) is gravitating toward another (“girl” / “woman”). On one hand, it is a natural physiological attraction, part of our biology. It is always there, from the first impulses of sexuality which both (girl and boy) experience at some age. The attraction per se is natural.
The second part is more tricky. The attraction is always there, but the conditions of social life and personal values exist for a reason, too. Both serve as safeguards, as sort of guidelines how to behave (both girls and boys) to make life harmonious and conducive to development, in both social and personal aspects.
At the time when we feel the first impulses which make intimacy the most desired part of life, our parents should teach us about these safeguards. Parents - not strangers, like teachers or preachers or doctors. But most parents do not want to go into these subjects. They themselves are blocked or suppressed or shy or straight unaware. Or they escape into work or more children or social duties or whatever, just do not let your child to ask you about “these things”.
The outcome: both girls and boys do not know what “this” is all about. Neither can “see” the other person. Both work diligently on building fantasies, supplemented with the abundance of resources online and advice from other kids. Both girls and boys create illusions and expand them and ornament them all the time. When these illusory, false images meet real-life situation - the natural intimacy impulse and the absence of guidelines what to with it - an avalanche of mental problems is triggered.
Girls want to be desired and express this in numerous ways, boys “see” these expressions and are naturally attracted to them, but do not know how to handle the situation. Neither girls nor boys will ask each other about what they are feeling or what is happening - the parents did not give them this simple option as the best solution. Thus, both girls and boys go full ahead into the natural desire and quickly learn a whole range of negative emotions. And they never talk about it with their parents - so there is no way to learn from mistakes or to identify false expectations. This is the ground on which we all become “adult” persons.
“Men” are not attracted to what “they just like what they see”. They don’t really know what they see, but they act upon their own imagination and the stories and the movies. A disaster is obvious.
“Hungry eyes”? Oh, dear. Hungry eyes are beautiful. Yes, we all (girls and women, boys and men) happily engage in looking at what is attractive and nice to our inner being. Seeing a beautiful, happy person is the best experience in life we can have. Enjoying her/his physical appearance, the way of moving, the manner of expression - this is all beautiful, this is what being human is about.
Girls/women go to immense lengths to make themselves an attractive “object”, even at the expense of harming the body. Is it because their parents did not make them aware of this game? Or is it because it always is a winning strategy over boys and men who are not self-aware enough to go beyond these games?
This is the landscape. The “stop” sign is missing there. It has never been set up when we were on the verge of becoming aware of intimacy. Our parents did not tell us that this is an invisible sign, a trap set up by the society to victimize anyone breaching the invisible rules. As all guidance signs, the “stop” sign has two sides…
The question is, where are all wise and outspoken psychologists? They all know these problems. And they do NOTHING to change this. Parents inherit this huge gap, and mostly are not aware of it. But psychologists learn about these issues and they learn how to resolve them - only within a prescribed routine and for the appropriate fee…
Some insightful commentary here, but also absolute garbage to claim women in general want to be sexually desired - maybe the author does for her own reasons, maybe the author projects her personal feelings onto women in general, maybe some do because they don’t know better, or some do because they like the vicarious illusion of power the male gaze might bring - but the vast majority of emotionally intelligent women are far far fafafafar far more interested in genuine connection than in contorting themselves into suitable consumable commoditized carboncopy fodder for a general population of stunted males. To be attractive to and attracted by a suitable mate? Yes. General obsession with general sexual desirability? Nope, healthy women are busy with more important things. ❤️
Wow - phewww - thanks 4 sharing. Woodstock generation granny speechless in Chicago.
Me too. OMG!! I could say a lot. But maybe not.
This essay deals very well with only part of the issue. Whilst 'boys looking at pretty girls who want to be looked at' is one aspect (amplified through social media technology), I propose that there are plenty of boys and girls who want to get to know 'the opposite sex' with a wider curiosity in mind than only sex. There is much to be discovered and enjoyed in platonic boy-girl relationships even when sexual attraction may be forever bubbling around in the background. Not all primal urges have to be acted on immediately. Delayed gratification has its advantages.
True, we may not have had access to social media etc. in our teenage years (70s), but the differences among our peers in terms of sexual interest and behaviour were already clear and pronounced.
In the current generation there is already far too much focus on sexuality in our culture, while the true issue is most likely a more fundamental struggle with identity, sense of belonging, sense of direction in an increasingly chaotic and aggressive world... We should perhaps think about what we can do to starve the beast that wants to push increasingly younger children into an increasingly destructive oversexualisation.
It's interesting to read this a week after turning 60 - down the other side of the sexual attractiveness peak. Today a man smiled at me in the grocery store and it was nice not to be ignored, as most often happens as men's eyes scan your face, unconsciously note your age and coast past you. Rendered invisible.
As a young woman, I remember exactly the conflicted feelings that come with attractiveness. Being glad I was, but not with the unwanted aspects of too much attention. The frequent gawker, the occasional stalker.
An older woman told me then that one day I would miss it. I feel it mostly as relief actually. A lack of self consciousness. Freedom, makeup or not, good hair day or bad.
But I'll admit it. Sometimes I miss it. The power's the thing. And the strangely un-feminist feeling that you're getting womanhood right somehow.
Great essay. Thank you for sharing and unravelling the current dilemma faced by young girls.
About the final conclusion… I’m not sure it’s just modern social norms. Women have not been allowed to be themselves for many generations and in many cultures all over the world. We had no right to our own lives, our own bodies, our own wisdom and power for hundreds, if not thousands of years.
After a brief illusory excursion into equality, now we are supposed to hand over our rights to our own sexuality and fertility too… including the label 'woman' itself...
If young girls believe physical/ sexual attractiveness is their best asset, it’s hardly their fault. It may not be what they really want… It may only give them an illusory experience of being a somebody, a valid member of the human race, albeit very briefly...
Very insightful!
Wow!
So important. Wonderful!
The Atwood quote is so on point. I read robber bride more than once many years ago.
Now where to find an equivalent piece for young men? of what our bizarre hyper anti-and ultra sexualization of males and females is doing. a lying denial of our humanity and the mis-assignation of blame! It shows up in bizarre forms of body hatred and in the many anti-body addictions too!
Thank you for sharing this. So much for us to engage with for we the human living in a world that is, basically, a total lie to everyone looking for what is true.
Muchas gracias.
All the best with what is changing. Everything changes!
A really deeply insightful essay. Thank you so much. I would add another factor - which is the easy almost unavoidable access young girls now have to being exposed to hard core pornographic videos online - which must provide a rather terrifying distortion of their pre-adolescent fantasy of what "becoming a woman" might entail. I can't help but suspect that children watching adult male sexual fantasies graphically played out in online video is yet another factor contributing to the "dis-ease" young girls and young women are feeling about their bodies and their female identity. I wish everyone I know would read your essay - but instead they'll let NPR tell them what to think about all this. : /
That was quite the read, thank you.
In response, I would like to offer this article by Substack account 'How to Subvert Subversion with Yuri Bezmenov':
https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/how-to-stay-anonymous-top-anons-creativity-trust
How To Stay Anonymous
A brief history of anons, a tribute to the top modern anons, and why anon culture fosters free speech, creativity, and trust.
As an anon myself, perhaps one may think of it as 'a counter balance to selling one's image and bathwater online.'
Remember corsets so tight they could kill you? Women would have ribs removed to achieve the perfect waistline. Not so long ago when pointy-toed high heels were all the rage, some women had their feet surgically altered. We can blame men but really we do these things too ourselves. Some people never get over themselves.
Wow-powerful! I think she nails it! Thank you for sharing this!
Agree… very good essay. So thought provoking and deep
> They do not see you; they just like what they see. Hungry eyes…
It’s in the opening part, so it kind of predefines one side of the story, the “men” side. And it is so wrong.
“They” do not see “you” - two vagueness, how do we navigate here? Is it within a social “good” paradigm like beast men and innocent, naïve girls? Really? When I lived next to an elementary school yard, the part close to my windows was a favorite spot for 8-9-10-year olds. It was in the shade of huge trees, right across the school building, a safe harbor to smoke, drink beer, and be a model girl for others. Yes, this was an abode for girls, boys never went there. Boys were on the opposite side, playing football. Boys didn’t have a spot to gather and smoke and drink. But the best part was about linguistics. My vocabulary range increased exponentially from sheer listening to these “girls” - who in fact were still in the toddlers’ age, just oversize and overoutspoken. They didn’t recite poems or fairy tales. I have never heard such weird, disgusting, obscene, absolutely ugly words, expressions and full, lengthy sentences from any man, sober or not, normal or macho. These girls were not quiet, they went full scale, not bothered that 15 yards away there was a huge block of apartments, with balconies and open windows. It was an amazing experience. The end of feminine innocence, in a way.
If I were to be this “they” in the above sentence, I would want NOT to see “you” - the girl with such disrespect to everything and everyone around, including yourself - like the ones above.
Now a different interpretation of this opening sentence. If “they” mean “men”, well, the first part is true. They do not see you. But the second part is completely wrong, and it shows the lack of understanding of deeper layers of the human mind, in either sex. “They” (in both sexes) cannot “like” “what they see” because - they do not see you, right? So, what is happening there?
One person (“man”) is gravitating toward another (“girl” / “woman”). On one hand, it is a natural physiological attraction, part of our biology. It is always there, from the first impulses of sexuality which both (girl and boy) experience at some age. The attraction per se is natural.
The second part is more tricky. The attraction is always there, but the conditions of social life and personal values exist for a reason, too. Both serve as safeguards, as sort of guidelines how to behave (both girls and boys) to make life harmonious and conducive to development, in both social and personal aspects.
At the time when we feel the first impulses which make intimacy the most desired part of life, our parents should teach us about these safeguards. Parents - not strangers, like teachers or preachers or doctors. But most parents do not want to go into these subjects. They themselves are blocked or suppressed or shy or straight unaware. Or they escape into work or more children or social duties or whatever, just do not let your child to ask you about “these things”.
The outcome: both girls and boys do not know what “this” is all about. Neither can “see” the other person. Both work diligently on building fantasies, supplemented with the abundance of resources online and advice from other kids. Both girls and boys create illusions and expand them and ornament them all the time. When these illusory, false images meet real-life situation - the natural intimacy impulse and the absence of guidelines what to with it - an avalanche of mental problems is triggered.
Girls want to be desired and express this in numerous ways, boys “see” these expressions and are naturally attracted to them, but do not know how to handle the situation. Neither girls nor boys will ask each other about what they are feeling or what is happening - the parents did not give them this simple option as the best solution. Thus, both girls and boys go full ahead into the natural desire and quickly learn a whole range of negative emotions. And they never talk about it with their parents - so there is no way to learn from mistakes or to identify false expectations. This is the ground on which we all become “adult” persons.
“Men” are not attracted to what “they just like what they see”. They don’t really know what they see, but they act upon their own imagination and the stories and the movies. A disaster is obvious.
“Hungry eyes”? Oh, dear. Hungry eyes are beautiful. Yes, we all (girls and women, boys and men) happily engage in looking at what is attractive and nice to our inner being. Seeing a beautiful, happy person is the best experience in life we can have. Enjoying her/his physical appearance, the way of moving, the manner of expression - this is all beautiful, this is what being human is about.
Girls/women go to immense lengths to make themselves an attractive “object”, even at the expense of harming the body. Is it because their parents did not make them aware of this game? Or is it because it always is a winning strategy over boys and men who are not self-aware enough to go beyond these games?
This is the landscape. The “stop” sign is missing there. It has never been set up when we were on the verge of becoming aware of intimacy. Our parents did not tell us that this is an invisible sign, a trap set up by the society to victimize anyone breaching the invisible rules. As all guidance signs, the “stop” sign has two sides…
The question is, where are all wise and outspoken psychologists? They all know these problems. And they do NOTHING to change this. Parents inherit this huge gap, and mostly are not aware of it. But psychologists learn about these issues and they learn how to resolve them - only within a prescribed routine and for the appropriate fee…
8, 9 & 10 year olds were drinking beer?
Is it the most striking part? :-)
Some insightful commentary here, but also absolute garbage to claim women in general want to be sexually desired - maybe the author does for her own reasons, maybe the author projects her personal feelings onto women in general, maybe some do because they don’t know better, or some do because they like the vicarious illusion of power the male gaze might bring - but the vast majority of emotionally intelligent women are far far fafafafar far more interested in genuine connection than in contorting themselves into suitable consumable commoditized carboncopy fodder for a general population of stunted males. To be attractive to and attracted by a suitable mate? Yes. General obsession with general sexual desirability? Nope, healthy women are busy with more important things. ❤️