"Ever notice how the women in Cosmopolitan magazine so often look like they’re a hair’s breath from an orgasm? This goes for the ads as well as the editorials. Have you ever wondered: hmm, isn’t it sort of weird that a women’s magazine that is itself sold to women and is simultaneously trying to sell things to women should be filled with other women staring out of the pages making the kinds of dull-witted sexyfaces you’d expect them to be making at men whose attentions they were seeking? Why are women being instructed to look at women who are ostensibly looking at invisible men? The magazine is showing you women via the male gaze. The magazine is also training you to see yourself via the male gaze, and to put more currency in how you look to the outside observer, or how you look in a mirror, as opposed to how you look at the world, as a person seeing. The message is that women don’t see; they are only seen. You want a man? You wear these clothes, stand in this posture, make this sexyface: these are the symbols of the straight female. In a heteronormative, male-driven world, this what it means to be beautiful, or at least sexually available."

-

Madonna, Lady Gaga, and Breaking the Male Gaze | Fatshionista
 (via knospen, curvesahead) (via hatari) (via somerset) (via loveyourchaos) (via rememo) (via princessketchup) (via queerandpresentdanger) (via ireensarrows)

To put it another way: to be a woman is to be seen. You want to be a woman? You do these things so that your appearance is sufficiently designed such that you are a woman.

That bit about wanting a man comes in a step or two later.

Source: curvesahead
  1. luxloves reblogged this from atomicyawn
  2. doublecherry-pie reblogged this from curvesahead
  3. chris4tao reblogged this from curvesahead
  4. sevdahbaby reblogged this from leprintemps
  5. growingtornadoes reblogged this from atomicyawn
  6. atomicyawn reblogged this from wine-loving-vagabond
  7. leprintemps reblogged this from landlessness
  8. anzabelle reblogged this from fizgig1202
  9. fyrdrakken reblogged this from sailaweigh
  10. melissathemagnificent reblogged this from wine-loving-vagabond
  11. orgyporgy reblogged this from de-bra
  12. fizgig1202 reblogged this from peekadora
  13. misswonderheart reblogged this from arliss
  14. kiskolee reblogged this from newtheoryoldlove and added:
    curvesahead, newtheoryoldlove)
  15. curmudgeonlaine reblogged this from desertmar
  16. arliss reblogged this from sailaweigh
  17. sparklespark reblogged this from ambivalent-progression
  18. desertmar reblogged this from sodiumlitskies
  19. sodiumlitskies reblogged this from filigrees
  20. yuyubees reblogged this from wine-loving-vagabond
  21. andygregor reblogged this from equivoque
  22. de-bra reblogged this from intimos