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But it’s like boobs are Velcro. You can practically hear the ripping sound when a guy finally looks up.

Bev Potter • Why Can’t Men Stop Staring At Our Boobs?

One might simplify this by saying: men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves. The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object – and most

John Berger • Ways of Seeing (Penguin Modern Classics)

Women dress for women and secretly want the male gaze

The longer I live, the more it seems like outfits at work and in life are for female approval rather than for myself or some misplaced desire to get male approval. So tiring. Imagine how much money women would save if not for this thing we impose on each other.

Separately, women seem to want the

Dispelling Beauty Lies: The Truth About Feminine Beauty

J. Sanilac jsanilac.com

You painted a naked woman because you enjoyed looking at her, you put a mirror in her hand and you called the painting Vanity, thus morally condemning the woman whose nakedness you had depicted for your own pleasure.

The real function of the mirror was otherwise. It was to make the woman connive in treating herself as, first and foremost, a sight.

John Berger • Ways of Seeing

Put simply: you’re damned if you do; you’re damned if you don’t. Try too hard, and you’re disgusting; don’t try at all, and you’re invisible.

Anne Helen Petersen • Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud: The Rise and Reign of the Unruly Woman

Even pretending you aren't catering to male fantasies is a male fantasy: pretending you're unseen, pretending you have a life of your own, that you can wash your feet and comb your hair unconscious of the ever-present watcher peering through the keyhole, peering through the keyhole in your own head, if nowhere else. You are a woman with a man... See more

A quote from The Robber Bride

These women have thoroughly internalized the male gaze, their to-be-looked-at-ness, and arrived at a place of incredible power — as objects. Their struggle, as evidenced by the ample time we spend with those who’ve “retired,” is figuring a sense of self outside of that objecthood.

Culture Study Meets 'America's Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders'

unabashed staring at a woman’s breasts or genitals would be inherently offensive to a woman because she would interpret this interest as selfishly indifferent to other aspects of her life. It is easy to see, then, how